FAIRMONT — With Minnesota living under a stay-at-home order, the local, state and national economies are taking a hit. Many business owners and their employees are suffering.

Fortunately, people who rent cannot be evicted amid the pandemic, but what does that mean for landlords?

Danny Klous of D&A Properties and Matt Traetow of Krueger Realty, both in Fairmont, offered some insight into what they are seeing on the rental front.

Traetow said Krueger is concerned for the safety of its tenants, implementing safety measures before the stay-at-home order went into effect.

“We’re only doing emergency work orders for maintenance right now, just stuff that needs to be done,” he said. “We want to avoid our maintenance person going in and out of places, particularly at Fairmont Place because that is an elderly household. There we did lock down the bathrooms and community room well before we had a stay-at-home order in place, to protect the elderly population because they’re more vulnerable.

“Our office is closed; we’ve been doing as much business as we can electronically or by mail and we’ve put a drop box out front. We’re just trying to adapt like most businesses have.

“We’re still doing business, just different than before. We’re just following CDC guidelines, and so far we haven’t had any known cases of coronavirus and we’re thankful for that.”

Both landlords have seen minimal change in the number of vacancies for this time of year.

“I would say that there’s probably not as much moving around,” Klous said. “Normally in spring we have people coming and going, and I think people are just kind of holding where they’re at for now.”

“We have some vacant apartments, which is unusual this time of year,” Traetow said. “Part of that is that we’re lacking some staff to get those back online. We’ve actually had several calls over this last weekend of people looking for rentals, so overall we haven’t had huge issues with vacancies.”

As far as people being unable to make rent, neither Traetow nor Klous have seen much of it. Traetow hopes people know help is available.

“We did lose a long-term tenant who was furloughed and they moved out of the area, and I think we’ve had about five tenants that have called and said they’re furloughed,” he said. “Fortunately, there was rental assistance available in the complex they’re in. So there is assistance available.”

Klous noted that while he does not currently see such problems, that does not mean they will not exist in the future

“We’re not seeing any problems yet,” he said. “I know people got their taxes back in the last couple of months and their stimulus checks came through last month, though I know some are waiting on the paper checks.”

If the lockdowns get extended over the summer, Klous anticipates the situation will change.

“I expect that we could see an impact this month or next month, especially with those who work in the service industry, as far as waitresses and bartenders,” he said. “They’re definitely going to have issues unless they planned for this or have been good at saving some money.”

Klous echoed Tratow’s statements about help being available, but said tenants need to communicate with their landlords.

“I wouldn’t say we’re going to get hit,” Klous said. “I hope tenants don’t view this as free rent, because when the ban is lifted we can evict them that month. It’s the same for us, we can’t be foreclosed on if we have mortgages on our rental properties. But that doesn’t mean we can’t get foreclosed on the month after the ban is lifted.

“So if renters are accumulating a balance, they need to be planning for that or evictions could still happen down the road. So it’s important for them to know that this isn’t a free pass going forward and they need to communicate with their landlords, which all of my tenants have been great at. If we know that they’re having a problem, we’re willing to work with them.”