A report from Yahoo Finance. "Homebuilding last month leapt to its highest rate in 12 years, newly released construction data says. But the havoc wrought by last decade’s housing bubble has buyers wondering how to protect themselves if the market goes south. Drew and Jonathan Scott, co-hosts of the HGTV show 'Property Brothers,' offer simple real estate investment advice for the moment a market downturn approaches: Find the sweet spot between panic and patience."

"The most precarious investors are those who stretch to afford a property outside of their budget, Jonathan Scott said. 'Anytime you make an excuse to buy a property, like, oh, well, maybe this isn't the best time, but I'm going to make it work, and you overleverage,' he says. 'That's when you lose your shirt.'"

The Wall Street Journal. "People with steady incomes but less-than-perfect credit are often shut out of buying homes because they can’t qualify for a mortgage. Divvy, along with companies such as ZeroDown, Flyhomes and others, are among a wave of startups creating new paths to homeownership at a time when high home prices and a limited supply of starter homes have made it difficult for some people to enter the market."

"Rent-to-own models are a response to a mortgage market where banks aren’t lending as much as they used to, says Sarah Bolling Mancini an attorney with the National Consumer Law Center. 'For most people the safest route is to wait until you qualify for a mortgage and save your money and keep renting like a regular tenant,' she says."

The Plain Dealer in Ohio. "Maple Heights Mayor Annette Blackwell said that in her southeastern suburb, white residents left and took their wealth with them. Redlining persisted. And today, many residents — most of whom are black, many of whom are single, working women with families — struggle to attain homeownership, in large part because banks will not lend them money."

"Whether or not the county presses its banking partners to expand lending, communities in Cuyahoga County — including Maple Heights — are considering leveraging their own relationships with banks to make change. I’ve heard the word redlining all my life,' Mayor Blackwell said. 'When are we going to do something about it?'"

The Post and Courier in South Carolina. "High prices and a lack of affordable homes aren’t the only problems facing Charleston’s housing market. Getting people to walk through the door to look at a house is another worry. For 12 straight months through July, home showings have been in negative territory, according to the ShowingTime Showing Index for the Charleston region."

"Home showings dipped 7 percent in July. They are off 10.2 percent for the 12 months since last August, when the slide began."

The Santa Monica Daily Press in California. "Sarah, the elderly home owner struggling to make ends meet, feels forced to sell up and leave Santa Monica. The elderly woman only feels able to rent her home empty, rather than be present in the home on the few weeks a year she would rent to paying guests. But the City has said empty home rentals are illegal."

"So the current ordinance puts Santa Monica residents, and the city treasurer, at a disadvantage versus Venice, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades and Malibu. (The proof is in the pudding. As I wrote this I opened AirBnb for Venice listings. Of the eighteen listings on page one, all eighteen were for 'the Entire House.' Private home rentals is where the money is.)"

The Idaho Statesman. "The trade association for residential real estate agents says it will oppose Boise Mayor David Bieter’s efforts to regulate short-term rentals such as those on Airbnb. Boise has no regulations in place for short-term rentals. Idaho law prevents cities from prohibiting them outright, but grants cities the power to regulate them 'as it deems necessary to safeguard the public health, safety and general welfare in order to protect the integrity of residential neighborhoods.'"

"Since 2016, the number of short-term rentals in Boise has increased from 336 to 1,183, according to data from AirDNA, a short-term rental analytics company. At the same time, Boise renters are facing a shortage of available housing. The rental vacancy rate in the city dipped to 2% in 2018, compared with 8% in 2009. 'We are fundamentally opposed to this restriction of private property rights,' said Phil Mount, the president of Boise Regional Realtor. 'This is a significant overstep that threatens one of the most basic precepts of property ownership: the right to rent.'"

The Chicago Tribune in Illinois. "The housing market in Naperville and other collar county communities are showing signs of trouble. GOBankingRates said the city’s housing market has been slumping and home prices have dropped more than 2% the past two years. The median list price in Naperville was $439,990, the website said. Also, more than a quarter of homes on the market in Naperville showed cuts in the list price. GOBankingRates said that at 26.4%, Naperville had the highest percentage of listed homes with prices cuts of any city on this list."

"When it comes to foreclosures and negative equity, one in 3,897 Naperville homes is in foreclosure and 6.5% of homeowners are underwater in their mortgages, the company added. Naperville is not alone; eight other Illinois cities made the top 50 list. The worst city in America is Peoria, where 21% of mortgages are underwater, one in every 932 homes is in foreclosure and housing prices fell 16% in the last two years. The only state with more cities on GOBankingRates’s list of housing markets going south was the America’s most southern state. Florida has 15 from Jacksonville to Miami Beach and Naples."

From Community Impact on Texas. "First the good news: Single-family home sales in Leander-Cedar Park spiked 10 percent—to 373 sales—in August compared to August of last year, according to the Austin Board of Realtors monthly real estate report. However, the median selling price for single-family homes in Leander-Cedar Park dropped 5.5 percent—to $322,000—over the same period, according to ABoR. The dip came in Cedar Park, where the median selling price dropped 17.7% in August compared to August of last year, according to the report. The median price for homes sold in Cedar Park during August was $298,738."

From Aaron Layman in Texas. "New home sales continued to outpace the resale market in August with new construction sales helping to lift the overall sales numbers. Average prices for new construction in DFW fell 3 percent in August, while prices for resale homes were about 2 percent higher. That helps explains the continued sluggishness of the resale housing market in general. Prices are simply too high. New construction sales were up by 48 percent in the City of Denton during August, while sales of existing resale homes declined by roughly 7 percent. MLS stats show that the average price of a new home sold in Denton actually fell by 5 percent compared to August of last year."

"The trend of a stagnating housing market is still intact, confirmed by the percentage sellers are receiving in terms of original list price, as well as the average days on market. Average days on market in Denton County were up by 30 percent compared to last year. With mortgage interest rates back to near record lows, there is little room for a misstep. From a practical standpoint, all the Federal Reserve did was push local home prices back to the upper ceiling in terms of what borrowers can afford. That is going to pose some problems going forward."

"We are in the midst of the longest economic expansion in American history, and the president just called for the Federal Reserve to drop interest rates to zero or negative. That is not the kind of policy action you see from your central bank during a healthy economy. That is crisis-level policy used to avert economic catastrophe. It should tell you something about the strength of the global economy that the European Central Bank (ECB) just restarted quantitative easing (QE) only 9 months after they ended the stimulus program designed to support their insolvent zombie banks."

"For better or worse, the housing market growth story depends on cheap liquidity and intervention. Without intervention, the growth narrative falls flat on its face as the wall of debt hits a ceiling of obligations necessary to sustain it. The rapid plunge in mortgage interest rates in 2019 provided a temporary fix to some of the structural issues with the housing market, but it was only a temporary fix. With the 2020 election coming, there will certainly be more policies and intervention to keep up appearances. Just don’t be distracted into believing that these are permanent solutions to avoid the end of the normal business cycle."

"If you weren’t paying attention at the end of 2018, you may have been surprised by the sudden chill in the DFW housing market, as sales declined and inventory shot higher. There is no reason to be caught off guard. The pundits, including many sell-side practitioners in the real estate industry, may tell you that the coast is clear. Nothing could be further from the truth. They may tell you this time is different. Unfortunately, that is rarely the case. The end of the economy cycle will arrive regardless of the Federal Reserve’s (or Trump’s) interventions to prop up the markets."