A report from BU News Service on Massachusetts. "Some property owners leave vacant units rather than bear the costs of lost rent, maintenance, utilities and other bills they may never recoup. 'I’ve put [some units] out of touch for the truly, truly desperate while I was willing to take a risk before because I could hold them accountable,' said Branch Yules, who manages 170 units of mixed-income rental properties in Hudson and Marlboro. 'You can’t carry them. You literally can’t afford to have people in those units.'"

"Springfield landlord Peter Houser said he had lost up to $25,000 a month in unpaid rent since March. Susanne Fuller and her husband rent out three buildings in Acton and Maynard, purchased as retirement investments. 'You’re going to have a few people taking it on the neck to the tune of thousands of dollars a month. That’s not reasonable or fair at all,' Fuller said."

From City Limits on New York. "A survey released by the New York Small Landlords (NYSL), an organization comprised of Chinese landlords, found delinquency rates in August hit a five-month low. But 42 percent of landlords said they’d rather keep their properties vacant, a proportion higher than the previous two months. The survey noted that the state’s eviction moratorium, which has been extended to October 1st, as the reason for landlords’ lack of motivation to find tenants."

"The survey interviewed 140 small landlords early this month, and found the delinquency rate in New York City had declined to 31 percent in August. Brooklyn’s delinquency rate was 43 percent, the highest among the five boroughs, followed by Staten Island’s 30 percent and Queens’ 27 percent, while across the river in New Jersey, the delinquency rate was 33 percent."

From CNBC on New York. "The number of empty rental apartments in Manhattan nearly tripled compared with last year, as more New Yorkers fled the city and prices declined. The inventory of empty units is the largest ever recorded since data started being collected 14 years ago, the report said. Experts say the migration from the city to the suburbs during the Covid-19 crisis has been fueled in large part by Manhattan renters leaving the city. 'The rental market is weak and getting weaker,' said Jonathan Miller, CEO of Miller Samuel. 'Where you are already seeing stress on landlords is on the low end of the price spectrum.'"

From My Northwest in Washington. "There has been a break for renters in some cases, and Matthew Gardner, chief economist at Windermere Real Estate, expects a greater contraction to come. The state and the city of Seattle also both have eviction moratoriums in place. 'Even though the state has basically said, you can’t evict anyone to the end of the year, inside the city of Seattle, you could not pay rent until the start of April 2021,' he said. 'So it’s hitting the apartment market. And because of that lower demand, a lot of people are actually moving in with each other, some are moving back home. That is depressing rents, no doubt about it.'"

The Mercury News in California. "A growing percentage of Bay Area tenants missed rent in September as persistent unemployment and shrinking federal aid compounded the stress on renters and landlords. Rent payments in San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco during the first week of September dropped roughly 9 percent from the previous year, according to RealPage, among the biggest drops in the nation."

"The percentage of renters making at least some payment in September fell, year-over-year, across the region. The rate dropped from 92.9 in September 2019 to 83.7 percent this September in San Jose and Santa Clara County. During the same period, the rate of East Bay rent payments fell from 90.4 to 81.2 percent and decreased in San Francisco and San Mateo County from 91.3 to 82.3 percent."

"RealPage market analyst Adam Couch said renters are struggling more in high-cost markets like the Bay Area. The drop in San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco, Couch said, 'is one of the largest that we’ve seen across the nation.'"

"The extended health crisis has set public officials, landlords and renters searching for relief and ways to forestall evictions and widespread displacement. Staggering unemployment, reaching nearly 8 million in California, has hit service workers and others hard. About 1 in 5 new unemployment claims filed in the U.S. in the week ending Aug. 22 were from California."

"'The initial rent payment figures from September have begun to demonstrate the increasing challenges apartment residents are facing,' said NMHC president Doug Bibby. 'Falling rent payments mean that apartment owners and operators will increasingly have difficulty meeting their mortgages, paying their taxes and utilities and meeting payroll.'"

"As the courts have re-opened, foundation lawyers have been representing tenants facing eviction for health and safety reasons. Staff attorney Caryn Hreha appeared in court this week to represent a single mother with two school-aged children for a lease violation. The woman, a nurse, has seen her income dwindle with the elimination of elective surgeries. She has not paid rent in six months. Hreha said the case was typical."

