A report from Denver 7 in Colorado. “A homeowner in Littleton says because he deferred his mortgage payments through the CARES Act forbearance program for those impacted by COVID-19. As soon as he was able to begin paying again, he was told he must pay about $23,000 in past mortgage payments within 60 days. After losing his job in March due to the pandemic, Lyndon Reynoso’s luck was starting to turn. ‘I had received an offer for a job, and I was going to start work in November,’ Reynoso said.”
“That meant Reynoso could start making his mortgage payments after nearly 8 months of forebearance, a program through the CARES Act allowing mortgage payments to be postponed to a later date. ‘My biggest message is just be careful with what banks are telling you as far as the forbearance. In my eyes and in my experience forbearance equals foreclosure,’ Reynoso tells Denver7. Reynoso tells Denver7 those five months of payments owed, totaled $23,000 within 60 days. To make it worse, his December statement showed not only a late fee but also a fee for a physical inspection of the property.”
“‘That person explained to me that they were checking to see if the home was vacated. I said, ‘why would you think the house was vacated? I’ve been trying to make payments.’ She said, ‘well, we are checking to see if you vacated because it’s the start of foreclosure process,’ Reynoso said. The Reynoso’s went to extreme measures like borrowing from family, and selling what they could. That included selling stocks and furniture. His wife even sold her engagement ring to get back in good standing.”
From WBUR in Massachusetts. “Daily life in Boston’s Financial District used to be characterized by the buzz of office workers, lunch meetings, industry events and afterwork get-togethers. On a recent weekday afternoon, canyons of concrete-and-glass office towers that once hummed with activity were eerily calm. ‘While there are some bright spots in terms of people getting creative to think about doing deals,’ said Ann Ehrhart of Boston Urban Partners, a commercial real estate firm. ‘I would say, candidly, on the whole it’s pretty bleak right now.’”
“‘I think we haven’t seen the worst of the bankruptcies and business failures yet,’ said Joe Peek, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. It starts like this: Businesses fail, they default on their loans, and banks start to take losses. Then, as banks see the market getting riskier, they become pickier about who they lend to.”
“According to a recent installment of the Federal Reserve’s Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey (SLOOS), 60-80% of loan officers said they’ve tightened lending standards for commercial real estate projects in recent months. The last time the SLOOS recorded a similar tightening of credit was around 2008, during the height of the Great Recession. ‘Do I want to lend to you right now on a real estate deal?’ Peek said. ‘Probably not. Because I’d be afraid you’re not going to make the payments.’”
From Bisnow New York. “Midtown — the epicenter of Manhattan office, retail and hospitality — has seen a stark transformation over the past eight months. The hundreds of thousands of office workers and tourists who used to fill the streets and businesses every day now only trickle down the hallowed corridors of Fifth Avenue, Park Avenue, Madison Avenue and Broadway. Dozens of boutiques, showrooms and restaurants that paid millions in rent every year have already shuttered in the world’s priciest retail cluster.”
“Meanwhile, swaths of retailers are filing for bankruptcy as retail rents along the area’s priciest strips plummet. The hotel market in the area was already oversupplied before the pandemic, so an obliteration of demand entirely has put the final nail in the coffin for many. An estimated 20% of the city’s hotel rooms won’t reopen, which would leave a lot of empty space throughout Midtown. ‘Manhattan is an island, and Midtown is part of that island,’ said LW Hospitality Advisors CEO Daniel Lesser said. ‘If the rest of the island doesn’t come back, I don’t know how Midtown does.’”
The Pittsburgh Post Gazette. “It’s not as expensive to live Downtown as it used to be. For instance, the 1st Avenue Lofts apartment building in the heart of Downtown is offering to reduce the rent by $200 a month on all vacant units right now, plus give new renters a $1,200 credit on the first month. And now you can get two months of free rent at several Downtown buildings, including Terminal 21, The Clark Building and 908 Penn Avenue, where one-bedroom units run as high as $1,400 a month. SouthSide Works City Apartments is advertising an offer to knock off $1,000 for immediate move-ins.”
