A report from the Times of London in the UK. "'For UK corporates, this is their Waterloo,' said a restructuring expert. 'What happens over the next few weeks will define what happens over the next few years, and whereas the financial crisis 10 years ago was about balance sheets, this is about access to cash.'"

"An insolvency expert said the coronavirus would kill off companies that had struggled for years despite the low-interest-rate environment. 'It’ll knock out those zombie companies that shouldn’t be here and in the long, long term it’s possible that won’t be a bad thing, because their turnover will migrate to businesses that really need it,' he said."

From CBC News in Canada. "Stock markets in Toronto and New York plunged when they opened Monday morning. Investors are worried about the domino effect that all those related economic shutdowns will have on corporate profits, and by extension their stock prices. 'If a restaurant owner can no longer pay rent, the property owner might not be able to pay its loan, and the bank that made the loan might end up suffering as well,' said Odysseas Papadimitriou, the CEO of financial literacy website WalletHub. 'If a restaurant owner can no longer pay rent, the property owner might not be able to pay its loan, and the bank that made the loan might end up suffering as well.'"

The Globe and Mail in Canada. "Eileen Kelly had already been out of work for several months and scratching around for something – anything – when oil prices fell off a cliff early in the new year. 'You just don’t even want to hear any more terrible news,' said Ms. Kelly, 54, who lives in Calgary. 'It’s just doom and gloom everywhere you look.'"

"Calgary’s real estate market was setting up for another depressed year before this month’s oil price crash. Commercial real estate company Avison Young had predicted office vacancy at 24 per cent in 2020. Some towers, such as the former 37-floor former Nexen building on the west side of downtown, are empty. The biggest hit has been to sub-premium properties outside the downtown core, where vacancies have topped 30 per cent. That was the market served by Strategic Group, whose 56 Alberta buildings were forced into receivership in late 2019, leaving lenders and other creditors out more than $700-million, making it the largest casualty in the province’s property market so far."

"Gleaming new towers have only recently been completed in the core, adding to available square footage."

The Conversation in Australia. "It’s one of the most Googled questions since the coronavirus and COVID-19 outbreak: how will coronavirus affect house prices? The bottom line is it will be negative - prices will go down. The market has been getting more difficult for the investor. The market in, for example, Sydney is oversupplied at the moment and there’s already been some downward pressure on rents."

From Reuters on China. "China's factory production plunged at the sharpest pace in three decades in the first two months of the year as the fast-spreading coronavirus and strict containment severely disrupted the world's second-largest economy. The Global Times on Monday quoted Wei Jianguo, vice head of the China Centre for International Economic Exchanges, a think-tank, as saying that China's 6% growth goal for 2020 remained intact."

"However, many private-sector economists see that as already well beyond China's reach. 'Don't even think about it,' said Hao Hong, head of research at BOCOM International. 'Even though China goes all in with stimulating policies in the property sector and infrastructure, that's still mission impossible.'"

"China's jobless rate rose to 6.2% in February, up from 5.2% in December and hitting the highest since official records were published. Pain was also seen in China's real estate market with property investment falling at its fastest pace on record while home prices stalled for the first time in nearly five years. Analysts expect March figures to be even worse."

The Hong Kong Standard. "Homebuyers piled into the primary market over the past weekend despite the coronavirus outbreak, but secondary transactions at ten blue-chip estates slumped almost 50 percent week-on-week. In the secondary market, Centaline Property Agency recorded only eight secondary transactions at ten major housing estates over the past weekend, down by 46.7 percent from a week before."

"Laguna City in Kwun Tong, Whampoa Garden in Hung Hom, City One Shatin in Sha Tin, Taikoo Shing and Kornhill in Quarry Bay saw no secondary transactions. In Tseung Kwan O, a 538-sq-ft flat at The Wings changed hands for HK$9.6 million, after HK$2.4 million, or 20 percent, was slashed from the initial asking price."

From Standard Media on Kenya. "There has been hullaballoo in the public arena as regards augmentation of real estate projects being advertised for auction in our daily newspapers. Truth is we need to be worried about this trend we seem to have nested ourselves into. However, in our discourse of the possible derivatives to this, we should not be frugal with the truth. Sunlight has to be the best disinfectant if we are to get to the root of this. We cannot play blind to reality."

"That our economy has been hopelessly struggling isn’t a revelation anymore but a reality nearly every Kenyan is living, or may I say majority of Kenyans. Every sector is feeling the pinch but somehow the public has continually expected the real estate sector to perform as before. No other excuse, amid our glaring economic tumble, can be attributed to the dwindling real estate investment return other than the ‘prophesied’ real estate bubble."

"In addition, we expect the real estate industry to condone, without recourse, every mediocrity thrown at it. Isn’t it true that nearly everyone expects that every house should be sold regardless of how it was built or that every office building however carelessly conceived and executed, should be fully occupied. Anything contrary to this expectation has been blamed on the real estate market and an apparent bubble. Really? Which is this investment sector, outside real estate, that can accommodate every idea however reckless?"

"We should allow, without blaming the market, people with proclivity for greed and zero respect engraved real estate norm practices to continue counting their losses. And painfully so."

From Socket Site in California. "The number of homes on the market in San Francisco has jumped 50 percent since the Super Bowl to 750. And in fact, inventory levels are now running 17 percent higher than at the same time last year and just hit a 9-year seasonal high. And the percentage of listings which have undergone at least one official price reduction – which doesn’t include any of the homes which were withdrawn from the market at the end of last year and have recently been relisted with a reduced asking price and a reset ‘days on the market’ count – has ticked up to 19 percent."

The Washington Post on New York. "Just after it opened to great fanfare in 1931, the Waldorf Astoria hotel suffered through the Great Depression, the economic crash that sent the stock market into free fall. After closing in 2017, its owner, China-based Dajia Insurance Group, is launching condominium sales at the hotel after a $1 billion renovation. The Towers at the Waldorf Astoria is offering 375 hotel rooms and — for the first time — 375 luxury residences for sale."

"Home sales on the island slipped 1.2 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2019, according to appraiser Miller Samuel and Douglas Elliman. After years of excess, Manhattan sales have declined in eight of the past nine quarters, reaching the lowest level in the past decade. A glut of new housing and a shrinking foreign-buyer pool are impacting sales, say housing experts. But recession fears have also been growing for months, and the recent stock market gyrations as the coronavirus spreads will probably further depress sales."

The Los Alamos Reporter in New Mexico. "With Coronavirus grinding travel and much of society to a halt and oil prices having crashed, there is little chance the budget passed during the 2020 Legislature will survive the year without some major revisions. Even prior to the session ending Senate Finance Committee Chairman John Arthur Smith said, 'I don’t think any of us can walk away from here and say the spending was controlled, we’re skating on very thin ice from a spending standpoint.'"

"They should have seen this coming. Even as the Legislature met the price of a barrel of oil was dropping. On January 6, 2020 oil was $63.27 a barrel. It dropped to $42 a barrel before the Russians and Saudis announced their price war which further reduced oil prices to about $30 a barrel. Since oil and gas comprise 40 percent of New Mexico’s budget a sustained price war makes a special session very likely. The Legislature didn’t learn their lesson of the last decade during which New Mexico experienced stagnant economic growth due to declining oil prices. Price dropped from over $100 a barrel to less than $50 a barrel over a few short weeks in late 2014."

"While they talked a lot about 'diversifying' New Mexico’s economy the Legislature did nothing of the sort. Instead they enacted numerous tax hikes and regulations that make New Mexico even less friendly to business. We are more dependent on the volatile oil and gas industry than before."