A report from National Mortgage Professional. "'Four months into the pandemic, the 120-day delinquency rate for July spiked to 1.4%,' said Dr. Frank Nothaft, chief economist at CoreLogic. 'This was the highest rate in more than 21 years and double the December 2009 Great Recession peak. The spike in delinquency was all the more stunning given the generational low of 0.1% in March.'"

"CoreLogic also reported that all states logged annual increases in both overall and serious delinquency rates in July. The company also predicts that U.S. metros that were hit hard by job loss in the oil and gas industries such as Odessa, Texas, are projected to leave millions of jobs unrestored throughout the remainder of the year."

From Yahoo Finance. "'The 120-day delinquency rate stood at 1.4%, up from 0.12% in July 2019 and the highest level since Core Logic started tracking delinquencies in 1999. 'What we’re seeing is a ‘pig in python’ effect with a spike in June for 90-day delinquencies and now in July with 120-day delinquencies,' said Dr. Frank Nothaft, chief economist at CoreLogic. 'I think it’s a big concern especially as the CARES Act provided forbearance, but homeowners will still have to owe every payment.'"

"All 50 states experienced an uptick in seriously delinquent mortgages, those characterized by payments 90 or more days late. But some bore the brunt more than others. In New York, that rate climbed to 10% in July, up from 4.3% the year before. New Jersey’s rate hit 9.6%, up from 4.5%, while the delinquency rate in Florida increased to 8.6% from 4.1% in July of last year. 'If there continues to be financial stress we can see at least 2 million loans seriously delinquent by the end of 2021,' Nothaft said."

From Bloomberg. "A flood of mortgage-bond supply combined with a dearth of credit for lower-quality borrowers point to how the U.S. housing market is becoming more uneven when it comes to access to historically cheap debt. The Mortgage Bankers Association’s index of housing credit availability dropped last month to the lowest since February 2014. The benchmark has slipped eight of nine months this year and stands 35% lower than at the same time in 2019."

"This bifurcation suggests a widening of the gap in the U.S. housing market as homeowners or would-be buyers toward the bottom of the credit scale struggle to qualify for a loan. Lending standards have been tightening amid high unemployment following the Covid-19 lockdowns and fears that the economic recovery is stalling. 'There has been tightening around every margin,' Joel Kan, the MBA’s associate vice president of economic and industry forecasting, said in an interview. 'A lot of low credit score programs went away.'"

"This is particularly so at Ginnie Mae, which is part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and guarantees loans that are popular with first-time homebuyers and lower-income borrowers. The agency has been tightening the reins for some time now, and the pandemic accelerated the trend."

"Ginnie Mae has reduced the flow of credit to borrowers with FICO scores below 700 and debt-to-income ratios above 40%, according to data provided by the Urban Institute. Whereas in January 2019 just over 44% of its purchase mortgages fell into that category, Ginnie reduced it to 38% in January this year and to 36% in August. For homeowners looking to refinance, the drop has been even steeper, from 38.5% in January last year to 12.8% one year later and to just under 5% in August."

"Even looking at gross supply, where Ginnie Mae’s annual output has averaged 34% of the agency MBS total over the past half decade, so far this year is has dropped to 26%. This may be prudent policy as creating a high rate of delinquent loans is something to be avoided even in the best of times. And servicers don’t like to have such loans on their books, either, according to Laurie Goodman, co-director of the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center, a Washington-based think tank."

"'It costs more to service delinquent loans than performing ones,' she said in an interview."

From The Real Deal. "A ratings agency predicts as much as a 50 percent hit to landlords’ bottom line at unsubsidized affordable apartments, which may lead to evictions when federal moratoriums expire. Fitch Ratings predicts 'full, on-time rental payments' for affordable properties subsidized by the government, which includes federal rental voucher programs such as Section 8. But properties that don’t receive subsidies could see a total discount to their debt service coverage ratio of as much as 40 to 50 percent, due to a 30 percent drop in rent payments as well as a pandemic-driven jump in operating costs."

"Both subsidized and unsubsidized affordable multifamily properties are likely to see a 10 to 20 percent increase in operating expenses, Fitch predicts. Rent collections in market-rate apartments have also decreased, although less dramatically than at affordable properties. In September, rent payments at professionally managed units dwindled to 76 percent."

From Yield Pro. "Desperate landlords now offer as much as three months free rent to potential renters at new, Manhattan apartment towers. 'There is a considerable amount of pain—20 to 25 percent declines in effective rents,' according to Ryan Davis, chief operating officer for Witten Advisors, an apartment research firm based in Dallas."

