iStock illustration

With the $600 federal boost to unemployment benefits having run out on July 31, indications suggest rental collections at large apartment complexes are beginning to suffer, a leading landlord trade group said.

The National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC)’s Rent Payment Tracker found 79.3 percent of apartment households made a full or partial rent payment by Aug. 6 in its survey of 11.4 million units of professionally managed apartment units across the country.

This is a 1.9 percent or 223,000-household decrease from the share who paid rent through Aug.6, 2019 and compares to 77.4 percent that had paid by July 6, 2020. The NMHC’s tracker includes properties across a wide range of sizes, but is weighted towards larger complexes and away from small landlords.

“Over the past few months apartment residents have largely been able to meet their housing obligations. In no small part, this is due to the enhanced unemployment benefits enacted under the CARES Act and significant steps by apartment owners and operators to help their residents. These unemployment benefits that have proven so important to so many households have now lapsed, meaning greater financial distress for millions and the potential worsening of America’s housing affordability crisis,” NMHC Chair David Schwartz, CEO and chairman of Chicago-based Waterton, said in a statement.

With negotiations between Senate Republicans, House Democrats and the White House stalled, uncertainty remains over the future of expanded federal assistance for those left unemployed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

A new survey from apartment listings site Apartment List found around one in three Americans failed to make their full August mortgage or rent payments on time, the highest figure since it began the monthly survey in April. The survey adds to a picture painted by the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse survey, which projected that only around half of renting adults in Massachusetts were fully confident in mid-July that they would be able to cover housing costs in the following month. The state’s eviction and foreclosure moratorium expires at the end of September.

“While President Trump announced executive orders relating to rental assistance and continued unemployment benefits, it is unclear when and if those resources will be available to families,” Schwartz said. “NMHC continues to urge the Trump administration and Congressional leaders to restart negotiations and reach a comprehensive agreement on the next COVID relief package. It is critical lawmakers take urgent action to support and protect apartment residents and property owners through an extension of the benefits as well as targeted rental assistance. That support, not a broad-based eviction moratorium, will keep families safely and securely housed as the nation continues to recover from the pandemic.”