Day 185: Rents Plunging

The BBC reports on data leaked to them out of Iran indicating that they've been reporting only half their cases and only a third of their deaths from coronavirus. The true numbers of 450,000 cases and 42,000 deaths would put them at Mexico's #6 spot in cases and India's #5 in deaths. This isn't the first indication of their falsifying numbers; their numbers were suspicious from the start. On the bright side, Portugal reported zero deaths yesterday.

In the US, Wolf Street reports plunging housing rents in the most expensive markets. The asking price for one-bedroom apartments in San Francisco is down 12% since this time last year, 7% in New York City, 6% in Boston, 9% in San Jose, and 4% in LA. Oil industry hotspots also appear on the list of plungers. On the rise are not the suddenly-popular tourist traps one hears about (perhaps due to size), but some cheaper spots in the midwest and south, all on the rise at a rate around 15%: Cleveland, Indianapolis, Columbus, St Petersburg, Reno, Chattanooga, Cincinnati, Baltimore, St Louis, and Norfolk (VA). The data is apparently from Zumper, and Wolf Street needs a quant to convert its separate one and two-bedroom numbers (plus more bedrooms) into a real analysis of the change in rents over the past year.

Retail rents are also on the rocks, CNBC reports, with New York City the canary in the Yunnan coal mine. While these are not purely coronavirus changes—a Five Below sullied 5th Avenue back in 2018—the pandemic is certainly not helping:

During the second quarter ended June 30, average asking rents along 16 major retail corridors in Manhattan declined for the eleventh consecutive quarter, falling to $688 per square foot, according to a report from the commercial real estate services firm CBRE. The drop marked the first time since 2011 that prices dropped below $700, the firm said, representing an 11.3% decline from a year ago.
[...]
The supply of retail space in the U.S., which equates to more square feet per capita than in any other country, is increasingly outweighing consumers’ demand to shop in those stores.

P.S. Massachusetts cases are up a sixth of a percentage point today, which is a typical Monday dip for our current plateau.

P.P.S. The Somerville Brewing Company (a.k.a "Slumbrew") said goodbye on Twitter today. While they've been in bankruptcy since September (and hard to find in the packies even longer), COVID-19 proved to be a very final nail in their coffin:

“The debtor has previously reported that due to the COVID-19 crisis, they were forced to close both of the locations in accordance with the rules and regulations implemented by the commonwealth and the city of Somerville,” Somerville Brewing wrote in its June reconciliation report, which the brewery had to submit monthly. [...]

In June, Somerville’s actual gross profit was -$81, a stark difference from the projected $32,384. However, in February, before the COVID-19 pandemic forced the closure of bars and restaurants nationwide, Somerville’s actual gross profit was $154,691; the projected gross profit for that month was $191,320.

PlagueBlog would like to personally thank the health department in the mayor's head for the post-apocalyptic prospect of a world without Porter Square Porter.