A report from the Wall Street Journal on New York. "Manhattan apartment sales tumbled during the third quarter and prices fell to their lowest level in four years, a Wall Street Journal analysis showed. In the third quarter, the median price fell to just over $1 million, a decline of 25%, to the weakest pricing since 2015. The average price of a Manhattan apartment fell to $1.7 million from just under $2.5 million in the second quarter, a decline of 32.4%."

"The Manhattan co-op and condo market had been in a slump for several years as buyers resisted many sellers’ overly optimistic prices, according to Gregory J. Heym, the chief economist for brokerage firms Halstead and Brown Harris Stevens. 'The data is terrible,' he said. 'Even with the rush before the taxes and hangover afterwards, we are still in a sluggish market.'"

From Summit Daily in Colorado. "One price that is going down is the average cost of vacant land, which has decreased as much as 62% so far this year. 'Vacant land is the first to be affected and the last to take off,' said Summit Association of Realtors President Thomas Coolidge in reference to how vacant land sales are impacted by the local housing market."

"Since vacant land is more of a long-term project for a buyer than purchasing a home, Coolidge said people want to have a solid plan when they buy vacant real estate. People don’t want to be sitting on vacant land if there does happen to be a downturn in the economy, he said."

The Davis Enterprise in California. "After seven years of steadily-rising home prices, a number of factors seem to indicate that the market for existing homes is leveling off a bit, and maybe even cooling off a tad, in Davis and across much of Northern California. In some cases, sellers have decided to reduce their asking price after a home has been on the market for a while and isn’t generating offers. And prospective buyers seem to be taking a little more time to consider before they make an offer."

"Cory Gold, a broker who has been working with buyers and sellers locally for decades, 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…  which in my opinion is not a bad thing. Home buying should not be an impulse decision.'"

"Some of these same trends have been evident in Bay Area counties and the Los Angeles area — and it is no secret that statewide real estate trends can be reflected in the Davis micro-market."

From Bloomberg. "Bond traders just had an inkling of what it could be like when central banks and pension funds aren’t there to support them. Japan’s bond futures tumbled by the most since 2016, triggering margin calls for investors, after the country’s worst 10-year debt auction in three years. Japanese government bond yields climbed and the curve steepened, while the sell-off also spilled into Treasuries and European debt."

"Behind the sudden collapse in JGBs lies the prospect that the Bank of Japan may slash bond purchases in October, and an announcement that the Government Pension Investment Fund is pivoting toward buying more foreign debt. All of a sudden, investors were left wondering what other changes were in store."

"The updraft in global yields as the Bank of Japan steps back from longer-term bond purchases is a sign of things to come, according to Bleakley Financial Group Chief Investment Officer Peter Boockvar. 'The August lows in yields will be the low for a while,' he said in a note."

"The BOJ on Monday cut purchase ranges for four major maturities, and indicated it may even stop buying debt of more than 25 years. It also suggested that it could skip buying operations as needed as it sought to steepen the yield curve."

"'I always thought it was going to be a bout of higher inflation that was going to end the central bank monetary madness, but maybe it’s just the realization that you need a functioning banking system in order to have a growing economy,' said Bleakley’s Boockvar."