A report from Yahoo Money. "With the jobless rate spiking into the double digits, more Americans may look to unlock the wealth tied up in their homes to get through the crisis. Problem is, banks won't give up the key. Lenders are increasingly turning away homeowners looking for equity lines of credit or a cash-out refinance, spooked by the surge in unemployment and the jump in requests by borrowers to skip mortgage payments. 'This is a good lesson that home equity is a very illiquid asset,' said Matt Hylland, a partner at Arnold and Mote Wealth Management."

"Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have promised to buy loans in forbearance from lenders to help keep the mortgage market working. But they refuse to purchase mortgages in forbearance that were cash-out refinances, making those types of loans riskier for lenders to originate and carry. As a result, lenders are upping their standards for these loans. Mortgage company PennyMac announced in late April that it won’t do any cash-out refinances that exceed 80% of the property’s market value."

"Lenders also worry about Americans’ ability to pay back loans at a time when an unprecedented number of workers have filed jobless claims in the last seven weeks. They also expect property values could dip, especially if the economy falls into a recession, increasing their risk on mortgages and other house-backed loans they hold. That’s caused major banks to pull back on issuing new home equity lines of credit, or HELOCs. Both Chase and Wells Fargo recently announced they would pause new HELOC applications."

"Lenders worry a borrower who becomes unemployed could default on the payments at the same time that home values are decreasing, eroding even more equity. If the lender is forced to foreclose and sell the home, it may not recoup what’s owed. 'The lenders will have no profit,” said Kevin Leibowitz, founder of Grayton Mortgage. 'The guy in the second position isn’t crazy to think that 10% can be wiped away.'"

"'It is always a good idea to build up a sizable emergency savings before paying any extra payments on your mortgage to ensure you have savings available when you need it most,' Hylland said. 'If you are dependent on debt to make ends meet you should be aware that at times you need it most, debt financing may not be there for you.'"

From DS News. "The impact has been dramatic, with one model showing mortgage credit availability has plunged by more than 25% since the U.S. outbreak of the virus. In March, riskier borrowers 'could get a mortgage but just pay a higher price than other people,' said Michael Neal, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute Housing Finance Policy Center. 'Now, some people are just not going to get mortgages.'"

From Liveabl. "The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) has released its Mortgage Credit Availability Index (MCAI) for the month of April, recording a 12.2 percent decline over the previous 31-day period to 133.5. The lower the index gets, the harder it is to qualify for a mortgage home loan, and the MCAI hasn’t sunk to these depths since December 2014 when the nation was still recovering from the 2008 housing crash."

"The MCAI for jumbo loans, which are used to finance high-priced homes and are deemed riskier because they aren’t backed by the government, plummeted 22.6 percent. The Conventional MCAI, including mortgage loans from private lenders like banks and credit unions, dipped 15.2 percent."

"'The abrupt weakening of the economy and job market — and the uncertainty in the outlook — drove credit availability down in April for the second consecutive month,' said Joel Kan, MBA’s Associate Vice President of Economic and Industry Forecasting. 'The overall index fell to its lowest level since December 2014, and the sub-indexes pointed to tightened credit supply for all loan types. The decline was largely driven by lenders dropping many low credit score and [high loan-to-value] programs, as well as further reduction in jumbo and [non-qualified mortgage] products.'"

The Real Deal. "WeWork’s efforts to renegotiate several of its leases and skip rent payments is causing the price of bonds backed by payments from the company to plummet. Many WeWork tenants have requested rent relief or the termination of their contracts since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, which has hurt the commercial mortgage-backed securities that rely on rent from WeWork to pay investors, according to the Financial Times."

"Overall, about $5.5 billion worth of CMBS deals include properties that count WeWork as a tenant, according to data from Trepp. These include some of the company’s flagship locations in New York and San Francisco. A $240 million loan backed by a WeWork location in San Francisco is now trading at 73 cents on the dollar, down from 100 cents in March."

"Michelle Orman, a WeWork tenant in Brooklyn, said to the Financial Times that she is not going to renew her lease after May and had tried to cancel it sooner. She has 'no intention of going back to [WeWork] after this experience.'"

From Hospitality.net. "All of travel is taking a beating from the pandemic. Our consultancy workshopped a contrary scenario stemming from many conversations with owners who have had to pull the plug on all opex and have come to us for valuations in case they need to sell. As more and more of these travel restraints were put in place around the globe, the home-sharing market was forced into a similar situation as the rest of us, with proprietors and hosts looking at zero occupancy on the books for the next few months while the bills still need to be paid."

"And it's this last part that's critical to understand insofar as how hotels are uniquely adept at weathering this tempestuous storm over the likes of Airbnb, VRBO, Homestay and other platforms of this ilk. In most cases, hoteliers have a longer tarmac and a better standing with the banks than, say, a ghost hotel operator who has leveraged ownership in several disparate accommodations to purchase several more. Put another way, while each home sharing's margin of revenue to operating costs on each night's stay may be drastically more than that of a hotel, their per-unit fixed costs are oftentimes substantially greater than those for a traditional property."

"For a bull market, any per-unit cost inefficiencies on the home-sharing proprietor's part are more than adequately buffered by incoming revenues, thereby strongly incentivizing the acquisition of more units and other forms of overcapitalization. But now as we are thrust into a negative growth environment, all those mortgage annuities, property taxes, apartment maintenance fees and utility bills become unsurmountable for an unincorporated sharing economy operator."

"For the ghost hotel operator, this foreclosure sequence of events may apply. To stave off a total bloodbath and depletion of its global inventory in major markets, Airbnb promptly created a host relief fund that numbers in the hundreds of millions of dollars, but this still may not be enough to get all the superhosts through unscathed if the pandemic persists for much longer."

