This COVID-19 situation has been difficult for many people around the world. Property owners and residents have also been impacted in ways that for some are very challenging. Jobs have been lost, incomes reduced and some are struggling to make ends meet and pay rent. Unfortunately, some of the impacted residents have been great tenants, showing consistent timely rent payment, taking care of the property and are nice to work with.
It is important at this time that we as a company and each of our property owners show understanding, compassion, and empathy for their situation, while at the same time still enforcing the lease, collecting as much rent as possible and working out arrangements to ensure payment in full.
In the month of April as a company, we decided to waive all late fees in an effort to help those impacted. We have also been communicating proactively and constantly with the 7% of our residents who have not paid with compassion yet with clear expectations.
We are optimistic about May and June, yet concerned that a greater percentage of our residents will have difficulty paying rent. To help them, we are directing them to charitable and non-profit organizations for assistance. We are even implementing our Resident Relief Fund (
more info
).
Many owners have asked what our plan is for lease renewals this year. We want to make sure during this time that we keep great tenants. As we discussed on our Client Webinar (
view here
) for those whom we would like to renew with, we are offering new leases with no increases for this year. For tenants in a position of financial uncertainty we will be allowing their leases to go month-to-month with continual updates from them until mid to late June. From there we can better determine what the next steps should be. Due to the
CARES Act
, we are unable to give legal notice to vacate until after July 25th (for "covered" properties) so we will need to work with people as best we can.