A report from Arlington Now in Virginia. "This week’s key figure is… 20 percent. During the last week, we’ve seen approximately a 20 percent increase in local listings spanning single-family homes, townhouses and condominiums. Spin it however you’d like folks, but the bottom line is that there’s a lot more homes to discover in our local market if you’re looking to buy."

"With the influx of inventory, it appears more and more sellers are taking competitive measures to get their homes sold. Going back to that 20 percent figure, we saw the number of Just Reduced homes jump by nearly (you guessed it) 20 percent during the last week, too. Regardless of what your home search may comprise, now is a great time to explore and, if you’re ready to commit, negotiate."

From Boston.com in Massachusetts. "Zillow monitored rents from February to August, reporting the now-troubled rental market is even more adversely affected in neighborhoods traditionally populated by students. 'Across the board we are seeing rents softening but, clearly, college areas are showing the highest decreases — every college neighborhood in Boston saw decreases from February,' said Cheryl Young, Zillow senior economist."

"Some landlords are feeling the pinch as they struggle with property taxes, maintenance, and mortgages. 'Mom-and-pop landlords are really having a tough time,' Young said. 'Protections are favoring renters. I don’t know what protections landlords have and how they will get help.'"

From Bisnow New York. "Residential vacancy rates in New York City have soared, apartment rent collections are still down, and nearly 90% of restaurants cannot pay full rent, reports released over the last few days show. New York City’s residential vacancy rate is nearly 12.6%, while 19% of renters haven't paid September rent, according to a Community Housing Improvement Program survey of 80,000 New York City apartments, most of which are rent-stabilized."

"In a pivot from prior months, CHIP Executive Director Jay Martin said the trade group has stopped expecting the federal government to step in, and that the industry is now looking toward local policymakers for help. 'City and State leaders must take steps to stop the bleeding and stabilize the affordable housing ecosystem for both tenants and their housing providers,' he said in a statement."

From Haute Residence on New York. "September brought new wave to apartment rentals to large, family size residences on Upper West Side. We are very busy helping families to move back to the city. We have clients who rented apartments site unseen by calling us from Hamptons. Sales show softness as only well-priced apartments are getting attention. Everything is on sale and people are expecting discounts."

"Many of our listings that are in the $4 Million+ category are less liquid in this market even though many clients are taking advantage of low-interest rates. We took some of the residences off the market as sellers don’t want to reduce prices dramatically. One of the townhouses listed by us had a price reduction of more than $1 Million. The year 2020 was a breaking point for many sellers and brought to market buyers who hesitated and waited in prior years."

The Commercial Observer on California. "The Apartment Association of Greater L.A. announced the motion against the city today. In June, the group filed a lawsuit against L.A. in federal court challenging the eviction moratorium, restrictions on late fees, and the freeze to annual rent hikes. Those ordinances have caused 'widespread and catastrophic financial damage to landlords and lessors,' the group argued."

"Just in L.A. County, about 138,250 households did not pay any rent at least once between May and July, according to a joint report recently released by UCLA and USC, and almost 40,000 households are at least three full months behind on rent. Of the renters in L.A. struggling to pay rent, about 98,000 have been threatened with an eviction before August."

"But AAGLA’s executive director, Daniel Yukelson, said that after seven months of not collecting rent, housing providers and landlords are suffering severe financial consequences. He said landlords are in deep financial trouble, and many have been forced to liquidate emergency savings or are at risk of foreclosure. Yukelson said they need relief today, and they cannot wait for court proceedings to play out with their June lawsuit, which could take months or years."

"'No government or any other relief has been offered to help these struggling ‘moms and pops,’ who have been forced to continue to provide housing and meet ongoing financial obligations, absent of any sort of compensation or relief,' he said in an email to CO."

From SFist in California. "Three months free rent? No problem. Free Peloton bike? Totally on the table. These are some of things prospective tenants are being offered right now, particularly in new-construction apartment complexes in San Francisco, as developers and landlords are getting desperate to fill vacancies. As the SF Business Times reports this week, 40 percent of SF landlords have had tenants unexpectedly break leases since March, according to an August survey by the San Francisco Apartment Association (SFAA)."

"And in SoMa, where rents soared in the last decade in new-construction towers and low-rise complexes, large swaths of units are sitting empty and owners are willing to give a lot of concessions to anyone willing to sign a lease — including things like free parking and DoorDash credits. The aforementioned Peloton bike offer reportedly went with a $1,995/month studio on Nob Hill, which was also offered with two months free."

