A report from Crain's New York Business. "The city’s hotel industry is in free fall, as occupancy and room rates have plunged and a growing number of chains have shuttered locations due to the dramatic drop-off in business as a result of the coronavirus crisis. 'We’re bleeding as far as occupancy goes—all hotels are right now,' an employee at the glitzy Gramercy Park Hotel told Crain’s. 'We’re in the single digits in terms of occupancy. I’ve never seen anything like it.'"

"An employee at Midtown’s 426-room, tourist-focused Warwick Hotel said it had stopped taking reservations until May 11. 'It’s a nightmare,' the person said. 'It’s a ghost town.' Although there was still hope that the virus could be controlled and the economy repaired in the coming months, hotel experts were already predicting that 2020 could be the worst year ever for the city’s hotel industry."

From Bisnow. "With the economy in flux and stock prices down across the board, the U.S. commercial real estate property outlook looks pretty grim, Green Street Advisors said in a webinar Tuesday. In the three weeks ending Monday, the S&P was down nearly 30% and REITs were down 35%, Green Street Advisors Managing Director of Strategic Research Peter Rothemund said during a conference call. 'The market is pretty freaked out about the spread of the coronavirus here in the U.S.,' Rothemund said. 'And it tells you that we are in a recession right now.'"

"REITs focused on gaming, lodging and healthcare are down 35% during the same time period. Student housing, which some had considered recession-proof, is down 30%. Office, apartments, malls and industrial REITs are down 20%. 'Some of these moves make sense and some of these moves are overdone,' he said. 'It's like the market is on a death scare … In times of stress like this, there's a lot of distressed selling going on. You need to use some of these signals with a grain of salt.'"

From Restaurant Business. "Restaurant companies have lost almost half of their value in recent weeks as investors panic over the state of their finances while consumers abandon dine-in eating. And while that only represents a small portion of the industry, the steep declines in valuation show that investors are fearful of the impact of the coronavirus on restaurants. They could well prompt a massive change in how the industry is valued going forward—and how it’s funded."

"Going into trading Tuesday, with many restaurant stocks down, the median publicly traded restaurant chain had lost more than 60% of its value since its 52-week high, according to an analysis by Nick Mazing, director of research for financial services site Sentieo. That’s more than double the decline of the S&P 500. So while stocks have crashed as the coronavirus spreads, restaurants as a whole have fallen through the basement. 'This is the meteor,' Mazing said. 'The industry as we know it will change dramatically. This is pricing in severe business impairments or worse.'"

"Mazing also believes that financiers will rethink the industry. Again, much of that had already been happening long before anyone heard of COVID-19—cash challenges at restaurant franchisees and the impending bankruptcy of NPC International was likely to take care of that. And, really, that might be one good thing that comes about this in the long term. Maybe restaurants have to change how they finance their capital needs."

"'I think the system will see reduced leverage as investors and banks pull back,' Mazing said. '“It will also lead to a major rethink of real estate. A national chain franchisee was in many ways the gold standard for a tenant. This will probably go away. We might see new rent structures emerge, like more variable rents, which means that real estate financing will change, too.'"

From Globe St on Texas. "Heavily favored by developers for years, self-storage construction has ramped up across the country with some markets becoming increasingly competitive and saturated. According to Yardi Matrix’s analysis, DFW is the third most active market and its self-storage supply flood took a serious toll on rents. The total self-storage space inventory in the DFW metro area consists of more than 62.7 million square feet, in excess of 1,084 facilities, or the largest inventory level for any US metro."

"Even though self-storage construction has slowed dramatically (-34% in 2019 compared to a record 2018), the pace of development is still elevated. The metro area recorded the addition of no less than 2 million square feet in 2019 spread over 24 new facilities. 'The biggest factor in the decline of the Dallas storage construction sector is most likely oversaturation in the market,' Francis Chantree, StorageCafe senior researcher, tells GlobeSt.com."

From Geek Wire. "Redfin announced Wednesday that RedfinNow, an arm of its business that buys homes directly from homeowners and resells them to homebuyers, will temporarily pause making offers on homes. The move comes as the coronavirus outbreak and social distancing have severely cut into home-buying demand across the United States. CEO Glenn Kelman also published a blog post on Wednesday in which he said the housing market had taken a 'turn for the worse.'"

The Financial Post in Canada. "The coronavirus outbreak, combined with a collapse in oil prices, is fueling recession fears and slowly eroding housing demand in key markets despite the central bank’s 100 basis points of rate cuts this month. 'Open houses are quickly becoming extinct,' said Phil Soper, chief executive of brokerage Royal LePage."

"'The market was ripping hot' just last week, said Vancouver-based agent Steve Saretsky, who held open houses but saw a noticeable slowdown in traffic. 'Almost overnight, things really took a turn,' he said. 'Phones are slower, people are nervous. I’ve had a couple of people request to pull out of presale contracts.'"

The Globe and Mail in Canada. "70 Carmichael Ave., Toronto. Asking price: $3,695,000 (Nov. 2019). Previous listing price: $3,795,000 (Sept. 2019). Selling price: $3,480,000. Near the Toronto Cricket Skating and Curling Club, a similar, fairly new residence sold for $3.7-million in 2017, but only fetched $3.5-million last year. Given that outcome, the sellers of this luxury home – which was listed nearby at the same time – dropped their own price, but resisted buyers seeking steep bargains."

"'Prices have softened since 2017 – there’s no secret – so it’s up to sellers to be proactive with their pricing to make sure they’re in line with market conditions,' agent Andre Kutyan said."

From Mingtandi. "A shop in Hong Kong’s Tsim Sha Tsui shopping district has been sold at a more than 41 percent loss as the city’s virus control measures crimp retail sales and push down commercial rents. A property investment firm believed to be controlled by the chairman of Shenzhen-listed Kaiser China Culture (SZ:2425) this month sold the 766 square foot (71 square metre) shop along Nathan Road for HK$40 million, according to records from Hong Kong’s Land Registry, after having purchased the property for HK$68 million in 2010."

"The investor’s 41 percent haircut is said to rank as the worst loss on a percentage basis that the Tsim Sha Tsui shopping district has seen in decades."

From Bloomberg on China. "China home-price growth stalled last month and sales plunged as large swathes of the country were locked down amid the height of the coronavirus outbreak. The coronavirus epidemic 'dealt a blow' to the property market, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a separate statement. Home sales had the steepest plunge since at least 2013, down 35% by value in January and February from a year earlier, a separate data set showed. The real picture may be more lackluster than the data show. Nineteen cities, including epidemic epicenter Wuhan, had no transactions last month, so prices there were considered to be unchanged, the statistics bureau said."

"Moves to discount apartments to keep sales ticking over also helped fuel the slowdown. China Evergrande Group offered discounts of as much as 25% at many of its projects last month, and while sales surged, its average selling price declined 3%. Property bear Larry Hu, head of China economics at Macquarie Securities Ltd., says the market was already weakening before the virus outbreak, and government support measures won’t be enough to turn it around."

The Australian Financial Review. "Sydney and Melbourne auction clearance rates headed lower at the weekend in signs the coronavirus may be hitting housing demand. Melbourne buyer's agent David Morrell said he'd acquired three properties prior to auction this month and attended an auction in Toorkak that had lasted just five minutes. 'There were no bidders, just a vendor bid and it was passed in. I was taken aback, in the past you would have had five bidders. I think its due to the coronavirus,' said Mr Morrell of Morrell & Koren."