A report from the Daily Independent in Arizona. "'They were warned. They were warned. They were warned again. There is no satisfaction in being able to say, ‘I told you so,’ said Roland Murphy, an independent commercial real estate market analyst based in Phoenix. 'Those of us who followed and actually cared about the multifamily market in the last several years repeatedly warned investors and developers to diversify their property portfolios to not rely so heavily upon Class A. I, for one, advised against no more than 60% holdings in that space.'"

"'While none of us could have imagined the staggering impacts of COVID-19 as a ‘black swan’ event, it was a certainty that holding $1,650 minimum rents in high-dynamic districts wasn’t sustainable,' Mr. Murphy said. 'Now investors and property managers are looking at massive downturns with no sustained or sustainable sections of market to prop up their positions.'"

From Gothamist on New York. "If pandemic Manhattan is a ghost town, Hudson Yards is its ghost capital. The million-square-foot mall built into the base of 20 Hudson Yards is open but eerily empty. And for the worse is where things seem headed, at least in the short term. If rents fall, so should tax assessments, and with them revenues for paying off the city’s Hudson Yards debt. 'I don’t think there’s a world in which that doesn’t happen—rents are going to come down more than they have,'' says Steven Soutendijk, executive managing director of retail services for the commercial real estate behemoth Cushman and Wakefield."

"'A lot of people will be able to start new businesses,' says Soutendijk. 'I thought I was going to have to live in Columbus, Ohio, because I can only pay $1,200 a month in rent —well, good news, that two-bedroom in the East Village that used to be four grand is now $2,600.'"

From WBEZ on Illinois. "Frank Celio owns a brown and beige single-family home in Hegewisch, a working-class neighborhood on Chicago’s Far South Side just blocks from the Illinois-Indiana state line. Today, Celio said he rents the home — and wants to evict the tenants. 'The government won’t let us get him out of there … It’s really, really frustrating because in the past I could just easily make a motion to evict — and that would be the end of it,' Celio said. 'I can’t even do that now — and it’s my property. I can’t do nothing with it.'"

"Landlords like Celio, who owns properties in Illinois and Northwest Indiana, are navigating a series of new eviction moratoriums that vary by location. While these efforts have been lauded by housing advocates, landlords like Celio say the protections favor renters. And experts say these new rules could lead to a surge in foreclosures for landlords down the road."

"Chicago attorney Carol Oshana represents landlords who mostly 'own just one building' to supplement their income. These small landlords, also known as single-family rentals, make up about 34% of the estimated 45 million renter households in America, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. In the Chicago metropolitan area, as of 2018, single family rentals make up about 20% of the 1.3 million rental units, according to Joint Center for Housing Studies."

"'My landlords are very desperate. They have [renters who] are working but don’t want to pay,' Oshana said."

The Des Moines Register in Iowa. "Developers of a parking garage that is part of downtown's proposed skyscraper The Fifth have defaulted on a loan, putting the future of the $170 million landmark project in question. A foreclosure petition, filed Monday by Bankers Trust Co., alleges owners Justin Mandelbaum, Sean Mandelbaum, and 5th and Walnut Parking LLC failed to pay on a $48 million note on the 11-story garage, which was due Aug. 31. The foreclosure follows a notice of default from the city, filed against the developers in June, for failing to reach construction deadlines outlined in a development agreement for the 40-story apartment tower, hotel and theater complex planned for the corner."

The Commercial Appeal on Tennessee. "In a sign of the turmoil, seven Memphis landlords went to federal court in an effort to overturn the federal order and open way for evictions of tenants behind on rent payments. The lawsuit was briefly dropped on Wednesday and refiled as a new case after some of the original plaintiffs were removed from the action. Next year, evictions could increase. One sign of pain appeared this month. In September’s first week, 32% of renters nationwide failed to make a full monthly rent payment, up from 10% in August, estimated housing analyst Chris Salviati of Apartment List."

"What’s not clear, said Jim Reedy, chief executive of a Memphis real estate firm that rents out 2,100 apartments and 1,000 houses, is what will happen in the market in the coming weeks. The $600 supplement ended in July. The jobless rate hasn’t receded. And the eviction moratorium will end Dec. 31. 'By the end of the year, the real shake-out is going to begin unless we get another stimulus worked out in Washington,' Reedy said. 'That’s when the job losses are going to rear their ugly head. That’s when the real pain starts.'"

From Patch. "The owner of the Connecticut Post Mall has a blunt message for city officials who may be on the fence concerning the company's proposed $75 million luxury apartment complex plans. 'Failure to allow this first-class investment will prevent the mall from stabilizing and could be the end of the property as an enclosed mall,' officials said in its plans to the city of Milford. 'Failure to invest now could cause the property to be one of the malls that does not survive the shakeout.'"

