A report from the Orange County Register in California. "Lake Forest will get 144 new townhomes with prices starting under $600,000. Silveroak is Landsea Homes’s latest addition to its 543-home IronRidge community in Portola Hills. Landsea says pricing will start from the high-$500,000s, 'a very attractive price-point for the region,' said Tom Baine, president of the company’s Southern California division."

"Silveroak comes to market as Orange County house hunters are shying away from new homes. In May, builders countywide sold just 262 residences — down 42% in a year. The lofty median selling price of $944,000 — down 4.3% in 12 months — suggests Silveroak may draw budget-conscious buyers. Regionally, builders aren’t having much more luck. Six-county sales of 1,705 new homes were off 18% in a year. The median of $534,000 was down 8.3% in a year."

From The Tribune in California. "Stacy George, a real estate agent at Platinum Properties in Paso Robles, is selling a $355,000 home on Fourth Street, not far from the city’s downtown area. George said it’s perfect for first-time buyers who want to break into the housing market. 'This is a great property for someone that is buying for the first time, and a couple of years — two, three years — it positions them well in their equity to move to another home,' she said."

"Here are four additional houses that may be worth a look if you’re shopping in the $300,000 to $400,000 price range. $379,000 in Oceano. Size: 957 square feet with three bedrooms, two bathrooms. Year built: 1961. It’s been on the market for 59 days, and the price was recently reduced by $20,000."

From Community Impact in Texas. "Homes in McKinney are taking longer to sell than they did 18 months ago, according to local Realtors. Julie Williams with Texas Property Sisters said homes are not taking much longer to sell, but the market is getting back to what it should be. 'It’s like a market correction where things get so insane that there has to be a correction,' she said."

The Review Journal in Nevada. "Las Vegas’ housing market heated up last year with soaring prices and fast-selling homes. It was such a frenzy that house flipper Brian Bair, CEO of Offerpad figured the market went to 'crazy town,' so he racked up more deals elsewhere. Q: Maybe we can start with the basics about Offerpad’s activity in Las Vegas."

"A: We’re probably transacting less than about 100 a month, buying and selling. It’s one of our smallest markets, but one of the reasons is at the end of last year, it got super super-hot and went into crazy town with some of the numbers that people were willing to pay for homes. With our model, we have to be very sensitive to that. We definitely didn’t get as aggressive in Vegas as others did. Overall I think we made the right decision because then it slowed down pretty quickly."

From Crain's Chicago Business in Illinois. "It may not offer you much comfort if you’re trying to sell your house, but Chicago’s weak housing market—a phenomenon reported in great detail by my colleague Dennis Rodkin—may actually be providing a bit of boon to the metropolitan area’s competitive status. Sort of like turning a lemon into lemonade, weak housing prices offer a potential boost to Chicago in competing against other metropolitan centers around the globe. That, anyhow, is the bottom line of a new study by Demographia."

"What the study specifically does is look at home prices—which in Chicago are growing slowly and in many areas still are below where they were before the sub-prime crash—and then compare them to household incomes, which are doing much better here. That gives an affordability index: how much house someone with a roughly average income can buy."

From Queens News in New York. "RealtyHop recently released their interactive map that tracks price drops in New York City neighborhoods throughout the month of June. According to their findings, the Queens neighborhood that had the highest drop in median drop this month was the Queensbridge-Ravenswood-Long Island City area with a 10.6 percent decrease, with the price drops averaging at a $133,475 decrease."

"The second highest median price drop was found in East Elmhurst, which experienced an 7.24 percent decrease, with price drops averaging $60,000. Right behind East Elmhurst was the Hammels-Arverne-Edgemere area with a 6.64 percent decrease and price drops averaging at a $69,000 decrease."

"Jamaica came in at number four, with a 6.56 percent median price decrease, with price drops averaging at a $21,000 decrease. At number five, the Breezy Point-Belle Harbor-Rockaway Park-Broad Channel area had a 6.12 percent median price decrease, with price drops averaging at a $20,000 decrease."

The Tampa Bay Times in Florida. "As the real estate market began to recover from the 2008 crash, a company started by a Chinese investor named Bo Wu snapped up dozens of houses, duplexes and vacant lots throughout the Tampa Bay area. The company still owns most of the properties. It also owes nearly $100,000 in taxes on them. Wu's company is among the more than 32,000 owners in Pinellas and Hillsborough Counties that failed to pay their 2018 property taxes by the April 1 deadline."

"Wu could not be reached for comment. Nor could Dr. James St. Louis, who is late on $156,260 in property taxes for his six-bedroom, six-bath mansion overlooking Clearwater Harbor in Belleair. St. Louis, founder of the now-defunct Laser Spine Institute, is under contract to sell the house, which has been on the market for several years and is currently listed at $7.9 million."

"Several multi-million dollar mansions in Hillsborough also have delinquent taxes, records show. The Richmond, Va.-based trust that owns a huge waterfront house in Tampa's Beach Park owes nearly $70,000, among the highest delinquent amounts in the county. The biggest delinquency, though, is on the Bridges, a Riverview assisted living facility — $169,557. (Its owner, an Indiana-based limited liability company, did not return a call for comment.)"

The Times of London. "Purplebricks is to shut its loss-making American business amid a change of strategy after the sacking of its founder. The online estate agency, which said yesterday that full-year operating losses had almost doubled to £52.3 million. It is the second time recently that Purplebricks has withdrawn from a problem market. Two months ago it said that it was withdrawing from Australia — at the same time as it announced the departure of Michael Bruce, 46, its co-founder and chief executive. He had clashed with Paul Pindar, 60, the chairman, over the failure of the company’s overseas expansion."

"The company said that its losses had been driven by £52.9 million of operating costs in Australia and the United States. Cash at the end of April, its year-end, was £62.8 million, down from £152.8 million the year before. It will close its Los Angeles-based US business, which began trading in 2017 and employs about 40 people, at the end of the year."

"Vic Darvey, 46, the former chief operating officer who replaced Mr Bruce as chief executive, said that the company had entered the American market at the wrong time, as the housing market was slowing."