A report from the Wall Street Journal. "Foreign purchases of U.S. homes have dropped by half over the last two years, a fresh blow to the top end of the market in New York City, Miami and cities in California. Their pullback is leading to price cuts in several coastal cities and causing new condos to sit empty."

"Real-estate agents said the pain from the foreign pullback is palpable when they try to sell high-end condos in Miami and New York or mansions in southern California and Seattle. 'Generally speaking, we are in the largest market correction since the Great Recession in New York City,' said Martin Eiden, a real-estate agent at Compass, who has had to cut prices on listings from Midtown Manhattan to Brooklyn in the last year."

"'The foreign buyers have pretty much all but disappeared,' he added. 'I’m helping a lot of foreign buyers get their money out of this country as fast as possible.'"

"'Our foreign buyers have been really driving the luxury market for several decades. Those buyers for various reasons have slowed down their purchasing,' said Ron Shuffield, president of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices EWM Realty in south Florida. 'In many cases, the currency exchange rates are still so unfavorable, they don’t have the buying power they used to have.'"

The Associated Press. "The persistently slow housing market has Debra Goodwin creating cooking videos to try to sell a house. Glenn Phillips finds himself explaining to sellers the reasons why they might have to take a loss on their homes. For many, revenue is flat because of a shortage of homes in the low-to-middle market, while higher-priced homes languish because they’re too expensive for many buyers."

"Phillips and the agents at his company, Lake Homes Realty, have learned that to sell a high-end property, they may need to be brutally honest with homeowners whose asking price is way above what the market will bring. That’s a tactic brokers didn’t need to use before the housing crash."

"'We started over a year ago, when we anticipated a slowdown. We started aggressively training agents to negotiate listing prices,' says Phillips, whose company is based in Hoover, Alabama, but sells lakefront homes in about half the states."

"Homebuilders are having similar struggles. Lexington Homes, which has townhouse and single-family developments in the Chicago area, has been building smaller projects, co-owner Jeff Benach says. While in the past a development would have between 150 and 650 homes, now they tend to run between 20 and 50. And homes in some developments sell slower than expected, leading Benach to offer incentives like more expensive fixtures to encourage people to buy."

"'I’d love to believe that we will get some momentum back some day, but I think the Chicago housing market will never see even close to the volume that we had before, at least in my lifetime,' Benach says."

"Pavel Khaykin, who buys homes in Massachusetts and rents or sells them, has started blogging on topics like foreclosure. 'If someone in a town in Massachusetts is facing foreclosure, they can land on our website and potentially reach out to us,' he says. 'The sellers that are overpricing their homes when they list them are learning that buyers are not rushing immediately anymore to purchase their homes — unless it’s a highly desirable area of the city.'"

From Culturemap Austin in Texas. "As the saying goes, once is chance, twice is coincidence, three times a pattern, and six months a trend ... at least when it comes to Austin real estate. On July 17, Austin Board of Realtors released its June and midyear 2019 reports, the latter a compilation of the first six months in Austin and Central Texas real estate, and the numbers indicate the city's housing bubble may be starting to deflate."

"Austin's single-family sales decline/price increase has been happening throughout the first half of 2019, something ABOR says may be indicative of a greater trend. 'We have seen slight dips in Austin's home sales before, but because this decrease is over the course of six months, it could be indicative of a larger trend,' says Kevin P. Scanlan, 2019 ABOR president."

The Orange County Register in California. "There were 18,736 filings in U.S. Bankruptcy Court’s California Central District in 2019’s first half, up 433 in a year, or 2%. Its the first year-over-year increase since 2011. Only one other district among the nation’s 93 had more filings nationally — the courts serving the Chicago area. But thanks to the local district’s sheer size in population and commerce, Southern California has ranked in the top two districts for bankruptcies since 2008."

"Let’s just say it could be worse. There were 17 districts nationwide with larger increases — with the eastern district of Texas tops with an 18% jump in filings. The seemingly mild increase in local bankruptcies may be tied to a noteworthy cooling in the region’s economy that has seen job growth cool and real estate and car sales dip. This broad-based slowdown could have walloped businesses and individuals who bet on a never-ending strong upswing."