Harry Bilodeau is the owner of Bilodeau Property Management Inc. in Providence, a large-property management firm that manages several large apartment buildings, particularly on the East Side. He spoke to the Providence Business News this week about how COVID-19 has impacted the residential lease market.
PBN: Given the closure of businesses and the universities, has the vacancy rate for residential apartments increased on the East Side?
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BILODEAU: Right now, people are paying their rents. We are inside our office, providing services. We have all the safety equipment and so forth, but our doors are locked, so people are not coming in. Right now, the rental tenant activity is limited and is actually almost normal.
This wave has come in, this COVID-19 wave of unusual behavior has come in upon us. However, the undertow is when we’re going to find the damage. Our rental activity right now is almost entirely people moving to different apartments [within Bilodeau Properties] or seeking new roommates or making internal changes. The activity is very low.
PBN: Is that normal for mid-April?
BILODEAU: That probably is normal. What is not normal is we are not getting calls. That’s what I’m talking about. We are always, at least three months before the vacancy occurs; we aim at finding out if people are going to renew their leases 90 to 120 days before the lease expires. We have sent out lots of lease renewals. We are getting lease renewals. What we are not getting is new people coming in and knocking on our doors.
PBN: Do you attribute that to the closure of businesses?
BILODEAU: No one after this experience should doubt that Providence has become a university town. I’m attributing it to the fact that not only are the students not here, the maintenance men are not here, the food-service workers are not here. None of the university professors are here. None of the university administrators are here. This place is empty.
PBN: So people who would normally be occupying other rental properties, including houses, are no longer here?
BILODEAU: There are people, such as myself – my wife and I have lived in a five-unit apartment building since 1973. Fortunately, we are fully occupied. There are many people we know who have two- and three-family houses, in which they live. They are owner-occupants. They are calling up and saying, can you help me rent these? They have never done that before. [There has been] a tremendous interruption of traffic. The impact of that is going to be felt a couple of months from now.
PBN: Among your existing tenants, are you getting a lot of requests for you to be flexible on the rent if they’ve lost their jobs?
BILODEAU: Actually, we are not. We’ve collected about 98% of whatever rent we would normally collect for April. We tend to be quite cautious about tenant selection, No. 1. But No. 2, I think the effect, let’s hope the [Paycheck Preservation Program] makes unnecessary the possible effect, which would really hit us in May. If people have been out of work for a couple of weeks, they can still pay their rent. Some people have called up and said, “We’d like to pay half.” Waiving the late fees, all the normal stuff is being done to accommodate people. But the wells are going dry. It’s a good thing that PPP money is coming, that’s for sure.
Mary MacDonald is a staff writer for the PBN. Contact her at macdonald@pbn.com.
