This recession is divergent from past downturns, both in its onset—a pandemic that triggered a global economic shutdown—and its trends and patterns, which are still emerging. During a digital conversation last week hosted by George Smith Partners, panelists—Bethany Logan Ropa of UBS Investment Bank; Tim Sullivan of Meyers Research; and Wes Rogers of Landmark Properties—discussed what has been most surprising as the market shifted in the last few months.

Sullivan noted that the trends have widely varied based on the market and the severity of the COVID-19 outbreak, meaning that the impact in New York City looked much different than in Austin, Texas. Jobs were also lost at a much faster rate than in past recessions. "We lost more jobs quicker than any other downturn than in the history of the US. We are hoping that it is going to come back quickly," he said. Sullivan also was surprised to see quick spending action and a relatively unaffected home building industry. "The power of fiscal support from the government has been amazing," he said. "Don't discount it, and has probably been the thing that has kept both sides together. The resiliency of the new home market has been remarkable. Some builders are trading at stock prices above where they were before COVID."

Rogers and Ropa were both surprised at the resiliency in certain aspects of the market. For Rogers, the firm's student housing portfolio has outperformed expectations. "When this crisis started, we identified some important risk areas and went into a contingency plan there," he said. "The first thing was the impact to universities, which pretty immediately went into online classes. We have about 40,000 students, and we were really concerned about whether or not they were going to continue to pay rent and if they would continue to pre-lease for the fall."