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Movie theater chain Cineworld Group on Monday announced a bankruptcy settlement with its landlords and lenders, clearing the way for the company to borrow an additional $150 million and make a $1 billion debt repayment, Reuters reported. Landlords and junior creditors dropped their opposition to the billion-dollar debt repayment after Cineworld agreed to pay at least $20 million in rent that will accrue after Sept. 30. Britain's Cineworld, which filed for bankruptcy protection in Texas in September with less than $4 million in cash on hand, previously did not intend to make any post-September rent payments until the end of its bankruptcy. Cineworld, the world's second-largest cinema chain operator, also agreed to explore a potential sale of the business and allow creditor input on its business plan. Bankruptcy Judge Marvin Isgur in Houston said that the agreement was a "pretty amazing" result given the widespread landlord and creditor opposition to Cineworld's bankruptcy financing at the start of its chapter 11 case. Creditors had filed 15 objections to the loan in court, and the company resolved about a dozen more objections before they were filed, Cineworld attorney Christopher Marcus said in court.

A failed plan to bring the Carolina Panthers practice facility to Rock Hill could result in York County being awarded over $81 million, WCNC.com reported. Bankruptcy Judge Karen Owens yesterday filed a motion to allow York County to have an $81 million voting stake in the bankruptcy fallout relating to David Tepper's GT Real Estate company. Owens made the decision because she was worried about how the county would receive no relief from the project's fallout. "I'm concerned with the danger of disenfranchisement of the county," Judge Owens said during the court hearing. "It is appropriate for them to have a voice in the vote and at the confirmation proceedings." Without a voting stake, parties that are owed money from the bankruptcy deal could risk not receiving what they are owed. Other contracting parties have already somewhat agreed to receive millions from the bankruptcy deal. However, GT Real Estate's bankruptcy proposals left no funding for York County or the city of Rock Hill. Yesterday's hearing only pertains to York County. The city of Rock Hill will have to wait till at least Nov. 16 to see if a similar voting stake for $20 million will be granted, according to court records.

Rent delinquency rates among US small businesses increased significantly this month, a new report shows, Bloomberg News reported. About 37% of small businesses, which between them employ almost half of all Americans working in the private sector, were unable to pay their rent in full in October. That’s according to a survey from Boston-based Alignable, a network of 7 million small business members. It’s up seven percentage points from last month and is now at the highest pace this year, the survey showed. Chuck Casto, head of research, at Alignable, said that small business owners are resilient but incomes are “basically being eaten away by inflationary pressures.” The survey of 4,789 small business owners was conducted between Oct. 15 and Oct. 27. The findings partly reflect how inflation is affecting small businesses. More than half say their rent is at least 10% higher than it was six months ago, and in seven say rents have increased at least 20%.

Cheap debt fueled a decadelong boom in U.S. office values, offsetting the impact of years of rent increases that didn’t keep pace with inflation. Now that the long period of easy credit is over, office-building owners are bracing to see how much less their properties are actually worth, the Wall Street Journal reported. The prices of some aging office towers in places such as New York and Chicago have already fallen by about a quarter as potential buyers struggle to land financing with interest rates rising fast, brokers and lenders say. Defaults are starting to move up from low levels. While rising rates and recession fears have also hit the value of stocks, bonds and other types of real estate, office owners are in a particularly bad spot. They are also grappling with the growing popularity of remote work, which has hurt demand for offices and pushed up vacancies. Office-leasing volume in the biggest U.S. cities in the third quarter was 40% lower than prepandemic levels, according to brokerage JLL.

Sales of new U.S. single-family homes dropped in September and data for the prior month was revised lower, more evidence that higher mortgage rates are choking the housing market, Bloomberg News reported. New home sales decreased 10.9% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 603,000 units last month, the Commerce Department said on Wednesday. August's sales pace was revised down to 677,000 units from the previously reported 685,000 units. Sales tumbled 20.2% in the densely populated South and fell 0.7% in the West. But they rose 4.3% in the Midwest and surged 56.0% in the Northeast. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast new home sales, which account for about 10% of U.S. home sales, declining to a rate of 585,000 units. Sales plummeted 17.6% on a year-on-year basis in September. They peaked at a rate of 993,000 units in January 2021, which was the highest level since the end of 2006. Data yesterday showed home prices logged their second straight monthly decline in August, resulting in a considerable slowdown in the annual pace of increase in house prices. Sales of previously owned homes fell for an eighth straight month in September, while homebuilding dropped, reports showed last week.

The average interest rate on the most popular U.S. home loan rose to its highest level since 2001 as tightening financial conditions weigh on the housing sector, data from the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) showed yesterday, Reuters reported. The average contract rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rose by 22 basis points to 7.16% for the week ended Oct. 21 while the MBA's Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, fell 1.7% from a week earlier. Mortgage application activity is at its slowest pace since 1997. Mortgage rates have more than doubled since the beginning of the year, as the Federal Reserve pursues an aggressive path of interest rate hikes to rein in stubbornly high inflation. The central bank is expected to raise rates by 75 basis points for a fourth straight time at the conclusion of its next policy meeting on Nov. 1-2.

One fallout from the unexpected bankruptcy of a prominent construction contractor in August has been delays on a long in the works West Village neighborhood redevelopment in Detroit, Crain's Detroit Business reported. In a lawsuit filed on Friday in U.S. Eastern District of Michigan Bankruptcy Court, an affiliate of developer Michael Higgins (more on another case in a hot minute) claims a construction lien that the now defunct Bloomfield Hills-based T.H. Marsh Construction Co. filed this summer seeking $267,000 for alleged unpaid work is hindering financing on his mixed-use redevelopment proposal for the northwest corner of Jefferson Avenue and Van Dyke Street. For several years, Higgins has floated reimagining that Jefferson/Van Dyke corner as 42 apartments — 36 across four stories atop a new parking structure, six in a redeveloped carriage house — renting for 50 percent to 120 percent of the Area Median Income, plus about 17,000 square feet of commercial/retail space. Even though some removal of underground storage tanks took place over the summer, the July 27 lien is causing a lender to not authorize construction draw. The lien came less than a month before T.H. Marsh filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation on Aug. 22, claiming $50,001-$100,000 in assets and $1,000,001-$10 million in liabilities to 100-199 creditors. A trustee, Mark Shapiro, has been appointed. And the lien, the lawsuit says, was filed long after T.H. Marsh did any sort of work on the project. The lawsuit also says that pre-construction liens are prohibited under state law, and that it was filed well after was legally required.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency said Monday that it will require lenders that use credit scores for mortgage underwriting to use scores from both Fair Isaac Corp., the creator of FICO credit scores, and its competitor VantageScore Solutions LLC, the Wall Street Journal reported. Until now, mortgage lenders had to gauge most borrowers using only FICO scores if they wanted to sell a loan to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. That requirement helped cement FICO’s dominant position as the go-to credit score for lenders for a variety of loans. Since lenders had to use FICO scores for many mortgages, they also made them the favored third-party credit score when underwriting car loans, credit cards and other consumer loans. This also helped secure FICO scores as the main credit score used in the securitization market. The FHFA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began a review of whether to change credit score requirements in 2014. Consumer advocates, VantageScore and some mortgage lenders had pushed for the change, saying that it would allow more people to get approved for mortgages. The FHFA said in a statement that it expects that the change “will be a multiyear effort.”