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Homeowners are increasingly forgoing home insurance, gambling that the likelihood of a disaster isn’t high enough to justify the cost of a policy, the Wall Street Journal reported. Some skipping insurance say they are doing so because they can no longer afford the rising premiums. The national average for home insurance based on $250,000 in dwelling coverage increased this year to $1,428 annually, up 20% from 2022, according to Bankrate. Others, particularly among the wealthy, say they have enough money saved to rebuild or move elsewhere should their home be destroyed. The risks of forgoing a policy are significant. When you don’t have insurance and your home is destroyed by fire, you don’t just lose your house and its contents. You might also have to pay for removing your home’s remains as well as the costs to rebuild it. Few people can financially withstand the loss of an uninsured home, according to financial advisers. It is particularly precarious considering the high price to rebuild or buy a home in many areas of the country.

China Evergrande Group delayed key votes on its offshore-debt restructuring plan just hours before they were to occur Monday, adding to uncertainty in a protracted process to finalize one of the country’s biggest restructurings ever, Bloomberg News reported. The distressed developer, at the epicenter of a property crisis that’s unleashed record delinquencies in a threat to China’s financial markets, delayed the meetings for the group and some units to Sept. 25-26, it said in a filing. Evergrande cited a desire to let creditors evaluate recent developments including resumption of trading in its stock, as well as the terms of the proposals. Its shares slumped as much as 87% in Hong Kong trading following a 17-month halt, becoming a penny stock. “Not enough votes is probably the reason for the delay,” said Ting Meng, a senior credit strategist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group, adding that it is uncertain whether the meeting will be further delayed later. While resumption of share trading helps creditors gauge value as they think about how to vote, the sharp drop in the stock price has likely given them more concerns, she said. Investor patience is running thin. Evergrande shot past previous targets in unveiling its restructuring plan, and global money managers are still seeking clarity on what they might recover some 20 months after the firm’s first public bond default. The last-minute change Monday is also the second such abrupt delay from a major distressed Chinese developer in just days, after Country Garden Holdings Co. pushed back voting Friday on its request to extend payment on an onshore bond.

A group of Wall Street firms that lent hundreds of millions of dollars to WeWork is exploring the possibility of a bankruptcy filing that could help the company exit from expensive office leases, one of several options under discussion, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. After WeWork raised doubts about its ability to stay in business a few weeks ago, fund managers including BlackRock, King Street Capital and Brigade Capital are holding preliminary talks about the company’s restructuring options and indicated that they would support a plan for WeWork to file for chapter 11 bankruptcy. The creditors haven’t presented proposals related to a bankruptcy or debt restructuring to the company’s board. Bankruptcy could allow WeWork to shed a portion of its expensive commercial real-estate leases and in the process hand over control of the company to creditors like themselves. If a bankruptcy process is pursued, WeWork would likely restructure its debts and offer creditors shares in the reorganized company. The fund managers have become some of WeWork’s most important investors after they lent $1.2 billion in new debt to the company in March, accounting for about 50% of the company’s long-term debt, according to public filings. If WeWork is able to renegotiate a sufficient number of its high-cost office leases with landlords and bring down its cost of rent, the company may not need to file for bankruptcy and the company could possibly avoid restructuring its debts.

Cape Coral, Fla., was devastated by Hurricane Ian last year, but real-estate agents still pitch waterfront homes as “Gulf access haven.” Insurers take a different view. Home-insurance premiums are soaring in the Southwest Florida city, and there is evidence that the higher costs are starting to affect the real-estate market, the Wall Street Journal reported. Buyers’ concerns about insurance costs are slowing sales and causing some canceled deals in areas with particularly high flood or wildfire risks. Home-insurance companies are trying to claw back steep underwriting losses by hiking rates, or pulling back from disaster-prone areas such as Cape Coral. The average annual home-insurance premium for Floridians has tripled in five years, from $1,988 in 2019 to $6,000, according to the Insurance Information Institute, an industry group. The cost of flood insurance—mandatory for some in the Sunshine State—is rising faster still in many vulnerable areas. The federal National Flood Insurance Program, which provides most policies, recently changed its pricing to more closely tie premiums to risk. In Cape Coral, the average annual flood-insurance premium for a waterfront zip code has increased from $1,791 to $4,728 a year, federal data show.

