A report from the Los Angeles Times in California. "If you’re falling behind on rent, don’t just wait for consequences. Your landlord may be open to negotiation. 'Residents shouldn’t hesitate to reach out to their housing provider,' agreed Fred Sutton, a senior vice president of public affairs with the California Apartment Assn. 'Rent rates are collapsing … A housing provider is going to do everything they can to keep you there.'"

From Bisnow on California. "Some of San Francisco's largest apartment owners are resorting to sizable concessions and lower rents as they compete to lease up their buildings in a market pummeled by the pandemic. Zumper found that the city's biggest landlords are looking to lure renters with packages ranging from gift cards to 12 weeks of free rent, with the most aggressive deals being offered by the owners of luxury SoMa properties. 'It’s almost like an arms race of concessions and free rent and so on and so forth,' Presidio Bay Ventures Managing Director Cyrus Sanandaji said. 'They’re all competing for the same few renters that are left in the market who are moving around within the market.'"

"Developer Crescent Heights' 754-unit NEMA San Francisco community in SoMa launched a lineup of offerings for potential residents, each of which includes three months of free rent. Studios at the luxury community also now start at $1,795, one-bedrooms at $2,295 and two-bedrooms at $3,495, representing year-over-year drops of about 30%, 33% and 26%, from $2,558, $3,423 and $4,775, respectively."

"NEMA Asset Manager Joey Ramos said in a statement occupancy has fallen to 80%. 'Renters are in a position of power for the first time in a long time,' he said. 'Everybody’s offering between eight weeks and 10 weeks free rent, and there’s been a significant drop in rents,' said Oz Erickson, CEO of Emerald Fund, a developer and also manager of over 1,300 units in S.F. and Oakland. 'Any cash flow is better than no cash flow as long as you’re covering the variable costs of bringing somebody into a building.'"

The San Francisco Chronicle in California. "San Francisco is the softest spot in the Bay Area’s mostly booming real estate market, and its condo segment is weakest of all. Inventory has been growing faster than sales, and price reductions — mostly in the condo segment — 'have hit very high numbers,' said Patrick Carlisle, chief market analyst for the Compass. The big reason condos didn’t drop more: Sales of two-bedroom units went up considerably — to 330 from 230 — year over year, while the number of one-bedroom condo sales dropped slightly, to 186 from 183."

"'The increase in two-bedroom sales pulled up the overall median condo sales price,' Carlisle said. When you look at one- and two-bedroom units separately, their median prices fell 6.6% and 6.5%, respectively, 'which rings much truer.'"

"This shows why looking just at median prices, the point at which half of homes sold for more and half for less, can be misleading. Carlisle found 'a similar dynamic regarding median house sales prices around the Bay Area in the third quarter.' The average size of homes sold in the Bay Area in the third quarter 'jumped virtually everywhere, very generally in the 5% to 10% range. Bigger houses sell for more money, raising the median sales price.' That’s not a true reflection of market values, or what an individual house might sell for."

The South Florida Reporter. "Jesse Keenan, an associate professor of real estate at Tulane University, studied Miami-area home prices in 2018 and came to a similar conclusion: Home prices were weakening in the lowest-lying areas. Keenan’s latest study, titled 'Underwaterwriting,' examined how lenders handle flood-prone properties. Keenan finds that small banks with more in-depth local knowledge are more likely to offload mortgages by selling them to mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, rather than holding them in their portfolios. His theory: Local banks know local risks well, or at least more intimately than out-of-town lenders."

"'They have their ears to the ground,' Keenan says. 'They have better soft information. Very local banks are using this soft information to shed risk.'"

"The Wharton team analyzed millions of home sales in Florida and discovered declines in both sales volumes and sales prices in the areas most vulnerable to flooding. 'Our results suggest that fewer buyers are willing to bear these risks at current market prices, leading to a sharp fall in transaction volumes,' write study authors Benjamin Keys and Philip Mulder."

"The effects are particularly pronounced in coastal areas of Miami and Tampa, the researchers find. 'When we really focus in on that slice that has the highest risk, we find that starting in 2013, their home sales volume started to decline year on year,' Mulder says."

