NMHC Rent Payment Tracker

Roughly 44 million households in the United States rent. The measure most often cited to describe whether those households are making their payments no longer exists.

The National Multifamily Housing Council's Rent Payment Tracker ran monthly from 2020 through January 2022. It drew on data from five of the largest property management software providers and covered several million professionally managed apartment units. It was cited everywhere during the early pandemic. Then the industry trade group stopped publishing it and nothing public replaced it.

What we have now are fragments. Census Household Pulse asks renters whether they are caught up on rent, but the methodology changes and the sample shifts. Individual servicers release numbers when it suits them. Property-level evictions data is tracked in pockets but not nationally in real time. None of it is comparable to the pre-2022 series.

The blind spot is consequential. Rent obligations move faster than mortgage obligations — a renter behind on rent can face an eviction filing in 30 days in some jurisdictions, while a homeowner behind on a mortgage typically has 120 days before foreclosure can begin. We track Foreclosure Starts and Credit Card Delinquency month by month. The equivalent rent series is gone, and the people who depend on it are the ones least able to buffer a surprise.