A report from the Gananoque Reporter in Canada. "Sales on Calgary’s MLS system in February were down 10 percent from February 2018, while the city-wide benchmark price declined five percent, year over year, to $414,400. If people don’t need to sell at this time, then don’t says Corinne Lyall of Royal LePage Benchmark in Calgary. 'No, they are just adding to an inventory that is already saturated in many areas,' says Lyall."

"Mark Herman, a broker with Mortgage Alliance in Calgary, doesn’t think speculators are going back into the market. 'Not at all,' he says. 'Many we speak to are stuck with one flip that they are losing money on. Some lenders that do these are also stuck and losing funds due to the decreases.'"

"'Even longer term ‘buy it, live in it, fix it and sell it in two-or-three-years’ types are stuck as the home is now worth what they paid for it, but they have put $20 to $40,000 worth of materials and their own time and labour for improvements,' he said."

From CBC News. "A provincial housing program did little for low-income families and caused a glut of overpriced homes on the market, according to Saskatchewan NDP MLA Cathy Sproule. Sproule said the government's Headstart on a Home program gave builders millions in subsidies, but didn't lead to nearly enough affordable housing units."

"She said the market was flooded with averaged-priced homes out of reach for those on low incomes. She said it also flooded the market with housing stock, contributing the the current slowdown in construction. 'They've made our housing market much, much worse due to oversupply,' Sproule said."

The Edmonton Post. "Less than 600 single-family detached homes were sold in the frigid month of February, marking a five-year low for the month in the Edmonton Metropolitan Region. The amount of overall home sales in February is a sharp decrease of 11 per cent from the same period in 2018."

"'February tends to see the start of an increase in unit sales in the real estate market following the sluggish winter months, and this year is no different,' association chairman Michael Brodrick said. 'Inventory remains high and compared to last year the market is still lagging, but we are hopeful the traditional upward trend for spring holds true this year.'"

From Glacier Media Real Estate. "It’s easy to think of Metro Vancouver real estate prices as being particularly hard-hit in the past couple of years, by a combination of provincial taxation measures and the federal stress test. But a report published this week by The Economist shows that, in global terms, we are far from alone in seeing recent declines in home prices."

"Examining eight of the world’s prime urban real estate markets – Auckland, Berlin, Hong Kong, London, Manhattan, San Francisco, Sydney and Vancouver – the UK-based economics magazine and research group found that almost all of the cities have seen home prices drop in recent years."

"Vancouver has seen a more recent decline, echoing activity in Hong Kong, where prices have grown considerably more than Vancouver since 2009. The report said, 'Prices started falling in August [2018] in Hong Kong and have dropped by nine per cent since. Developers there were spooked when their bids for a vacant parcel of land in the world’s most expensive neighbourhood — aptly called ‘The Peak’ — failed to meet the government’s reserve price in October.'"

"The Economist reported than prices in Manhattan fell by 4.3 per cent last year and that 60 per cent of home listed at $1 million or more in 2018 failed to sell. In Sydney, prime prices have slipped by 16 per cent since 2017. In London, home prices have fallen by 20 per cent from their 2014 peak, according to international realty group Savills."

"The report authors wrote that concurrent prices drops across prime cities are no coincidence, as global housing markets are now intrinsically interlinked."

"'The International Monetary Fund (IMF) observes that house-price movements have become increasingly correlated across the world, and that the link is greater between big cities than between countries. That is because housing is becoming a more global asset class rather than a purely local one. The prevailing winds of the international marketplace affect prime residential property much as they do shares and bonds. The IMF notes that international correlation increases at the time of severe recessions and can help predict the risk of a downturn.'"