A report from the Wall Street Journal on Nashville Tennessee. "This city has been a poster child for economic development, the good and the bad. Tax breaks and cash incentives have flowed. Tourists, sports teams and conventioneers have come. Hotels and restaurants have bloomed. Home prices rose; public services sputtered; traffic clogged. 'People say, ‘With all these cranes in the sky, how did we run out of money?’ Nashville Mayor John Cooper, a Democrat, told me."

From Bisnow on New York. "A total of $22.4B worth of commercial properties sold in the first half of the year, per a Real Estate Board of New York analysis. Multifamily was particularly diminished — total dollar volume fell 37% between the first half of 2018 and 2019, and transactions dropped 31%. 'I would like to represent to you that the decline in investment sales was an aberration and won't be repeated. Our fear, though, is that it's the start of a trend,' said REBNY President Jim Whelan."

"JLL Chairman of New York Investment Sales Bob Knakal said that his firm’s figures suggest this year on pace to see $18.7B worth of investment sales properties priced over $10M in Manhattan to sell by the end of 2019. That represents a 34% drop from 2018 and 67% down from the peak of 2015. 'There are significant headwinds, from a policy perspective,' Knakal told Bisnow. 'Until prices become the new normal, then you get seller capitulation. [But] at the early stages, it’s difficult for sellers to accept the lower price today than they could’ve got yesterday.'"

From Senior Housing News. "Ventas’ senior housing portfolio performance has lagged throughout 2019. That performance took a turn for the worse in the third quarter of 2019. A combination of market dynamics, particularly on pricing, surprised Ventas’ operating partners in Q3. Those conditions worsened over the course of the quarter, with occupancy taking a 'precipitous leg down' at the end of September, Ventas CEO Debra Cafaro said Friday on an the earnings call for the Chicago-based real estate investment trust."

Meanwhile, price competition with new supply drove wider re-leasing spreads year-over-year, Ventas CFO Bob Probst said during the earnings call. As for why pricing became more aggressive than anticipated, Ventas did not offer a definitive answer. Capital One analyst Daniel Bernstein suggested that senior housing communities that opened in the last three years might still be struggling to reach stabilization as they are hitting their covenants on construction loans, propelling them to offer deeper rent concessions."

"An analyst’s note from Green Street Advisors noted that this is the 17th straight quarter of year-over-year occupancy declines. 'Unfortunately, the supply/demand imbalance hits not only occupancy, but also rents, which continue to eke out only slightly positive gains year-over-year,' the note read. The poor SHOP performance reminded Cafaro that, even at this stage in her career, she can be surprised. 'It’s amazing to be at this stage and grade and still be learning good lessons,' she said."

The Lansing City Pulse in Michigan. "Everywhere you look near Michigan State University, developers seem to be doubling down on luxury housing geared toward college students. The question it all poses is, how long can this building boom last? And what’s to happen to other student housing complexes on the north edge of the city? Is East Lansing headed for a bust? Bob Trezise, CEO of the Lansing Economic Area Partnership says no. 'There probably is a student housing bubble but I think it’s a much more nuanced issue than that.'"

From Greenville Online in North Carolina. "$1,200 a night. That was the cost of a two-bedroom rental condo during the Florida State University football game in Clemson. Twenty minutes south of Clemson in Townville, Mary Brock said she was booked up for Clemson's homecoming months ago and that she rented her four-bedroom house on Lake Hartwell to a group of girl friends for $295 a night for the FSU game. While she declined to say how much income Airbnb brings in every year, Brock said renting eases the stress of a second mortgage. 'I just see it as a way for the house to help pay for itself.'"

From City Lab on Mississippi. "Earlier this month, more than 59,000 college football fans descended on Mississippi State University’s campus in Starkville, Mississippi, to watch the Louisiana State Tigers take on the home team. In a city of just over 25,000 souls, hundreds of places to stay are available to book across Airbnb, VRBO, Homeaway, and other online booking platforms."

"With the growing popularity of Airbnb, game-day housing is a big enough industry that some rental platforms are solely devoted to accommodating those travelers. It’s just one of many outgrowths from the massive money-making machine that is American college football. But as in many larger cities grappling with tourism spikes, some college communities are also dealing with the downsides of their seasonal magnetism. Disruptive noise, safety concerns, and scant parking are common refrains among locals besieged by weekend football crowds."

"Describing a rented house next to hers that had a revolving door of fans last year, Starkville homeowner Julia Baca complained to her board of aldermen earlier this year. 'No one would call that a neighbor,' she said, according to a local newspaper. 'One would call that a hotel.'"

From Vox on Washington DC. "Justin Pierce is a 43-year-old real estate investor who works in the DC region and occasionally writes about housing for the Washington Post. 'I came up in the business thinking that the prices of the homes should be dictated by the income of the community,' he said while sitting in the lobby of an apartment building his company built in Arlington, Virginia, where millennials lounge on sofas and a draft kombucha machine is on display. 'I still like to keep that in mind,' he said. 'I keep that in my arithmetic. But the prices just aren’t justified by that math anymore, and it’s become really hard to calculate the value.'"

"Increasingly, Pierce struggles to make sense of his real estate projects in the metro area. The prices of unrenovated homes have climbed too high, the profit margins are too slim. Markets across the country are being 'juiced' by development dollars at a time in which, economically speaking, 'maybe we should be going into our natural drawback cycle,' he says."

"Twenty years into this grand experiment, residents are bucking against what all this growth has wrought: high rents, displacement, and a gutting of the very character of their cities. In some US cities, the squeeze has begun to hit the very people who helped spur this urban development in the first place, the very people that city after city are working so hard to attract."

"That unrelenting growth doesn’t affect only poor and middle-class urban residents. My wife and I recently spent the better part of year perusing the housing stock in Washington, our hometown. What we found was baffling. An otherwise decent-sized row house in the once impoverished neighborhood of Bloomingdale was awkwardly divided, each condominium going for $750,000. An exceedingly narrow, turret shaped townhouse on a beat-down street in Petworth, the second floor not quite level, a cool $690,000. A cute bungalow with a nice lawn in isolated Brookland — nothing to walk to, no shops or cafes — $625,000."

"'The previous owner paid something in the 300s just four years ago, can you believe it?' our real estate agent said."

"'I think there is already evidence that it’s slowing,' Pierce, the DC area developer, said. 'You can already see that some of these houses have stagnated. They wanted $600,000 for them, but now they’re down to 540 because they’re trying to get the house sold. They’re not getting snatched up the way they were for a time.'"

"'Prices will go down,' said Aristotle Theresa, a civil rights attorney in Washington, DC, 'particularly in black neighborhoods. We’ve already seen the slowdown in development in DC … and, you know, DC lost people last year.' Pierce predicts a real estate downturn. 'The runaway train will stop, eventually — abruptly,' he said."