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The pandemic has aggravated the housing market’s longstanding lack of supply, creating a historic shortage of homes for sale, the Wall Street Journal reported. Buyers are accelerating purchase plans or considering homeownership for the first time, rushing to get more living space as many Americans anticipate working from home for a while. Many potential sellers, meanwhile, are keeping their homes off the market for pandemic-related reasons. The combined effect has created an extreme drought of previously owned homes for sale. At the end of July, there were 1.3 million single-family existing homes for sale, the lowest count for any July in data going back to 1982, according to the National Association of Realtors. In the week ended Sept. 12, total for-sale inventory was down 29.4 percent from a year earlier at the lowest level since at least late 2017, Zillow Group Inc. said.

In the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, as businesses across the country urged employees to work from home, rents plunged in New York City, San Francisco and other densely-populated cities, Reuters reported. Still, prominent hedge funds, including D1 Capital Partners and Long Pond Capital and mutual fund giants Capital Group and T. Rowe Price, purchased shares in the second quarter in companies that rent residential real estate in urban markets, buying in at beaten-down levels and possibly betting on a faster rebound than Wall Street forecast. Now, nearly three months later, shares of real estate trusts that specialize in urban apartment rentals are down more than the broader real estate sector and the benchmark S&P 500 stock index for the year-to-date and since the March market rout. Shares of Equity Residential, founded by billionaire Sam Zell, are up 7 percent since the March low, AvalonBay Communities, which owns the Avalon Morningside Park with views of Manhattan, and UDR are up 26 percent and 14 percent, respectively, while the S&P 500 is up 48 percent. “The next three to five years are going to be very challenging,” said Jonathan Litt, whose hedge fund Land & Buildings Investment Management concentrates on real estate. “The key is to stay alive until 2025 in these markets.”

GNC Holdings Inc. got legal permission to sell itself to Chinese sponsor Harbin Pharmaceutical in bankruptcy court despite recent resistance from U.S. political figures, Bloomberg News reported. Bankruptcy Court Judge Karen Owens approved the health and wellness company’s plan to sell its assets to its largest shareholder and original bidder, Harbin Pharmaceutical Group Holding Co., for $770 million. The deal was also supported by GNC’s landlords and creditors, GNC’s lawyers from Latham & Watkins said at a virtual hearing yesterday. “The market has spoken. The Harbin bid was the highest, best bid” that emerged during the marketing process and is “better than any alternative plan,” including liquidation, Latham’s Caroline Reckler said on behalf of the company. The sale also provides $4.5 million to GNC’s unsecured creditors who supported the sale as part of a global settlement with the company. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) voiced concerns last week over the company’s plans to sell to Harbin, citing risk of GNC customers’ personal data being exposed to the Chinese government. GNC continues to stand by Harbin’s bid and doesn’t believe there are any legal issues related to the sale, Reckler said in court, noting that “access to consumer data” is protected through quarterly audits that “will not change in any way.” The deal also calls for the assumption of 1,400 retail locations, saving thousands of jobs while closing under-performing storefronts, GNC’s lawyers said.

Auto-parts manufacturer Garrett Motion Inc. is preparing for a possible bankruptcy filing as tensions rise with former parent Honeywell International Inc. over asbestos injury payments and as sales have slumped during the COVID-19 pandemic, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The company is in discussions with creditors and considering filing for bankruptcy within weeks, though talks are fluid and no decision has been reached. The company in August said that it hired legal and financial advisers to explore options to address a $1.4 billion debt load and required payouts to victims of asbestos exposure stemming from Honeywell’s products. Garrett Motion also warned that efforts to reduce debt could hurt the value of its shares or lead to a cancellation of its stock. The company’s financial woes stem in part from its 2018 spinoff from Honeywell, which laid out how the two companies would cover injury claims to workers and others injured by asbestos in Honeywell products. In December, Garrett Motion sued Honeywell in New York state court, seeking to unwind an agreement to reimburse Honeywell for the bulk of the former parent’s settlement payments. In the lawsuit, Garrett Motion said the indemnification agreement is oppressive and one-sided, turning the company into Honeywell’s “asbestos piggybank.” Honeywell has said the lawsuit has no merit and the indemnification agreement is enforceable, according to public filings.

