A report from the Globe and Mail in Canada. "Call it Exhibit A for the state of Vancouver’s slumping market for detached houses. In a gauge for rundown properties, a buyer paid $1,980,000 last month for a three-bedroom teardown in the city’s Point Grey neighbourhood, nearly three years after the seller bought it for $2,880,000."

"The listing took 14 months to sell, underscoring the sluggish sales activity across the region. Housing sales have tumbled to a 10-year low in Greater Vancouver as a market once fuelled by bidding wars gives way to a period of declining prices."

"Simply put, the psychology swung last summer to being a buyer’s market, with consumer confidence eroded by an array of B.C. taxes on real estate, said Phil Moore, president of the Greater Vancouver board. 'Anything above $3-million has been hardest hit,' he said. 'Buyers don’t like instability and they’re looking for homes that are liveable.'"

"Look no further than the Vancouver teardown as a dramatic example of the turmoil in the detached segment. The listing in the Point Grey neighbourhood on the city’s west side went on the market for $3,070,000 in November, 2017. The house, built in 1912, languished for six months without any takers. Last May, the seller lowered the asking price in what would be the first of four markdowns."

"Finally, after slashing the list price to $2,199,900 on Jan. 7, the knockdown sold days later for $900,000 lower than what the seller paid nearly three years earlier, or a 31-per-cent plunge. The listing agent, Danielle Lu, said she couldn’t say much about the transaction. 'I am sorry that I can’t discuss anything about my client. It is their decision,' she said."

From CTV News in Canada. "January real estate numbers show further softening of the Metro Vancouver real estate market, and nowhere is that effect more dramatic than on Vancouver's West Side. One realtor says a lack of foreign buyers is why homeowners who bought in the pricey part of the town a few years ago are now selling for huge losses."

"'The West Side housing market…became very reliant of foreign capital flowing in,' said Andrew Hasman, the realtor for an owner who finally managed to sell their 1920s character home after more than a year on the market. 'All of those buyers have kind of hit the sidelines and without those buyers, prices can only go one way and that's down.'"

"The property in question was first listed for $2.7 million. It then dropped to $2.4 million and then $2.2 million. Hasman said the home finally sold a couple of weeks ago for less than $2 million—$612,000 less than the owner paid for it 20 months ago. A different home located nearby is currently listed at $2.5 million. In June 2016, it sold for $4 million."

"Last month, a detached fixer-upper in East Vancouver was listed for just shy of $1 million, a price that has been unheard of in the city for years. While devaluing has been the most dramatic on the West Side, the trend extends right across Metro Vancouver, with most detached homes selling for well under their assessed value. Townhome and condo prices have fallen too."

"While the downward trend is good news for those looking to get into the market, it was a tough lesson for Hasman's client. 'The seller is not happy, but it's just the reality and for whatever reason, they had to sell,' he said."

From ABC News in Australia. "West Australians are making more calls per capita to the National Debt Helpline than residents in any other state, as the legacy of a mining construction and housing downturn continues to bite. 'We're getting a fifth of the national calls, [but WA represents] only a tenth of the population,' said Bev Jowle, executive officer of the Financial Counsellors' Association (FCA) of WA."

"While the FCA is grappling to understand what is driving the spike in calls, a large number of callers have cited mortgage stress and property repossession. 'The mining downturn, I think, really started the ball rolling,' Ms Jowle said. Ms Jowle said many workers who had received redundancies in the immediate aftermath of the mining boom used the money to pay down their mortgages or other debt."

"'Now that [money has] run out, they're starting to have to go back to making repayments on the mortgage,' she said."

"In some areas, particularly the North West, those home owners were now in negative equity, Ms Jowle added. 'They can't sell the asset, they can't live off the asset and their income isn't enough to sustain the debt that they've got on their assets,' she said. 'We know that the mum-and-dad investors often were borrowing to the hilt on their own mortgage, extending that mortgage to buy the second house, and now they're having difficulty renting that house out for the cost of the mortgage.'"