CURRENT DAILY LIFE DURING COVID-19?
Who is working from home during these times and how are things going with your company?
Are you stopping development (construction halted), lending and acquisitions for now? Is there a hiring freeze?
What is your current day-to-day and what has been the most significant changes throughout your daily work life?
Any uncertainty and trends you're seeing? Deploying dry powder? Looking at opportunities or waiting for the dust to settle before purchasing?
What are the short term and long term impacts in the real estate world?
FWIW there’s quite a bit of construction going around here in LA. I run in the mornings and see their crews still working.
Boston's completely shut down. I wouldn't be surprised if people started following suit as well. It's really tumultuous right now, none of my GCs have any idea whats going on. Everyone's got their ear to the ground waiting for the next shoe to drop. We've had some folks go straight skeleton crews, pushed starts, etc.
Rumor has it that OSHA also made contracting COVID-19 on the job a recordable. No idea how it would ever be traced or quantified, but imagine getting 100 recordables as the insurance holder. Might want to just close up shop and pop up a new company at that point.
LA is shut down, more or less. Many are self imposing their own quarantine. Bars and public places are closed. Restaurants are takeout only (if they’re even open). There’s an eerie silence around. Can’t help but think to that Margin Call scene about the music stopping.
It’s odd to see construction going on personally. I would’ve expected it to be a canary especially since hospitality revenues have fallen into a black hole. I’m watching the Four Seasons expand right next to my apartment.
My dad works in construction and he's still been going in as of today (3/18). He works for a smaller company so I hope he still gets paid once things eventually shut down.
I work for a tech company (fully remote right now) that surprisingly we are going to do well throughout this whole thing because of our niche. I'm working on a promotion and it's going well.
But as to my daily life. I'm deep in the rockies watching MSNBC most of the day watching cramer and the market
Got a ton of food and a few guns sitting out. Seeing how long it takes this to blow over. Considering buying a rifle so I can hunt if needed if shit really hits the fan.
I would hate to be trapped in any major city.
Sounds like a badass setup. Good to hear that things are going well GL on the promotion.
You’re living the good life. Mind if I PM you?
Sure.
Thats sweet. Jealous you're in the rockies, I was hoping to get some skiing out there during easter weekend but that's not going to happen...
I dipped the fuck out of NYC when a guy at the bank a block over tested positive.
Things have been a little hectic at work these past few days, although I think my company is in a more precarious position than most (most of our assets are offices in Houston and, aside from the coronavirus, the other threat right now is the price of oil dropping like a rock). I'd say occupancy/leasing are probably the biggest concerns for us right now. It's been agreed upon that we likely won't be looking at new deals closely in the next 60 days, because we're going to wait for the dust to settle and focus on making sure current projects stay on track.
I feel for you man. Houston Office was already precarious pre-COVID-19 and oil price falling off a cliff.
Been following the Russia / OPEC dispute constantly... Hopeful that in the next couple weeks we'll see some movement that'll help out oil prices. Still likely to be some shops who'll have to close up, but how many... Will there be any loan restructuring to allow some of the smaller companies who are highly levered keep operating? Hope so for the sake of the Houston office market.
Currently in the SF Bay Area, so I'm at day 1 of the shelter in-place order. Since SF is a tech hub many started going remote about a week or two prior and its expected to go till early next month. The work from home component is flat out awful, and there's still at least a couple weeks to go. However, i think its still good we can be productive remotely in some capacity. My Monday was hectic when the announcement of the order took place earlier that day. At this point, it is something purely out of a movie. the city and streets, totally empty and lifeless.
I'm on the lend side and treasury has sunken down quite a bit in the last few months and all the announcements in the news and swings in the stock market are not making things better. The entire office was going frantic and panicked. Completely unreal. Lenders are either quickly bowing out of deals that they were once interested in not too long ago, putting a freeze on their lending, or trying to quickly lock deals in.
I think the effort to lock people down may seem aggressive in protecting against covid-19, but i think its a measure that could ultimately translate to better control of the situation. Better control of the situation would give investors better confidence in the market, even if cases still show up later in the months to come.
I'm working from home. It's officially "optional" because there's a bit of an old fashioned in-person mentality at the firm and one of my bosses has a desktop so he "can't work from home," but I'm perfectly fine remotely.
No construction stop. It may happen eventually, but for now we're plowing forward. We don't hire enough for there to be a freeze or not.
My current day to day was crisis response/policy creation and now will be working on a pipeline for when this ends - lots of underwriting and market research. The significant changes are I get to do this from my couch, watch TV while doing it, and don't have to listen to dumbass coworkers through thin walls. I actually don't mind it. Not going to the gym is no fun though.
All of the uncertainty on every level.
Still unclear.
Out of curiousity, what are you doing to build a pipeline for when this thing ends?
Finding sites, underwriting deals, talking to the land owners, talking to economic development authorities if necessary, working out architects to lay out site plans and analyze density, putting LOIs out, etc.
Same as always. I'm sure there will be a disruption in the chain at some point, but we're operating under the assumption that you still need to push on everything you can. People are still going to need apartments whenever this ends.
All of our US offices have been directed to work from home. I've heard of a few projects getting delayed but only one completely shelved by a hospitality client. Hiring freeze is in effect.
Working from home in DC for the foreseeable future. I'm in lending and haven't seen a slow down really at all and won't for at least a while but we are starting to run into closing problems with the different city/county offices being closed. Interested to see how things go moving forward.
As for DC - construction has not stopped, still going hard 6 days a week (in a construction hot spot). This week has been pretty much a ghost town from what I've seen with all the closings here. Although that was not the case this past weekend, you could tell some people stayed at home but lots of people out and not practicing the social distancing.
Encouraging to hear no slowdown in lending.
Discouraging to hear about morons still being out and about.
Started a few weeks ago with rates dropping but still going strong even with increased spreads. Lending to mostly large borrowers. I'm interested to see how the next few weeks/months shake out.
Hopefully these idiots stay in this weekend.
What kind of lending do you do, or what kind of lender do you work for?
I work with several Life Cos and nearly all of them have either put a freeze on lending for the time being and are awaiting things to settle in the market. The ones that are lending are quoting bigger spreads to avoid losses.
GSE/Agency - so mostly large borrowers that are just loving the drop in rates. Adjustments have been made with increased spreads, shorter quote periods, some product slowdown, etc. but still rolling in. I can see some being riskier just because of how unsure the market is right now, curious to see the state of things in a few months.
Update 4/2: spreads keep increasing, debt service reserve (between 9-12 months) required if full due diligence is not complete and a 5 bp adder to DCR/LTV on cash-out deals
Several of the major banks are now pencils down on all construction lending
I work in debt capital markets predominately with Life Cos. I would have to second what was said above about nearly all of them sitting on the sidelines or quoting 280 bps spreads over the 10-year.
Took a prime industrial deal out to market this week. On Tuesday we had a quote for full dollars ($30M) at a 3.00% coupon. By Wednesday morning the quote changed to a 3.80% coupon. I don't think they'd even do the deal today. I've also heard of a particular Life Co pulling all applications, even if they're signed up. I think a big factor in this is the balloon in corporate bond yields.
Retail is beginning to blow out in major cities... Can only imagine what's happening in hotel world...
Basically their whole portfolios are going to go to workout. It's going to be so bad......
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