A weekend topic starting with the Tampa Bay Times in Florida. "If you own a house in the Tampa Bay area, chances are you’ve received at least one 'Dear Homeowner' letter offering to buy it for cash, 'as is' and with no closing costs or commissions. And if it’s a somewhat tired-looking house worth less than $125,000, chances are you get enough solicitations to paper an entire wall."

"Despite rising prices, this has been a banner year for HomeVestors of America, known for its 'We Buy Ugly Houses' slogan. So far this year, the 34 Tampa Bay franchisees have bought a total of 420 houses — twice the number as last year."

The New York Times. "Interest rates have started to rise, and the housing market is cooling off, a combination that is putting a squeeze on mortgage lenders. Now, some of them are turning to more complicated loans, a remnant of the last housing boom, to bolster their business."

"These risky offerings fall under the umbrella of non-qualifying loans, meaning they do not conform to standards set by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But lenders are starting to push the loans on borrowers, who are using them to get into homes that may be bigger and more expensive than what they could otherwise afford."

"Even a conscientious borrower faces risks with these types of loans, said Susan M. Wachter, professor of real estate and finance at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Wachter said in hot markets like San Francisco, where home values are growing so quickly, an interest-only loan may be the only feasible way to buy a house."

"'In markets like San Francisco, the correction is going to be more severe,' Dr. Wachter said. 'These are the properties that are going to be the most volatile and have the most price risk. The price falls will be higher because of the expectation that prices always go up.'"

From Bisnow. "The end of the cycle is inevitable, right? Across the industry, experts are pondering what will be the catalyst to shock the cycle into its next downturn or recession. Will the market fall to another oil bust? Or will it come from the single-family housing market like 2008?"

"'Everyone is looking for a bubble,' Bay Mountain Capital Chief Investment Officer Will Dyer said during Bisnow's Capital Markets event in Houston. "

"The amount of alternative debt capital for real estate has increased, The Hanover Co. CEO Brandt Bowden said. 'It is not going to get bad in one year,' he said. 'But you could see a scenario where one year of good results compounds to another good year of good results ... [But,] If anything goes wrong, it gets really bad really fast. That's where I am kind of concerned.'"

The Wall Street Journal. "When Lambo? It was around the peak of bitcoin’s value a year ago at just below $20,000 that this obnoxious question entered the Urban Dictionary: How long would it take to amass enough cryptowealth to buy a Lamborghini?"

"Now, those bitcoin owners still holding on for dear life after an 82% decline are putting on a brave face, but there is no more denying that we have witnessed the popping of a classic bubble."

"A speculative craze isn’t defined by its frequency or even its amplitude, which makes defining a bubble tricky. When bitcoin had appreciated by more than 1 million percent, an expert in manias said it didn’t meet his criteria for a bubble."

"Months later, bitcoin finally ticked nearly all of his boxes."

"The use of leverage is another of his telltale signs. Stories of people selling all of their possessions to invest in cryptocurrencies or buying with credit cards cropped up around the peak."

"Buyers of bitcoin near the top weren’t just overconfident—a hallmark of bubbles—but were dismissive of skeptics as Luddites who just didn’t get it. Bulls said the same thing in 1999 during the tech boom."

"The bitcoin bubble, following the housing bubble and the tech bubble, is the third in less than 20 years. Clearly, bursting bubbles don’t inoculate us against falling for another one."