A trend report from property management software company Rentec Direct found that rental payments were down 29% year over year in August 2020 and 12% in the last five months, suggesting that state aid has expired to address the economic hardship caused by the pandemic high costs.
"Our data shows a consistent downward trend in the number of rent payments property managers and landlords receive, down more than 12 percent in the last five months alone," Nathan Miller, president of Rentec Direct, said in a statement. “Many tenants rely on various temporary regulations to protect them as widespread unemployment and loss of income affect the land. This means that fewer tenants are paying their rent. "
While rental payments are declining overall, a worrying trend is that online payments fell in August, which, while not suffering as much as total rental payments, are still substantial as those who pay online traditionally they tend to make their payments with more regularity.
(It should be noted that the authors of this study offer an online accounting system for online payments at Rentec Direct.)
Online payments were down 11% compared to March this year, after falling just 1.6% in July.
Despite the comparative consistency of online payments versus traditional payments, the number of requests to collect online rental payments decreased by over 9% compared to pre-pandemic averages.
The report was prepared using data from Rentec Direct's anonymized internal data from 620,000 rental properties across the country. The figures refer to the first week of the last five months when most rents are due. The company said it will look at payments from January and February this year as a basis.
The White House took Executive action on federal aid to Americans after Congress was unable to reach an agreement to expand federal benefits to the unemployed who were previously receiving an additional $ 600 per week. This aid ended on August 1st.
Executive ordinances provide that $ 44 billion in Disaster Relief Funds from DHS will be distributed as an additional $ 300 per week in unemployment benefits to the more than 30 million Americans currently unemployed. At this rate, the money would run out by the end of September.