The City of Brotherly Love has a new reputation as one of the emptiest office districts in America, sparking a debate over what’s keeping Philadelphia workers at home, the Wall Street Journal reported. According to one weekly measure, the majority of office workers in and around Philly continue to work remotely much of the time. Only Silicon Valley’s tech workers go to their San Jose, Calif., offices less when compared with prepandemic office-use rates, according to Kastle Systems, a security firm that tracks employee badge swipes in and out of buildings. New York City occupancy has consistently been more than 45% this year, while Dallas and Austin, Texas, office use has ranged between 50% and 65%. Kastle’s Back to Work Barometer shows Philadelphia’s office-occupancy rate hovering around 40% in recent months—and under 40% for some weeks of this summer. Philadelphia, like many U.S. cities, has gone full throttle on efforts to lure people back into downtown areas. But the combination of the office-worker exodus, taxes and crime has resulted in more empty office space on the market today than during the 2008 recession, theorize researchers, Philadelphia employees and real-estate professionals. Center City District, a business-improvement group aimed at keeping downtown Philadelphia safe and attractive, said its own data set shows office occupancy steadily rising to 57% as of June. The group uses data from street sensors and mobile-phone location pings to monitor foot-traffic in a stretch of downtown with the most office buildings, said Paul Levy, chief executive of Center City District.

WeWork Inc. is rounding up advisers for help with a restructuring as it struggles with a heavy debt load and poor financial performance, Bloomberg News reported. The co-working giant reportedly has hired real estate adviser Hilco Global, once again tapped consultant Alvarez & Marsal and re-engaged law firm Kirkland & Ellis for advice on its options. The company is seeking to avoid a chapter 11 bankruptcy filing and restructure its debts out of court, one of the people said. WeWork’s ability to stave off bankruptcy will depend in large part on whether it can terminate or renegotiate a substantial number of its leases in more expensive markets, the people said. The company earlier this month told investors there is “substantial doubt” about its ability to stay in business. “We will continue to invest in our product offerings while simultaneously taking necessary steps to reduce rent and tenancy costs. Our members remain our priority and, regardless of any near-term actions we may take, we will continue to operate and serve them for the long term,” a representative for WeWork said in a statement.

The U.S. has at least 600 fewer nursing homes than it did six years ago, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of federal data. More senior care is happening at home, and the Covid-19 pandemic caused many families to shun nursing homes while draining workers from an already short-staffed industry. The result? Elderly patients are stuck in hospitals, a dangerous place for seniors, waiting for somewhere to go—sometimes for months. Beds are disappearing while the need for senior care is growing. The American population 65 and older is expected to swell from 56 million in 2020 to 81 million by 2040. Even before the industry started to shrink noticeably, it was effectively contracting. Though fewer people tend to live in counties without nursing homes, those counties tend to have more elderly residents than average. For people who need comprehensive care, closures can mean disruptive moves or ending up far from loved ones. Data show capacity in the nursing-home industry has lagged behind growth in the ranks of older Americans for many years. By 2018, the decline accelerated as nursing-home beds steadily disappeared. The shrinkage was decades in the making. Most older people would prefer to stay in their homes and more Medicaid spending on long-term care has gone to home- and community-based services rather than institutions such as nursing homes since 2013. Those forces contributed to a net loss in nursing-home beds that has hit almost every state. Read more.(Subscription required.)

The financially troubled senior living facilities will be one of the session topics at the ABI Healthcare Program, September 18-19, 2023, in Nashville, Tenn. For more information and to register, click here.

A sprawling Greenwich Village townhouse once rented by rapper Travis Scott — and now listed for $22.5 million — has entered bankruptcy ahead of a scheduled foreclosure auction, Bloomberg News reported. 80 West Washington Place Real Estate Holdings LLC, the legal entity that owns the abode, filed for chapter 11 protection yesterday. It disclosed liabilities of more than $20 million in court papers. Sitting less than a block from Washington Square Park, the townhouse dates to the 1800s and was once owned by composer John Philip Sousa. Its more than 8,700 square feet holds six beds and eight baths, according to a listing from Compass. Other draws include a wine cellar, hot tub and private spa. A mortgage lender sought to foreclose on the property in 2021, according to papers filed in New York state court. A foreclosure sale was scheduled for Wednesday. chapter 11 can pause legal actions by imposing an automatic stay on all pending litigation.