9 Months in – So much for that…

N.J. hits ‘devastating’ 6-month high in new cases with 3,877 positive tests. Death toll rises by 21 fatalities.

New Jersey health officials reported 3,877 new coronaviruscases on Tuesday – the highest daily positive tests since the April peak of the outbreak – and 21 additional deaths as the state prepares for a new curfew on indoor dining set to take effect on Thursday to slow the second wave surge.

Some of the new cases reported on Tuesday, however, may reflect a computer glitch that caused a delay in reporting on Monday when health officials announced 2,075 new positive tests. The state reported 3,207 positive tests on Saturday.

Still, the seven-day rolling average for new cases is now 2,568, an increase of 55% from a week ago, and a 233% increase from a month ago. The seven-day average hasn’t been that high since May 4 when unprecedented lockdown restrictions were still in place and the state was just emerging from the outbreak peak. New Jersey’s highest day for new daily cases was 4,391 on April 17.

“These numbers are devastating,” Gov. Phil Murphy said in a Tweet announcing the latest numbers. “We are still in the midst of a pandemic. Wear a mask. Social distance. Stay safe.”

Essex County reported a staggering 675 new cases as Newark’s mayor took steps to tighten restrictions in the city and in specific zip codes considered hot spots. Fourteen of 21 counties had more than 100 new cases.

Hospitalizations also increased for the 11th straight day to 1,645, the highest level since June 9, but still down from the more than 8,000 of the April peak.

From the AP:

Biden defeats Trump for White House, says ‘time to heal’

Democrat Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump to become the 46th president of the United States on Saturday, positioning himself to lead a nation gripped by a historic pandemic and a confluence of economic and social turmoil.

His victory came after more than three days of uncertainty as election officials sorted through a surge of mail-in votes that delayed processing. Biden crossed the winning threshold of 270 Electoral College votes with a win in Pennsylvania.

Trump refused to concede, threatening further legal action on ballot counting.

Biden, 77, staked his candidacy less on any distinctive political ideology than on galvanizing a broad coalition of voters around the notion that Trump posed an existential threat to American democracy. The strategy proved effective, resulting in pivotal victories in Michigan and Wisconsin as well as Pennsylvania, onetime Democratic bastions that had flipped to Trump in 2016.

Biden’s victory was a repudiation of Trump’s divisive leadership and the president-elect now inherits a deeply polarized nation grappling with foundational questions of racial justice and economic fairness while in the grips of a virus that has killed more than 236,000 Americans and reshaped the norms of everyday life.

Biden, in a statement, declared it was time for the battered nation “to unite and to heal.”

“With the campaign over, it’s time to put the anger and the harsh rhetoric behind us and come together as a nation,” he said. “There’s nothing we can’t do if we do it together.”

From the Washington Post:

A stomach-churning night of counting leaves the outcome in the balance

Whatever people thought they knew about the state of the presidential race a few weeks ago went out the window on Tuesday, turning Election Day into a tense night of counting and indecision and proving once again that there are no easy elections in a divided America.

Instead of President Trump prematurely declaring victory based on incomplete results from Election Day voting, or former vice president Joe Biden blowing out the electoral map on the strength of a massive blue wave of early votes, Election 2020 instead produced a night of nail-biting, stomach-churning results — with the possibility that the outcome would not be known for days.

With so many states undecided, it wasn’t clear whether this election would be a repeat of 2016, a shocker to the world and demoralizing to the Democrats, or something closer to 2018, when the Democrats’ seemingly slow start eventually became a wave that flipped the House. Either outcome seemed possible with so many states not called. As the night went on, the prospect for a close outcome in the electoral college continued to grow.

…

There was one clear echo from 2016: The three Northern states that secured Trump’s victory — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — appeared poised to play the decisive role again this year. But unlike many other states, none of the three began counting the massive numbers of early votes until Tuesday, meaning it could be days before the identity of the winner is known.

