Multifamily Downturn Q&A – April 13th, 2020

For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been sharing insights designed to help multifamily companies to steer through the challenging market conditions created by COVID-19. Last week we initiated a weekly roundtable discussion for our clients, a group that includes some of the most experienced pricing and revenue management practitioners in the industry.
In this blog, and in blogs that will follow on this site, we summarize insights that were shared during our discussion. The content is presented below in Q&A format, and all responses are anonymous. 
Rent Collections: NMHC announced on Apr 8 that rent collections were at 69% for March vs. 81% for February and 82% for the same month last year, so 81%-82% seems like the right benchmark. That’s a drop of about 12 points – what’s everybody else experiencing?

Anecdotally we’ve heard numbers down more like 6-8 points as opposed to down 12, so kind of good news/bad news. Good news, almost 70% paid, bad news down 12 points is a little more than I’ve been hearing. I’ve been hearing 6-8. Note: that may be related to a somewhat A-class bias  

We’re faring slightly better. From an April rent collection standpoint, we’re down around 9 points. Now when it comes to looking at how many people have paid versus how many people have typically paid, we’re down about 5 percentage points. That implies that we have a fair amount of people that are on payment plans, so certainly we have eyes on kind of the 15th and ……