"If there's one bright light at the end of the coronavirus tunnel, it's that this outbreak may force the insolvency of those pesky, and largely illegitimate, ghost hotel operators that we have been trying to regulate for nearly a whole decade now."

From WTGS in Georgia. "Although traffic on Tybee beaches is up, sales for short term rental companies are still suffering. Tybee Beach Vacation Rentals say they’re getting multiple cancellations every day, some as far out as September. 'I will be surprised if we are about 50% of our normal summer. What we’re canceling is larger than what’s coming in,' said Keith Gay, a managing partner with Tybee Beach Vacation Rentals. He estimates his company has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars to COVID-19 so far."

From Long Island Business News in New York. "The first full month under the COVID-19 lockdown has ravaged the Long Island housing market, as pending home sales in Nassau and Suffolk counties last month were the lowest for any April on record. There were 1,077 homes contracted for sale in Nassau and Suffolk last month, a 66.5 percent drop from the 3,214 homes that were contracted for sale in April 2019, according to preliminary statistics from OneKey MLS. "

"The biggest decline in sales was felt in Nassau. There were 403 homes contracted for sale in Nassau last month, 70.2 percent fewer than the 1,345 Nassau homes contracted for sale in April 2019. In Suffolk, there were 674 pending home sales last month, down 64 percent from the 1,869 pending sales recorded in April last year."

"Pending sales of Long Island homes this April fell 56.6 percent from the 2,481 homes contracted for sale in March, when the virus and its stay-at-home order first took hold. For a historical perspective, last month’s pending sales on Long Island were about 40 percent lower than they were in April 2009, when the region was in the grips of the housing crisis that hastened the last recession."

The Tampa Bay Times in Florida. "Josh Stenger, who rents out a house in Clearwater and one in St. Petersburg, said he hasn’t received rent on time from either of his tenants since the pandemic began. One lost her job as a nanny and has communicated with him and provided partial payment. The other tenant, he fears, is taking advantage of the pandemic’s protections against eviction and is failing to pay on time even though he didn’t lose employment."

"Stenger has seen news of rent strikes in New York City and worries people are forgetting that many landlords depend on the income from rent. He still owes money on one of the houses. 'I just want communication,' Stenger said. 'They’re making landlords seem like the villains, but landlords have expenses, too.'"

"There are signs even larger companies are feeling the pinch. Dean & DeWitt, a prominent St. Petersburg property management company for apartments and historic homes, sent an email to tenants earlier this month urging that they contact their members in Congress to ask that they include direct support for renters and landlords in the next coronavirus relief bill."

The San Mateo Daily Journal in California. "SummerHill Housing Group CEO Robert Freed speculated that the slowed economy may yield difficulties for some developers seeking funding for new developments. 'Projects that haven’t come out of the ground yet might have trouble with financing,' he said."

""Other industry experts agreed, with expectations that banks may be reticent to lend money for developments amid an unstable economy. These anxieties are heightened by local officials establishing rent moratoriums and other restrictions on the flow of money into the real estate sector, setting off a chain reaction of debt and risk sensitivities."

"'I would not be surprised if the financial basis for these projects might be teetering a little bit,' said Burlingame Community Development Director Kevin Gardiner. 'Every city we have talked to is concerned about their budget.'"

The Southern California Newsgroup. "Commercial real estate values nationwide fell 9% in April as pandemic containment throttled the economy. Green Street Advisors in Newport Beach tracks commercial real estate values in two ways. Analysts watch both publicly owned real estate investment trusts traded on Wall Street and property dealings among privately held funds. Once a month Green Street combines that research into indexes tracking real estate performance in key categories."

"The coronavirus outbreak halted what had been commercial real estate’s long rebound from the depths of the Great Recession, where values plummeted by one-third. Business limitations due to various stay-at-home mandates have hurt property owners’ ability to collect rents as tenants lost jobs or cash flow. The industry also found that renting empty spaces — whether it be overnight (think, hotels) or a longer term — was very challenging."

"Green Street’s overall commercial real estate index, measuring 'unlevered' valuations, for April was down 9% in a month and down an overall 8% in the past 12 months. In April, all 11 subindexes fell for the month and only two had gains in the past year. April’s bigger loser was malls; smallest losses were seen in industrial, self-storage and healthcare properties."

"Here’s how Green Street broke down values by commercial real estate niches. Office: down 9% in a month and lost 6% in the year. Apartments: down 10% in a month and lost 3% in the year. Self-storage: down 5% in a month and lost 2% in the year. Hotels: down 7% in a month and lost 16% in the year. Student housing: down 12% in a month and lost 9% in the year."

"Malls: down 20% in a month and lost 33% in the year. Strip malls: down 15% in a month and lost 13% in the year. Healthcare: down 5% in a month and lost 5% in the year. Net-lease properties: down 8% in a month and lost 9% in the year."

The Sun Gazette in California. "Beacon economist Chris Thornberg made his third stop in three years in Visalia to talk about the economic outlook for Tulare County. This time, he tailored his message to the economic impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic. And where some economists forecast a deep recession, Thornberg said the recession will be short and outlooks will be righted by quarter three and four."

"'This is being driven by choices and by public health mandates. We understand millions have been let go but if some genius tomorrow came up with a cure, within two to three days many people would be back to work,' Thornberg said. 'Things are pretty good out there. People are enjoying a higher standard of living… This is not a fragile consumer sector.'"

"Thornberg said that an economic recovery will likely come from the pent-up demand. So a sustained recession does not seem likely. 'This is an economy that can weather a tough storm. And this is a tough storm…This is not like a housing market that is going to have a 15% foreclosure rate,' Thornberg said."