From Bisnow on Texas. "City of Houston officials and tenant advocates were already debating the creation of a local eviction grace period ordinance. For now, the new eviction moratorium has interrupted that debate. As the economic downturn continues and unemployment remains high, landlords are continuing to voice concerns about the ability of renters to pay back their accumulating debt. 'This order … kicks the can down the road and creates an impossible balloon payment situation for our renters in a few months that most of them are not going to be able to survive,' said Veritas Equity Management CEO John Boriack."

The Las Vegas Sun in Nevada. "Tom Blanchard, president of Las Vegas Realtors, said the region’s housing market 'continues to defy expectations.' But, he said, he’s not sure how much longer the market can perform like it is now."

"'Those that can purchase have been purchasing, pretty much since this pandemic started,' Blanchard said. 'That part of our business has been steady and constant. The only thing I’m concerned about is if the assistance people are getting — unemployment insurance, the Cares Act, all of the government assistance out there — goes away and the jobs haven’t come back, we’ll see us fall off the crevasse.'"

From News 3 Las Vegas in Nevada. "Economist David Grana dismissed a new report from CoreLogic, which analyzes housing markets across the U.S. According to its latest statistics, CoreLogic ranks Las Vegas with Prescott, AZ, Lake Charles, LA, Miami-Miami Beach, FL and Huntington-Ashland, WV-KY-OH as having the highest risk (75%) of a home price decline. Grana also cited an outlier. 'I don't think that they're also applying psychology to it. I don't think that they're applying pandemic-type economics to it, and by the way, no one knows what pandemic-type economics are.'"

From Miami Agent Magazine in Florida. "CoreLogic reported that homes in Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach had a 13.4% delinquency rate of 30 days or more in June, more than double the rate of 5.3% from a year ago. The area had a serious delinquency rate of 7.1%, more than triple the 2% rate a year ago. Florida was singled out in the report as a COVID-19 hotspot with a serious delinquency rate increase of 3 percentage points from the year prior. 'Miami — which has been hard hit by the collapse of the tourism market — experienced the largest annual increase at 5.1 percentage points,' the report noted."

From Click on Orlando in Florida. "Shaquille O’Neal’s 31,000-square-foot Isleworth mansion is back on the market for a lower price of $19.5 million after it didn’t sell last year for the original asking price of $28 million."

From The Real Deal on New York. "Some investors are seizing on the opportunity to snatch up hotels at significant discounts. Ashford Hospitality Trust Inc. has sold its 310-room hotel at 60 West 37th Street in the Garment District to Magna Hospitality Group for $115 million, according to property records. That’s a 41 percent discount to the $195 million the real estate investment trust paid for the Embassy Suites hotel 18 months ago."

"Similarly, hotel operator Highgate and real estate investment firm Rockpoint Group sold the storied Royalton Hotel for $40.8 million — a roughly 25 percent discount to the $55 million the partners paid for the property at 44 West 44th Street in 2017."

"For Ashford, its purchase of the Embassy Suites hotel was intended to be the Dallas-based firm’s entrée into New York real estate. But after the coronavirus ground the city’s travel economy to a halt, the hotel buckled under the weight of its debt. Ashford became two months delinquent on the CMBS loan behind the property after the debt was transferred to special servicing in May, according to the data firm Trepp."

From Bloomberg. "Jim Millstein, the co-chairman of Guggenheim Securities, said financial markets are headed into a period of 'significant volatility' with default rates expected to spike as we move closer to the end of the year. 'Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride,' Millstein said in a Bloomberg Television interview. Ratings companies are also forecasting more defaults. The rate fell in August, as expected, since the last month of the summer is typically slower for nonpayments. But S&P Global Ratings expects the the pace of defaults to increase 'amid the continued impact of Covid-19 on economic and credit conditions,' Sudeep Kesh, head of S&P global credit markets research, wrote in a report."

"Pressure is also mounting at the corporate level for landlords who rely on businesses to make a profit and pay their rent, according to Millstein. 'Some businesses that are barely hanging on are not paying,' and landlords will have a 'hard time' as a result."