A report from Bisnow. "The COVID-19 pandemic is impacting the commercial real estate market in ways both large and small. Shares of real estate investment trusts have fallen 34% between February and March 16, which implies a 24% decline in real estate asset values, an analysis by Green Street Advisors found. The indicated drop-off ranges from a 10% decrease in the value of office towers and data centers to 50% in senior housing properties. REITs are trading at roughly a 22% discount, to Green Street's 'best guess' of the underlying value of their portfolios."

"'Private market real estate investors, who just weeks ago were racing to deploy billions upon billions of dollars of dry powder, are tapping the brakes,' the Green Street report said. 'A sharp drop in transactions will limit visibility on property prices. Nobody knows where real estate values will ultimately settle.'"

From Multi-Housing News. "As lenders nationwide hunker down and prepare for an economic downturn, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are implementing stricter multifamily loan terms. The sudden economic downturn has affected all types of lenders, not just the GSEs. Securitization programs (CMBS, CLOs) are facing little demand for bonds, and most banks are stepping back. 'Unfortunately, I think that loans of all sizes will be challenged and only those that have to be financed will,' said a capital markets professional at an international brokerage."

From CNBC. "Construction of single and multifamily housing units is expected to decline now, as the economy stalls in the face of the coronavirus epidemic. Single-family homebuilders don’t want to be stuck with supply they can’t sell, and some multifamily projects are now facing trouble with funding."

From Boca Mag in Florida. "For large, investor-financed projects, the short-term outlook is bleak. A Daily Business Review story quoted a developer as saying that lenders aren’t even looking now at the sort of large, multi-family projects that have sprung up in Boca Raton and Delray Beach in the last decade."

The Commercial Observer Florida. "In the first quarter of 2015, average rental rates in Southwest Florida were $1,068 monthly, according to commercial real estate brokerage Newmark Knight Frank. By the end of last year, however, average rents had climbed to $1,342 per month – a 25.6% jump despite the thousands of new units that had come online. But with all the gains and new product have come concerns from some quarters that inventory has begun to outpace demand. Fort Myers’ multifamily vacancy rate now stands above 11%, according to CoStar, one of the highest rates in the nation."

The Gainesville Times in Florida. "Heavy machinery is still in motion at a large tract off Phil Niekro Boulevard, even as businesses are shutting down due to the coronavirus pandemic and economic forecasts are grim. 'We are under construction and by the time we begin to lease, we hope things have started to improve,' said Kurt Alexander, principal with The Residential Group, which is grading for a 324-unit apartment complex near Interstate 985 in Flowery Branch."

"While the Flowery Branch project is forging ahead, an apartment project planned in Oakwood is iffy, Alexander said. 'Financing is very difficult,' he said. Asked to elaborate, Alexander said, 'Banks, as well as equity investors, are taking a wait-and-see approach.'"

From Banker and Tradesman in Massachusetts. "The coronavirus has managed the turn the global economy and all our lives upside down in a few short months. We may very well see a shakeout in the Greater Boston development market. James Kirby, chief executive of Commercial Construction Consulting, said he is fielding calls from pension and sovereign wealth funds asking for help in evaluating projects that 'were planning to start this year who have lost some or all of their financial backing recently.'"

From Real Estate Weekly in New York. "While residential brokers had hoped 2020 would be the beginning of things finally looking up after two years of sluggish sales, the first quarter of 2020 unsurprisingly saw home sales nose dive as coronavirus crippled the market in a matter of weeks. The latest first quarter market reports for Manhattan don’t paint a pretty picture for sellers or agents with sales in March having dropped 42 percent year-over-year. Calling the market 'stagnant' in every single neighborhood in the borough, Compass concluded that conditions will be 'significantly softer' for at least the next 30 days."

From Crain's Chicago Business in Illinois. "Many apartment landlords today are in a pickle, under pressure to give struggling, out-of-work tenants a break on rent but limited in how flexible they can be by their own obligation to pay the mortgage. They’ve had the upper hand over tenants for most of the past decade, allowing them to hike rents and sell their properties for hefty gains. The coronavirus adds more uncertainty to the market here and beyond. Worried about overpaying for properties, Chicago-based Origin Investments put more $241 million in apartment deals on hold last month in cities including Houston, Denver and Charlotte, N.C."

"'We’re certainly hearing that nobody wants to take a deal out on the market right now,' said Ron DeVries, senior managing director in the Chicago office of Integra Realty Resources, a consulting and appraisal firm."