With the election in the balance, the counting of the mail ballots in those Northern states likely will result in legal challenges that could affect which ballots are and are not counted. The president has complained about mail ballots, claiming falsely that they are rife with fraud, and Republicans have sought to limit the time for ballots to arrive to be eligible for counting.

From the Star Ledger:

Election 2020: When could we know the election results in N.J.?

While New Jersey isn’t a swing state when it comes to the hotly contested presidential election, there are plenty of races that voters will be watching closely.

So how long will it take election officials to count ballots?

“The more people who cast the ballot that was mailed to them,the more likely we are to have completed results sooner,” said Alicia D’Alessandro, spokeswoman for the secretary of state. “The more people who vote in person, the longer the ballot counting process will extend beyond Election Day.”

And people are voting in droves.

New Jersey election officials have received more than 3.5 million mail-in ballots as of Monday. That’s more than half of the 6 million mail-in ballots that were sent out to active registered voters.

The counties have already started counting, thanks to a new law that allows them to start 10 days before Election Day,helping to speed up the process.

From NJ Advance:

Businesses in Atlantic City boarding up ahead of election 

Businesses in Atlantic City are boarding up ahead of Tuesday’s election in preparation for potential unrest.

On Saturday, workers boarded up a number of national brand stores at the Tanger Outlets outdoor mall — including Forever 21, Coach, Famous Footwear and Guess.

“Some people are boarding up. We’re starting to see this nationwide, unfortunately. It’s not a good sight to see coming into town, but people want to protect their investments,” Mayor Marty Small told NJ Advance Media on Sunday. “They’re taking a precautionary measure.”

Tanger Outlets did not immediately return a request for comment on why some retailers were boarding up windows over the weekend.

Small said businesses in Atlantic City are likely preparing for possible mayhem after, in late May, a peaceful protest over the police killing of Minneapolis man George Floyd turned destructive, with people looting and breaking store windows at the Tanger Outlets.

From News 7:

Hoboken joins other NJ cities in COVID crackdown

Several cities in New Jersey have decided to close nonessential businesses early as the state looks to contain an alarming spike of COVID-19 cases.

Newark announced strict new restrictions earlier this week with Paterson and now Hoboken following suit. Jersey City has elected not to institute a crackdown.

In Hoboken, bars and restaurants now have to close early as we approach Halloween weekend.

They want to avoid crowded, mask-free party scenes like one caught on camera in Paterson. That city now has a midnight curfew on all nonessential business.

In Hoboken, Mayor Ravi Bhalla’s executive order goes into effect Thursday, closing all bars and restaurants at midnight seven days a week.

The intention, the order says, is “to limit situations when social distancing and other precautions are much less likely to be followed.”

From the NYT:

What Will New York Real Estate Look Like Next Year?

One in five New York City tenants did not pay rent in September, by one estimate, and there is growing concern of “an eviction tsunami.”

As apartment vacancies climb, sale prices and rents are falling, but nowhere near the magnitude needed to compensate for scarce affordable housing options.

And while the flight of affluent residents to the suburbs appears to be overstated, major companies are downsizing and fewer people are commuting, setting the stage for a new reckoning over personal and business priorities.

Real estate is everyone’s business in New York City. The industry generated nearly $32 billion in taxes last year, 53 percent of the city’s tax revenue, and it employed more than 275,000 people, according to the Real Estate Board of New York and labor statistics. An inveterate source of obsession, envy and frustration, real estate colors the aspirations and agendas of countless people, companies and policymakers.

From MarketWatch:

Americans could owe an estimated $7.2 billion in unpaid rent by December because of COVID-related job losses, Fed study shows

A new study suggests that Americans will owe billions of dollars in unpaid rent by December — but that could mean that the nation’s worst fears about the eviction crisis may not come to fruition. 

Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia used payroll, joblessness and unemployment insurance data to create a more precise estimate of how many households nationwide are behind on their rent. The number they produced is far lower than the figures presented by other studies.

