Two reports from the Wall Street Journal. "The FTSE Nareit Equity Apartments index, which tracks the stock prices of publicly traded apartment landlords, is down more than 21% year to date. A big reason: Dramatic cuts in rents in coastal cities like San Francisco and New York City by landlords like Equity Residential and AvalonBay Communities Inc. have sent shudders through the market. In an earnings call last month, Paul Beldin, the chief financial officer of Apartment Investment & Management Co., noted that rent collections had been more challenging in areas where local governments had imposed restrictions on evictions for unpaid rent."

"'When somebody tells you, ‘You don’t have to pay your rent,’ people tend not to pay,' Mr. Beldin said."

"The share of nongovernment-backed mortgage bonds secured by student housing that are delinquent rose to a peak of 13.7% on July 1, according to Trepp LLC. That is up from 9.7% at the beginning of March and the highest figure since at least 2005. The sector was showing the signs of strain even before the pandemic because of overbuilding. Take a portfolio of five student-housing properties near the University of Connecticut in Mansfield, Conn. Income fell sharply in recent years because of competition from newer buildings, according to watch list commentary on the buildings’ mortgage bonds."

"The properties’ owners stopped making loan payments and were more than 90 days behind on their $15 million mortgage as of August, according to Trepp. In a statement, the property’s owner, CT Liberty Group, said it has since reached a consent agreement with its lender. 'Virtually overnight, we lost 90 percent of our tenants and the income that came with that' when the university closed its campus in March, the company said."

From Providence Online in Rhode Island. "On Westminster and Thayer Streets, you’ve likely already noticed a change: suspiciously easy parking, crowd-less sidewalks, and perhaps a quiet that seems unnerving when you’re in the heart of a city. 'The colleges and universities are such a part of the fabric of the City that to rip it out will really leave a gaping hole,' says Kristen Adamo, CEO of the Providence Warwick Convention & Visitors Bureau."

From Spectrum News on Florida. "Deltona resident Jayne Rocco has been a landlord for about 25 years. Rocco felt she had no choice after a tenant at one of her Daytona Beach properties stopped paying rent in March. On June 1, Rocco filed for an eviction. But Florida’s eviction moratorium halted case proceedings, she said. Rocco pointed out that many small-time landlords like herself do not actually profit off the properties they lease, after mortgage payments, insurance, property taxes and necessary repairs are accounted for."

"'That’s what we pay our bills on. That’s our job. That’s our salary,' Rocco said of the rent payments she and many other landlords have missed during the coronavirus pandemic. '[The tenants] don’t care. They’re just going to walk away. Landlords are never going to collect that money.'"

The Philadelphia Inquirer in Pennsylvania. "Touted as a boutique luxury apartment building in the nexus of a tony suburb just outside Philadelphia, the Delwyn in Bala Cynwyd planned to open in the spring and charge up to $2,430 a month for its biggest units. After the pandemic delayed construction, the Delwyn was ready to open in September. Concerned about filling its 87 unoccupied units, the building, developed by Federal Realty Investment Trust and managed by Greystar, decided to offer a concession: no rent due until the end of the year."

From Mahoning Matters in Ohio. "Jeff Rickerman, president of the Mahoning Valley Real Estate Investors Association and also a housing provider, said he feels the moratorium leaves landlords holding the bill. 'I think it’s an absolutely terrible idea,' he told Mahoning Matters. 'I don’t think it’s solving the problem at all. I think it creates many more problems than it solves. For most housing providers, they’re on a pretty razor-thin margin. … When you’ve paid everyone else that has to be paid each month, there’s not a whole lot left there. When someone’s paying short on the rent or not paying, you’re going into the negative extremely quickly.'"

"Instead, he foresees landlords going bust and banks clawing back properties, which may then sit vacant for a number of years. Under the new moratorium, tenants must notify landlords of pandemic hardship by issuing a legal declaration, signed by all adults in the household, that shows the individual either: expects to earn no more than $99,000 in 2020 (or $198,000 if filing a joint tax return).'"

