A report from the Canadian Press. "Albertans struggling to enter the real-estate market have at least two chances to win a home this year. All one needs to do is pay an entry fee and submit an essay. Owners of the two properties are among many in the province affected by a slumping real-estate market. Homes are listed for months without a single offer."

"Alla Wagner, who has limited mobility after a fall, put her 5,000-square-foot (464-square-metre) house in Millarville, a hamlet in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, up for sale last year so she could downsize to a smaller bungalow. Her house was appraised at $3 million three years ago, she says. She first listed it at $1.9 million."

"'The market is so low that I wasn’t even getting a single offer,' Wagner says. 'It was very painful to watch.'"

The Global Times on China. "'My colleagues and I thought the news was really funny, Tian Lin (pseudonym), a 55-year-old Hegang native, told the Global Times, commenting on the news that housing prices in Hegang, a declining city in Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, were as low as 300 yuan ($44) per square meter."

"Housing prices in Hegang are falling and are much cheaper than other cities in China, Tian said. Hegang ranked last among 341 cities included in house pricing statistics, with an average of 2,177 yuan per square meter, according to China Real Estate Association in March."

The South China Morning Post on Hong Kong. "Investors’ appetite for new flats priced above HK$10 million (US$1.27 million) is showing signs of waning as they are hesitating to dig deeper into their pockets for large units. As of 5pm on Monday, developer Billion Development and Project Management only managed to sell 160 out of 307 units on offer at its Centra Horizon project in Pak Shek Kok, Tai Po, according to agents."

"Most of the units sold were priced below HK$6 million, with only a few takers for units costing more than HK$10 million, they added. During the sale of the first batch at the end of April, investors snapped up more than 75 per cent of the 295 units on offer, waiting patiently in long, snaking queues outside the company’s sales office for a chance to buy a flat."

The Taipei Times on Taiwan. "The prices of old luxury apartments in Taipei’s prime Xinyi District have fallen 30 percent from their high in 2015 as buyers favor newer properties despite a pickup in buying interest."

"The figures suggest they cost NT$959,800 per ping (3.3m2) for 144.36 ping of floor space including parking space, or a 30 percent drop from NT$1.37 billion for transactions at the same location in 2015, said H&B Business Group, the nation’s largest real-estate broker by number of franchises."

"It is the first time that apartments in the district have sold for less than NT$1 million per ping, even though buying interest for upscale housing has recovered somewhat, H&B researcher Mandy Lang said. 'While people with high net worth have demonstrated a better interest in acquiring luxury homes, they generally insist on price concessions from sellers,' Lang said."

From Business Live on South Africa. "Buying a rental flat or two may have been the go-to investment for many South Africans with a little cash to spare 12 to 15 years ago. Back then, you typically only needed a 10% deposit to buy a property; the bank would fund the balance."

"Rental yields (annual rental income as a percentage of market value) were fairly attractive, at 7%-10%, and most landlords were assured of a standard annual rental increase of 10%. Vacancies were low, so it was easy to find a new tenant if yours left. It all meant that your investment often started paying for itself in three to five years."

"Not any more. Today, buy-to-let owners are lucky to get a 5% annual rental increase when leases come up for renewal. And, for the first time in more than a decade, there is an oversupply of rental stock. As a result, many landlords — most notably those in the oversaturated Cape Town market — have had to drop rentals or risk losing tenants."

"The latest flat rental data from property economists Rode & Associates shows that vacancies for rental apartments across SA hit a historical high of 7% in the first quarter of 2019, up from 5.5% a year earlier and substantially ahead of the 1%-3% average of a decade ago."

"Kobus Lamprecht, head of research at Rode & Associates, says the percentage of flats standing empty in Cape Town, for instance, surged from 1.8% to 8.1% over the past 10 years (to the first quarter of 2019). Joburg has recorded a similar, though less pronounced, increase over the same time — from 2.8% to 7%."

"Lamprecht says it’s not only financial pressure that is negatively affecting rental demand: 'New rental housing stock has also increased notably, thereby pushing the rental market into oversupply.'"

"Lamprecht refers to the latest Stats SA figures, which show that the number of newly built flats and townhouses — square metres completed year on year — increased by a substantial 58% in the 12 months to end-January. Given the softer housing sales market, he says, developers have struggled to sell many of these newly built units, and have had to rent them out instead."

"FNB property sector strategist John Loos says the latest consumer price index (CPI) for housing and utilities underscores just how weak the housing rental market is. Loos says rental inflation decelerated from 5.39% year on year in September 2017 to 3.84% in February.

"Rapidly rising property ownership costs are, of course, further eroding buy-to-let returns. Loos refers to key housing-related CPI items, including municipal rates and water (costs normally carried by landlords) that were still rising at an average 10.99% year on year in February, as recorded by Stats SA – more than double the rental inflation of 3.84%."

"As Lamprecht puts it: 'Investing in the flat market has become risky.'"