A report from the Denver Post in Colorado. "In the second half of this year, the housing market here and in other cities has cooled, with sales slumping and the inventory of unsold homes rising. And while annual price gains are still solid, the median price of homes sold continues to drop from the peaks reached this summer. When the housing markets last started heading south about 12 years ago, the most overheated cities like Phoenix, Las Vegas and Miami suffered the worst price declines."

"Does a similar fate await Denver, Seattle and San Francisco and other leaders this time around? 'The market is shifting right now more towards a buyer’s market than a seller’s market,' said Martin Mata, a Redfin agent in Denver. He is working on 30 listings set to hit the market in the first quarter. A year ago, he had only 15 to 20 queuing up."

"'I saw the slowdown in the market in June of this last summer,' Mata said. With no indication that conditions are about to reverse, he expects the inventory of homes to swell even further, putting more pressure on sellers. Homes priced correctly to reflect the changes in the market will move faster, while those that aren’t could linger and clog up the market, Mata said."

The Seattle Times in Washington. "Seattle’s newest plan to sell a long-vacant block across from City Hall and have a private developer build a residential high-rise and a Civic Square plaza on the troubled site has slipped a year behind schedule, prolonging the life of an embarrassing downtown eyesore."

"The deal approved by the City Council last year included a timeline that listed August 2018 as the target date for Vancouver, B.C.-based Bosa Development to obtain a land-use permit for the downtown project. But Bosa is still refining the project’s design in response to recommendations by a city review board and likely won’t secure a permit until late summer 2019, said Bryan Stevens, spokesman for the Department of Construction and Inspections."

"That means construction may not begin until early 2020, an astonishing 15 years after the city’s old Public Safety Building was demolished and the valuable property became a hole in the ground. Meanwhile, the housing market is changing. Inventory is up, rents have leveled off in the past year and home prices have dropped."

The San Francisco Chronicle in California. "Development of market-rate housing in San Francisco will slow to a trickle in 2019, because a combination of higher construction costs, escalating fees, a softening market and increased interest rates has persuaded many builders to wait on the sidelines, developers and industry analysts say."

"Development 'is not going to happen,' said Sean Keighran, president of the Residential Builders Association, which represents developers and contractors. 'There are four strikes, and you only get three. It’s hard to foresee a rosy path forward.'"

"The median price of a single-family home in the city has fallen 15 percent from its peak of $1.7 million in February 2017, according to real estate brokerage Compass. While the median price of $1.44 million is still out of reach for most people, it’s enough to have a chilling effect."

"'Nobody buys land and develops in a downward market,' Keighran said. 'Our guys stopped buying sites a year and a half ago.'"

"Mark Conroe, a managing partner with Presidio Development Partners, recently completed a 28-unit condominium project at 1598 Bay St. in the Marina district and is building a 160-unit rental building at 1699 Market St. But he said he has no plans to jump into any new projects."

"'There are a couple of cracks in the dam,' he said. 'Brokers will tell you, if they are being honest, that the market changed at the beginning of the summer. There is no question the condo market is going down.'"

"Plenty of developers are looking to sell sites where projects have been approved but construction has not started, he added. 'I question why anyone would start construction now,' Conroe said. 'Before, you had to track down sites. Now, the seller tracks you down. My response is always the same: I am not a buyer. Revenues are going down and costs are going up.'"

"While groundbreakings will be rare in 2019, plenty of new units will hit the market next year because many of them were started about two years ago. The city expects that about 4,700 units will be completed in 2019, more than twice the 1,900 a year the city has averaged since 1990, and almost as many as the roughly 4,900 units that opened in 2016, the most productive year in recent history. About 2,300 homes in multifamily buildings were completed in 2018."