A weekend topic starting with the Financial Times. "Viewed from Bangalore, the purchase of a newly built three-bedroom apartment in London for more than £1.4m (S$2.4m) seemed like a safe investment bet. As Shonu Bhandari considered the purchase two years ago, agents told him he could expect the value to rise 15 per cent before the property had even been finished. But his purchase soured quickly."

"When Bhandari approached a mortgage lender, it valued the property not at 15 per cent more than he had agreed to pay – but at 20 per cent less. With completion of the building looming, he signed over the property to a new buyer in March this year for £1.2m, losing more than £200,000 of his deposit."

""Bhandari’s experience has been repeated around the world. Developers’ over-exuberance and government crackdowns combined to end the selling frenzy and leave developers, lenders and property investors battling to absorb the fallout. 'I can’t remember the last time I sold a new-build property at a profit,' said Charles Jordan, an agent who resold Bhandari’s apartment."

"Jordan recently helped resell another home in a waterfront tower that was bought for £2.8m and sold for £2.05m ahead of completion – so an overseas buyer who had hoped to 'flip' for a profit instead lost £750,000."

"Arriving at Vancouver’s international airport, visitors must walk past advertisements for gleaming new-build condominiums, with text in both English and Chinese. House prices in greater Vancouver rose about 80 per cent in the five years to May 2018."

"A report this year commissioned by the regional government, which took power in 2017 pledging to combat the housing affordability crisis, described how 'a fever developed, akin to a gold rush, in which foreign buyers rushed to buy homes, willing to pay over market price for property in order to be in on the rush and avoid what many thought was inevitable – government intervention. Local speculators and prospective buyers, worried about being priced out of the market, further fuelled demand.'"

"House sales in Vancouver this year have dropped to their lowest levels in decades."

From Bloomberg. "It’s a billionaire’s delight: In a market awash in luxury properties and buyers more skittish about parting with their cash, brokers are working harder to close mega-deals. That sometimes means discounts, and even the super-rich like a bargain. 'Pricing was a little high, so we went through a correction,' said Alexander Ali, an external spokesman for Nile Niami, the movie-producer-turned-developer of multi-million dollar mansions in Los Angeles."

"'Two years ago, there was a lot of foreign investment, but because international laws changed, it impacted our housing market,' Ali said. Back then, 'you could get $100 million for a house.'"

"Eight blocks from where Jeff Bezos recently dropped $80 million on a penthouse and the two units below it at Manhattan’s 212 Fifth Avenue, a $98 million condo has been on the market for about a month. The 19 815-square-foot spread — dubbed 'Le Penthouse,' — features an infinity pool facing the Empire State Building and a glass-walled jacuzzi on the private rooftop deck. But for the most part, it’s empty."

"'We sell the unit as a white box,' said Raphael Sitruk, the listing broker with Keller Williams NYC."

From The Guardian. "Two massive luxury real estate deals in Los Angeles have shone a harsh light on the wealth gap in a region where tens of thousands of people live on the streets while mansions the size of football fields sell for more than $100m. On Monday, Variety reported that the Uber co-founder Garrett Camp and his partner Eliza Nguyen have purchased a Beverly Hills mansion for a record-breaking $72.5m, in what is believed to be the largest-ever sale of a home in the neighborhood.paid for it."

"Camp’s purchase has drawn the ire of activists and drivers who have long been protesting about Uber’s labor practices and advocating for better working conditions. 'This is a perfect example of the 1% stealing from the rest of us,' Nicole Moore, a ride-share driver in Los Angeles, said of Camp’s $72.5m purchase. 'Drivers are living in their cars. We’re fighting for fair wages. At least share that wealth with the people who have actually built your company.'"

"The purchase by Camp is particularly eye-popping given that Uber continues to lose money and has also aggressively opposed drivers’ efforts to organize and improve their working conditions, said Veena Dubal, an associate law professor at the University of California, Hastings, who is an expert on labor rights in the gig economy."

"'It’s a slap in everyone’s face,' she said, arguing that Uber was built on the idea of breaking labor laws and violating existing regulations. 'The capitalist system we have has unduly rewarded him with extraordinary, in-your-face wealth.'"

From CalMatters. "Recent weeks have seen a debate of sorts about the image and reality of contemporary California. Is it, as Gov. Gavin Newsom contends, a nation-state proving that economic prosperity, multiculturism and social progress can advance together? 'California is what America is going to look like,' he told a television interviewer. 'California is America’s coming attraction.'"

"Or is it, as Hoover Institute historian Victor Davis Hanson indirectly responded in a Fox News interview, 'America’s first third-world state' with widening income and wealth disparities, rampant homelessness, poor schools, and rising disease levels despite high taxes? 'We have a medieval society,' Hanson asserted, with a wealthy 'royal elite,' including Newsom, that prospers while ordinary Californians 'are treated like peasants.'"

"Even as he boasts about his first state budget, which he calls an 'affordability budget,' Newsom acknowledges the state’s socioeconomic divide. 'You can’t live in the richest and the poorest state and have a just society,' he said while touting appropriations to help the 40 percent of Californians rated as poor or 'near-poor' by the Census Bureau and the Public Policy Institute of California."

"The Economist quotes a leading in-state critic, Chapman University’s Joel Kotkin, with this appraisal: 'The Golden State used to be a rising tide lifting all sorts of boats. Now it’s a rising tide lifting a few yachts.'"

The Real Deal on New York. "The waterfront Listowel Estate in Water Mill has listed for $29.5 million after first coming on the market for $39 million in June 2017, according to the New York Post, which also noted that another Southampton home has had its price cut down to $28 million after first listing for $37 million last September."

""Listowel Estate, located at 258 Horsemill Lane, has a 12,000-square-foot home sitting on Mecox Bay. It has five bedrooms, six bathrooms, a two-story library, hand-painted chinois wallpaper, marble bathrooms and a chef’s kitchen. The nearly seven-acre grounds include gardens and a pool. The Southampton home, at 17 Channel Pond Court, sits on six acres and has specimen trees, gardens, a pond, a pool, a gazebo and a tennis court. The 17,503-square-foot home, built in 2003, also has eight bedrooms and nine bathrooms."

"Thomas Sandell, the billionaire Swedish hedge fund manager, has taken a 10-month break from the construction of an 18,000-square-foot Moroccan-style home at 1320 Meadow Lane in Southampton that is about 60 percent complete, the New York Post reported. It wasn’t immediately clear if Sandell planned to fully abandon the project. His local lawyer, Gilbert Flanagan, did not return the Post’s requests for comment. 'The owner is now weighing his options, including demolition,' said Chris Talbot, the Southampton Village building inspector."

"Sandell has already spent about $37.1 million to buy the property and another $19 million on construction since 2012. Multiple architects have been attached to the project, whose stalled status was noted by 27east in January. The partially-built home, which sits on a roughly eight-acre oceanfront parcel, has two stories, numerous arches and a distinctive roof with pyramids and conical peaks."