Rethinking Multifamily Risk Post-COVID

SAN DIEGO—The pandemic has forced organizations to make massive operational changes that have impacted the balance sheet, scattered the CRE workforce and exposed the industry to new levels of risk. Panelists at the NMHC annual meeting here in San Diego dug into how companies are addressing these new challenges. 

According to moderator David Schwartz, chairman and CEO of Waterton, it wasn’t long ago that risk, for multifamily, was about fire, hurricanes and liability claims. While those exposures remain, such as the Texas freeze, he said, COVID has brought a new era of risk to the industry “that requires us to rethink how to confront and mitigate the new landscape. The ripple effect of the lost job, rising costs, growing rent delinquencies and more are just some of the many fires we are putting out.”