[Survey] Rent Payment and Eviction Trends - November 2020

In mid-November, we sent a survey to over 70,000 active TurboTenant landlords and renters to gain insights into how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted their rental process, specifically regarding rent payments, evictions, mortgage payments, debt and income, communication trends, as well as tenant screening criteria. This is our fifth survey in our series on COVID-related landlord and tenant topics. We will continue to publish insights and data through the end of 2020 and into 2021. This survey was conducted between November 12th – November 17th. Our key takeaways and insights from both landlords and tenants for our November survey are highlighted below. You can read our October analysis.

Landlord and Renter Demographics

Below we have outlined high-level demographic information for landlord and renter respondents related to location, unit size, forbearance, annual household income, and savings.

Landlords

Key Data Points:

  • 58% of landlords own rental property in cities or urban areas.
  • 44% of landlords have a mortgage on all their properties, 26% have a mortgage on some of their rental properties and 30% have no mortgage.
  • 5% of landlords are currently in forbearance.
  • Unit size breakdown: 1-4 Units – 62%, 5-10 Units – 18%, 11-20 Units – 10%, 21+ Units – 10%.
  • 32% of landlords reported having to dip into their savings to cover their rental mortgage.

Renters

Key Data Points:

Rent Payments

Breakdown by State, Unit, and Community Type

Key Takeaways: 

Renter Data

Key Takeaways:

Tenant Screening Criteria

Key Takeaways:

  • 25% of landlords have made their tenant screening criteria more stringent, 7% have made it less stringent.
  • Nearly 60% of landlords require a credit score of 600 or more; 9% require a credit score of 700 or more.
  • 40% of landlords reported they had to lower their monthly rent amount in order to fill a vacancy.

We will continue to update this data every month. If you have data requirements that are outside the scope of this article, please email [email protected]. We have ongoing data collection and are happy to supply another data set if it is available. Check out all of our COVID-19 landlord resources.

If you are in the process of filling your properties, TurboTenant can help streamline your rental process with easy and free online rental applications as well as thorough tenant screening so you can find the best renter for your property.