Zillow Estimates 0.6% of Nation’s Renter Pool to be Evicted
Its latest survey says that’s 50 percent more than pre-pandemic, and that rents and vacancies will not rise dramatically.
Zillow projects a 50 percent rise in evictions coming out of the expiration of the federal eviction moratorium, or roughly 1.5 times what they would typically have been before the pandemic, according to the survey conducted Aug. 3 through Aug. 17.
The survey comprised a collection of 111 economists, researchers, analysts and other housing experts from academia and the private sector.
An estimated half-million evictions would be filed over September and October, according to the survey, with about 0.6% of the overall 43.9 million renter pool being evicted (or 268,000).
The survey also reflected that rents and vacancies are not expected to rise dramatically following the end of the federal eviction moratorium.
How many at-risk renters will be evicted will be greatly impacted by the pace of the distribution of federal relief funds. According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, only $5.1 billion of the $46.5 billion in rental relief has been distributed by state and local governments as of Aug. 25.
After the moratorium expired July 31, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention imposed a new policy to prevent evictions in areas with high COVID infection rates. However, the Supreme Court blocked the new ban, leaving a number of renters at risk of eviction.
The vast majority of survey participants do not expect rents to change much as a result of the moratorium ending. The largest single group of panel participants — 34% — said no change is likely to occur, while 26% expect rents to rise slightly. A total of 14% of respondents said rents will fall either slightly or modestly. Predictions for rents to rise modestly were cast by 20% of the panel, and those believing rents will increase significantly accounted for 6%.
When asked how rental vacancy rates will be affected, the largest share of respondents (38%) said vacancies would rise slightly as a result of the end of the moratorium, just ahead of predictions that vacancies would not rise (37%) and beyond calls that they would rise modestly (24%).