A report from WFTV in Florida. "It sounds simple and safe. Homeowners who lost jobs can skip mortgage payments now, then repay at the end of the loan. But some federal lawmakers, who helped pass the CARES Act that allows forbearance, say it can be a costly trap. Some lenders could demand full repayment within months. 'Right now, people are set to fail when they have these balloon payments. Who loses their job and can’t afford six months of payments, suddenly has enough to pay it all back?' said Central Florida Rep. Darren Soto."

"Ken Gibbs qualified and skipped mortgage payments because of hurricane forbearance. But after three missed payments the lender demanded full repayment on month four. That was money Gibbs didn’t have. 'Stop sending harassing letters that they're going to foreclose on my house,' Gibbs said."

From WTSP in Florida. "Hotels are open, but private vacation rentals are closed – and that’s not fair. That’s the argument a group of Floridians is making in a lawsuit they filed Thursday in federal court against Gov. Ron DeSantis. Galen Alsop is a retired fighter pilot, and his wife Wendy left her teaching job to manage the rental home in Destin they purchased with their life savings. Mike McGrath lives in Clearwater and owns two short term rental properties there. Paul Gasner calls Dunedin home. He owns vacation properties in Clearwater Beach and Pasco County."

"Mark Peery lives in Panama City Beach, and according to the lawsuit, renting his 21 properties and 150 weeks of time-share rights accounts for his whole livelihood. Florida Beach Rentals said it has already lost more than $1.5 million, according to the lawsuit. Gasner said he’s losing about $10,000 a month because of his inability to rent his properties. Peery said he will lose $78,500 by the end of May."

The Herald Tribune in Florida. "New home construction remained solid in Southwest Florida in early 2020, but the housing outlook has changed dramatically in the last several weeks. 'It appears that the first quarter of 2020 will be the high water mark for economic growth and housing activity in the U.S., including the Sarasota market,' said David Cobb, regional director with Metrostudy. 'The economy falls fast, as it has, but the recovery will be gradual, and not a quick bounce back. It could be very similar to what we saw in the housing market between the years 2009 and 2019 — a big crash with a slow, steady recovery.'"

"Home builders could be challenged by growing levels of vacant developed lots — ready for homes to be built — during the economic recovery. In Manatee County, for example, if starts drop 50% from current levels, and the supply of vacant developed lots remains where it is today, that would raise the months supply of those lots from 21 months to about 43 months, well above equilibrium and the highest in eight years."

The Star Tribune in Minnesota. "During the Great Recession, Todd Simning wagered much of what he had earned over the previous 18 years that the downturn would be short-lived and that he would get back to business quickly. It wasn’t and he lost a boatload of money."

"In this economic downturn, the Twin Cities developer said he is not going to let history repeat itself. 'I was way too optimistic and I waited, thinking that things would turn around fast,' he said of his experience during the recession. 'I’m not going to make the same mistake again — ever.'"

"After more than a year of planning, Simning recently pulled the plug on TMBR, a 10-story condo building in the North Loop neighborhood in Minneapolis, and is instead moving forward with plans for a shorter building with 100 rental apartments. Simning said that after nearly a year of marketing the units, which ranged from about $500,000 to more than $2 million, he had commitments in place for nearly a third of the 59 units. Those reservations had recently started converting to purchase agreements, but they will now be canceled and deposits/earnest money will be refunded."

"Simning said he still needed at least 30 presales before he could secure financing and break ground on the project. Given the uncertainties about how long the pandemic would last and the lingering pain of the decisions he made during the 2008 recession, he decided it wasn’t prudent to move forward. His decision was solidified after talking with his banker, who made it clear that credit markets were already tightening."

"On the Sunday after Gov. Walz announced the stay-at-home order in March, Simning said two of his clients called within an hour of one another and put their projects on hold. 'Their permits were ready to go,' he said. 'But they said ‘don’t dig.’ The next day, another client called and put their project on hold. 'They said ‘we just need to see how this plays out.’ This caught everyone flat-footed.'"

The Post-Dispatch in Missouri. "The market this year, before the coronavirus hit, was 'very robust,' said National Association of Realtors Chief Economist Lawrence Yun. Fewer houses were up for sale. Competition among buyers was often fierce. 'And suddenly the lights are out,' he said."

"Some worry about long-term consequences. The Hersches, from Overland, are still looking for the right new house, and the right time to put theirs on the market. But Tana Hersch fears the pandemic will hurt their chances. 'I’m afraid we invested all this money and we are fixing this house up through the years and we are not getting any of that back, and having to settle for way less than what we would want,' she said."

The Santa Fe New Mexican. "For Brandon Delgado, it all started when the National Basketball Association suspended its season in early March. For Christine Robertson and Mary Ann Kaye, it hit just days later, as Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham began placing restrictions on business operations around New Mexico. And for Todd Davis, it took hold as President Donald Trump initiated a travel ban. But perhaps the beginnings weren’t as important as the net effect: By late March, these owners or managers of vacation and short-term rental properties were essentially out of business."

