A report from the Globe and Mail in Canada. "Many long-time agents continue to find the unpredictability of the Greater Toronto Area market perplexing. Leslie Battle, a real estate agent with Royal LePage Real Estate Services Ltd., had two listings with two unexpected outcomes in the city’s west end recently. In one case, a former doctor’s office on busy Royal York Road sold in two days to a bully while, in the other, a quintessential family home on a quiet street around the corner sat without an offer."

"'It is a wonky market,' Ms. Battle says. Ms. Battle says 'the buyers are all out' and listings tend to have plenty of showings. But some buyers are still wary. 'It is still a very price-sensitive market,' she says. 'Sellers are becoming a little bit more realistic in their pricing.'"

"She expressed surprise that she didn’t receive an offer on the scheduled date for a two-storey detached at 32 Edgemore Dr. in the Sunnylea neighbourhood. The asking price of $1.55-million is 'fair,' in her opinion, for a recently renovated house with four bedrooms and two bathrooms. Ms. Battle says 32 parties booked showings during the week leading up to offer night, but no one submitted a bid."

"Often potential buyers will wait to see if a house sells on offer night, then try to negotiate with the sellers a day or two later if a bidding war doesn’t materialize. That didn’t happen this time either. 'Even after 48 hours, nothing,' Ms. Battle says. 'It’s bizarre.'"

From Business in Vancouver in Canada. "In the past few weeks, landlords have besieged Mark Goodman, a multi-family specialist with Vancouver’s Goodman Commercial Inc., wanting to list their properties for sale, including rare portfolios in Vancouver’s hottest rental neighbourhoods. 'This is unprecedented,' said Goodman, who has been selling rental apartment buildings for 18 years."

"He said most of the potential sellers are local families that have held rental property for years. Now, he said, many want to get out of the market, even with Vancouver rents at historic highs and the city’s vacancy rate the lowest in Canada. Goodman contends they are fuelled by an underlying frustration with provincial legislation that caps rent increases at 2.5% this year, combined with soaring property taxes, based on assessments that are now often higher than the buildings could sell for."

"In 2019’s second quarter, Metro Vancouver rental apartment building sales fell 66.7% to just 13 compared with the same period a year earlier. The dollar value of sales was $152 million, down a staggering 73.9% from 2018’s second quarter, according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver’s commercial division."

The Timmins Daily Press in Canada. "Timmins has seen a steady decline in single family housing and building construction in recent years, according to a report presented at council. Mark Jensen, the city’s director of community and development services, said they have many draft-approved lots in the system, but no one has shown interest in developing them. 'I think it’s a case of demand,' he said. 'If we don’t have the demand for the lots, nobody’s going to step forward and invest a whole lot of money with hopes of selling the lots.'"

From ABC News in Australia. "New figures show the housing slowdown is biting NSW hard, with the number of construction companies going under last quarter hitting its highest level in almost four years. The statistics, provided by ASIC, show 169 NSW-based construction companies went into administration, receivership or a court-ordered shutdown in the June quarter — the highest number since the September quarter in 2015. Over the whole 2018-19 financial year, 556 construction companies went under — 101 more than the previous financial year."

"An increasing number of half-finished apartment projects are dotting the Sydney landscape, with property development giant Ralan Group — which collapsed in July owing $500 million to creditors — the most high-profile example. Association of Independent Insolvency Practitioners president Stephen Hathway said there was no doubt the industry was 'stressed.' Mr Hathway, who also runs his own liquidation firm, said small construction companies had been hit hardest."

"'These days it's subcontractors on subcontractors,' he said. 'And the general feel I'm getting from talking to my fellow liquidators, is that in the building industry subbies just slow down paying the little ones [construction companies]. 'It's a spiral, and it's always a bit of a scurry at the end to make sure you get paid before it all falls over.'"

The Sydney Morning Herald in Australia. "Mascot Towers owners say they were 'absolutely gutted' after Better Regulation Minister Kevin Anderson suggested displaced residents devised a scheme to secure taxpayers' money. Mr Anderson told Parliament on Wednesday that the owners had 'flip-flopped' over their options to fund essential remediation work on the cracked building, which saw them evacuated in June. The minister said owners had the option of taking out a loan over many years but instead decided to raise special levies, only to then say they could not afford the repayments."

"Owners in the apartment block need to start paying levies of between $5000 and $14,000 a month for the next nine months to ensure the cracked building can be stabilised before summer. At an extraordinary general meeting last month, the majority of owners voted for the levies rather than a high interest loan over 15 years. But many owners later discovered they could not manage the repayments because banks would not allow them to re-borrow any money. They are pleading for low-interest loans from the government."

"Mr Anderson also said work that needed to be done related to problems discovered in 2017 but two Mascot Towers owners, Brian Tucker and Isaac Lean, said this was 'totally untrue.' Mr Lean said he had put '15 years of wages' into buying his unit, which left all his capital tied up in the evacuated building. He said he found Mr Anderson's suggestion that the owners were simply trying to secure government money was 'ludicrous.'"

"'I couldn't believe it would actually come out of his mouth … we had three weeks of sleepless nights before the EGM working out how to pay [for the repairs],' he said. Mr Lean said some owners faced bankruptcy as they tried to find a way to move back into their homes."

"Labor's spokeswoman for building reform Yasmin Catley called on the government to consider giving owners low-interest loans so they could fund the essential repair works that are due to start next month. 'Owners are quite rightly offended and outraged by these accusations,' she said. 'They are already living through the nightmare of being evicted from their homes and having what is, for most of them, their major financial asset stripped of value.'"