It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "California home prices and sales are likely to fall as a result of the coronavirus, according to the California Association of Realtors. Kalena Masching, a Redfin agent in Silicon Valley, saw a sudden shift in the market this week. Last Thursday, on March 5, she listed a home for sale in Mountain View. On Sunday, her client got three strong offers, all over asking price with no contingencies. On Monday two buyers withdrew their offers. The sellers accepted the third offer, which was all cash. On Thursday, that buyer withdrew and stands to lose the earnest-money deposit, Masching said. The homeowners have already moved out and are renting a place, which they can do for a few months to see if the market settles down, but not all sellers can afford two homes at once, she said."

"Masching said many of her buyers who were planning to make offers last week have pulled back. Most are using stock to fund the down payment 'and don’t have the purchasing power they had two weeks ago.'"

"Across South Florida, residential, as well as commercial agents say they are concerned about how coronavirus will affect the market and ongoing deals. 'It is literally the perfect storm for real estate that is not good for the market,' said Douglas Elliman agent Bill Hernandez."

"Sales increased in January and February compared with a year earlier, as home sellers dropped prices and bargain-seeking buyers closed deals, brokers said. The median closed sale price was $906,250 in the fourth quarter, about 9% lower than a year earlier, and the number of sales increased year-over-year by 11%, the most recent report from the brokerage Douglas Elliman and the appraisal company Miller Samuel shows."

"Luxury homes — that is, the top 10% of sales by price — sold for a median of $6.8 million, down more than 13% from a year earlier, the report shows. 'We’ve bridged the gap; we’ve seen homeowners come down to market value, and that’s all our buyers want, they want to pay market value,' said Todd Bourgard, a manager and associate broker with Douglas Elliman, based in Westhampton Beach and Bridgehampton."

"COVID-19 and the economic fallout that has come with it are putting some home buyers and sellers in the Twin Cities on edge. 'This is getting real in a hurry,' said Jerry Hall, who was planning to sell his house in Woodbury next year but has decided to get his house on the market as quickly as possible. 'I wonder if it’s too late,' he said.' he said. 'It will be interesting to see how the dominoes fall on housing.'"

"Houston-area home sales experienced another double-digit gain in February as buyers came out in droves to take advantage of low mortgage rates. But with the local economy in peril amid plunging oil prices and disruption from the coronavirus, sellers are starting to worry the busy market won’t last. Real estate agent Jessie Singh said the owner of one of her listings in Rice Military instructed her to accept an offer he had declined before the oil and stock markets plummeted on Monday."

"'He literally sent me a text that said: 'Accept this offer,' said Singh of JSingh Homes."

"'Craziness' was on Realtors' minds Thursday, the day after the World Health Organization first called the outbreak a pandemic and the global crisis hit as close to home as could be for Oklahoma City. 'My concern isn't so much the virus itself, it's the overwhelming disruption it is and will continue to cause,' said agent Erik Love. As the virus spreads, more and more places will quarantine, which will lead to missed paychecks, and less overall spending, also potentially leading to DTI (debt-to-income ratio) being thrown off, causing buyers to become less qualified to purchase. I do expect to see a reduction in home sales and prices even after this has passed for some time.'"

"Realtors on Facebook Thursday were bracing for impact. 'I’m not panicking but I do believe we are about to experience a big shift in the market. I’ve already had several out-of-state buyers cancel trips,' one posted. The oil price collapse hit harder than the prospect of disease, some Realtors said on a Facebook page. 'We personally put our house hunt (or building plans) on hold because I’m straight commission and my husband is in the oil field,' one said. 'The economy is struggling right now. For now my husband's pay is the same. But I have buyers who are scared they won’t have a job here soon, or will have a job with reduced pay.'"

"The conversation: 'I work with a lot of out-of-state investors. I haven't had anyone back out because of 'Corona,' but I had one decide not to buy right now because of the uncertainty with the oil sector. He doesn't feel like now is the right time to start investing in Oklahoma. His thought is that we could be at the beginning of a huge crash. He's wants to to wait and see whether home prices will drop.'"

"'And by doing that he is contributing to a crash. Haha.' 'Yep. It's wild.'"

