It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "Colorado home prices have sky rocketed, at the same time that wages have stalled. The City of Denver sponsors a program that helps fill that gap called the Metro Down Payment Assistance program. Rachel Palya got $14,000 toward her home in Englewood. It’s hard not to want to get into the housing market, when there is free money to help pave the way. 'It’s really nice. I mean why not take the opportunity if it’s there,' Palya said."

"'The bidding-war market of the last few years made it tough for buyers to get in on first-time buyer programs, but today’s softened market is much more receptive,' says Scott Byer, broker/owner of Colorado Realty. 'When you buy the place you live, you’re setting your family up for a solid future,' says Arturo Palomares, with Colorado Realty/Metro Brokers LLC. 'Renting is throwing money down the drain. Si, se puede (Yes, you can),' Palomares adds. 'Si usted gusta vender o comprar una casa, por favor llameme, yo le puedo ayudar.' He can conduct an entire transaction in Spanish if you need that."

"Estimates from Chinese real estate website Juwaireveal that US home sales to Chinese buyers are likely to drop to an eight-year low by next March. Juwai’s executive chairman, Georg Chmiel said that worries over US visas and the desire to diversify investments had spurred a collapse in sales to Chinese buyers after a five-year surge. 'With the trade war going on, it’s easy to imagine a scenario in which you might be forced to sell or your investment might otherwise lose value,' Chmiel said."

"The Los Angeles housing market has slowed considerably since last year—when home prices were climbing as much as 8 percent annually. In the very high-end market, Compass agent Ari Afshar says properties with 'aspirational' price tags are selling for 'what buyers know to be real value of the market,' giving an example of a home on the Bird Streets that was asking $25 million but was scooped up for $15 million."

"The protracted recovery of home values in Chicago 'makes me wonder,' said Yilan Xu, an associate professor in the University of Illinois department of agriculture and consumer economics. 'In the short term, most people hang in there because they know that in the long run the value will come back.' But 13 years, Xu said, 'feels like in the long run it hasn’t come. It feels like people are stuck.'"

"The people who are most stuck are generally middle-class households who have few or no other better-performing assets that can offset the poor performance of their housing investment. 'For them, home equity is a larger piece of household wealth than for somebody in the more expensive neighborhoods,' said Geoff Smith, executive director of the Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University. 'They may not have the equity they were anticipating for their retirement.'"

"Don't ever let anybody say that you can't put a price on oceanfront property because there is a price on this one and it's pretty jaw-dropping. Last summer I told you about what was Ocean County's most expensive home for sale at the time, an LBI compound that tipped the scales at a hefty $11,200,000. Well, good news if you fell in love with that one - the price has been reduced by almost a third, currently listed for a frugal (by comparison) $7,999,999."

"The tortured saga of a years-delayed Toronto condominium project called The Academy begun in 2014 by LeMine Investment Group, appears to be finally coming to an end. On Aug. 20, 3070 Ellesmere Developments Inc. (the subsidiary created by LeMine for the project) filed a Notice of Insolvency where it claimed it had no capacity to pay the millions in loans it owed its creditors. On Feb. 26, investor Xiangdong Zhao won a default judgment against 3070 Ellesmere Developments for making 'negligent misrepresentations' about expected dividends."

"Blocks of expansive flats, some eight floors high, welcome you to Nairobi’s Pipeline estate in Embakasi. The poor roads connecting the estates are busy avenues where residents sell groceries and other food items and where mkokoteni pullers and awkers ply their trade beside stinking garbage. We visited the once posh Buruburu estate too, which is nothing but a shell of its former self. A couple of years ago, this estate was a highly regarded middle-class residential area, just 10 minutes’ drive from the Nairobi city centre. 'The selling point was the three-bedroom main houses coupled with spacious compounds with parking slots. Now tenants have to share the available space with occupants living in the extensions,' explains Mike Mulwa, a property agent."

"When it comes to residential accommodation, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) presents a bundle of contradictions. Some of these housing estates, which have been in existence for more than a decade, are being joined by new ones that have been sprouting in different locations year in year out. However, more than 80 per cent of the houses in these estates are vacant. Some have been vacant since they were completed years ago. And having been exposed to the vagaries of the seasons, a good number of the housing units have witnessed encroachments from the elements."

"UN Special Rapporteur, Ms. Leilani Farha, stated 'Successive governments have allowed economic inequality in Nigeria to reach extreme levels, a fact that is clearly evident in the housing sector. These new dwellings do not fulfill any housing need, since many remained vacant, acting as vessels for money laundering or investment.'"

"Sixteen months ago I wrote a story about ghost houses in Auckland – those perfectly good houses that sit empty on so many of our streets because their absentee land-banking owners don't want the hassle of being a landlord. At that time, the only figure we had to go on in Auckland was 33,000, which came from the 2016 census. This week we learned that the number of empty houses has risen by a staggering 18 per cent in the past five years (2018 census), and the figure in Auckland is 39,393."

"A North Shore agent, who preferred not to be named, said it is often a 'cultural thing.' 'One colleague says it is very common in Vietnam for people to own several houses. His own parents own three to four houses and they don't put people in them. It's all about the capital gain.' Another one of the firm's agents in Murray's Bay noted there were at least half a dozen houses in his street that have had no-one living in them for five to 10 years."

"According to Propertyology’s research, Australia has produced 'a tsunami' of residential apartment construction since the turn of the century. It took Australia 250 years to build 10 million dwellings, but one million have been built in our eight biggest cities in just the last 16 years alone.Propertyology Head of Research Simon Pressley recently referred to the over-development and subsequent shoddy workmanship of many high-rise apartment buildings as “Australian real estate’s equivalent of the Bubonic Plague“, holding grave concerns for all owners of high rise apartments built at any time during the last 20 years."

"'Every year, forever and a day, there will be tens of thousands more apartments with major defects that get exposed and very few apartment owners will have any form of financial recourse,' Mr Pressley said. 'Consequently, existing apartment owners now have the enormous uncertainty of when-will-it-happen-to-me while the pool of prospective future buyers will forever diminish.'"