COVID-19: Impact on April Rent Payments, Leasing Traffic and More (Webcast Summary)

To support the multifamily community through the current COVID-19 crisis, we’ve launched a series of discussions centered around its impact on the rental housing industry with the latest data, expert insights and actionable measures stakeholders can take to minimize fallout. Register for upcoming webcasts and watch previous episodes on demand at the COVID-19: Resource Center.  This is a condensed summary from the webcast, COVID-19: Impact on April Rent Payments, Leasing Traffic and More, broadcast on April 9, featuring RealPage® Chief Economist Greg Willett and Vice President/Deputy Chief Economist Jay Parsons. ECONOMIC UPDATE Nearly 17 million jobs were lost in three weeks, indicating that we may be reaching the point where job cuts are now enveloping major corporate employers outside the hospitality, retail and entertainment industries. Such implications raise broader concerns about future consumer and business spending, as well as about how this will impact the country’s finance and banking system. This trajectory would mean we’re moving from a sharp but short “V-shaped” recession pattern toward a more prolonged downturn. APARTMENT RENT PAYMENT TRACKER As part of unprecedented industry collaboration, the National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC) created a nationwide Rent Payment Tracker with RealPage and other property management system providers contributing rent payment data.  The results for April Rent Week (April 1- April 5) showed 69% of conventional apartment households paid rent—a decline of only 12 percentage points from March and 13 percentage points from April YoY. The share of rent payments paid online jumped 20% compared to the same time last year. Over half of webcast attendees polled (53.3%) considered the 69% payment performance better than expected. APARTMENT RENT PAYMENTS BY ASSET CLASS Class A properties saw a decline of 9 percentage points in on-time rent payments by April 5. Class...