A report from Patch New York. "New Yorkers on the hunt for deals on one-bedroom apartments might want to start looking near the closest subway stop. Rents fell around 418 out of 473 stops across the city during the coronavirus pandemic, according to RentHop. All told, 88 percent of subway stops had rents fall for nearby one-bedrooms, the study found. And landlords, fearing losses, have kept about half of unrented apartments off the market in hopes prices will rebound."

From Bloomberg. "After office construction in New York City ground to a virtual halt in the second and third quarters of last year, developers began work on $2.7 billion worth of projects in the final three months of 2020, according to data from Real Capital Analytics. That was down roughly one-third from the fourth quarter of 2019, but large enough to show builders and lenders haven’t lost their appetite for risk."

"Still, New York City landlords are digging out of a deep hole. The city has estimated that the value of Manhattan office buildings will drop 25%, with hotels worth 31% less. Apartment rents have slid amid a flood of vacancies, while key retail corridors are plagued by empty storefronts. New York commercial mortgage-backed securities saw a surge in delinquent loans over the past year, reaching a total balance of $5.8 billion in March, according to data firm Trepp. That equates to an overall delinquency rate of 5.77%."

"Office availability, meanwhile, is at the highest level in at least 30 years, worse than it was after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the financial crisis."

The Washington Post. "Downtown Washington has long been known as a hub for lobbyists and lawyers commuting to and from the office like clockwork each weekday. But experts say that may change. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the vacancy rate in the central business district, forcing city leaders to consider drastic alternatives to fill unused office space. 'We have all this space to fill, and there are not enough lawyers and probably not enough nonprofits to move here and fill it up,' said Gerry Widdicombe, director of economic development for the DowntownDC Business Improvement District."

"Authorities also fear drops in sales tax revenue without workers supporting coffee shops, restaurants, bars and other businesses downtown. 'We get half a million people a day commuting into the city,' said David Umansky, public affairs officer for the office of the chief financial officer. 'If that number drops a whole lot, there will be a lot of pain.'"

"Between 2014 and 2017, the vacancy rate in D.C.’s central business district hovered around 9 percent, according to data from real estate brokerage firm Colliers International. It climbed to nearly 11 percent in 2018 before surging in 2020 and reaching almost 17 percent in the first quarter of this year. Local leaders and real estate brokers attribute much of the vacancy trend to an explosion of construction in NoMa, the Wharf and Navy Yard neighborhoods over the past five years."

"'This has been occurring for the greater part of a decade or so,' said Neil Albert, CEO of the DowntownDC BID."

From Blog TO in Canada. "A new report from Urbanation Inc., which has been tracking the GTA's condo and apartment market for 40 years, shows that vacancy rates among newer purpose-built rental apartments in the region reached 6.6 per cent during the first quarter of 2021. The estimates for buildings in the City of Toronto are even higher, with adjusted vacancy rates of 8.8 percent at residential projects completed since 2005. This is up from just 1.1 per cent for the same period last year."

"This posted decline in rents at the buildings surveyed by Urbanation was in addition to what the firm calls 'widespread incentives being offered in the market.' 'About two-thirds of buildings were offering free rent periods of one to three months to attract new tenants,' reads the report. 'Urbanation calculated that these free rent periods were equal to a rent reduction of approximately $255 per month when averaged over the course of the initial lease term.'"

From My London in the UK. "Rents have plummeted buy up to a quarter in some London postcodes as tenants flee the capital in the wake of Covid-19 lockdowns. According to renting giant SpareRoom, rent prices fell by as much as 8 per cent in London in the first financial quarter of 2021 due to Covid, with some postcodes falling as much as 26 per cent individually. Instead of sitting out the restrictions though, SpareRoom reports that 27 per cent of London renters plan to give the city a French exit once restrictions are lifted, kissing goodbye to the city just as everything reopens."

"Matt Hutchinson, the director of Spareroom, said: 'London rents continue to fall and, as has been the case throughout the past year, it’s the expensive areas where they fall the fastest. We’re now seeing the biggest drop in London room rents since spring, and there’s no immediate sign of a recovery.'"

From IOL on South Africa. "Nobody can deny the devastating impact that Covid-19 has and will continue to have on the global economy. Our personal finances are threatened from all ends, as the lockdown has left millions of South Africans desperately seeking additional sources of income. CEO of Momentum Investments Jeanette Marais says that South Africa is now in what the industry is calling an unprecedented buyers’ market. 'Banks are actually quite willing to offer 100% home loans, and with the recent reduction in interest rates, the market is well positioned for recovery.'"

The South China Morning Post. "The number of homes standing empty in Hong Kong may climb to an 18-year high in 2021 as thousands of families flee to the UK, according to a Bloomberg estimate. The forecast exodus would take the number of empty homes in Hong Kong to 66,683, up from 52,370 last year. For an idea of scale, that is more than five times the number of units in the gigantic Taikoo Shing housing estate in the east of Hong Kong Island."

"Rents may slide by another 10 per cent in 2021 as the shrinking population threatens to stifle residential leasing, following a 6 per cent drop last year, according to Bloomberg’s research report. 'Landlords may struggle to find tenants for their vacant rental units amid Hong Kong’s sputtering economy, possibly hurting their bargaining power in rental negotiations,' said the report."

