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Independent Landlord Rental Performance Report: October 2025
- The Chandan Economics Research Team
- 3 hours ago
- 6 min read
Monthly Tracker of On-Time Payments in Non-Institutional ("Mom-and-Pop") Rental Properties
Key Takeaways
In October 2025, on-time rental payments in independently operated units rose by 99 basis points (bps) to 83.5%.
Measured year-over-year, on-time payment rates have fallen for 27 consecutive months.
The forecast full-payment rate held steady at 94.8% in October, remaining unchanged from September.
Late payments — the primary driver of underperformance in the mom-and-pop sector — have remained above 10% for most of 2025.
Despite elevated late-payment rates, full-payment performance has proven resilient.
Western states continue to hold the highest on-time payment rates in the country, led by Alaska, Utah, Montana, and South Dakota.
2–4-family rental properties led all property types in October with the highest on-time payment rate, coming in at 83.8%.
The Bottom Line Upfront
Recent national data paint a picture of improvement and cautious optimism. While on-time collections remain well below post-pandemic highs, the recent positive inflection suggests the sector has likely already found its bottom.
As described throughout this report, the primary source of underperformance in the mom-and-pop rental sector is a sizeable uptick in late payments. In 2023 and 2024, the three-month moving average of late payments never reached double digits. In 2025, late payments are forecast to have exceeded 10% of charges for nine consecutive months since February. As operators rely on tenant income to cover operating expenses, higher late-payment shares are far from harmless.
The drop-off in rent payment timeliness aligns with other indicators of consumer financial strain. Credit card delinquency rates in Q2 2025 sat at 8.6% — more than double the 4.1% rate recorded in Q4 2021. Student loan delinquencies — a debt category that disproportionately affects young renters — have climbed to an all-time high of 13.0%. Moreover, delinquencies and negative equity levels for auto loans have also surged. Altogether, the data suggest that households living paycheck to paycheck have fallen further behind in 2025.
Still, tenants are continuing to prioritize rent, even when they fall behind. Despite higher late-payment rates in 2025, full-payment performance has outpaced 2024. Further, since this dataset counts partially satisfied rents as unpaid, the real income impact to landlords may be smaller than the topline figures suggest.
Looking ahead, the trajectory of rental performance will hinge largely on broader macro trends — namely, the labor market.The current labor market environment is characterized by low heat — less hiring, but also less firing. While limited labor market churn may weigh on both wage and rent growth, it also promotes income stability for households already employed. So long as the labor market avoids major job losses and inflation stays contained, on-time collections should continue to recover.
National Overview
On-time rental payments in independently operated units rose for the second consecutive month in October 2025 — signaling that the sector is moving off its performance floor. According to this month’s first estimate, 83.5% of units paid their full rent on time, an increase of 99 bps from September.
Meanwhile, September’s on-time payment rate, initially reported at 83.1%, has been revised down to 82.6%.
Year-over-Year Change
While on-time payment rates have improved month-over-month, they remain significantly lower than a year ago — down 223 bps. On-time collections have now declined year-over-year for 27 consecutive months, marking a sustained period of soft performance.
Encouragingly, the pace of decline is moderating. After drops of roughly 300 bps in July and August, the gap narrowed in September and October, suggesting a slow but steady recovery may be underway.
Note: As of May 2024, monthly data estimates are reported as a three-month moving average.
Full-Payment Rate: Historical & Forecast
The forecast full-payment rate for October 2025 — which accounts for on-time, late, and historically anticipated late payments — held steady from the prior month, remaining at 94.8%. September and October’s full-payment forecasts currently sit as the two lowest on record since 2021. However, actual full-payment rates have outperformed forecasts in recent months, thanks to late payments being resolved at higher-than-expected rates. While this has weighed on the on-time rate, it indicates that tenants remain committed to making up missed payments.
Omitting the September and October data points, the average monthly full-payment rate for 2025 currently stands at 96.0% — landing between the 2023 average (96.6%) and the 2024 average (95.3%).
