%1

Nearly half of commercial retail rents were not paid in May, the Washington Post reported. Companies as big as Starbucks say that the financial devastation from the shutdown has left them unable to pay their full property bills on time. Some companies warn they will not be able to pay rent for months. The situation is especially dire for owners of hotels and malls. Such retailers as Bed Bath & Beyond, Famous Footwear, H&M, and the Gap, movie theaters AMC and Regal and gyms like 24 Hour Fitness stopped paying rent entirely in May, according to Datex Property Solutions. Starbucks paid May rent but also sent a letter to landlords requesting landlords to make concessions starting June 1 and continuing for 12 months. Overall, Datex found that 58.6 percent of retail rents were paid in May. Office and warehouse tenants are still paying rent for now, but there remain concerns about whether tenants will renew leases as working from home gains in popularity.

Floridians who can’t make their residential mortgage and rent payments due to the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent economic slowdown are getting a break for another month, Law.com reported. Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order on Monday extending the suspension of foreclosures and evictions through 12:01 a.m. July 1. “We are committed to getting Floridians back on their feet as we move forward with our #SafeSmartStepbyStep plan for Florida’s recovery,” DeSantis said in a tweet yesterday, referring to his recovery plan. The move comes just days after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was sued by a group of landlords who allege his May 7 executive order extending the state’s moratorium on evictions through Aug. 19 violated their contract and due process rights and amounted to an improper taking of their property under the U.S. Constitution. DeSantis first imposed a 45-day moratorium April 2 and extended it until May 14. The second extension was to expire Tuesday when DeSantis opted for another extension. More than 2 million new unemployment claims have been filed in Florida, according to the Department of Economic Opportunity’s dashboard.

The U.S., already wrestling with the economic challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, is on the precipice of a compounding crisis of evictions, as protections and payments extended to millions of people out of work begin to run out, the New York Times reported. The fallout is predicted to be devastating for the nation’s renters, who entered the pandemic with lower incomes, significantly less in savings and housing costs that ate up more of their paychecks. They also were more likely to work in the industries where job losses have been particularly severe. Many have been scraping by thanks to temporary government assistance and emergency orders that put many evictions on hold. But evictions will soon be allowed in about half of the states, according to Emily A. Benfer, a housing expert and associate professor at Columbia Law School who is tracking eviction policies. “I think we will enter into a severe renter crisis and very quickly,” Professor Benfer said. Without a new round of government intervention, she added, “we will have an avalanche of evictions across the country.” In many places, the threat has already begun. The Texas Supreme Court recently ruled that evictions could begin again. In the Oklahoma City area, sheriffs apologetically announced that they planned to start enforcing eviction notices this week. And a handful of states had few statewide protections in place to begin with, leaving residents particularly vulnerable as eviction cases stacked up.

U.S. applications for home mortgages jumped last week, in a sixth straight weekly increase, suggesting the housing market could lead the economy’s recovery from the novel coronavirus crisis even as high unemployment is expected to linger, Reuters reported. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said today that its seasonally adjusted Purchase Index increased 8.6 percent from a week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the index rose 7.4 percent from the prior week and was 9 percent higher compared to the same week a year ago. It was the sixth consecutive weekly gain and a 54 percent surge since early April.

Mortgage availability has tightened sharply as lenders impose tougher income, credit-score and down-payment conditions and drop some loan types altogether, such as home-equity lines of credit, the Wall Street Journal reported. The economic shock from the coronavirus pandemic explains some of this credit crunch. But the economic factors have been exacerbated by policy decisions in Washington, D.C., industry officials say. As part of its March relief bill, Congress let homeowners suspend mortgage payments for up to a year but provided no way to pay for this, potentially saddling lenders with the burden. Meanwhile, federal regulators make it hard for loans where borrowers might seek forbearance to get the backing of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which guarantee nearly half of residential mortgages. One indicator of the credit crunch is that the volume of mortgages being refinanced, which normally rises sharply when rates drop, is up only modestly since before the pandemic, according to Black Knight, a mortgage-data and technology firm. Another indicator is mortgage rates themselves: They are roughly a percentage point higher than they ordinarily would be given current Treasury-bond yields.

Dozens of J.Crew Group Inc.’s landlords, including some of the biggest mall owners in the country, are seeking rent payments from the retailer’s stores as they reopen, according to court filings, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The chain’s landlords — including Simon Property Group Inc., CBL & Associates Management Inc. and Brookfield Property REIT Inc. — say that they deserve to be paid rent on stores as malls and shopping centers reopen. Many states are gradually easing restrictions on retailers that were forced to close stores to slow the spread of the new coronavirus, and have issued guidelines for restarting operations. J.Crew has asked the bankruptcy court to allow it to stop paying rent on all its stores for 60 days — until July 6 — saying that it needs to preserve cash after closing about 500 locations in March. J.Crew filed for chapter 11 protection in early May after struggling for years before the coronavirus pandemic prompted it to close stores and scrap plans to raise cash by spinning off its Madewell chain. A committee representing J.Crew’s unsecured creditors has also objected to the retailer’s request to defer rent payments, pointing out the company hasn’t promised to pay back the deferred rent.