"New apartments in core, urban areas in the nation’s largest cities offered deep concessions in October 2020. In addition to New York, that also includes the core areas of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and Seattle—once the hottest apartment submarkets in the U.S. 'More expensive submarkets have greater rent losses,' says Jeanette Rice, Americas head of multifamily research for CBRE."

"Even before the pandemic, a growing number of them had moved out of urban apartments to rent or own larger spaces, according to Paula Cino, vice president of construction, development and land use policy for the National Multifamily Housing Council. 'The movement out to the suburbs was not caused by COVID-19,' says John Sebree, senior vice president and national director of Marcus & Millichap’s Multi Housing Division."

The Wall Street Journal. "Harry Wolff, a software-engineering manager who lived in Manhattan’s Stuyvesant Town neighborhood complex, was already planning to move to Connecticut with a second child on the way. Covid-19 accelerated that departure. His ability to work remotely eased concerns about a longer office commute from the suburbs. Then, after struggling to find outdoor play space in New York City for his 2-year-old son, his mind was made up. In June, Mr. Wolff moved his family to a three-bedroom house in Fairfield, Conn."

"'Almost all of our friends have left the city,' he said, adding that many of them also were planning to move in the next few years. 'It’s sad because there’s no celebration of the departure. It’s almost like a slow slink away.'"

"'The stereotypical scenario is that a young professional couple starts having kids and then they move out to the suburbs,' said Jonathan Miller, president of the appraisal firm Miller Samuel. 'You took what would be a natural trend and compressed five years into about three months of outbound migration.'"

"This wave of selling has contributed to a glut of properties in a number of New York City neighborhoods and weighed on home prices. In August, total sales inventory across the five boroughs reached its highest level for data going back to 2010, according to StreetEasy. New signed contracts in Manhattan decreased 31% year over year for the month of August, according to Miller Samuel."

The Philadelphia Inquirer in Pennsylvania. "The region’s top tier homes, those priced over $1 million, are 'definitely sitting longer than the median priced homes,' said Realtor Helen Kowalchik. The average $1 million-plus home in Philadelphia’s collar counties is almost always selling for less than the original asking price, Kowalchik said. Some sellers of luxury properties who are excited by the strength of the overall market inflate listing prices, which leads to their homes sitting on the market longer. Sellers then are forced to lower prices."

"Luxury home buyers also generally aren’t in a rush. They don’t want to compromise and are more likely to pull out if they feel like they are not getting what they wanted, she said. Not many buyers can afford homes in this range, so they know they have fewer competitors. 'They know that they have the upper hand in that situation almost always, especially in the suburbs,' Kowalchik said."

"Philadelphia’s luxury condominium market isn’t getting as much attention now as it had been before the pandemic, said Mike Fabrizio, a Realtor with RE/MAX Access who specializes in Center City condos. Fabrizio, of Mike Fabrizio Luxury Real Estate, said he’s seeing many more units for sale by owners than usual, in part because some empty nesters are moving up plans to purchase retirement homes and because some residents with two homes are selling their condos. The abundance of inventory is helping drive down prices to 2016 levels, he said. Condos that would normally sell quickly are sitting on the market despite price cuts. 'There’s really amazing opportunities out there right now,' he said. 'The savviest buyers are getting the best deals.'"

"As with sellers of single-family houses, sellers of condos in the high-end market see how strong the housing market is generally and wonder why their properties aren’t selling. 'It’s such a spotty market right now,' he said. 'You just have to say, ‘Listen, it’s not this market, it’s this market’ and manage sellers expectations depending on price and location, he said."

From Socket Site in California. "Purchased from the sales office for $3,149,500, or roughly $2,003 per square foot, back in June of 2016, the 'highest and largest' two-bedroom, two-bath unit in the Lumina tower at 338 Main Street, unit #35A, was then listed for $3,449,000 in March of 2017. Reduced to $2,995,000 this past February, is now down to $2,875,000, or roughly $1,830 per square foot, a sale at which would be 8.7 percent below the the unit’s mid-2016 value on an apples-to-apples basis."

The Los Angeles Times in California. "Chalk this sale up as a head-scratcher. In August, singer Leona Lewis sold her equestrian estate in the celebrity hot spot of Hidden Hills for $3.9 million to a trust tied to Simon Cowell. Ten days after buying the home, records show Cowell put it back on the market for $3.7 million — or $200,000 less than the price he had just paid. On Tuesday, the property sold for $3.6 million."