Apartment performance during the pandemic has been uneven, depending on ownership and asset size. New data from The National Multifamily Housing Council shows that while overall rent collections have been consistently high, not all apartment owners are on a level playing field.

The National Multifamily Housing Council tracks rent data for professionally managed apartment properties, representing a little more than half of the apartment market. However, single-family rentals and two-to-four-unit properties account for 55% of the total rental housing stock in the US, and most of these properties have small, private ownership. Looking at only one segment of the rental market can produce misleading results about the state of the market. For example, the owners of properties with less than five units have lower income, are more likely to be in distress and are more greatly impacted by reduced rent collections.

Professionally managed properties have experienced strong rent collections throughout the pandemic. In the first six days of October, rent collections matched the previous year; however, in the two weeks following, rent collections fell by 2.4% and 1.8% compared to rent collections for the same period in 2019. This shows that numbers can change from week to week; however, throughout the pandemic overall rent collections have only been down one or two percentage points. In addition, data from Yardi Matrix showed only an average of $1 monthly rent decrease for professionally managed apartment buildings.