April 2020: Rent Collection Survey [1600+ unit sample]

[Matt Lefebvre]

COVID-19 has a far-reaching impact on the economy and is impacting the world of real estate. Going into the month of April, I've heard many landlords bracing for the worst in terms of their tenant's ability to pay rent.  Instead of gauging how rent collection has been going anecdotally, I decided to survey a variety of property owners and property managers to understand what rent collection has been like in the month of April.  I separate my results by "property manager" for when I surveyed a management company that oversees multiple owner's and "property owner" for any landlords who run their own management of their own building.  Here are the criteria I used and the questions I asked in my survey:

• Any property manager needed to manage a minimum of 100 units to ensure a good sample size
• Any property owner needed to own a minimum of 20 units to ensure a good sample size
• Only apartments were considered in this survey
• I called on April 6th asking how many tenants have paid IN FULL
• Only properties in New Hampshire were considered (I encourage people to do this in their own state! The results are interesting!)

Now for the numbers...

• Total number of units:  1,605
  
• Number of units managed by a third party:  1,376
• Number of units managed by the owner:  229
• Weighted average collected by a third party manager:  80.74%
• Weighted average collected by the owner:  86.03%
• Blended average collected:  81.50%

Most property managers surveyed reported either offering a $50 rent concession is rent was paid in full by the 5th of the month, or offered to waive late fees if someone lost their job or had their hours cut.  Many private owners offered no concessions at all but often stated that they would be flexible on collection and late fees for their tenants if they needed it. Many landlords (managers and owners) stated that they had much lower expectations for what percentage of rent they expected to collect in April and were pleasantly surprised by the results of their rent collection.  Almost everyone has stated that their biggest fear is May rent collection as that's the month where any money that tenants had saved up (assuming they have an extra month's worth of living expenses in their bank accounts) will be completely gone if they lost their job and the stimulus is not enough. 

Has anyone else done a survey like this?  I'd love to see other's findings controlling for similar variables above.