A report from the Globe and Mail in Canada. "Sales in the Greater Toronto Area plunged 69 per cent in the first 17 days of April compared with the same period last year, according to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board. Andre Kutyan, a real estate agent with Harvey Kalles Real Estate Ltd., says he is advising owners to hold off listing if they can afford to wait. Mr. Kutyan says potential buyers are circling luxury properties, but many seem to be looking for signs that sellers are in distress."

"A couple of his listings in the $10-million to $12-million range in the Forest Hill area have drawn queries from prospective buyers asking if his clients might be willing to take 25 per cent less. Mr. Kutyan says the answer is no. 'Nobody’s under duress to do something,' he says. 'They’re not going to give away their homes.'"

"Mr. Kutyan knows of one condo owner who refinanced the unit in January to secure a lower interest rate on the mortgage and also draw some equity to pay for the renovation of his new house. The condo unit was already renting for less than he is paying for the mortgage and expenses each month. Then the tenant moved out and the unit is sitting vacant."

"In April, the owner approached his bank to see if he could defer a few mortgage payments on the condo unit but the bank would only allow him to defer for one month. The bank is not interested in helping him out any more than that, Mr. Kutyan says. He knows of others facing a similar squeeze. 'Some are on the edge with their credit.'"

The Royal Gazette in Bermuda. "Property prices are likely to fall as the number of real estate transactions slides this year, realtors said. Penny MacIntyre, partner at Rego Sotheby’s International Realty, said: '“We’re all conscious of the fact that our market is going to struggle. There may be people who need liquidity looking to sell or rent out their properties. And it’s likely you’re not going to get what you got before. Everyone will have to adjust to that kind of reality.'"

From Bloomberg on the Philippines. "The Philippine capital region's condominium market is set to cool for the first time in a decade, according to Colliers International Group Inc. Residential condominium prices this year will drop by 15 per cent from a year ago before slightly recovering in 2021, said Joey Bondoc, a senior research manager at Colliers in Manila. 'The Philippine economy and property market are facing a tremendous challenge,' he said in a briefing."

The Sun Daily on Malaysia. "Developers in Penang expect property prices to drop significantly due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and movement control order. Penang Real Estate and Housing Developers Association chairman Datuk Toh Chin Leong expects developers to put in extra effort to sell off excess units in their inventory as soon as the MCO is lifted. To maintain cash flow, he expects some developers to offer huge rebates."

The Docklands News in Australia. "Glenn Donnelly, a managing director at City Residential, said the flow of properties into the rental market was 'totally unprecedented.' 'It’s 100 per cent completely unprecedented, we’ve never experienced anything like this at all,' he said. 'What we’re finding is we’ve got three times the amount of furnished properties on the market at the moment and with the limited enquiries we’re getting, people are dropping rent by $100 to $150 a week to get them filled. All the short-stay operators are handing back the keys and they’re getting rented out at a lower price than what they normally would.'"

"Rus Littleson, a representative of property owners and long-term resident advocacy group We Live Here, said COVID-19 was an 'apocalypse for the whole short-stay industry.' 'We have residents telling us that short-stay operators are collapsing throughout the city,' he said. 'Short-stay companies that have been around for more than a decade have not been immune - they’re crumbling under the pressure of paying above-market rents with near-zero income.'"

The Guardian on Australia. "The coronavirus crisis is having a devastating impact on the Australian property market, with sales down by hundreds of millions of dollars and tenants handing back the keys because they can no longer afford their rent. Sales values have dropped 85% in Melbourne in the past eight weeks, according to figures. In Sydney, sales were down 79% (a loss of $454m), data compiled by FrontierSI/UNSW showed. Across all capital cities rental asking prices fell 3.1% in the past week and 2.5% in the past month, according to SQM research. In Sydney rents were off 3.8% in the past week and 5.2% in the past month, while Melbourne was down 2.5% and 2.6% respectively."

"But they mask huge falls in the plusher areas such as Sydney’s eastern suburbs, where house rents are down 10%, and the CBD, where they are off by 17%. 'In a nutshell, 10% of the rental book is vacant,' said Property Owners Association of NSW, John Gilmovich. He confirmed rents had dropped at least 10%, and in some areas as much as 15%, leading to a price war between landlords desperate to fill their properties."

"'The discount wars have started. Landlords are offering two weeks’ free rent, they’re offering to pay for electricity, for gas, for Foxtel, Netflix, you name it. Anything just to get someone in,' he said. But very few people are moving. 'Inquiry rates about rentals are down 80%,' Gilmovich said."

From News of the Area in Australia. "In the Port Stephens region the restrictions on travel and short-stay accommodation has seen the rental market flooded with new listings. According to Trent Wilshire, an Economist with the Domain Group, the effects of the CoronaVirus are flowing through to the real estate sector as demand for holiday stays drops. 'For the rental market in the short-term we’re likely to see higher vacancy rates and more discounting on asking rents which we’re already seeing signs of,' said Mr Wilshire. 'Property prices are likely to decline in coming months and property sales are likely to fall significantly.'"

From Newsroom on New Zealand. "Three months ago, Queenstown Lakes District's property market was on a high after a decade of rampant growth. Median house prices had more than doubled from $480,000 in 2010 to $1,055,000 in January 2020, making it the second most expensive district in the country behind Auckland's North Shore. There were few houses listed below the $700,000 mark."

"The growth was built on a seemingly endless stampede of three million visitors per year, creating tourism jobs and, in turn, demand for housing, which created more jobs in construction and real estate. Such was the demand for visitor accommodation, and the projections of future income from it, there were more than 4000 hotel rooms under development or awaiting consent, across more than a dozen hotel projects."

"And the shortage of hotel rooms had a major knock-on effect for the housing market. Landlords could get high nightly returns from Airbnb, pushing prices higher, and reducing the amount of long-term rental stock. Up to a fifth of the district's housing stock was used as short-term holiday lets. But the tourism tap has been turned off by Covid-19, and now the tables have turned."

"Within hours of the borders closing, dozens of properties were popping up like daisies on various rental accommodation websites, while landlords were offering 20 percent-plus rent reductions to keep existing tenants. Thousands of redundancies are expected in the tourism sector and beyond. Colliers International Otago managing director James O’Hagan says there is likely to be 'a level of re-calibration in residential pricing locally as the market responds,' and how much depends on how the wider Queenstown economy recovers."

"'If we find that the changing job market leads to people leaving the district and a significant oversupply of properties that can’t be tenanted, then we would expect a larger correction in pricing,' O’Hagan said."

From Newshub on New Zealand. "The property and rental market has been flipped on its head overnight. Property prices nationwide are forecast to drop by around 10 percent. And now a flood of former Airbnb properties is putting pressure on rent prices in Queenstown. 'So in a situation where demand is suppressed, landlords are having to reduce their rents to meet the market and keep their homes full,' says independent economist Benje Patterson."

"Many are dropping rents by 30 percent or more to retain tenants and get some cash flow. 'So you've got to weigh up the fact that is it better to keep a tenant in there and take the loss, or carry on with the costs with nobody?' says Queenstown landlord John Fenton. 'And I mean the reality is, it's better to take the hit.'"