From Oregon Business. "Sales of commercial real estate, particularly for large transactions, may take a while to pick up gain. 'Investors and buyers and sellers of real estate have hit the pause button,' says Adam Taylor, capital markets director at JLL. The slowdown in deal flow will be particularly felt in transactions worth more than $10 million."

The Oregonian. "The agency’s state and private forest divisions are funded almost entirely through harvest revenues from state forests and taxes on private logging. And with the pandemic’s vast economic fallout, Oregon’s wood products industry is already beginning to tank, erasing some of the best paid jobs in rural Oregon and dragging the agency’s revenues with it. 'April will be bad compared to March, and May will be a disaster,' said Andrew Miller, president of Stimson Lumber, one of the largest buyers of state forest logs."

"'We were going to have an amazing housing year, but when all this started our order file began to evaporate,' said Steve Zika, the president of Hampton Lumber. Hampton is shutting two of its nine mills next week, and will reevaluate on a week-to-week basis. 'I’d be surprised if you didn’t see some form of curtailment for almost everyone,' he said. 'You can only stack your lumber for so long.'"

From KGW 8 in Oregon. "Protections designed to help renters who lost work because of COVID-19 could seriously hurt landlords. That’s the message from Multifamily NW, which represents 2,500 landlords who collectively own 250,000 properties in Oregon. The executive director of Multifamily NW, Deborah Imse, fired off her own letter to the governor and others after seeing the city commissioners' letter. She warned that forgiving rent would create a 'cascading series of events threatening our basic economic structures.'"

From Socket Site in California. "Having already started to slip earlier this year, prior to the COVID-19 hit, the weighted average asking rent for an apartment in San Francisco dropped around 2 percent in March to $4,000 a month, which is around 1 percent lower on a year-over-year basis and 10 percent below its 2015-era peak of around $4,450 per month, with the average asking rent for a one-bedroom in the city down to around $3,475 per month (which is around 4 percent lower than at the same time last year and 5 percent below peak)."

"At the same time, the weighted average asking rent for an apartment in Oakland dropped down around 3 percent in March to $2,600 a month, which is less than a percent lower than at the same time last year but around 8 percent below its peak in the second quarter of 2016, with the average asking rent for a one-bedroom down to $2,300 a month (versus closer to $2,500 a month at peak)."

From Curbed Los Angeles in California. "It took a pandemic to make it happen, but Los Angeles rental prices appear to be on the way down for the first time since the Great Recession, according to a new report from real estate data tracker CoStar. According to CoStar, it’s newer apartments—which aren’t covered by LA’s rent control regulations—that are seeing the biggest price dips right now. Typical rents for these units fell by 0.75 percent between March 11 and March 30. If that trend continued over a full year, it would amount to a 12 percent drop in the monthly cost."

"Brand new units in particular could be difficult for property managers to fill at a time when public health officials have urged residents to avoid contact with those they don’t live with, and stand at least six feet apart. The report notes that prices for newly built apartments in the Downtown area were on the way down prior to the outbreak; rents there have declined 4 percent since the beginning of the year."

From D Magazine in Texas. "Fluid. That’s the best word to describe the current state of multifamily housing during the Coronavirus pandemic. Investors started pouring in from markets like New York and Los Angeles. Average sales pricing appreciated almost 140 percent since the beginning of the cycle, outpacing the U.S. norm. And the average cap rates have compressed more than anyone could have imagined (a decade ago we saw cap rates at 7 percent to 8 percent versus 5 percent to 6 percent just before the downturn)."

"Now, with a bear market at hand, everyone is eyeing rental collections for the next few months, and many are adopting a 'wait and see' approach. There is also concern over newer assets. RealPage has seen traffic to multifamily property websites drop by 15 percent. Dallas-Fort Worth has about 30,000 units under construction, so with less demand in the coming months, it’s going to be tough to get that new supply through lease-up."

The Lumber Building Material Journal. "Bob from Unstoppable Homes, is always looking for a big score. For example, when it was clear that there was a need for rental properties in your market, he went all-in on multifamily construction. At first it was great with landlords snapping up the apartment buildings, and Unstoppable Homes appeared, well, unstoppable. Bob was hiring like crazy, planning to grow his company and expand into other regions, and become one of the big builders on the cover of a magazine. Until the tide turned, and the local rental market was overbuilt. Then Bob was forced to backtrack, lay people off, downsize his operation, and focus on the fundamentals."