Rental housing is booming business, and some landlords and their investors see additional dollar signs in the potential to evict tenants protected by eviction moratoria up until this point in the pandemic.
"Wall Street financial analysts, speaking to corporate-owned apartment complexes in recent weeks, have pressed for answers on how investors can benefit from the expected wave of tenant evictions," reports Lee Fang.
Fang writes earlier in the month, before the U.S. Supreme Court threw out both the federal and New York State eviction moratoria in August.
Fang reports that a push to evict non-paying tenants comes despite a booming rental market for landlords.
NexPoint Residential Trust, which owns over 14,000 rental units around the country, noted in a call with investors last week that its occupancy rate is up to 96 percent, a rate the company noted was at an “all-time high” and positions the company to “aggressively push [rental] rates” for the “remainder of the year.”
And
Last Thursday, UDR Inc., a real estate trust that owns 149 apartment complexes, also released its earnings report, showing dazzling growth. The company reported strong financials, including increased revenue and a 97.5 percent occupancy rate, a “new high watermark.”
Fang reports detailed and on-the-record questions from investors responding to the largesse of those specific companies with questions about plans to evict non-paying rental tenants—and promises from these and other companies to move swiftly to evict tenants once eviction moratoria are no longer in place.
One chief executive, UDR’s chief executive Thomas Toomey, "added that the company lost $1.5 million to $1.6 million a month from the 400 tenants they planned to evict," echoing the legal claim of a large landlord suing to end the city of Los Angeles's eviction moratorium as an "illegal taking" under the 5th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
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