Inflation Alert! With the median asking rent for 1 bedroom apartments increasing by 10% or more in 56 of the 100 largest cities in the US in January, NMHC Rent Payment Tracker found 92.0% Percent of Apartment Households Paid Rent in the month of December
Following up from our dive into the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index Summary for January where discussed rent for 1 bedroom apartments increased by 10% or more in 56 of the 100 largest cities in the US, The National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC) reported only 92% of renter households had made their rent payment for December by the end of December, down from 93.8% in December 2020, and down from 95.9% in December 2019.
What this looks like in graph form:
As we can see, on-time payments are on the downswing but there are spikes towards on-time payments along the way. These spikes line up around the $1200 and $600 stimulus payments.
However, since there have not been any other direct payments made to individuals and rent is jumping bigly because of inflation, on-time payments are cracking.
I am having issues finding up to date total renters in the US, but in this chart from 2017, we can estimate around ~43 million rental households:
NMHC data is from at least 11.1 million apartment units each month, or ~25% of the rental market.
TL:DR of 25% of market data available in this set, 8% or ~888,000 units did not make rent payments on time in December of 2021.
