Woman sitting in a kitchen with her cell phone, looking worried.

Brief

Are Rising Rents Raising Consumer Debt and Delinquency?

Neil Bhutta

Special Advisor, Consumer Finance Institute

14 Nov ’23

In this CFI Research Brief, I examine whether the sharp rise in rents since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic has been associated with a deterioration in the household finances of renters.

Using anonymized consumer credit record data merged with county measures of rent growth derived from detailed apartment building data, I find that credit card balances and credit card delinquencies have increased for renters more so than for homeowners in the last two years, and this difference between renters and homeowners widens in counties that experienced the sharpest growth in rents during the pandemic. The findings suggest that renters may be using credit card debt to help ease liquidity pressures from rising rents.

View the Full Brief

How Consumers Made Ends Meet During the COVID-19 Pandemic

To gauge how the unprecedented economic downturn and related surge in unemployment affected individual households as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, this latest research brief focused on the strategies respondents used to help make ends meet based on data from the Consumer Finance Institute’s COVID-19 Survey of Consumers.

Consumer Finance

Report

CFI COVID-19 Survey of Consumers — Employment, Income, and Financial Security as of April 2022

Tom Akana

21 Jun ’22

This report shares results from Wave 12 of a national survey of consumers investigating the effects of COVID-19 on employment and income data, including employment through the crisis, income changes across the last three years, and financial security over the next three to 12 months.