From Queens News in New York. "The number of apartments available for rent in Queens hit a record high in the borough during the third quarter of this year, according to a new report. During the third quarter of 2020, there were a total of 15,896 rental listings available in Queens, according to StreetEasy. The nearly 16,000 listings marks a record high and an increase of over 41 percent when compared to the third quarter of 2019, the report said."

"The increase in available units was a great benefit to renters, the report said. Queens saw a near record high of discounted units, with over 26 percent of apartments being rented at a discount in quarter three, StreetEasy said. Rental inventory in Manhattan grew by 44.7 percent, a similar number seen in Brooklyn."

From WTOP on Virginia. "Arlington County and Alexandria have something in common: rising inventory. Long & Foster attributes that to the Amazon effect. 'Since people bought homes so aggressively in that area the past two years, the inventory levels are finally seeing some relief, causing them to look like they’ve risen,' said Larry Foster, president of Long & Foster Real Estate."

From WAMU on Washington DC. "Lawmakers in D.C. have passed a series of measures to help renters during the pandemic. But some mom-and-pop landlords wonder whether the city will do the same for them. One woman who oversees two properties her parents purchased in D.C. in the 1980s says the city’s eviction ban is forcing her family into an untenable position. Since before the pandemic, they’ve sought to remove a tenant who owes more than $10,000 in rent dating back to last year, court records show. But their case ground to a halt when courts stopped holding eviction hearings mid-March."

"'Now we’re just hanging in limbo,' the woman says. Now the woman says her family is considering selling, but she fears that doing so would contribute to gentrification in the District. 'You’re placed in the position of having to consider, do you hold onto the property or do you allow one of these developer sharks to come in and buy it?' she says."

"'The narrative is to punish the landlord,' says a small-time D.C. real estate investor who requested anonymity to avoid backlash from tenant advocates. 'It just feels like, ‘Suck it up. Figure it out.’ I don’t think they recognize that landlords have to eat, too.'"

From Bloomberg. "Real estate debt investors are stockpiling cash, searching for opportunities to lend to commercial-property owners hurt by the pandemic. Mark Fogel, chief executive officer of Acres Capital LLC, a New York-based commercial property lender, said he’s getting almost twice as many calls from borrowers looking to refinance their debt or get bridge loans to stay afloat than just a few months ago."

"A flood of distressed deals is widely expected to hit the market in coming months as lenders run out of patience. 'I’m starting to see lenders just wanting to get paid off, so they’re going to borrowers, saying forbearance is over, time’s up,' Fogel said. 'You’ll start to see a lot of that start to happen this last quarter of 2020, heading into 2021, especially on retail and hospitality assets.'"

From Bisnow on Massachusetts. "New Balance’s former world headquarters at 20 Guest St. has been sold for $72M, giving its owner a 228K SF facility near the bustling Boston Landing neighborhood. The sale of the fully leased building represents one of the largest deals in the Boston area recently, said Aaron Jodka, Colliers’ managing director for research and client services in Boston. 'At $315 per square foot, that's a pretty good value for the city of Boston,' Jodka said, adding there has been a lack of recent sales transactions in Boston amid the coronavirus pandemic to compare it to."

"More than 1M SF of office space in Boston was emptied in the third quarter as near-term demand for office space has been thrown into question. Artemis Managing Director Anar Chudgar said in August that her firm was close to closing on an office building in a gateway city with a discount of up to 30% of its pre-COVID price."

From The Oregonian. "Oregon’s construction sector fared relatively well in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. Even so, Oregon construction jobs fell by 10% in April and have been slower to bounce back than other industries. Oregon has lost 6,200 construction jobs so far this year, (seasonally adjusted) including a 2,600 job loss just last month."

"Across the nation, though, the long-range picture for construction is concerning. The monthly Architecture Billings Index is a leading indicator for the construction industry, reflecting projects in the pipeline that could start work in the next year. An index below 50 indicates a decline in billings and a diminished outlook – and the national index fell from 53 in February to 29.5 in April. It settled out at 40 during the summer and remains there, pointing to a protracted decline in building activity."