"Charlotte So, who recently quit her job in Hong Kong and will fly next Monday with her husband and 11 year-old son to start a new life in Kingston, an hour’s ride from central London. 'The possibility of coming back to Hong Kong is small, so we just sold our home even though it was some HK$500,000 below our asking prices,' said So."

From Nikkei Asia on China. "Kangbashi, a town in the middle of barren Inner Mongolia deserts, once found itself stuck with rows of newly built-but-vacant apartment buildings, earning a nationwide reputation as a guicheng, or ghost town. Now the district in the city of Ordos is back. Having sold previously empty apartments, Kangbashihe town is building more high-rise complexes. When the bubble burst, condos that went for more than 8,000 yuan per sq. meter, or about $1,200, at the peak tumbled to between 3,000 yuan and 5,000 yuan."

"Yet 'now prices in central Kangbashi are up to 15,000 yuan' per sq. meter, the salesperson said. This is even as the city's economy shrank in 2019 and 2020. Comments arguing that real estate is 'holding China hostage' are a common sight online. Property investment directly boosts gross domestic product and stokes demand in related industries such as steel and cement."

"'In normal countries, condominiums are built because there's demand,' said an economist under China's State Council. 'In China, condominiums are built to increase steel and cement production. It's backward.'"

"The development that helped power China's recovery from the coronavirus outbreak has left lower-tier cities with a buildup of excess homes. New condominium inventories reached a four-and-a-half-year high by square footage around the end of last year, according to E-House China R&D Institute. On top of this, population growth has stalled. The number of people in their 20s and 30s -- the prime homebuying age -- is already shrinking. In Ordos specifically, the population grew nearly 5% annually on average in the six years through 2012, but the growth rate has plunged to an average of 0.6% since the bubble ended."

"Tianjin and Inner Mongolia still languish near the bottom of China's 31 provinces and provincial-level cities in terms of economic growth. 'We can't shake the fear that if new development picks up steam, we'll create a new ghost town,' an Ordos real estate developer said."

From Domain News in Australia. "Melbourne apartment owners have offloaded inner-city units at losses of up to 40 per cent in recent months, as some apartments continue to sit empty. John Sdregas from JMRE Real Estate in North Melbourne recently sold a one-bedroom apartment in Swanston Street for $180,000 – 30 per cent less than the owners paid for it 15 years earlier."

"'It had been sitting vacant for nine months, and they simply couldn’t afford to keep it,' Mr Sdregas said. 'We are seeing this a lot,' he said. 'Vendors can’t find renters. They are distressed, and they’re prepared to sell at a loss. That’s if they can find a buyer. Some apartments are sitting on the market for three to six months. The investor market in the inner city has diminished. No one wants to buy an investment property at the moment.'"

"'We don’t know how long it’s going to be until international students can come back. It could still be another six, 12, 24 months away,' he says. 'You won’t be able to give them away if you’ve got no students to rent them.'"

"Public records reveal dozens of examples of inner-city apartments that have been sold in recent months at a substantial loss. In November last year, a studio apartment in Carlton sold for $141,000, 38 per cent less than the $227,500 it was purchased for in 2007. In January, a studio apartment in a high-rise building in Collins Street sold for $145,000 – 36 per cent less than the $228,000 the owners paid for it in 2004."

"And there are dozens more examples. The agent who sold the Collins Street apartment, Annamaria Stella from Twigg Real Estate, says '99 per cent' of the apartments she currently sells in the CBD sell at a loss. 'Occasionally, we sell one or two that break-even, or even sell for $10,000 more than they were purchased for off-the-plan. But that is very rare,' she says."

"However, Ms Stella is quick to point out that she regularly sold CBD apartments at a loss even before the pandemic hit. 'Even before COVID hit, we were seeing a major oversupply of apartments in the city … from about early 2017 onwards, we were starting to re-sell some of these apartments that had been bought off the plan for less than what they were purchased for,' Ms Stella says."

"'So, before COVID, I’d get calls from vendors who were thinking about selling for various reasons, and when I’d tell them what their property was worth, they’d say, ‘oh, no way, I’ll hold on to it’, she explained. 'Now they call and say they don’t want to sell, but it’s empty, and they need to sell, even though in most instances it will be at a loss.'"

"Ms Stella says many of the CBD apartments she has sold recently have sold for '25 to 30 per cent less than the original purchase price.' Angie Zigomanis, director, research and strategy at Charter Keck Cramer, says there are still a significant number of new developments due for completion this year that will continue to put downward pressure on inner-city apartment prices for some time to come."

"A report last month revealed that 16,400 apartments were forecast for completion across Melbourne in 2021, while from 2022. 'There are still a number of big projects reaching completion stage, and a significant proportion of those will be in the central Melbourne area,' Mr Zigomanis says. 'These new completions are just going to add to the stock of vacant apartments on the market … making it even more challenging for sellers to achieve the prices that they initially paid for them, especially when you consider they will be competing against owners who are in a position where they need to sell.'"