A report from the Globe and Mail in Canada. "New condo sales in the second quarter in the Toronto region fell to their lowest level since the Great Recession. Condo weakness is also playing out in the resale market. For investors, who make up nearly 40 per cent of condo owners in the Toronto region, the investment strategy of covering mortgage payments with rental income or expecting prices to climb is less compelling. The pandemic has slowed migration to the city, dried up tourism and slashed jobs. That, coupled with an influx of new condos and Airbnb units turning into long-term rental apartments, has pushed rental vacancies slightly higher and rental prices down."

"'The investment strategy of most condo investors has, for the most part, not been about cash flow, it’s mainly been about speculative future price growth,' said Carl Gomez, an independent real estate economist. 'If investors do not feel confident about the potential direction of condo prices in the future, then they will bail today. And I think that’s exactly what they are doing.'"

From BlogTO in Canada. "Average rent prices for condos and apartments in Toronto have been consistently declining and a new report suggests that trend is ongoing in many of the city's neighbourhoods. In the Bay Street Corridor, the average rent was $2,448. This marks a 10 per cent decline from Q2 in 2019. 'The biggest decline was seen in the Moss Park area with a 14% annual decline. A condominium apartment at 320 Richmond Street East called The Modern, which was one of the most active projects in terms of monthly listings in that area, witnessed a 20% rent decline annually,' notes the report."

From London Loves Business in the UK. "According to The Guardian, London rents dropped by 8-18% between February and July. The devastating financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic is forcing many landlords to lower rents or risk sitting on empty units. Many investors will have no choice but to sell their properties and cut their losses before they dig a deeper hole of debt."

From Gulf News on Dubai. "Myles Bush, CEO of PH Real Estate, admits it’s no secret that prices have dropped by more than 20 per cent within Emirates Hills over the last 12 months. 'Far too many times I have seen houses take more than a 12-18 months to sell because the listing agent has over promised and under delivered. If the price is right- it will always sell!,' he said. Emirates Hills has seen similar price falls as the rest of Dubai, with average price per square foot dropping by 30 per cent over the past few years."

The Hindustan Times. "Gurugram’s rental housing market -- recognised as one of the most lucrative housing markets in Delhi-NCR -- is decelerating. Experts and property owners have attributed the new trend to returning of salaried professionals, most of who are allowed to work from home, to their native towns and only a few takers for rental properties in the city. 'Corporate professionals don’t want to stay back in this atmosphere, and new people are not shifting here for work. This month, I made only 50% of the deals as compared to March,' said Kuldeep Khokri, who owns a property brokerage firm in Palam Vihar."

"Kartar Adhana, an independent broker operating in and around Sector 29, was earlier charging 15 days’ rent amount from clients as brokerage. 'Now, I have started charging only 10 days’ rent as my fee. Since I do the business on my own, I can cut the fee a little. But many brokers in the city are actually middlemen who work for big property dealers. They are the ones who are really stuck,' Adhana said."

The South China Morning Post. "China’s housing market is blowing hot and cold in a struggling economy, where property investors trying to catch a post-pandemic rebound have been knocked back by local policy disciplinarians. Nowhere is that more evident than the sudden squeeze this month in Shenzhen, the Silicon Valley of China and a speculative hotbed in the southern province of Guangdong that borders Hong Kong."

"Some homeowners have started slashing their asking price by about 5 to 7 per cent after local authorities introduced harsh measures to clamp down on runaway prices, according to property listings. Some 1,019 units out of 30,000 existing homes listed on Centaline Property’s website are now offering discounts to entice buyers. 'The measures rained on the parade,' said Fion He, director of the research centre at Midland Realty. 'Some owners are willing to lower their asking prices because many buyers are now sidelined by the new curbs.'"

The Hong Kong Standard. "Street shop landlords in core business areas are slashing asking rents amid unprecedented social distancing measures, with the asking rent for a street shop in Causeway Bay plunging by about 80 percent from its peak in 2016."

"The asking rent of a 1,130-sq-ft street shop on 482 Hennessy Road in Causeway Bay is currently about HK$120,000 per month, or HK$106 per sq ft, according to Centaline Commercial (Hong Kong). In comparison, its asking rent hit HK$600,000 per month four years ago. Meanwhile, the asking rent of two street shop premises, which measure 750 sq ft in total, also plunged by about 48 percent to around HK$130,000 per month, from around HK$250,000 in June."

"In the secondary market, a four-bedroom flat at Tai Koo Shing changed hands for HK$10 million, or HK$17,182 per sq ft, after HK$900,000 was slashed from the original asking price. In the primary market, Wheelock Properties canceled the sale of 44 flats at Koko Hills scheduled for Friday."

The Weekly Source on Australia. "This week Stuart Penklis, residential head at the leading residential apartment development Mirvac, told The Australian 5,000 units will be built this year compared with a peak of around 40,000 a year in 2017 and 2018. 'The days of selling a project over a weekend and then delivering in three years’ time have gone and we will move back to a normalised market where you will sell some product prior to construction, some during construction and a proportion post completion.'"

"This means that the heat – which means confidence – has evaporated from the buyers’ market."

From ABC News in Australia. "Australia has recorded its biggest-ever quarterly fall in consumer prices, which dropped 1.9 per cent in the June quarter amid the coronavirus pandemic. The consumer price index goes all the way back to 1948, and the next biggest quarterly drop in prices recorded was a 1.5 per cent fall in December 1953, as Australia came off the back of a Korean War boom in wool prices, then the nation's largest export."

"One area where many experts expect prices to keep falling is housing. REA Group's director of economic research, Cameron Kusher, said rents nationally were back at the same levels they were in March 2017. 'We certainly saw a flattening of rents, rent reductions, mainly caused by an oversupply of property in the residential market, due to a couple of factors,' observed Robbie Yeoland, department manager of residential property at Knight Frank. 'One being Airbnb not having any business and the other with COVID affecting the income of residential tenants.'"

"While consumers may initially enjoy a widespread drop in prices, economists warn extended periods of deflation are one of the greatest economic threats. 'Sustained deflation can have at least two damaging consequences,' Saul Eslake explained. 'First, it can encourage people to put off spending in the belief that they'll be able to buy things cheaper further down the track, and that can make the downturn worse. Second, falling prices can make it harder to service the level of debt that people have — in real terms, the value of debt goes up when the price level is falling. Given how much debt Australian households have, that would become a serious problem if we had several years of falling prices.'"