From the very early stages of the coronavirus outbreak, it was clear the pandemic would have serious repercussions for the multifamily industry. Now, with emerging data to analyze, we are beginning to get some concrete sense of the outbreak’s impact. Data compiled by Radix shows that, in terms of property performance fundamentals, there are some predictable but nevertheless worrying trends.Nationally, traffic is way down on a Year-over-Year (YoY) basis. For the week ending on April 15, traffic was down 63.3% from the same time last year. On a more positive note, it was up 11.3% when compared with the preceding week. From discussions with our clients, this increase is likely due to the fact that operators are getting creative and doing virtual tours through applications like FaceTime and Google Voice.Additionally, leases signed are decreasing. The average U.S. apartment community signed 1.7 leases during the seven days ending on April 15. That represents a YoY decrease of 48.5%. Traffic and leases are leading indicators, and when they are down for sustained periods, we will soon see negative impacts on metrics like occupancy and leased percentage rates, and then followed by rents.We are seeing the first signs of this cascading effect. For example, the U.S. same-store occupancy rate for the week ending on April 15 was 93.55%, a 0.19%- drop from the preceding week and a 0.58% dip from the same period one year earlier. The same-store percent leased rate for the week of April 15 was 94.51%. The rate was a 0.35% d……
