Property managers: Unpaid rent curve flattens
'Everyone is working hard to stay current,' says one agency
The rate at which people are unable to pay their rent has flattened, according to a survey of several area property management companies responsible for more than 1,500 rentals in Humboldt County.
Real Property Management reported a less than 1% increase in the total amount of unpaid rent from April 13 through May 13. As of Wednesday, 6.5% of the total rent due to RPM was unpaid. On April 13, that figure stood at 5.9%.
The April-to-May increase of 0.6% is a significantly more gradual rise than what RPM saw from March-to-April. On March 13, RPM counted 2.6% of its total rent owned as unpaid.
RPM President Darus K. Trutna said, excluding a few outliers with high amounts of previous unpaid rent, that there was virtually no increase from April to May. On April 13, excluding the “outliers,” 4.7% of total rent was unpaid and that figure remained at 4.7% as of May 13.
Trutna said under normal conditions, he would expect that figure to be around 3.0%.
Redwood Coast Real Estate on Wednesday reported only three of its 140 units had not paid rent in May, a two-fold decrease from the seven units which did not pay in April.
Catrina Bindel of Bindel Inc. IMS Rentals reported no increase in the number of units that did not pay rent: 16 of the 320 units Bindel oversees did not make a rent payment in April. That number remains 16 as of May 13.
Bindel said an overwhelming majorly of the units are rented by self-employed tenants, and that the issue for her past-due renters is garnering unemployment insurance or other COVID-19 benefits from the state and the federal government.
“I was surprised to see how well people are doing, I think everyone is working hard to stay current, pay their bills and do the best they can,” Bindel said. “It’s very impressive and I am proud.”
As of May 2, the Employment Development Department reported 4.1 million Californians filed unemployment insurance claims since mid-March, 600,000 of which came between April 26 and May 2.
Eviction moratoriums have been enacted by officials at state, county and local levels to protect outof-work renters. Eureka and Arcata have both put in place preliminary orders which allow renters to go months without paying rent before beginning a repayment process.
On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported lawmakers in the state are looking to include a long-term solution to mounting rental debt. The plan would give tax credits to property owners equal to unpaid rent from tenants, and would allow tenants 10 years to repay missed rent to the state.
Some renters might not have to pay the full amount because of an unspecified hardship exemption. The state would not charge interest. The program would be voluntary, meaning both tenants and landlords must agree to it. If no tenants paid the money back, lawmakers estimate it would cost the state about $500 million.
The National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC)’s Rent Payment Tracker found 80.2 percent of apartment households made a full or partial rent payment by May 6 in its survey of 11.4 million units of professionally managed apartment units across the country.