“About half of the 25 multi-family projects that were developed in the Downtown market since 2010 are trying to fill vacant units by offering some kind of concession for renters who’ll sign leases. Practically all of the new multi-family projects in the past 10 years have been luxury apartments, and the approximate 1,200 units that are in the pipeline for development in the region also fall in that category.”
“‘There are only about 1,200 units in the pipeline [for Downtown Pittsburgh],’ said the CoStar report, ‘but this is a fragile ecosystem, and developers are always cautious about introducing new supply. Those units could struggle to fill for more than a year and rates could take a serious hit.’”
The Midland Reporter Telegram in Texas. “The median rent of an apartment in Midland has dropped for 18 straight months and is down to nearly $700 for a one-bedroom apartment, according to a report from ApartmentList. The report shows rents in November are down 3.5 percent compared to October, 24.5 percent compared to the start of the pandemic in March and 31.5 percent compared to the same time last year. The year-over-year drop is one of the largest in the nation, according to the report.”
From Seattle PI in Washington. “According to the November data from ApartmentList, Seattle rents declined 5.6% month over month and are down nearly 20% since the start of the pandemic in March. For the past eight months straight, Seattle has seen its rents fall. The only city that saw rents decrease more than Seattle since the start of the pandemic was San Francisco, where rents have declined about 25.4%.”
The San Francisco Chronicle in California. “Another month, another drop in rental prices. Rents in San Francisco decreased another 3.4% in November, bringing the total dip in rental prices to 24.5% since the start of the pandemic in March, according to a new national rental report released by ApartmentList. That means a median two-bedroom apartment in San Francisco has dropped from $3,147 to $2,377 since March.”
“‘Given the move to more distributed work it’s not clear if SF will ever be quite the same again. But I don’t think that’s a bad thing,’ Zumper CEO Anthemos Georgiades wrote. ‘The city needs to breathe, to rebuild, to re-set its (insane) cost of living to attract the next generation to come here.’”
From KPIX in California. “Chinatown is one of the most colorful and historic districts in San Francisco but, despite a relatively low infection rate, the area is fighting for its life as fear of the pandemic is causing longtime businesses to fail. ‘It’s desolate and there’s nothing here anymore,’ said area resident Mark Lobell.”
“Grant Avenue on a Sunday morning would normally be jammed with shoppers and diners but, these days, it’s quiet and empty. Steven Lee co-owns the Sam Wo restaurant which has been operating in Chinatown for more than a century. ‘You see? This is the result of a pandemic,’ Lee said as he climbed stairs to the dark, second-floor dining room. The tables were empty and a restaurant that once had people lined up down the block is reduced to take-out.”
“‘We’re down to maybe like three, three and a half people from 23 (employees). Three shifts down to three people,’ Lee said. It’s the same story all over town but, in Chinatown, it started early — in February before the lockdown began. ‘The restaurants here were empty but, if you went through the tunnel or to North Beach, they were all full,’ Lee said. ‘So it seemed like there was something going on, that they were scared.’”
“The fear and blame for the pandemic landed squarely on Chinese-owned businesses. While racism is nothing new, 90-year-old Stanley Gee said he’s never seen it have this kind of effect. ‘Chinatown is the district that is worse than any other places,’ Gee said. ‘I don’t care or worry about the restaurants. I’m worried about my people here. It’s the saddest thing!’”
From Spectrum News 1 on California. “More than 400 leaders in business, public policy, housing, and education participated in the 11th annual Southern California Economic Summit. ‘We face challenges on multiple fronts, a pandemic unlike anything we’ve experienced in our lifetimes, a resulting economic downturn worse than anything we’ve seen since the Great Depression and an equity gap that has reached historic levels,’ said SCAG President Rex Richardson, who is also a Long Beach city councilman.”
“Overall, the six-county SCAG region saw employment drop by more than 1.78 million jobs, or 19.7%, between February and April. The hardest-hit industries were leisure and hospitality (down 45.4%), other services (down 27.3%), information (down 22.7%), and nondurable goods (down 17.4%). In Orange County, the hardest hit sector was leisure and hospitality, which saw considerable losses as restaurants, hotels, and Disneyland shut its doors for the first extended period since opening in 1955.”