Small Landlord Survey Results!

Celebrating NAHREP familia, cultura, politics, and grassroots action

Qué onda mi gente?!

Over the last week, the NAC Regionals and I have sent text messages, emails and Facebook posts urging our NAC (that’s you!) to participate in our current Call to Action campaigns. You might have seen the call your U.S. Representative campaign about credit overlays, or the email your U.S. Senator campaign, asking them to include our priorities in the next stimulus package.

Thank you to all of you who have responded! We see you and we appreciate you.

For those that haven’t participated, maybe you don’t think that one email is going to make a difference. After having worked in various forms of government, including a congressional office, a federal regulatory agency, and even the White House, I can tell you that you’re right. If an office receives one message, or a handful of messages or calls, it won’t make a difference. However, if an office gets bombarded with messages in a short period of time, you bet these elected officials will feel the pressure to be responsive to their constituents. Power in numbers!

Many have also expressed that they are nervous to make the calls. I promise, it’s really easy. It takes a minute tops. For the phone calls we have provided a script for you and option to tell your own stories if you’d like. I know the NAC is still a toddler, and we’re still learning how to walk, but just imagine what would happen if all 40,000 members participated in these campaigns?

Results are in! NAHREP Landlord Survey

Along with campaigns, we have also asked you to fill out and share surveys. Our most recent NAHREP Landlord Survey was a huge success, kudos to everyone who spread the word and even sent out the survey to your clients! Surveys are instrumental in providing one of the most important currencies for policy making: numbers and information. The results of this survey have allowed us to be a leader in driving the conversation around small landlords and helping to write legislation to support these mom and pop investors.

Key Takeaways:

The vast majority of landlords in the survey (80 percent) own or manager fewer than 20 units. These are not major conglomerates, hedge funds or private equity groups. In fact, over half of respondents owned four units or less.

More than two thirds of these landlords (67 percent) expect to derive at least a quarter of their retirement income from their rental properties. We already have a retirement crisis in this country, with too many people nearing retirement age without any savings. Many Latinos invest in real estate, over other retirement savings vehicles, to support themselves in retirement. If these individuals lose these investments there is a lot of wealth that will be zapped from the Latino community in the years to come.

More than half of landlord surveyed (52 percent) had at least one tenant not pay rent last month, 10 percent said fewer than half of their tenants paid rent. These small investors are often undercapitalized in comparison to the big guys. Without support, they may be forced to take on more debt, or worse, be forced to sell or foreclose in order to make ends meet.

Owners of 5-19 units are more likely to report decreases in collections and steeper drops compared to first quarter, and 25 percent had to borrower funds to cover shortfalls in operating costs. Borrowing to cover operating costs is unsustainable. If these individual investors lost their properties, it’s likely they will get swept up by large scale investors.

We need a government program. 4 out of 5 landlords surveyed said they would be interested in a government loan program.

• Among already interested, the following would increase likelihood of participating:
  • 90% low interest rate loan
  • 89% no repayment for 10 years
  • 65% documentation for COVID-related impacts
  • 60% eviction protections
• Among those who said they were uninterested in government loan:
  • 55% said low-interest rate loan and no repayment for 10 years would boost interest
  • 61% said documentation and 56% said eviction protections would diminish interest

You can find the full factsheet and survey data on our website. Please share these results with your elected officials! Let’s keep showing the world who we are familia. If you haven’t done so already, please take 2 minutes to respond to our two campaigns.

And to all my rock star advocates out there, you are the heart of NAHREP. Thank you for stepping up to the challenge.