It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "The housing market in Houston and across the country has been on a tear in recent years. Several recent reports from the government, analysts and real estate companies are starting to suggest that the market might have reached its peak. Sean Cerelli, a real estate agent at Connect Realty, said he has seen higher mortgage rates affecting sales of homes listed for more than $400,000. 'I’m noticing are houses over that amount are usually staying on the market longer,' he said. 'And I’m seeing more price decreases.'"

"There was a pronounced drop in the number of homes for sale in Northern Virginia in September, and prices may be showing signs of topping out. The number of sales across the Northern Virginia region almost universally fell in September, with sales in Arlington County down 12 percent from a year ago, sales in Fairfax County down 15 percent and sales in Loudoun County down 23 percent, according to Long & Foster Real Estate."

"Prices in Arlington and Alexandria were 2 percent lower than a year ago. 'We are getting to the point where we are going to have affordability challenges,' said Larry Foster, president of Long & Foster Real Estate."

"The Hamptons real estate industry was brimming with optimism for the third quarter back in July. The hope was that a spate of closings was going to happen over the course of July, August and September. But that didn’t happen. Looking at the last decade in New York City, Judi Desiderio, the CEO of Town & Country Real Estate speculates that developers overbuilt on the high-end in the Big Apple."

"'We never follow national trends,' Ms. Desiderio said. 'But we are umbilically connected to Wall Street and run in patterns with Manhattan.'"

"A recent survey showed almost half of British Columbians are feeling the effect of rate hikes, and two-in-five are worried about financial trouble if they go higher. Thanks to government intervention, prices on some homes have been dropping. If buyers can't afford to pay more, prices could drop even further."

"'I think they're starting to see that there's an increase here or an increase there,' said MNP's Grant Bazian. 'They're thinking, 'How am I going to be able to afford this?'"

"The top end of Melbourne’s property market has borne the brunt of the city’s recent property price downturn, which experts say has more time to run. Areas with the steepest falls were concentrated in affluent eastern suburbs and most of the price drops were in suburbs with medians above $1 million."

"Carlton, Toorak, Armadale, South Yarra and Caulfield North were hit the hardest, with price falls ranging from 20 per cent in Carlton and Toorak, to 11 per cent in Caulfield North."

"Declan Fay and partner Juanita Pope are on the hunt again. And this time the can see a difference, Mr Fay said. 'We’ve noticed a big change in agents. They’ve got a bit more desperate,' he said. '[On Wednesday] we got four calls from agents pleading with us to come to auctions.'"

"New flats have been quickly rolling off the Hong Kong assembly line, recording a 30 per cent jump in the completion rate in the July-to-September period, adding pressure on developers to speed up sales ahead of an expected vacancy tax to deter hoarding."

"On Thursday, Chuang’s China Investment got a chilly reception from prospective buyers, selling only 35 per cent of 175 units offered at The Esplanade in Tuen Mun. 'Competition for buyers will further escalate because developers are getting impatient to cash in on their projects as market sentiment continues to sour,' said Derek Chan, head of research at Ricacorp Properties. 'Developers are under pressure to price their units at competitive prices if they want to sell fast,' Chan said."

"For the last two decades, property speculation in China has been a one-way bet. Take 57-year-old Shanghai businessman Tai Pei, for example. Having watched the Chinese real estate market grow for many years, he too was tempted to grab a slice of the incredible profits from the country's massive construction boom."

"Tai bought three downtown apartments in China's commercial capital and made almost 10 million yuan (€1.27 million, $1.44 million) profit when he sold two of them sometime later."

"At the beginning of this month, however, the developer of the apartment block where his third property is located suddenly dropped the price by a third, due to enquiries drying up. The abrupt change of fortune prompted many existing owners to protest outside the sales office, demanding compensation."

"'Clearly the developer pushed up the price [of the flats] to cheat people when they already had plans to reduce them,' Tai told DW."

"The property protests have not been limited to Shanghai and, in some instances, have even turned violent. In Xiamen, in China's southeastern Fuijian province, anger spilled out on the streets after the price of one luxury villa was cut by 2 million yuan, having sold for more than 5 million a year earlier."

"Property protests are becoming so regular in China that a new term has emerged on social media. 'Fang Nao' literally means property trouble-making. Indebted Chinese property speculators, however, can't necessary count on much public support, now that the real estate market has turned against them. 'The price goes up, you are happy. The price goes down, you make trouble,' wrote one person on Chinese social media platform Weibo.

"Others were angry that speculators had caused a massive affordability issue for ordinary Chinese people trying to buy their first property. 'It’s exactly these people who buy properties to speculate that have created the property bubble,' another user wrote."

"An editorial for the website Sina Finance, meanwhile, accused property speculators of violating 'the spirit of contracts' by protesting. 'After many years of a property bubble that has made many people rich, those [speculators] should realize that the period where property prices only went up and never the other way, is over.'"