It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "Stacey Woods, a Realtor in Palo Alto, said she was introduced to the St. Joseph statue and its legend by a colleague three years ago. Last week, Stacey was back at the SILVAR office needing St. Joseph’s help with another home. There is nothing wrong with the home other than she believes it was originally priced too high."

"'If a home is priced correctly, it will sell,' said Woods. She finally convinced the seller to reduce the price of the home, but also decided to purchase a St. Joseph statue for good measure."

"The Aspen area’s real estate market may be heading into its next down cycle and sellers of high-end homes will likely have to adjust their prices to more realistic levels, a local appraiser said. Part of the problem, Randy Gold said, is sellers with unrealistic expectations. 'There are a lot of people that are dreaming with these kind of listings,' he said. Too many sellers 'have no idea that their properties are not worth what they are asking.'"

"The number of homes for sale in the Hamptons soared to nearly 2,200 at the end of last year, a rise of more than 80 percent compared with a year earlier, appraisal company Miller Samuel and brokerage Douglas Elliman reported. 'It is more a buyers’ market than it is a sellers’ market,' said Judi Desiderio, chief executive of Town & Country Real Estate.'There are bargain hunters out there, and they’re saying to sellers, ‘I have cash and this is what I’m willing to pay.'"

"Hamptons inventory has hit its highest level since at least 2006, said Jonathan Miller, chief executive of Miller Samuel, which has been tracking Hamptons data since that year. Sales activity tumbled by nearly 35 percent, year over year, with 360 closed deals in the fourth quarter, the lowest number in five years. The decline in sales, influx of listings and resulting inventory pileup is a 'measure of the disconnect between buyers and sellers,' Miller said."

"Single-family home sales in South County declined nearly 18 percent in January, compared with the same month last year, according to the Rhode Island Association of Realtors. 5 Charlestown homes sold, the same as last year. The median price dropped to $380,000 from $449,900."

"In Seattle, the median home price hit $730,000, up from $711,000 the previous month but still down from a year ago. On the Eastside, prices fell to $900,000 — down from a month ago and a year prior. Condo prices continued to fall — down 8.4 percent from a year ago across King County, the biggest decline in seven years. The median condo across the county sold for $380,000, down from a record high of $466,000 last spring. The number of condos sitting unsold more than tripled in the past year while sales continued to decline."

"The cool-down also continues in Snohomish County, where the cost of the median single-family house fell 2.1 percent from a year prior — the county’s first annual drop since 2012. The median Snohomish house sold for $475,000, down from last spring’s peak of $511,000."

"Within the City of Vancouver, the price for detached properties averaged $2,070,030 last month for sales on the multiple listing service, down sharply from $3,080,563 in October, 2017, according to an analysis of publicly released sales data by real estate agent Steve Saretsky. The last month that Vancouver’s average detached price dipped below $2.1-million was in February, 2015."

"The price for detached houses sold in the City of Vancouver set a record-high average of $3,080,907 in April, 2016. 'It’s a combination of factors coming together at once, and you can call it a perfect storm,' Mr. Saretsky said. 'You would get real pain. People already have been borrowing up to their eyeballs,' he said."

"The Dutch housing market may be beginning to cool down, and house prices have actually fallen a fraction in places like Wassenaar, Amstelveen and Rotterdam, according to price monitor Calcasa. 'The housing market always slows in the fourth quarter and you often have price drops in some areas, but this is a lot more than we usually see,’ Calcasa spokesman Rogier van der Hijden told the Telegraaf. 'Prices in the fourth quarter have risen less than in previous fourth quarters and that is a sign the market is cooling down.'"

"Cracks are forming in the real estate market of Nairobi, forcing developers to offload homes at a discount in a move that could spark angry demands from homeowners who paid full price for units. High profile builder HF Group has priced some of its city houses at a 30 per cent discount, while Soil Merchants, and Edermann Property have been offering hefty discounts on some of their ongoing developments."

"The problem with this strategy, as has been proven in China, is its potential to spark social unrest when existing homeowners protest against price cuts offered by developers to new buyers. In October last year, for example, Garden Holdings, China’s biggest housing developer by sales, slashed prices of its homes by up to 30 per cent igniting violent street protests as angry buyers who paid the full price smashed the showrooms of one of its projects in Jiangxi – demanding a refund."

"China's housing unicorns are getting dangerously good at financial engineering. In Beijing, for example, it costs 40 years of an average resident's income to buy a home. Yet in a city of 22 million, just 17,000 units are available for rent, according to Jones Lang LaSalle. Danke is a middle-man, not a landlord. It signs long-term leases with individual owners, then renovates the apartments into dorm-like spaces to sublet on short-term contracts."

"Danke says it partners with reputable financial institutions, and that risks are well managed. Its flats all have smart locks that can be triggered when tenants miss repayment deadlines. But the firm is in a low-margin business with high legal risk from landlords and regulators. A rival's bankruptcy in 2017 ruined the credit of thousands of indebted tenants. Getting too clever with funding could bring the whole house down."

"Westpac chief executive Brian Hartzer has played down concerns over the fall in house prices, describing the slump as a 'cyclical adjustment' that is being managed well. Appearing before the government's banking inquiry, Mr Hartzer also said the Hayne royal commission was a 'sad indictment' on the entire financial sector."

"Amid a debate about how house prices may affect the economy, Mr Hartzer argued the decline in prices was a 'natural response' to the increase in housing supply, rather than any clampdown on credit availability by banks. Mr Hartzer also reiterated the bank's view that falling house prices were not being caused by tighter lending policies by banks. 'The bigger issue is that not as many people, particularly investors, are applying for loans.'"