Eviction moratorium complicates rental business
Gary Zaremba has responded to the long-running eviction moratorium by selling off dozens of properties.
He is more careful about whom he rents and is considering buying buildings in more upscale neighborhoods.
Zaremba, who owns mre than 300 units mostly in Ohio and New York City, said conditions are getting better after a bleak year-and-a half. But he still has a quarter of tenants struggling to pay rent, which means he has had to cut staff and delayed repairs on his buildings so he can pay his property taxes and his mortgage for the buildings.
Now, a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eviction moratorium lasting until Oct. 3 has him fearing further hardship.
He worries the nationwide moratorium could inspire some of his tenants to stop paying rent — as they have done before.
Most evictions have been halted since the early days of the moratorium and there are now more than 15 million people living in households that owe as much as $20 billion in back rent, according to the Aspen Institute.
A majority of single-family home owners have been impacted, according to a survey from the National Rental Home Council, while 50% say they have tenants who have not paid rent during the pandemic.
Still, the apartment rental market has navigated the crisis relatively well, according to data from analytics firm Trepp, which tracks a type of real estate loan taken out by owners of commercial properties such as offices, apartments, hotels and shopping centers, shows.
The increase in delinquencies for multi-unit apartment buildings has risen, hovering around 4.52% as of July compared with 2.75% as of December 2020.
But that is far less than hotels, among the hardest hit areas, which have a nearly 13% rate of delinquency on their loans, down from nearly 20% in December 2020.
The retail industry had a 10.5% delinquency rate in July, down from nearly 13% in December 2020.
