A report from Capital and Main. "On a normal day, Marcella Nolan would be flashing her smile in the aisles of a Restaurant Depot, giving away samples and drumming up sales for the food brokers who hire her as an independent contractor. In 1999, she left behind her life as a carnival operator in Ohio and moved with her children to Lakeland, Florida, where Nolan was able to buy a piece of land outright for $11,000 and take out a mortgage for a double-wide trailer. She made improvements over the years – a new septic system, a pool."

"In 2018, she refinanced the home and land together, mortgaging them for $56,000. Working full-time, the 57-year-old earns $2,400 a month, out of which she usually pays her $500 mortgage, sometimes even kicking in an extra $100 toward the principal.When coronavirus hit, though, her work dried up. She applied for unemployment March 16 but, six weeks later, still hasn’t received a dime and can’t check the status of her application because Florida’s website keeps crashing and phone lines are perpetually busy. She hasn’t received a promised $1,200 stimulus check from the federal CARES Act, either. Her now-grown daughters can’t help – they’re both in the restaurant industry and in similar binds."

"What Nolan has received is a letter from her mortgage servicer saying that she will owe a lump sum when payments start again. 'They reached out to me,' she said. 'If I take their deal, come July, I have to pay four months at once. There is no way I can do that.'"

The Los Angeles Standard in California. "Terra Phelps is a retired U.S. Air Force Veteran who owns a two-unit duplex in Leimert Park. He lives in one unit and rents out the other. While he is a landlord, he isn’t part of a large corporation. Phelps isn’t a big business that can weather this storm, and unlike a corporate landlord, he’s showing compassion to his tenant’s situation."

"'I have to work harder to meet my mortgage, and at the same time I would like to help out my tenant,' he said. 'I pretty much work with my tenant, understanding his situation. So not only did we do a forbearance, we forgave the rent for this month.'"

"This is the only property that Phelps owns, and while he agrees that tenants need aid from the government, he also feels that 'mom-and-pop' landlords should also be protected if they are to keep their property. 'If we keep going this way, I’d have to sell,' he said."

The Laguna Beach Independent in California. "Nowadays, being a retail landlord ain’t no fun at all. The small tenants like nail shops, are closed, cannot pay rent, and trying to squeeze them will only result in them going broke. The big ones, called “credit tenants” because they have big balance sheets, are using the pandemic as an opportunity to demand concessions and many landlords are giving them."

"All this, in turn, means landlords must go their lenders and ask for 'forbearance,' another way of stating they do not have enough cash flowing in to make their monthly payments. So far, most lenders are taking a hard line. The current forbearance most lenders are offering is pitifully little, maybe three months of 'interest-only' payments. This does no good at all, so just about every landlord is calling a bankruptcy attorney for advice on legal alternatives. Soon, a whole swath of foreclosures is bound to occur, and soon after that, the bankruptcy courts will be full."

The Dallas Morning News in Texas. "Pending home sales — houses under contract but not yet sold— are down 22% from April 2019 levels. Even with the downturn in sales, median home sales prices in the more than two dozen North Texas counties included in the survey were still 5% higher than a year earlier. But year-over-year sales prices were down sharply in some neighborhoods. Median prices fell 35% from April 2019 levels in the Park Cities and were down 14% in Irving."

The Review Journal in Nevada. "James Probst and Stepfanie Tyler are buying their first home together, a place being built from scratch with plenty of upgrades and space one day for a small pool and an outdoor kitchen. They already spent around $36,000 in deposits on the Las Vegas house. But their income plunged when the coronavirus pandemic shut down much of the economy virtually overnight — and canceling the sale isn’t so simple."

"If they bail on the home purchase, they won’t get their money back. 'We’re in tears about this every week,' Probst said. 'It just sucks.'"

"Across the valley, house hunters who signed sales contracts before the coronavirus outbreak have faced a similar question: Should they cancel the purchase and risk losing their deposit, stick with the sale, or wait to see what the world looks like as their closing deadline nears? As seen in emails Tyler provided to the Review-Journal, Probst told a Century Communities sales associate on March 20 that he had been furloughed, they will 'barely be able to afford rent' and the vast majority of their cash was tied up in escrow."

"On March 31, the sales associate wrote that Century will not refund any deposits to buyers who passed their five-day right of rescission 'as noted in the contract documents.' 'If you still would like to cancel at this point in time,' she said, 'the builder will not be refunding any money to you.'"

"The sale is expected to close in July. Probst and Tyler are waiting to decide what to do. Century, meanwhile, has sent 'very happy emails' with updates on the house, he said. Sales associates told the couple April 5 that framing had started. 'Once again,' the salespeople wrote, 'congratulations on your new home purchase and welcome to the community!'"