It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "It was already going to be a challenging spring in Manhattan, where prices are down about 20 percent from the peak in 2016 amid a glut of luxury condos. In a small survey of 43 offers entered after the stay-at-home order in Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn, the average offer was 14.5 percent below asking price, according to Fritz Frigan with Halstead Real Estate. Among accepted offers, the discount was about 8 percent."

"Elliot Bogod, president of Broadway Realty, said he was trying to purchase about 20 units at a 20 percent discount from an Upper West Side condo he would not name, because of competition from other bidders. (In an unusual move, he said he was negotiating with the lender, not the developer, suggesting the property might be in financial distress.)"

"In late April Kathy Murray, a Douglas Elliman agent, closed a deal on an Upper East Side studio listed a year ago. Before the pandemic, the price was cut twice, from $745,000 to the last asking price of $695,000, and she said the buyer, a Harvard student from Hong Kong, negotiated an additional 9 percent discount as the market grew more uncertain. Crucially, the buyer and his parents requested to include the seller’s furniture."

"Residential property sales on Hawaii island and Kauai in April plummeted between roughly 20% and 60%, according to the report from Hawaii Information Service based on data from the Hawaii Island Realtors and Kauai Board of Realtors. Kauai condos sold for a median $497,250 last month, down 10% from $550,000 a year earlier. For condos sold on Hawaii island, the median price dropped 17% to $349,900 in April from $419,000 a year earlier."

"Businesses and individuals have started to see some relief to get them through the coronavirus, but 'there's only so much the government can do,' said Deco Capital founder Bradley Colmer. 'There's going to be sectors that are going to be [an] absolute bloodbath.' Colmer and his partners have been tweaking plans for Eighteen Sunset, a luxury residential building with retail and restaurant space in Miami Beach’s Sunset Harbour. In April, a proposal submitted to the Miami Beach Planning Board changed that to include two penthouse residences but replace the other residential units with two floors of Class-A office because of the soft condo market in Miami Beach."

"Lori Devault survived and rebuilt her Julian home after it burned down in the 2003 Cedar Fire. Now she is worried she might not survive her mortgage lender as she is already two months into a maximum six-month mortgage forbearance agreement with Irvine-based Rushmore Loan Management Services. 'Rushmore requires the missed payments to be made up by the end of the forbearance period,' said Devault. 'I don’t have the money.'"

"Under Chapter 13 of the bankruptcy code, you may be able to keep your home indefinitely, said bankruptcy attorney Michael Nicastro. But, he added, 'Treading water is not swimming. It’s delayed drowning.'"

"Housing purchases have taken a downturn in the city of Estevan. 'We're not in a completely dead market. We still have people looking, there's still sellers listing their properties and those prices are becoming more realistic and competitive for the market now,' said Josh LeBlanc, a real estate agent. He added there are lots of buyers right now, but they're only willing to deal with sellers who are realistic."

"In the past week, property professionals report that buyers are emerging on the hunt for bargains. David Galman, the sales director at Galliard Homes, one of the UK’s largest property developers, says a Chinese family office recently bought three flats in Galliard’s Trilogy scheme in Borough, south London. 'I would have expected to sell each unit for £1.1 million, but I was happy to sell for £1 million each, so they’ve got a decent 10 per cent discount,' he says. However, Galman adds that he has heard of other developers receiving 'silly offers' that they are declining. 'I’ve received a cheeky offer that was, in my opinion, relatively derisory. I don’t blame them for making it, but I just said, ‘We’re not ready, thank you very much.’"

"Ed Lewis, the head of residential development sales at Savills, says: 'Our average discount is 5.8 per cent, while before the lockdown it was 4.8 per cent. That’s a dealing margin rather than a discount — although the biggest discount doesn’t necessarily represent the best deal. Some assets are overpriced, and just because you’ve got a 25 per cent discount it doesn’t mean you’ve done the best deal.'"

"Landlords in high-end estates are counting losses as effects of the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic continues to erode rental earnings. Rent income from high-end estates such as Runda, Spring Valley, Loresho, Kitisuru and Lavington fell marginally in the first quarter of this year, with analysts warning the worst is yet to come. Land prices similarly fell across both suburbs and satellite towns in the first quarter of this year, sustaining the decline recorded in previous quarters. 'The COVID-19 pandemic has left some landowners with unexpectedly limited liquidity and as a result we may see a bigger supply in land moving forward,' said Sakina Hassanali, Head of Research and Marketing at Hass Consult."

"Singapore saw total auction listings decline 31.1% year-on-year to 235 in the first quarter of 2020, revealed an Edmund Tie report. And much like in 2019, the proportion of mortgagee sales significantly increased to 68% in Q1 2020 from 46% in Q1 2019. Residential properties accounted for 51% of mortgagee listings in Q1 2020, industrial properties 31% and retail properties 15%. 'The higher proportion of mortgagee sale listings came amid an already gloomy economic outlook made worse by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in owners defaulting on mortgage payments,' said the report."

"Despite the increase in listings, the auction success rate declined to 1.6% in 2019 from 3.8% in 2018, reflecting a more cautious sentiment in the buyers’ market."

"The slide in Hong Kong’s property market is dividing analysts at Wall Street investment banks who are telling clients different stories on the outlook for home prices this year. 'We had hoped for residential prices to bottom in March 2020 and go up by 10 per cent thereafter,' said Praveen Choudhary, a managing director at Morgan Stanley. 'Since then, the Covid-19 outbreak has resulted in significantly lower GDP and the unemployment rate has gone up to 4.2 per cent, a 10-year high. These are generally negative for residential prices.'"

"Home ownership in Australia is on the decline and likely to worsen but it’s not just housing affordability responsible for the shrinking numbers, new research shows. Rather, it’s the increasing incidence of unstable, casual work with no guarantee of pay, and a growth in property investors that have seen a shift in the market where more Australians are now facing a future of living in long-term rentals. The housing market in Australia had become 'financialised' with developers building apartment complexes specifically for the investor market and Australian tax policy assisting investors through negative gearing, said Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute researcher Professor Terry Burke."

"'The financialisation of housing is an international factor and is best understood as the process where housing is treated as a commodity to be invested in rather than a home, meaning more and more money flows into housing but without any necessary improvement in housing supply or quality,' he said."

"April saw state and territory governments implement measures to support the residential rental market through the economic downturn caused by the CCP virus crisis with most opting to put a moratorium on evictions for six months, following the national cabinet doing the same for the commercial market. Real Estate Institute of New South Wales CEO Tim McKibbin is unhappy with the rent waiver, saying landlords are subsidising the tenant’s occupation."

"'The NSW Government has made it very clear that landlords are expected and required to ‘waive’ all, or a significant portion, of the rent due by the Tenant; and ‘waive’ is a good descriptor, because the Landlord is waving goodbye to the money due to them,' he said. He said the majority of landlords are ‘Mum and Dad’ investors with just one property and a mortgage they can’t take a holiday from paying. Banks won’t waive mortgages, instead offering deferrals that come at a substantial cost. 'Landlords will still pay and pay it all, just a bit later on!' he said."

"Hobart saw a staggering 60 percent more listings, Melbourne jumped by 20 percent, Sydney by 18 percent, Adelaide by 8 percent, and Brisbane by 7 percent. Domain senior research analyst Dr. Nicola Powell said the surge of listings is largely due to the release of Airbnb and other short-term properties into the long-term leasing market."