"Average asking rents for apartments are down 20 percent year over year, as Socketsite reported last week — and this data is typically based on larger, newer buildings reporting to rental and trade agencies, as opposed to rent-controlled and shared housing. The average asking rent for a one-bedroom just dropped to under $2,900, down from a peak of $3,700 (~22%) in recent years. Also, because so many rent concessions (e.g. two- and three-month free rent deals), what are called 'effective rents' for landlords are down even further."

From Socket Site in California. "Having ticked up another 8 percent over the past week, the number of homes on the market in San Francisco, net of new sales and contract activity, has jumped over 15 percent since the end of August and crossed over the 1,800 mark for the first time in a decade. Inventory levels are now running 90 percent higher on a year-over-year basis, 200 percent higher than in September of 2015, and roughly 20 percent higher than during the Great Recession."

"At the same time, with 30 percent of the homes on the market in San Francisco having been reduced at least once, which is 17 percentage points, or 130 percent, higher than at the same time last year, the number of reduced listings has increased 19 percent over the past month in the absolute to a new 9-year high, as we noted yesterday."

The Express News in Texas. "The mystery of the dog that didn’t bark in the night — as far as economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic — shows up as a statistical absence. Where are the consumer bankruptcies? My theory: rental eviction moratoriums and mortgage forbearance. This theory isn’t original. Reed Allmand, a Fort Worth bankruptcy attorney, also explains the 2020 drop in bankruptcy filings this way."

"'Most of the reasons people file bankruptcy have been put on pause,' he says. 'Nobody wants to file bankruptcy if they can avoid it. Foreclosures are down significantly. Evictions have virtually gone away. Even lawsuits, people being sued for their debts, have gone away.'"

"Absent these drastic triggering events, people do not take the drastic step of filing for bankruptcy. In contrast, business bankruptcies are running well ahead of last year, up 40 percent in April, May and June. The rise in business bankruptcies continued in July and August. Because the consumer economy is complex, we can also come up with other plausible factors suppressing bankruptcies. Increased unemployment and stimulus payments dampened distress this summer. Physical distancing — closed offices and closed courts — may have discouraged people from filing bankruptcy as they did not want to visit a lawyer’s office or appear in court."

"Allmand believes these delays all point to consumer bankruptcy filings as normalcy returns. Specifically, as foreclosures and evictions return in the near future. Giving people a break in hard times and seeing fewer bankruptcies do sound pleasant. But that’s only one side of the coin. Because now the record scratches and the music stops. From here, we go in a different direction."

"Forgiveness for consumers means pain for landlords. The system we live under requires that people pay for their housing. Sorry, Bernie, but it’s true. Housing capital, in the form of rent and mortgage loans, is the anchor asset of our system of private property. At some fundamental level, if you can’t enforce property rights — to ensure getting paid for owning housing or mortgages — the system doesn’t work in the long run. Eviction court is kind of a ground zero for the workings of capitalism. As are lawsuits for debt payment and bankruptcy."

"Justin Solomonic, 40, owns four rental units that constitute his main nest egg for retirement. He’s an IT professional in San Antonio. He built up savings, which he plowed into these four units. He estimates he’s collected just 40 percent of his rents since the pandemic began. Most of the lost income stems from a single tenant, who has not made a rental payment since March. Reminders to pay rent mostly are met with shouting. Or gaslighting, in which the tenant tries to convince Solomonic he’s the best tenant ever and nobody else would want to live in the house."

"It turns out, he has a point. When Solomonic inspected his property in April, he noticed his renter had raised his bed 6 feet off the ground on wooden risers. That was odd. Odd but necessary, because of fleas. And the fleas dominated the place because the renter was in the habit of leaving all his windows open and feeding and providing litter boxes for neighborhood’s stray cats."

"The renter works in construction. In the yard, he had trash from construction sites piled taller than a normal-sized man. Two refrigerators, wood scraps, corrugated metal. All at the house for which the renter hasn’t paid rent since March. In Bexar County, landlords could not file eviction notices until after July 25. Solomonic sent an eviction notice the next day via certified mail. He also sent information, required by law, on where his renter could get additional resources if needed. On Aug. 15, Solomonic requested a court hearing, which happened on Sept. 18. The tenant didn’t show up. After six months of no rent, Solomonic now has a writ of possession, and his tenant has been ordered to vacate the property."

"Sure, landlords and mortgage lenders tend to have more resources than renters and borrowers. But landlords also need a way to protect their assets, right? To go back to where I started, I think that when eviction and foreclosures begin to happen again, we will see that uptick in bankruptcy filings absent the first part of the year. For future contributions to his retirement nest egg, I reminded Solomonic about stock index funds. Stock mutual funds don’t attract fleas, and they don’t require eviction filings in court."