The researchers estimated that by December around 1.34 million renter households will be behind on their rent as a result of pandemic-related job losses, which equates to roughly 4.2% of all renter households. Altogether, these households will owe roughly $7.2 billion in rent by December, averaging to around $5,400. 

These households include 2.8 million adults and 1.1 million children. The study also found they were more likely to be include people of color or have a woman as the head of the household.

Previous studies have estimated that as many as 40 million Americans were facing the threat of eviction because they had not managed to make full, on-time rent payments because of the coronavirus pandemic. 

The difference in these estimates comes down to how researchers went about assessing who was behind on their rent. Some early studies made assumptions about which workers were most likely to be impacted by the pandemic based on the field they were employed in. Other studies based their estimates on survey data regarding people’s confidence in their ability to pay rent, essentially assuming that many people who were worried about missing their rent payment would indeed not make it.

8 Months In…

From Inman News:

Foreclosure activity hits historic lows as filings drop 81%

Foreclosure filings, including default notices, scheduled auctions or bank repossessions, dropped 81 percent year over year to 27,016 filings, according to Attom Data Solution’s Q3 2020 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report. The number, which was also down 12 percent from the previous quarter, marks a new historic low in filings since Attom began tracking the data during the first quarter of 2008.

Foreclosure filings in September 2020 alone — which totaled 9,707 filings — were also down 80 percent from the previous year.

“Foreclosure activity has, for all intents and purposes, ground to a halt due to moratoria put in place by the federal, state and local governments and the mortgage forbearance program initiated by the CARES Act,” Rick Sharga, executive vice president of RealtyTrac, said in a statement. “But it’s important to remember that the numbers we’re seeing today are artificially low, even as the number of seriously delinquent loans continues to increase, and that we’ll see a significant — and probably quite sudden — burst of foreclosure activity once these various government programs expire.”

From CNBC:

NJ governor hopes to use a ‘scalpel’ to deal with coronavirus hot spots not another broad shutdown

New Jersey Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy said Thursday on CNBC he hopes to avoid broad economic lockdowns to deal with rising coronavirus cases in the state and the nation.

“I think we’re less likely, and please God that this is the case, we’re less likely to use blunt instruments we used in March and April when we shut the garage doors down on everything, and much more likely to use a scalpel and go into a particular community,” Murphy told “Squawk Box.”

The governor acknowledged that new Covid-19 cases in New Jersey have been moving higher between 700 and under 1,000 per day recently. “We’ve come a long way but our numbers are up, there’s no question about it, over the past several weeks,” he said. “For instance, higher education has been a challenge,” adding he’s putting more resources behind contact tracing and testing at state colleges and universities.

Murphy described the escalation of coronavirus cases in the state as “hot spots” and not everywhere. “But there’s a fair amount of community spread,” he said, explaining people are mostly following virus mitigation measures, such as wearing masks and practicing social distancing, when they are out in public. However, people are letting their guards down at homes and in “frat houses,” he stressed.

Murphy urged people feeling ill to “take yourself off the field” and self-quarantine. He said government officials need to continue to stay on the “bullhorn” to encourage people to stay vigilant.

From the Washington Post:

Home sales rise despite low inventory and pandemic

Despite record unemployment and a sharp decline in the number of homes for sale, both existing and newly built homes reached their highest pace of sales since 2006 in August.

The National Association of Realtors reported that existing-home sales were up 10.5 percent in August 2020 compared to August 2019, rising to an annual rate of 6 million homes sold year-to-date, the highest level since December 2006. Every region saw more existing homes sold in August 2020 compared to July 2020 and to August 2019. Homes typically sold in 22 days in August 2020, down from 31 days in August 2019.

New-home sales also rose sharply in August to their highest level since September 2006. Sales of newly built homes reached an annual rate of 1.01 million in August 2020, 43.2 percent higher than in August 2019, according to the Census Bureau. New-home sales were also up 4.8 percent compared to July 2020.

