Bloomberg reported a few days ago that there are close to 8 million renters that are behind in their rent payments.
About 15% of US renters aren’t caught up with their payments…That represents 8.4 million Americans who were struggling to pay their monthly rents during the June 1 to June 13 period of the Census survey.
Bloomberg
And our favorite real estate You Tube channel, Reventure Consulting, is estimating that 13 million people are in default in some shape or form:
We can assume the truth lies somewhere between 8 million and 13 million renters facing some sort of eviction process if payments are made somehow.
What can a prudent investor do in this situation? We’ve taken a look at our REIT holdings and because we’ve strategically avoided residential REITS, we are in good shape. As a reminder, we own MPW, which is a health care REIT which shouldn’t be affected by massive evictions. We also own ILPT, which is an industrial REIT that shouldn’t be affected by evictions either. Lastly, we do have positions open in TWO which is a mortgage REIT that may be affected however we have a small position so losses, if any should be minimal.
What we WILL do however after the eviction carnage begins to wane is to load up on REITs that have massive corrections and looks promising as long term investments. We are looking at O (Realty Income REIT) as a primary candidate and a few others as well. We’ll continue to do our due diligence but in the meantime stay tuned and stay solvent…