Late Payments
Late payments have proven to be the primary source of underperformance for the mom-and-pop rental sector. While late payments are not as debilitating to property-level economics as outright missed payments, they remain a significant source of headaches for operators. The three-month moving average of late payments in independently operated rentals has risen consistently since mid-2024, climbing from a low of 8.4% to a high of 12.9% in August 2025. Forecast late-payment rates for September and October are 12.2% and 11.2%, respectively.
Performance by Property Type
Trends within key rental subsectors reveal a clear performance gradient. Among the three tracked property types, 2–4-unit rentals led all property types in October 2025, posting an on-time payment rate of 84.2%. Single-family rentals (SFR) followed at 83.7%, while multifamily properties trailed with an average on-time collection rate of 82.4%.
Compared to the prior month, all three subsectors saw significant improvement. Multifamily experienced the largest uptick (+115 bps), followed by 2–4-unit rentals (+110 bps) and single-family rentals (+93 bps).
Regional Differences
At the state level, continuing a consistent trend, properties in the West outperformed the rest of the country. In October 2025, on-time payment rates were highest in Alaska (95.1%), followed by Utah (94.5%), Montana (93.3%), and South Dakota (92.8%). Rounding out the top five was Washington, DC (92.7%), which leads a growing cohort of East Coast markets quietly climbing the rankings. New Hampshire (91.8%), Virginia (89.8%), and Vermont (89.8%) have all moved into the top 15.
Importance of the Report
The Independent Landlord Rental Performance report provides valuable insights into how well non-institutional landlords are managing rental payments. It uses data from property management software RentRedi, showcasing results from 66,397 units. Information is collected and reported monthly by Chandan Economics. The trends highlighted here can serve as a benchmark for investors, brokers, and policymakers to understand the health of independent landlords in the rental market.
About: Chandan Economics
Chandan Economics is an economic advisory and data science firm serving the commercial real estate industry. The firm's primary businesses include real estate data science (REDS), economic & market research, and litigation consulting.
About: RentRedi
RentRedi offers an award-winning, comprehensive property management platform that simplifies the renting process for landlords and renters by automating and streamlining processes. For landlords, RentRedi provides all-in-one web and mobile apps to collect rent, list and market vacancies, find and screen tenants, sign leases, and manage maintenance and accounting. For tenants, RentRedi’s easy-to-use mobile app allows them to pay rent, set up auto-pay, build credit by reporting rent payments to major credit agencies, prequalify and sign leases, and submit maintenance requests.Founded in 2016, RentRedi is VC-backed and a proven leader in the PropTech market. The company ranks No. 180 on the 2024 Inc. 5000 list, No. 12 on the Inc. 5000 Regionals list, and was named an Inc. Power Partner, a GetApp Category Leader, a Capterra Established Player, and a G2 High Performer and Momentum Leader based on the software’s user ratings and popularity. To date, RentRedi has more than $35 billion in assets under management with nearly 200,000 landlords and tenants using the platform. The company partners with technology leaders such as Zillow, TransUnion, Experian, Equifax, Realtor.com, Plaid, and Stripe to create the best customer experience possible. For more information visit RentRedi.com.
Methodology
Data are reported on a forward basis from March 2020 through October 2025 (current reporting period). As of the latest month of data availability, the reduced unit sample size totals 66,397. Rent charges are measured on a 15th-to-15th-of-the-month basis. Rent charges that are issued after the 15th of the current month are treated as a rent charge for the following rent-tracking period. (E.g., a rent charge sent on September 16th would be treated as a charge corresponding to October's owed rental payment.) Monthly estimates are represented as a three-month moving average.
Only charges designated as "rental income" are included for analysis. Rent charges below $500 and above $10,000 are excluded from this analysis.
Units that have not paid any form of rental income (full or partial) in the previous 60 days at the time a new rental charge is issued are removed from the sample tracking sample. Unpaid units refer to all units that have yet to fully satisfy their owed rents for a collection period. These unpaid units include units that have only partially paid their rent. As a means of reporting standardization, units with more than one monthly rent charge (E.g., rent paid weekly) are removed from the rent tracking sample.