COVID-19 Rent Collections: OK to Say “I Don’t Know”?

 

 

“Dewey Defeats Truman”

Chicago Daily Tribune headline on 11/3/48

 

“Even fools are thought wise if they keep silent, and discerning if they hold their tongues.”

Proverbs 17:28

 

My 6-year old son is tasked with completing school assessment tests this week on the computer.  It’s a stressful time for him!  Not only does he have to deal with new questions about numbers and words, he has to figure out how to use a mouse for the first time.  It’s a lot for a new, aspirant student.

 

My wife thinks some of the questions may be out of the scope of a Kindergarten-educated child.  “Three-digit subtraction questions?  Scandalous!  How could he know such things at this point?”

 

So he’s tackling an assessment question like:

 

Q.  What is 100 – 80?

1. 35
2. 20
3. I don’t know!
4. I really don’t know!  (Can I watch TV now?)

 

The truthful answers for him are clearly C or D (with a hard lean on D).  But for us educated folk who have been taking tests all our lives, we know at minimum we need to answer A or B.  Nobody gets any points for offering “I don’t know” on a test!  We only get points for knowing (or acting like we know and guessing correctly).  But we really should know stuff, right? 

 

Or maybe that’s the limitation with tests when we implement this methodology in real life.  With tests, there’s always one right answer that is evident if the data is studied and understood.  But reality can be very different. 

 

For example, take this COVID-19 situation for property managers.  We’re asked questions from clients like, “Do you expect tenants to pay rent next month?”  Or, more directly, “Will my tenants pay rent next month?”  As someone in the property management field for the past 16 years, I should be able to answer that question, right?

 

Well, I read the same articles that everyone else did with statistics from large apartment provider associations saying 33% of tenants didn’t expect to be able to make their rental payments this summer.  Wow!  1 in 3, that’s bad.  Then I received calls from a few of our tenants telling me about their job losses and wondering if any of our owner-clients would be offering “Free Rent” until things were back to normal.  Data was not promising, both empirically and anecdotally.

 

All of this must have meant that we were going to experience some rough times with the rental properties we manage in the Charlotte-Metro area, right?  So I jotted off letters every month this summer to our owner-clients telling them to expect some rental disruption.  I thought I knew what was going to happen and then I relayed this to our clients.

 

So what happened?  Everyone this entire summer paid (with the exception of literally 1 tenant who is moving out).  And the number of late paying tenants was half of what we usually have.

 

What do I know? 

 

What is 100 – 80?  Fortunately, I can help with that one.  But are tenants going to continue paying on time and in full next month?  I really don’t know.  (But I hope so!)

 

Happy Landlording!