The Dallas Morning News in Texas. "The share of rental units offering concessions to tenants has almost doubled since early this year as COVID-19 has swept the country, according to a new study by Zillow. More than 30% of nationwide rentals are offering some kind of concessions. And in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, the share of landlords using giveaways is even larger — almost 39% in July compared with 22% a year earlier, Zillow reports. U.S. markets with the biggest share of rent concessions as of July included Washington, D.C. (57.5%); Charlotte, N.C. (53%); and Austin (47.1%)."

"Dallas-Fort Worth is currently the country’s fastest-growing apartment market, with more than 40,000 new units on the way. More than half of the new rental units under development in North Texas will open this year."

From Real Estate Business Online on Texas. "Houston saw more than 80,000 units delivered between 2014 and 2018 and 24,872 multifamily units under construction in the first quarter of 2020 'Over the past two decades Houston has added the equivalent of the population of Austin to its ranks, and consistently employs more people each year,' says Tom Melody. 'It’s a very business-friendly climate with a comparatively affordable cost of living. If we can maintain reasonable job growth in the next few years, we’ll absorb the current oversupply and return to a rebalanced market.'"

"Cap rates have held steady at near 5.8 percent on average in the first half of 2020. Effective apartment rents average $1.22 per square foot, falling between Charlotte and Milwaukee in terms of affordability. And while the market average vacancy rate of 10.3 percent is up year to date, vacancy of stabilized properties is 9 percent, similar to the rate at the beginning of the year."

From Mansion Global. "In California, 'there are a lot of sellers that are contacting agents and just want to test the water, and if they’re able to get what they want, then they’ll sell,' said Marco Rufo, an agent with The Agency in Los Angeles. 'A lot of people are moving or buying homes elsewhere. But they’ll say, ‘If you can’t get my number, I’m not going to market.'"

"In slower markets, sellers may want to explore an off-market sale to see if there’s any demand at all, and in high-demand areas, they may simply be assessing whether this is a savvy time to cash out of their property. 'I had a call with a seller saying, ‘Can we go off-market so it’s not publicly available in case we decide not to sell, and to wait to get a better price next year,' said Scott Hustis, a New York City-based broker with Compass’ Hustis/Jovanovic team. 'Now it’s more prevalent than ever, [the question of] do you prefer to sell or do you need to?'"

"On a recent listing, however, said Andrew Barrocas, CEO of MNS Real Estate NYC, 'I put it on as a quiet listing and it didn’t really get any interest, and now I’ve put it on the market [at a lower price] and realized more quickly that it was probably overpriced. You don’t want it to sit on the market.'"

The San Francisco Chronicle in California. "Precise information about population shifts in the Bay Area may not be available until after the release of 2020 census data. But more than fifty people responded to queries from The Chronicle to share their stories about moving, and reports from real estate and moving companies indicate a transformative shift, even if it cannot be measured precisely."

"The number of people seeking price estimates to move out of the Bay Area was 46% higher this year than in June 2019 for Unigroup, which owns moving companies United Van Lines and Mayflower. Other moving companies, including U-Haul and Winter Moving and Storage, have also reported increased demand for trucks and moving services in the region."

"The effect appears most dramatic in San Francisco proper. Rents have dropped between 14% and 15% year over year for one- and two-bedroom units in the city, and homes listed for sale have skyrocketed 96% in San Francisco, dramatically higher than every other metropolitan area but New York, according to data from Zillow."

"San Francisco’s 'demand score,' or the relative interest in San Francisco sale listings compared to other markets on Realtor.com, has dropped 83 points since January, from 89 to 6 on a 100-point scale. The level of interest is by far the lowest it has been since at least September 2016. Average listing prices, which peaked at $2.75 million in January, have since fallen to $1.9 million — about where they were in 2017 and 2018, but significantly below 2019’s levels."

"And those that have lingered because they love San Francisco’s arts and food scenes now see only the problems. 'All the things that we love about the city are just gone right now,' said Michelle Lai, a 16-year resident of the Mission District who moved south to a house in Capitola (Santa Cruz County) in mid-July."