A report from US News and World Report. "The tables have turned across the U.S. as the real estate market has shifted from a seller’s to a buyer’s market, which means that more homes are for sale than there are buyers to purchase them. Gone are the days of listing a home and it selling overnight simply because of its mere existence, as if it were the last home to be had. In many parts of the country, buyers had felt lucky and accomplished just for winning a bidding war for a property."

"Those days are over and now sellers have to do everything perfectly, from initial pricing to marketing strategy, in order to sell their properties on a reasonable timeline. A buyer’s market is not the time for aspirational pricing. Only unique properties, which are really outliers, fly off the shelf these days. Buyers are looking for deals and they rarely bid at asking price."

"Get real. Listen and educate yourself on current market conditions in your neighborhood. Ask your real estate agent for recent comparable closings and active listings, and size them up to market highs. The real estate market has pressed the reset button. Now more than ever, sellers cannot leave anything to chance if they want to get top dollar for their properties in this new arena."

From Variety on California. "After more than three years with no deep-pocketed takers willing to take the plunge, Jim Belushi has swapped his former real estate agents for another Platinum Triangle powerhouse broker and unceremoniously chopped one million dollars off the asking price of his longtime house in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles, Calif., that now stands at a tetch under $29 million."

"The star began his years-long real estate odyssey in the spring of 2017 when the property was floated as an off-market whisper listing with an inexplicably bloated price of $42 million. Sequestered behind gates, the estate officially popped up on the open market in the fall of 2017 at a still too rosy $38.5 million and in the summer of 2018 the price was radically slashed in one fell swoop to $29.995 million before it was taken off the market near the end of the year."

The Orange County Register in California. "Orange County’s mid-point price for all residences sold in February was $700,000 — down 1.4% compared with a year earlier. At the neighborhood level, prices were up in just 35 of 83 Orange County ZIP codes. Sluggish buying is a culprit: 1,903 Orange County residences sold in the period, down 17% in 12 months. Sales rose in only 20 of 83 Orange County ZIPs."

"On a scale of zero bubbles (no bubble here) to five bubbles (five-alarm warning) … this is THREE BUBBLES. For a bubble to burst, prices must be falling … significantly. This drop is tiny … but bursts must start somewhere. Continued sales weakness is equally worrisome. But if you think local pricing’s recent winning streak was extremely long — perhaps even bubble-ish … please note the previous multi-year upswing ran 122 months — yes, a decade-plus from December 1996 to January 2007. And that surge spiked the Orange County median selling price by 213 percent."

The Denver Post in Colorado. "Year after year this decade, construction cranes and work crews in metro Denver have gotten only busier. But activity may finally take a breather, according to a forecast from a leading cost estimation firm."

"'Denver has been one the hottest markets across the country since 2013 and 2014,' said Dan Pomfrett, a regional director with Cumming. 'We expect this (slowdown) to be more of a market catching up with itself than a recession.'"

"Cumming predicts that construction spending in metro Denver will drop about 8 percent this year, led by an 11.5 percent decline in residential construction activity. Residential construction, which includes apartments and single-family homes, will drop from $13.1 billion to $11.6 billion, making it the largest contributor to this year’s decline."