The Boston Globe in Massachusetts. "In another sign of how unusual this September has been in Boston, even the moving trucks are staying put. The lack of activity is an indication of the city’s soft rental market. A real estate website this week crunched the numbers on how many people sought permits to park moving trucks in Boston this year, and found requests are down sharply in September compared with last year. Indeed, they’ve been down for five of the last six months, and are off 15 percent for 2020."

"It’s a real-life example of the COVID-19-induced slowdown in Boston’s typically-tight apartment market, said data analysts at Renthop, who have tracked city moving permit data for several years. As the traditional Sept. 1 turnover date approached, some landlords were cutting rents and offering a month or more free as incentives to fill thousands of still-unspoken-for apartments. And sure enough, when move-in weekend hit, there were fewer rental trucks plying the streets from Allston-Brighton to the Seaport. The declines have come nearly across the board, but were more pronounced in some neighborhoods than in others."

From Socket Site on California. "Having slipped last month, the weighted average asking rent for an apartment in Oakland is now down over 13 percent since the end of last year and 17 percent below a 2016-era peak of roughly $3,000 a month. At the same time, listing activity for apartments in Oakland, which had remained relatively stable in the second quarter of the year, has jumped around 50 percent since the end of June and is now up around 70 percent versus the same time last year."

From KCBS Radio in California. "Economic crises and recessions historically lead to a softening of the rental market. With the COVID-19 pandemic impacting large parts of the economy across the country and here in the Bay Area, experts say it is possible rents will fall once again. 'We’re already hearing that tenants are requesting rent reductions because the market for housing just isn’t what it was six weeks ago,' says Charley Goss with the San Francisco Apartment Association, which represents city property owners."

"And despite state and countywide eviction moratoriums protecting residents who are unable to pay their rent, many are leaving on their own. 'We surveyed 315 members last week, and found that 16% of property owners surveyed had renters who had moved out of the city due to COVID-19,' says Goss, who expects the vacancy rate in San Francisco to go up."

The San Francisco Examiner in California. "Yubalance’s story is a dime a dozen right now in San Francisco, where the coronavirus pandemic has left business owners struggling to stay afloat. Many fear the looming expiration date of the moratorium may trigger an 'avalanche' of evictions for commercial tenants, according to Allan Low, a real estate attorney who is working pro bono to help small businesses in The City’s Asian cultural districts. 'Unless we rely on the generosity of landlords, there’s a real threat there’s going to be just a wave of litigation [from] landlords trying to collect rent,' Low said. 'The practical question there is: You sue and evict tenants, but who’s going to come in and take over the space?'"

"'There’s just not enough money in the real estate ecosystem to make anything work right now,' he continued. 'Most tenants’ sales are down 70 to 80 percent and [they] just don’t have enough money to pay rent. If landlords aren’t collecting rent, they can’t pay their mortgage.'"

The Wall Street Journal. "Bank of Hope has been an American success story. The Los Angeles-based firm created a niche by lending to Korean Americans and other businesses run by recent immigrants. By merging with competitors, it increased its assets over the past decade to $17.2 billion. Then the pandemic hit. Now, the lender is one of many small and midsize U.S. banks buried under a pile of potentially troubled commercial real-estate loans."

"Bank of Hope’s loan portfolio may be one of the most vulnerable. It had $3.1 billion in loans with Covid-19-related payment deferrals or other modifications as of June 30, according to its second-quarter earnings call. That accounts for around 18% of the bank’s total assets, ranking among the highest percentage for these kinds of loans in the country."

"Loans with these modifications were equivalent to around 170% of the bank’s Tier-1 capital, a measure of reserves that protect against potential losses, a level higher than most peers. The vast majority are commercial mortgages. A large number were made to hotel and retail owners, according to its second-quarter earnings report, two of the hardest-hit property sectors."

"Some smaller banks 'gave money away like Pez dispensers' when the property market was on the rise, said Mark Edelstein, chair of law firm Morrison & Foerster’s global real-estate group. 'They’re going to be in for a rude awakening when the regulators come down and tell them they’ve got to put more capital against the loans.'"

"Few know the true scale of the industry’s problem. Federal regulators no longer require banks to list troubled loans on their balance sheets for as long as the borrower is getting Covid-19-related debt relief. Regulators don’t share information on these loans with the public. Shares of Bank of Hope’s parent, Hope Bancorp, are down more than 40% year to date, making its performance worse than its regional bank peers and well below the S&P 500 stock index’s modest gains this year. Shares of Los Angeles-based PacWest Bancorp, another regional bank with a large concentration of commercial real-estate loans, have also sold off this year."

"'People are saying ‘Look what happened last time,’ said Christopher McGratty, head of U.S. bank research at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Inc. 'I think people are worried that they’re gonna have pretty big losses.'"