Orange County apartments have actually held up through the pandemic. Since the start of the pandemic, CBRE brokers have been tracking apartment rent collections, and they have found that rent collections have consistently trended above 90%.

"When COVID-19 hit we did experience market anxiety that sidelined a lot of people. At that point, we started tracking rent collections– we're now in the fifth month of doing so—and realized rent payments remained at 90-plus percent month over month over month," Dan Blackwell, EVP in CBRE's Newport Beach office, tells GlobeSt.com. "At these high levels, we have seen bank lending confidence come back, followed by investor interest."

While rent collections have outperformed initial expectations, apartment investment activity has been disrupted. Capital is moving out of the state at a faster rate than before the pandemic. "We have always had a good portion of capital flowing out of state, but COVID-19 has accelerated that trend somewhat," says Blackwell. "Something to note is that many more of our clients want to stay in multifamily whereas in the past, quite a few investors have opted to trade out of multifamily and get into out-of-state retail."