A report from My Northwest in Washington. "Matthew Gardner, chief economist for Windermere Real Estate, says just shy of 8% of all homes with mortgages in the United States are in forbearance today. 'That number has been dropping back over the last several weeks as those people go back to work and they feel more confident,' he said. 'So again, I think the ownership market is still in pretty good shape. But it’s the apartment world, which is clearly a problem.'"

"Dave Ross said that it feels like another shoe is going to drop as housing values are increasing at the same time that the small business economy and retail seem to be in a shambles."

The Cape Cod Times in Massachusetts. "Local housing advocates are worried about this fall. They see three factors that, together, could leave Cape Codders in a vulnerable position: the state’s eviction moratorium that is set to expire in mid-October; the end of the additional $600 a week in unemployment benefits that ended in July; and the seasonal economy’s annual move to winter hibernation."

"Lower Cape Outreach Council Executive Director Larry Marsland is expecting a surge now that the extra $600 has stopped. 'A lot of people are going to go into fall in a really difficult situation financially,' he said. 'I don’t know how you can take $600 away from people and think anything but a catastrophe will happen.'"

"Landlords, too, are affected. Some depend on rental income to be able to stay on the Cape. 'A lot of landlords, especially small landlords, are hurting and rely on this money,' said Michael Pierce, a Cape-based attorney who handles tenant/landlord disputes."

From CBS San Francisco in California. "A Fremont landlord recently found out his property was being illegally rented out on Airbnb but state and local eviction moratoriums are preventing him from getting his house back. 'I was furious,” said Avinash Jha, the homeowner about finding out from a neighbor that his home was being rented out on Airbnb without his permission. Their tenant, Linda, is violating Fremont city law by allowing more than two people to stay there at a time. She asked them to reduce her rent back in March by $500 a month because of hardships caused by COVID-19, they agreed to lower the rent and now regret it."

"'They’re making money off our house and not paying us the rent, it’s kind of like crazy in every which way you look at,' Shah said."

"Todd Rothbard is an attorney who helps landlords through the eviction process. He says cases like this are happening all across the state. 'I get more than a dozen stories like this every day and a lot worse,' Rothbard said. 'The worst case scenario is that property owners will abandon their properties. They can’t afford them, they can’t maintain them, they can’t pay the property taxes so the government will be deprived of funds, all of these impacts will occur the longer this goes on.'"

"Meanwhile Jha and Shah are being forced to downsize. With an expensive mortgage to maintain they’re moving their family of four to a two bedroom condo nearby hoping someday soon they’ll be allowed to move into their own home. 'All nights that we are awake, it’s because of this, you know, it’s causing a lot of emotional stress for sure,' Shah said."

The Los Angeles Times in California. "Actress Lori Loughlin and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, have one less thing to worry about as they await sentencing for their role in the college admissions scandal. The pair have sold their Bel-Air estate for $18.75 million — or about half the $35 million they had asked for the estate."

From Variety on New York. "Jennifer Lawrence has had plenty of success on the big screen, but not so much with Big Apple real estate. The actor shoveled out $15.6 million for her glass-walled penthouse condo on the Upper East Side in 2016, just as the Manhattan market peaked. According to tax records filed in late July, she’s now resold the place for a breathtaking $9.9 million. Not counting carrying costs, improvement expenses, and real estate fees, that’s a staggering $5.7 million loss — which has gotta hurt, no matter who you are or how much money you have."

"J-Law initially listed the condo last year with a much-too-optimistic asking price of $15.45 million. The price dropped to $14.25 million before it was, in late 2019, slashed to its final ask of $12 million. Saddled with massive common charges of over $5,700 month, not to mention taxes, insurance and upkeep that collectively amounted to around $100,000 per year, cutting her losses appears to have the right move to make."

From Yahoo Finance. "Bank lending collapsed in the second quarter. According to the latest Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey — or SLOOS report — from the Federal Reserve published Monday, bank lending during Q2 tightened by the most since the financial crisis. Across all parts of the commercial lending business and all areas of consumer lending except housing, banks tightened standards and saw demand plunge during the months covering the most acute phase of the pandemic crisis."

"Only residential real estate, essentially the mortgage market, has seen increased demand, though standards still rose sharply during the last few months. Cash transfers can keep consumers spending and meeting some (but not all) of their obligations. This at least keeps the economy sputtering along. But bank lending — and the curtailment of this credit extension — is where we see signs of just how sharply the economy contracted, how aggressively lenders have hunkered down, how fast borrowers dried up, and how long the road ahead is to get the economy back to full strength."

From Forbes. "Year-over-year revenues of small business owners plummeted 52% while their payroll expenses dropped 54% in the second quarter of 2020, according the new Small Business Financial Health Survey, conducted by Biz2Credit. Businesses reported a 54% drop in average payroll expenses from $137,126 in 2Q'19 to $62,599 in 2Q’20. 60% of businesses surveyed were closed for some part of 2020 due to COVID-19, and these companies experienced a drop in revenue of 87% compared to 2019. Meanwhile, companies that were not closed saw an average decline of just 13%."

"LLCs showed a revenue decline of 90%, a drop in payroll expenses of 51%, and a drop in the number of employees by 62%. The average of number of employees among businesses surveyed dropped from 15 in 2Q’19 to just 8 in 2Q’20. Only 20% of the businesses that had to close because of government mandates were offered a deferred payment option by their landlord or mortgage company."

"Struggles for small businesses continue. Only one in five companies were able to negotiate deferments or discounts on rents with their landlords. Thus, despite having zero revenues in some cases, businesses were expected to pay their rent in full. A lot of small business owners were caught between a rock and a hard place; they had little money coming in, yet they had obligations to pay. Everyone suffered. After all, many times the landlords themselves do not have deep pockets and rely on their rental income to survive."

The Wall Street Journal. "More U.S. farmers are filing for bankruptcy, as federal payments projected to reach record levels this year fall short of compensating for the coronavirus pandemic and a yearslong slump in the agricultural economy. The pandemic has pressured prices for many commodities, squeezing farmers who raise crops and livestock, and prolonging a six-year downturn in the Farm Belt."

"'Agricultural markets have been horrible, and the pandemic exacerbated it, big time,' said Paul Swanson, an Oshkosh, Wis.-based attorney. He said he has 40 open farm-bankruptcy cases, about a third more than last year. Mr. Swanson said some clients who received federal coronavirus aid still wound up in bankruptcy. 'The cash came in, the cash came out,' he said."

"Before the pandemic, a global grain glut and foreign competition had pushed down agricultural prices. Then the coronavirus hit, upending the U.S. food-supply chain. As restaurants closed, farmers plowed under thousands of acres of vegetables and dumped milk into manure lagoons. Corn prices plummeted as Americans stopped driving, cutting demand for ethanol, a corn-based biofuel blended into gasoline. Prices for slaughter-ready cattle and hogs dropped as meatpacking plants that became virus hot spots slowed or halted production."

"Hog farmers have lost nearly $5 billion in actual and potential profits for 2020, according to the National Pork Producers Council, a trade group. In California, agricultural businesses stand to lose as much as $8.6 billion, according to a study commissioned by the California Farm Bureau Federation. Trouble for many farmers extends back to a commodity boom beginning in 2006 that encouraged them to borrow heavily, said Patrick Westhoff, director of the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute."

"U.S. farm debt has grown steadily since then to more than $425 billion this year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates. That is the largest sum since a farm crisis in the 1980s that pushed many farmers and lenders out of business. 'There are a lot of people that have been hanging on for a long time that needed a positive development, and this year hasn’t provided that,' Mr. Westhoff said. 'It’s been just the opposite.'"