It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "Consider a few of these recent headlines from major newspapers around the state: 'Bay Area home prices fall 1.7% in May, biggest year-on-year drop in 7-plus years,' said the San Francisco Chronicle on June 27, 2019; 'Sluggish sales suggest peak has come and gone,' said the Mercury News on June 27, 2019; and 'Southern California home prices are flat in May as sales fall,' said the Los Angeles Times on June 26, 2019."

"And it is no secret that statewide real estate trends can be reflected in the Davis micro-market. Broker Cory Gold added that 'With the buyers that I am working with, there seems to be no urgency. They find a house they like and they don’t immediately put in an offer. They take their time with their decisions and have the sense that if this one sells, there will be another one.'"

"'It’s just absolutely critical to price the property correctly, and by that I mean don’t overprice it or you’re going to be following the market down. The price strategies that worked in the market in 2017 don’t work in the market in 2019,' said California Association of Realtors chief economist Leslie Appleton-Young."

"Plano home prices have started to cool over the past year, according to industry experts. One particularly high-value Plano home Realtor Cassandra Stahl had been trying to sell recently has been sitting on the market for longer than usual. Her client, after buying the home for $630,000 two years ago, was still having trouble selling it recently after bringing the asking price down to $599,000."

"'It’s frustrating for the seller, and frustrating for me too because it’s got great schools, so it would seem that it should move very quickly,' Stahl said. 'But it hasn’t. It takes a while for people to really get on the bandwagon and say, 'OK, I’m going to sell my house.' And I think now we’re seeing more sellers saying, ‘OK, I’m ready to sell,’ but we don’t have the same influx of buyers.'"

"Like other taxi moguls who owned the properties where they parked their fleets, Victor Weingarten parlayed the wealth he made in the yellow cab business into another booming industry: real estate investment. But Weingarten is facing foreclosure on an Upper West Side apartment building where he and his partner Simon Baron Development have struggled to execute a plan to turn rent-stabilized apartments over into free market units."

"'They’re willing to cut their losses and walk away from it,' one source familiar with the property said."

"An Ontario bankruptcy trustee has launched an investigation after a developer failed to pay millions of dollars owed to investors who financed a housing development north of Toronto. President Dino Sciavilla said on Thursday the investors were not paid because the project did not make a profit."

"'There were no funds to pay – the houses were sold under-price ... for the mortgages that were on them,' he said. 'That’s unfortunately what happened.'"

"The value of properties in Nicaragua has fallen between 20% and 30%, as a result of the crisis that has plagued the country for fifteen months, three experts from the legal, stock and financial sector told Confidencial. 'The real estate market is at a standstill. There are no credits, no appetite for this type of assets, which also applies to cars and any other capital asset,' an expert in financial matters explained."

"'When they are in a hurry to sell (because they are leaving the country, do not want to lose their houses, or need the money) then the discount is higher,' stated Rosario de Tefel, President of the Nicaraguan Chamber of Real Estate Brokers. This is somewhat what is happening in the coastal areas, where many people have chosen to sell their homes with much higher discounts, 'up to 50% in some specific cases.'"

"There are certainly opportunities in the current 2019 market to pay less than the last price. A three bedroom Parramatta apartment in the Meriton-built Altitude complex has been bought by an investor for $990,000. This represents a 30% drop in value since purchase when it was sold for $1,285,000 off the plan in May 2015."

"Detroit’s renaissance in the downtown and Midtown areas has earned the city a national reputation as the Comeback Capital of urban America. But the market giveth, and the market taketh away."

"The Detroit Free Press identified a market that has 'hit the pause button.' The price of housing is also a worrisome development. 'The back-to-the-city trend has reversed,' William Frey, an internationally recognized demographics expert, recently told the Wall Street Journal."

"As Deadline Detroit recently reported, the newest apartments available in Midtown and downtown rent for somewhere between $1,000 and $2,500 per month. And that doesn’t include electricity or a covered parking space. Worse yet, the domino effect of this unwieldy upward trend is obvious."

"The Corktown neighborhood bordering downtown was known not long ago for its vacant lots, waist-high weeds and abandoned buildings. Not far away, on the fringe of the inner city, are homes that sold in recent years for as little as $5,000. Now, prices for the newest three-story, two-bedroom Corktown condos start at about $400,000 and can exceed $600,000, which matches the cost of suburban 'McMansions' with three times as much square footage."