When people left big cities during the COVID-19 pandemic, “sweetheart” deals (aka COVID deals) ran the residential rental market, according to an update from Insurtech firm Lemonde (NYSE:LMND).
While a lot of renters negotiated some cheap deals, many now “fear they are at risk of having these agreements taken away from them.” Lemonade Insurance recently conducted a survey from the “point of view of renters nationwide” to discover what renters are really feeling:
- Most respondents (84%) “regret signing a sweetheart agreement.” Why? The top reason is because they feel “it doesn’t protect them as a renter (40%), followed by realizing it’s only temporary (32%).”
- With 61% of renters “stating their rent has been raised in the past year – this stat only further feeds into the fears renters have.” Although, it’s “not all bad news.” More than two-thirds of renters (69%) feel “at least somewhat optimistic about the economic situation getting better in the next year.”
From previous recent surveys, Lemonade found landlords “want simple things from their tenants: renters insurance policies in place, cleanliness, and rule followers.”
Communicating with your landlord is “often key—particularly when it comes to renegotiating these sweetheart deals.”
As covered earlier this year, Lemonade, the digital insurance company powered by social impact, announced (in July 2022) that its 2022 Giveback for the twelve months ended June 30, 2022, “amounting to $1,873,588, to be donated across 59 nonprofit organizations chosen by its customers.”
As reported in July of this year, the Lemonade Giveback is “part of the company’s socially-impactful business model in which a portion of underwriting profits go to nonprofits of customers’ choosing.”
This year’s Giveback amounts “to almost 1.5% of Lemonade’s 2021 annual revenue—that’s more than 10 times the 0.11% of revenue Fortune 100 companies donate,” according to CECP’s 2021 ‘Giving in Numbers’ report. This also “marks the company’s sixth year of the program, donating more than $6 million since the first Giveback in 2017.”