…

Realtor.com’s Weekly Housing Report for the week ending Sept. 19 found that nearly 400,000 fewer homes have been listed since the beginning of the pandemic in March compared to that same period in 2019. As a result, homes are selling 12 days faster than in 2019 and prices have accelerated for the 19th week in a row.

From the Star Ledger:

‘We are anticipating a second wave’ as new coronavirus cases spike to 4-month high, N.J. health officials says

As the state hit its highest single-day total of new COVID-19cases in more than four months, officials warned Thursday that New Jersey is bracing for a potential second wave of the coronavirus that could escalate quickly if residents become complacent about prevention practices.

“We are anticipating a second wave and are preparing based on lessons learned from our prior experiences,” state Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli said at the state’s latest coronavirus briefing in Trenton. “If individuals do not adhere to social distancing, masking guidelines, washing your hands, staying home if you are sick, this wave has the potential to become a surge.”

New Jersey reported 1,301 new cases — the most the state has announced one day since 1,394 on May 29 — led by a sustained spike in Ocean County and its largest municipality, Lakewood. The Jersey Shore county had 285 positive tests, with 206 in Lakewood alone.

The good news: Persichelli said New Jersey is better prepared now than it was for the first COVID-19 wave in the spring, having been stockpiling personal protective equipment, ventilators, and experimental medications.

But unlike its peak in April, the state would be on its own in a battling a second wave since it’s likely to sweep through the United States more evenly than the initial wave that focused on New Jersey and New York, Persichilli said. As a result, New Jersey can’t rely on health care workers from other states to come in to help if frontline workers start becoming ill in greater numbers.

From NJ1015:

Home buying surges at the shore amid COVID-19, brokers say

Brokers and real estate agents say home-buying at and near the beach has surged significantly since the start of the coronavirus pandemic — mostly when the weather started warming up in May — and professionals in the field are attempting to keep up with demand as shortage of inventory makes each available property a must-have item for countless wannabe buyers.

“I just put a house on the market two weeks ago, and within a week we had more than 85 people through the house,” Yagoda said.”It’s all been very, very busy — and then somewhat inland as well.”

The health crisis, experts say, appears to be pulling city-dwellers away from packed streets and towards the shore, or coercing folks who have the means to finally pull the trigger and purchase a second home along the coast or nearby — not a bad place to be when your forced to work from home.

Markets along the shore have been “busier than ever lately,” according to 2020 New Jersey Realtors First Vice President Robert White. With flexible schedules, more people have the opportunity to make the move, he said.

From Patch:

Ex-NJ Gov. Chris Christie Hospitalized After COVID-19 Diagnosis

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was hospitalized on Saturday after announcing that he has tested positive for the coronavirus.

“In consultation with my doctors, I checked myself into Morristown Medical Center this afternoon,” Christie said on Twitter.

Christie said he’s feeling “good and only have mild symptoms,” but he felt this was an “important precautionary measure” because of his history of asthma.

“I am thankful for our hardworking medical professionals and look forward to coming home soon,” he said.

The former governor announced on Twitter that he tested positive for COVID-19, almost a week after attending an event at the White House where a number of attendees – including President Trump – later tested positive for the virus.

From CNN:

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump test positive for Covid-19

President Donald Trump announced early Friday that he and his wife both tested positive for the coronavirus, an extraordinary development coming months into a global pandemic and in the final stretch of his reelection campaign in which he has flouted experts’ guidance on preventing the disease’s spread.

The diagnosis amounts to the most serious known health threat to a sitting American president in decades. At 74 years old and obese, Trump falls into the highest risk category for serious complications from the disease, which has killed more than 200,000 Americans and more than 1 million people worldwide.

His infection with the disease could prove destabilizing in an already fraught political climate, and stock market futures tumbled on news of Trump’s infection.

“Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!” Trump tweeted shortly before 1 a.m. Friday.