Hertz Global Holdings Inc. must change its plan to pay 14 top executives up to $5.4 million in bonuses if it wants win approval for the incentive program, says the judge overseeing the car renter’s bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported. Judge Mary Walrath sided with opponents of the payouts, who argued that the bonus program comes too soon after $16.2 million in retention money Hertz agreed to hand out to about 340 employees just days before it filed for bankruptcy in May. Judge Walrath’s order also nixed a new plan that would have split as much as $9.2 million among about 295 lower-ranking managers. “It seems offensive to give senior executives bonuses” when some of them got retention payments immediately before Hertz headed for court, Judge Walrath said in a hearing held by telephone yesterday. Under the pre-bankruptcy retention plan, Chief Executive Officer Paul Stone received $700,000. With the new plan, Stone could have collected as much as $1.6 million.

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows met with major airline chief executives yesterday as the industry braces for thousands of job cuts in two weeks, and urged lawmakers to embrace a $1.5 trillion coronavirus aid package proposed by a bipartisan congressional group and endorsed by President Donald Trump, Reuters reported. Meadows told reporters “if (House) Speaker (Nancy) Pelosi was willing to move a bill to keep people from being laid off in the airline industry that’s stand-alone, that the president would certainly support it.” But congressional aides say that it is unlikely that Congress would agree to a stand-alone bill to assist airlines when so many other sectors are struggling and seeking assistance. “The needs have only grown. Some of the needs for the small businesses, needs for restaurants, needs for transportation and the rest,” Pelosi said yesterday. Other transportation sectors are also seeking billions of dollars in new bailout funds, including public transit, bus companies and the Amtrak passenger rail service. Meadows said that the administration had examined executive action options, all of them less than ideal. Airlines did not offer a new proposal but again made the case that helping avert airline job cuts was one good reason to pass a broad coronavirus relief bill.

The bankrupt owner of New York Sports Clubs and Lucille Roberts said it was prepared to pay out as much as $850,000 in an effort to quell a social-media-fueled backlash over its billing practices during the coronavirus pandemic, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The company, Town Sports International Holdings Inc., said that it set aside that amount for customer refunds after filing for bankruptcy Monday. Many more gym members than expected have asked for their money back due to pandemic-related closures, the company said. Some customers complained on social media that they were charged fees even though their local gyms remained closed. Town Sports had initially expected to set aside about $225,000 to cover such requests, a lawyer for the company said during a court hearing on Wednesday. The company’s billing practices are the subject of a continuing probe by New York state authorities. Town Sports said in court documents that it earmarked the money “to compensate customers for certain inconveniences over the past six months that have been caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

U.S. President Donald Trump yesterday announced a new round of pandemic assistance to farmers of about $13 billion at a campaign rally in Wisconsin yesterday, Reuters reported. The new aid program — which the agriculture department is expected to release details about today — is tapping into the $14 billion in additional Commodity Credit Corporation funds that Congress agreed to prepay as part of the Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act. Farmers are expected to be allowed to start applying for the new program on Monday. How much certain crops will receive is not known, but the program is set to make direct payments to producers of meat, dairy, grain, vegetables and other products. The payments will be designed similarly to an earlier aid package: calculated based on yields of crops and the impact the coronavirus pandemic had on the price of the commodities. Trump in April announced a $19 billion relief program to help U.S. farmers cope with the impact of the virus, including $16 billion in direct payments to producers and mass purchases of meat, dairy, vegetables and other products. That came on the heels of $28 billion in trade aid given to the farm sector over 2018 and 2019. A government watchdog agency said on Monday the 2019 aid favored farmers from the U.S. Southeast, primarily those growing crops like cotton or sorghum, over those in other parts of the country.