It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "The average asking price of homes in the Lakes Region is definitely inflated by the many high-priced waterfront homes that are on the market. Big time! You’d almost think we were in California or Boston when you look at the $693,157 average asking price. For the first three months of 2019, the average sales price for single-family residential homes was $422,098. That’s a scary number for a lot of folks!"

"The towns that have a lot of waterfront showed the biggest price drop. The overall average sales price in Moultonborough was $732,217, but when you take out the waterfront homes, the average sales price drops down to $257,454! Meredith went from an average of $504,819 down to $293,973."

"Nelson prices fell 12%, from $215,000 in the first quarter of 2018 to $190,000 in the first three months of 2019, and Albemarle prices dropped 6%, from 2018’s $370,000 median sale price to 2019’s $346,320. Fluvanna prices also fell, down 5% from 2018’s $224,000 to $212,185 in 2019."

"Tele Jenifer, Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors president noted that some new housing is price competitive with existing housing. 'New single-family, unattached homes in Albemarle County are selling at a median of $658,000, while existing unattached homes are selling for a median price of $424,000,' she said. 'When you consider that new attached homes are selling at $374,000, that gives buyers an affordable choice.'"

"'Inventory of homes for sale remains a little tight, but it’s not really a sellers’ market out there, so the best advice is to get your home fixed up and ready to present to buyers,' she said. 'If it’s not, buyers may go look somewhere else.'"

"It might not feel like it, given the seemingly unending rise in home prices, but homebuyers in the Austin metro area are gaining an edge over sellers, according to Trulia. Those indicators — homes spending more time on the market and home prices being cut — show buyers in the Austin area now enjoy more bargaining power, Trulia economist Elliott Deal says."

"'The longer a home stays on the market, the more likely a seller will reduce the price or accept a bid under the asking price,' Deal tells CultureMap."

"Once called home by Hollywood icons like Cher and comedian Eddie Murphy, this Beverly Hills mansion is back on the market once again—at a serious price drop. Originally on the market for $85 million just two years ago, the price has decreased over 40%, making the asking price for the secluded property just (lol) $48 million."

"Real estate agents say continued tight inventory and fewer than usual purchases in January contributed to a double-digit decrease in York County housing sales in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period in 2018. 'If buyers don’t see that they want, they wait,' said Julie Grady, president of the York County Council of the Maine Association of Realtors."

"Eight buyers are now seeking to get out of their contracts and have their deposits refunded at J. Milton & Associates’ long-delayed Parque Towers luxury condo project in Sunny Isles Beach. The developer’s attorney Robert Frankel, said the lawsuits could be motivated by buyers who are looking to get out of their contracts because the condo market has slowed down. He also said 'a lot of purchasers are Brazilian nationals who are having difficulty getting their funds from their home country.' He said this has made it more difficult for them to put down the remaining money needed to close."

"Parque Towers is one of the many luxury condo projects in the wealthy beach town of Sunny Isles. Sunny Isles has about 17 years of inventory of condos priced at $5 million and up, according to a recent report from EWM Realty International."

"Built for former NBC boss Bob Wright, this magnificent Medouie Creek estate recently had its price cut to $15,250,000. Designed as a place for Wright's extended family to gather and enjoy the bucolic beauty of Nantucket, MA, the compound was previously listed for $18 million."

"Lena Dunham was over her Williamsburg pad almost as soon as she bought it, but selling it has taken quite a bit longer. Dunham bought the three-bedroom condo at 60 Broadway for $2.9 million in April 2018. But Dunham must have felt some kind of buyer’s remorse (or realized she had zero desire to be in Williamsburg), because she tossed the 1,987-square-foot loft back on the market just two months later, in July 2018, for $3 million."

"The apartment disappeared from the sales market late last year, but now it’s back with a newly discounted price tag of $2.65 million and a brokerage switch to Compass. Aside from the loss Dunham is willing to suffer, the biggest change is that she enlisted ASH Staging to furnish the place. The apartment was previously pictured empty but is now fully furnished."

"The Long Island State Senate majority and Town Supervisor Laura Gillen have announced a $215,000 grant to study and address the Island’s shortage of affordable housing. The funding will explore how the Town of Hempstead can keep people in their homes."

"''The Town of Hempstead has several hundred zombie homes, and foreclosure is causing property values to plummet,' Sen. Kevin Thomas said."

"Gillen said that many families on Long Island struggle to make their monthly mortgage payment, and deal with housing instability. She also said that Long Island has not recovered from the housing market collapse a decade ago. The median home value in the town is just over $400,000 — 40 percent higher than everywhere else in the state, and double the median value for the rest of the country, according to Gillen."

"'The tide of foreclosure has battered many of our communities,' Gillen said. 'On top of that, homeowners are feeling the pressure even more today due to tax policies that include capping deduction on state and local taxes.'"

"Perhaps you have heard that tech initial public offerings are blooming like wildflowers this spring. Lyft, Pinterest, Uber, Zoom, Slack and more are coming, almost all of them headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area. Host Molly Wood talked with Glenn Kelman, CEO of Redfin, a real estate company that offers both brokerage services and data."

"Kelman: 'The laws of supply and demand are already at work. That's why people are renting U-Hauls and driving to Oregon. I think in some ways, whenever there's a huge tech rally, you always have some curmudgeon saying, 'Wow, that bubble is going to burst.' I don't know if I want to characterize myself as a curmudgeon, but I left San Francisco to run Redfin 14 years ago, and I always planned to come back. One of my kids the other day said, 'If we ever came back, do you think we could afford it?" I don't know, man. I don't know. If I'm worried about it, everybody else must be, too.'"

"The Fed is treated these days like a holy citadel that can’t be challenged, yet few institutions have made more egregious mistakes in recent decades. In 2003 then Governor and later Fed Chair Ben Bernanke declared that 'disinflation risk will remain a concern for some time.' That was on the cusp of a multiyear burst of 3% GDP growth, but the Fed kept feeding a subsidy for easy credit that triggered commodity inflation and the housing bubble. Then as that bubble headed for bursting in 2007, Mr. Bernanke saw little reason to worry."

"'We have spent a bit of time evaluating the financial implications of the subprime issues, tried to assess the magnitude of losses, and tried to determine how concentrated they are,' Mr. Bernanke said in May 2007. 'There is a sense that, although there is always a possibility for some kind of disruption,' the 'financial system will absorb the losses from the subprime mortgage problems without serious problems.'"

"To our knowledge neither Mr. Bernanke nor anyone else at the Fed have acknowledged being wrong for feeding the credit mania that led to panic, or for the failure of the Fed’s financial regulatory oversight. Tim Geithner, then president of the New York Fed that regulated Citigroup, received a promotion to Treasury Secretary."