"'It was pretty devastating,' said Kaye, who manages Casas de Guadalupe, a 12-unit, short-term rental facility in business for over a decade. 'We lost most of March and April and then into the first two weeks of May people are pretty much canceling.' June, she said, 'looks dismal.'"

"Similar words were used by other Santa Fe-based operators to describe how phones started ringing off the hook with news of cancellations as national and state leaders reacted to the spreading respiratory virus by imposing travel, lodging and business restrictions. Short-term rental owners and managers interviewed for this story said they are considering the possibility of offering long-term rentals. Some said they would consider rental price reductions as well."

The Idaho Statesman. "In late March, Casey Lynch got off a reassuring call with his lender: Yes, the bank would still finance a downtown Boise project that his firm Roundhouse was in the early stages of planning. Two weeks later, the bank called him back. It wouldn’t be making loans after all. Lynch, who builds and operates apartments, isn’t the only developer in the Boise area to see a project delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. Uncertainty in the industry has led some developers to pull back on their applications."

"Homebuilders like Neider and Corey Barton say they’re still moving forward, business as usual. But for apartment and townhouse builders who rely on lenders to finance their projects, the coronavirus could stall development. 'Short-term, you will see almost no new construction in the Valley, including on multifamily,' Lynch said. 'You couldn’t finance almost any speculative project right now.'"

"For Scott Weyrauch, this is the second time in his life that a recession has interrupted a move. Based in Las Vegas, the 49-year-old works as a self-employed project manager for trade shows and events around the country. He planned to put his Las Vegas house on the market on March 18 and relocate to Boise this summer. But then the coronavirus hit. Every major trade show was canceled until October. 'I need to see my industry come back before I put my house on the market,' Weyrauch said. Until he can sell his house in Las Vegas, he can’t move."

"Lynch expects that Weyrauch isn’t the only one in that situation. 'The 20,000 people a year moving to the Treasure Valley could be cut in half,' he said. 'If you’re moving from California and your personal balance sheet has been decimated by this, the last thing you’re going to do is pack up and move to a place where you don’t have a job.'"

The Bay Area Newsgroup in California. "Thirty Bay Area cities — from Concord to San Leandro to Los Altos — all shrank just a little bit last year, which delivered the region’s slowest population growth since 2006. California’s population grew just 0.2 percent in 2019, continuing a trend of slowing growth that started after the Great Recession, according to estimates released by the state’s Department of Finance this month."

"Within the state, growth has been slowest in expensive coastal areas and fastest in the Central Valley and other more affordable inland parts of the state, said Doug Kuczynski, a demographer at the Department of Finance. 'It’s mostly due to migration,' Kuczynski said. 'People are moving out of state and not as many people are moving to California into those high-cost areas.'"

"Residents say they’re fed up with the region’s high cost of living, gridlocked traffic and growing homelessness crisis — nearly three in four residents say the quality of life in the region has worsened in the past five years, according to the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. The exodus hit San Mateo County particularly hard, making it one of 26 California counties that shrunk slightly last year. Los Angeles, Santa Cruz and Marin counties also lost residents last year. For the third year in a row, California and the Bay Area added more housing than people, in part thanks to an increase in the number of accessory dwelling units, Kuczynski said."

The Nashville Scene in Tennessee. "In mid-March, Nashville’s boom years — a decade or so of extraordinary growth and prosperity — blinked out like a dying neon sign. The tourists who would typically be crowding the city’s bars and restaurants were suddenly absent. For the week of March 22-28, the city’s hotel occupancy rate was 9.3 percent, compared to 92.6 percent during the same week in 2019. All of this was done for good reason, in the interest of public health. Arguably, it should have been done even sooner. But the effect was the same: Turn out the lights, the party’s over. But what about the hangover?"

"In Nashville, the crisis has revealed weaknesses in a city that had every reason to be at its strongest. What did we get for our time in the sun, our decade of growth and cultural cachet as the burgeoning 'It City'? And when the rain came, did it have to be this bad? Did we blow the boom years?"

"The current crisis will hit Metro departments hard. Metro Nashville Public Schools had already been asked to cut $100 million out of its budget for the current fiscal year, and the district is up against a $25 million shortfall for the upcoming year. The direct cause of today’s pain is the pandemic, but it was arguably inevitable after a decade of good times that was not matched by the political action needed to make it sustainable or equitable."

"Councilmember Tanaka Vercher — who served as Budget and Finance Committee chair and supported a property tax increase last year — points to other core government responsibilities that she says have been neglected, like infrastructure. 'We, meaning all of us — government, citizens, ‘we’ because we’re all in this collectively — we lost focus,' she says. “We were romanced by being coined the ‘It City.’"