We are happy to share a new working paper summarizing our findings from our survey of residential landlords in Minneapolis, MN. We administered this survey between November 2020 and January 2021, asking landlords how the pandemic had impacted their businesses. Minneapolis still had an active eviction moratorium when our survey was live, but the federal government had yet to unveil the Emergency Rental Assistance program.

A summary of our analysis:

• We received nearly 1,500 responses to our survey, representing over 13% of all residential rental property owners in the city.
• Nearly 50% of respondents to our survey reported that the pandemic had impacted their business somehow.
• The most common reported impacts were: an anticipated decline in operating cash flow (33%), an increase in the frequency of missed rent (24%), an increase in vacancy (12%), increased difficulty in signing new leases (12%), and an increase in premature vacancies (11%).
• We test several associations with reported pandemic-related stress. We find consistent associations between rents, portfolio size, race, and the physical condition of properties and reported stress.