He went on: “We saw that there were four main ‘buckets’ that property types fell into. One was property types that were actually counter cyclical; that actually got a tailwind from the pandemic – things like self-storage and industrial warehouse space, with the increase in online ordering.
“You had another set of property types like malls where there were changes taking place, and in a lot of ways the pandemic accelerated those changes, and there’s sort of a question about whether the pandemic may have changed our relationship with those properties.
“Going forward, I think the great debate about working from home, and whether it’ll fundamentally change office demand, is part of that discussion.
“Then there are those property types that were chugging along before the pandemic, such as apartments and hotels, that hit a speed bump. Those will pretty much get back to normal,” he added.
Woodwell concluded that as some of the uncertainty from April and May 2020 had lifted – particularly in retail and lodging – both borrowers and lenders now had a better ability to understand where properties were and what kinds of loans they could support.