"With turmoil in financial markets pushing many key interest rates to record lows, why are mortgage rates going … higher? The economic damage from the global coronavirus outbreak has freaked out financial markets and caused most interest rates to plummet. However, this week real estate saw a hiccup. What should have been an added boon to the real estate market, even cheaper mortgages, didn’t materialize."

"The gap between what lenders are charging and what the bond market is saying is historically wide. When I put into my trusty spreadsheet a half-century’s worth of rate data, I found this week’s gap between these two key interest rates — what’s loosely a big part of mortgage-making profit — at 2.82 percentage points. How big is that? It’s the largest gap in 12 years. Since 1972 — years that included numerous periods of double-digit mortgage rates — this gap has been wider only 4% the time. And over 48 years, this spread between mortgage rates and Treasury yields has averaged 1.7 percentage points."

"'Somehow, someway, mortgage rates actually moved higher this week, touching their highest level in almost a month despite immense volatility in the markets and Treasury yields falling and remaining near all-time lows,' wrote Zillow Economist Matthew Speakman. 'So, what’s the deal?'"

"Municipal-bond prices plunged to record lows Thursday amid a selloff in stocks and other assets, as investors dumped even gold-plated debt. Yields jumped 58% from Tuesday through Thursday on 30-year bonds, according to Refinitiv, the biggest three-day increase since the firm began keeping records in 1981. The S&P Municipal Bond Index experienced its biggest one-day drop in more than a decade. Bond yields rise as prices fall."

"'Today was the weakest day on record for the muni-bond market and prices fell faster than they ever have before,' said Matt Fabian, a partner at Municipal Market Analytics. 'To the upside, we’ve gotten rid of some of the pricing excesses of 2019.'"

"Adam Weigold, who manages $5.5 billion in municipal-bond mutual funds at Eaton Vance, said he was surprised to see so many funds selling bonds in response to outflows, rather than using cash to reimburse investors. 'I would have thought there would have been more cash out there,' he said."

"A gyrating stock market is seizing headlines as the coronavirus threatens corporate profits and economic growth. Yet it’s in the normally temperate bond market, where companies go to borrow money, where the gravest dangers may lurk. The numbers are enormous."

"Having binged on borrowing, companies that are outside the financial sector owe $9.6 trillion in the United States — up more than 50% in a decade. Worldwide, companies have issued $13 trillion in bonds, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. That’s twice what they owed in the financial crisis year of 2008. Corporate debt in China alone has soared from virtually nothing to $590 billion."

"Add in what companies owe banks and other creditors, and their debts come to $75 trillion worldwide, up from $32 trillion in 2005, the Institute of International Finance says. Companies had been selling tens of billions in new bonds each month. That pace ground to halt in late February. Companies started canceling sales as investors balked at buying corporate bonds. In the last week of that month, no U.S. company sold new bonds, according to S&P. That’s virtually unheard of outside of a holiday or an emergency like the financial crisis."

"The canceled sales coincide with perilous times for many companies. Oxford Economics has warned that nearly $4 trillion of U.S. corporate bonds will come due within five years — a 'massive wall of maturities,' it calls it. Corporate America has used new bond sales to pay off old bond holders, akin to homeowners during the housing bubble paying off their mortgages with proceeds from new mortgages. Now, the corporate refinancing cycle is shuddering."

"Money manager Marilyn Cohen is telling her clients with bonds to stay calm and ride out the storm and not force her to sell in a market with so few buyers. But not everyone is listening. 'One lady said she wanted to sell, and I said, ‘To who?' Cohen recalled."

"Stocks of the nation’s homebuilders are tanking, on pace for their worst day since Dec. 1, 2008, when the subprime mortgage crisis brought the whole housing market to its knees. In addition, Bank of America downgraded Lennar, Toll Brothers and NVR, saying that while they are still bullish on housing, 'We would be remiss to assume no impact on end-market demand from COVID-19.'"

"Names like D.R. Horton and Pulte are down double digits on the day and well off 52-week highs. Toll Brothers in particular, a luxury builder, will likely be impacted by the massive drop in the stock market. Shares of Lennar were down more than 10%, while Toll Brothers shares had shed more than 13%, and the stock was down almost 50% from its 52-week high."