A report from Real Estate Weekly. "Ninety percent of workers from New York’s financial heart are still operating from home. Nearly half of Lower Manhattan’s population has left, and three hotels and over 160 retail business have closed for good, according to the Alliance for Downtown New York. These shifts created downward pressure on the residential rental market, pushing rents down 18 percent to nearly $3,300 – the lowest since 2011."

The Seattle Times in Washington. "A 'rare opportunity' on Capitol Hill will transform a just-finished apartment building planned for upscale market-rate rentals into affordable housing for people who are currently homeless. The sale, expected to close next month, is an unusual deal in Seattle's once-hot apartment market. On Capitol Hill, rents have dropped for the first time since at least 2011."

"'There's a class of buildings where folks say: OK this was a great business line but we're not sure about the future. We would like to get out,' said Debbie Burkart, national vice president for a nonprofit affordable housing investor that will provide LIHI a loan for the Capitol Hill building. 'That creates an opportunity on the flip side for public-private partnerships… A building like this shouldn't just be bought and held and kept empty until the market turns around.'"

"While property owners sometimes made similar offers before the pandemic, Emily Alvarado, head of the city's Office of Housing, said her office has seen an uptick in interest from building owners or developers looking to sell. Rents for small studios and one- and two-bedroom apartments owned by developer NexGen Housing Partners have dropped 10% to 15% compared to a year ago, said CEO Daniel Stoner. About 10% of the apartments are vacant, compared to 4% or 5% pre-pandemic, Stoner said."

"Stoner said he expects to continue developing small apartments. For firms that construct buildings and plan to hold onto them, 'we can ride it out,' Stoner said. 'For those who build and flip, they're in a much more tenuous position.'"

"Brad Padden, a developer whose firm built micro-apartment projects across Capitol Hill and First Hill, saw a similar trend. Rents for new leases in his company's buildings are down about 15% compared to before the pandemic, he said. 'But our whole business model is built around the lack of affordability for middle-wage incomes,' Padden said. 'This idea that people are going to be able to just go live in bigger houses and spread out—that's just not financially feasible for most people.'"

From Bisnow. "Multifamily owners might have been spared the pandemic pain of their retail and hotel peers, but 11 months into the coronavirus pandemic, they have been beset by rising maintenance costs, rent concessions and tenant turnover, eating into their margins and stretching their budgets. Equity Residential reported a 2.8% year-over-year jump in expenses across its 76,535-apartment portfolio in Q4, while its total revenue and NOI for the same time period fell 8.2% and 12.9%, respectively."

"AvalonBay Communities faced similar headwinds, with the REIT reporting a 5.8% rise in operating expenses for its established communities between the fourth quarter of 2019 and 2020 and a 14.3% drop in NOI. 'The biggest difference when it comes to an Avalon Bay or an EQR is that they are continuing to see declining rents in their major markets and are exposed to the San Franciscos, Bostons and New Yorks, and so far, only a few bargain hunters are starting to come back [to those markets],' Piper Sandler Senior Research Analyst for REITs Alexander Goldfarb said."

From Spectrum News in California. "Apartment rents in some of the major core cities across Southern California fell in December by as much as 15%, according to one report, a sign that the coronavirus pandemic had people leaving the big city for greener affordable pastures. According to Apartment Guide, the year-over-year median monthly rental price for a one-bedroom unit in Los Angeles fell by 15.5% to $2,683; Anaheim is down 12.5% to $2,040, and Irvine dropped 9% to $2,492."

"'There has been a trend over the past year where notoriously expensive cities — NYC, San Francisco, L.A. to name a few — have seen a big decrease in rent prices,' said Brian Carberry, senior managing editor at Apartment Guide. According to the report, big cities across the nation from San Francisco, Boston, Washington, D.C., to Tampa, Florida all faced downward pressure on rent prices."

"Zion Perets, the chief financial officer at CGI, did not say whether his company, which owns and operates 25 apartments totaling 2,000 units across four states, increased or lowered rent during the pandemic. Perets did say that it is more challenging to lease to a new tenant when a newer apartment enters the market. Koreatown, for example, is experiencing a flood of new apartments in the area. CGI owns three apartment buildings in that area."

"'Many times those new buildings are providing more concessions, and so a tenant approaching the end of their lease has two options: either renew the lease or move to a brand new building and enjoy those concessions,' Perets said. 'Again, the difficulty is not only in those new buildings but also the old buildings that find themselves competing with the new product.'"

The Long Beach Post in California. "The Oceanaire apartment complex in downtown will become an affordable housing project for middle-income earners for at least the next 15 years under a new pilot program approved by the Long Beach City Council. Because the project will exempt the building from property taxes, it’s expected to cost the city, the county and schools in Long Beach about $1.5 million in year one. The city alone is expected to lose about $8 million in tax revenue over the course of the pilot program. All tax collecting bodies are anticipated to lose about $43 million."

"The Oceanaire opened in 2019 as the city’s newest luxury apartment complex, and a spokesperson told the Post in early 2020 that it expected to be near 90% capacity by the summer. However, as of January, only about 71% of the units were occupied, according to a city report."

The Korea Economic Daily. "South Korean investors in the Drew Las Vegas development project are at higher risk of losing their investment of 300 billion won ($271 million) in the stalled development project in Nevada, after its senior lenders decided to sell the security interest on their loans to a third party. The developer Witkoff Group defaulted on a $2 billion project loan in May of last year, after its construction was shelved due to the COVID-19 pandemic."

"Although the Korean brokerage firms had granted a grace period on the debt payment, its senior lenders recently decided to exit their investment by selling their security right over the property. Since then, the brokerage houses had held negotiations with the unidentified senior lenders to take over their security interest. But they failed to reach an agreement by the Feb. 9 deadline stipulated by the latter, according to investment banking sources on Feb. 10."

"The Drew Las Vegas is a 68-story building with a floor space of 803,146 square meters consisting of the JW Marriott hotel with 3,780 rooms, casino, convention center and theater. It is one of the tallest buildings in Las Vegas. Since ground was broken in 2007, the property has changed hands a couple of times. 'We were unable to reach an agreement among ourselves, so we couldn't take over the security right,' said an official at one of the four Korean brokerage companies. 'We will contact the buyer of the security right to find ways to reduce our losses.'"