A report from Boston.com in Massachusetts. "'The Boston condo market is a great example of what’s happening nationally,' said Kiernan Middleman, an agent with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Warren Residential. Buyers are simply leaving the city and heading to the suburbs.' From July through September, average sale prices for condos in the Seaport and Back Bay were down by 35.1 percent and 21.9 percent, respectively, compared to last year. Still, most buyers remain cautious — leaving the bargains to the bold. 'We are seeing some deals that, just one year ago, nobody would have imagined happening,' Middleman said."

A press release. "56.3% of Redfin offers on homes faced competition nationwide in September, down from a revised rate of 59.1% in August, according to Redfin. 'Until very recently, bidding wars were entirely ubiquitous in Tampa, but it suddenly seems like buyers have had enough of sellers' pie-in-the-sky, aspirational pricing. The market is getting a little too hot, and buyers are feeling fatigued,' said Tampa real estate agent Brian Walsh. 'It's getting to the point where you'll see a seller demand $50,000 over what they paid a year ago—and the only thing they've done to the home is minimal DIY renovations, like slapping on some new paint and flooring. Some of my buyers have decided to take a break from making offers altogether and just wait until the market cools off.'"

"'Condos are not selling as fast as they used to,' said Mary Bazargan, a Redfin real estate agent in Washington, DC. 'Single-family homes are selling fairly quickly as long as they're priced right. The homes we price correctly or a little conservatively are getting multiple offers. The ones that push the price aggressively high are sitting on the market.'"

The Wall Street Journal on Illinois. "A Chicago heir to a clothing-manufacturing fortune was so inspired by the House of Tomorrow in the city’s 1933-34 Century of Progress International Exposition that she asked its architect, George Keck, to build her a private residence. The 15,411-square-foot, seven-bedroom, 12-bathroom home on South Green Bay Road is on the market for $2.9 million."

"Owners Gopal N. Bhalala, a doctor, and his wife bought the house in 2004 for $4.9 million and lived there with their four children, now grown. Commenting on the listed price, Scott Newman, principal at RNP Real Estate Group, which has the listing, said, 'The sellers simply repositioned the home to account for the complicated times we’re living in.'"

From Honolulu Civil Beat in Hawaii. "Philip Garboden, a professor in affordable housing at the University of Hawaii, conducted a recent survey that found more than 38% of Hawaii landlords surveyed are struggling to stay profitable and the residential vacancy rate has more than doubled, up to. 9.2% compared with 3.9% prior to the pandemic. As the pandemic continues, some landlords are considering selling their properties. Maria Tanega owns properties in Manoa and near Iolani School and has one tenant who hasn’t paid rent since August. Tanega said her tenant is still waiting for money from the state’s rental assistance program."

"'Tell the governor, stop the moratorium. I cannot subsidize the freeloaders. I want to get rid of them,' she said."

The Denver Post in Colorado. "Denver’s popularity with millennials may be fading, at least when measured by the share of apartment applications young adults are filling out compared to other major cities, according to RentCafé. Denver doesn’t even make the top 15 for 2020, and the rankings of the 'hottest' cities has shuffled, according to the study, which examined 5.6 million applications across 61 locations. Another study from Zumper found that Denver ranked fourth for the rent reductions and concessions landlords were providing to attract tenants after San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Irving, Texas. Zumper estimates listed rents on one-bedroom apartments are down 11% in Denver compared to last year and that 16% of Denver listings come with concessions."

The Midland Reporter Telegram in Texas. "Nowhere was the drop in rent during the pandemic felt more than inside the oil patch, according to a report from Insurfy, a home insurance comparison site. The report states the three communities with the three largest percentage decreases in monthly rent were Odessa, Williston, North Dakota, and Midland. The website showed a 26.4 percent decrease in rent in Odessa from March through September, a 24.45 percent decrease in rent in Williston – which is located in the Bakken oil basin – and a 20.67 percent decrease in Midland."

"San Francisco (17.81 percent) and Mountain View, California (16.68) rounded out the top five. Odessa and Midland were the only two Texas cities in the top 20. There were 10 California cities that made the top 20, and nine of those 10 cities are clustered by the Bay Area region of northern California, according to the report. The website also reported average two-bedroom apartment rents of $728 and $912 in Odessa and Midland, respectively, in September. Year over year, rent in Odessa dropped 34.1 percent. In Midland that rent decrease was 29.5 percent."

From Socket Site in California. "Despite offers of up to three months free rent, cash incentives to sign a new lease and advertised rents having already dropped over 20 percent on a year-over-year basis, the weighted average asking rent for an apartment in San Francisco continues to tumble and has just dropped to under $3,300 a month."

"As such, the weighted average asking rent for an average apartment in the city, which measures 2.4 bedrooms when counting a studio as having one, is now 20 percent ($825 a month) cheaper than just eight months ago, down 23 percent on a year-over-year basis and down nearly 27 percent from a 2015-era peak, with the average asking rent for a one-bedroom in the city having just inched under $2,800 a month (which is down from around $3,700 at peak)."

From Multi-Housing News on California. "The Bay Area’s multifamily market, although underpinned by one of the nation’s strongest economies, is experiencing a historic moment. San Francisco, notorious for its limited housing supply, had 23,158 units underway and 1,549 delivered in 2020 as of August. Meanwhile, transaction activity totaled $1.1 billion, with capital targeting RBN assets in the East Bay, which pushed the per-unit price down 11.4 percent to $387,519."

The Los Angeles Times in California. "In the absence of any further federal relief like the now-on-hold Save Our Stages Act measure, independent music venues face increasingly dismal choices. 'We feel abandoned right now,' said Audrey Fix Schaefer, spokesperson for the independent venue association, which led the music industry’s advocacy for the legislation. 'It has been a horrendous roller-coaster ride. Everybody predicted this would pass in July. People are selling their houses to not go under. We’re in the deep end, drowning.'"

From Curbed. "Even as WeWork’s IPO collapsed last fall and its then-CEO Adam Neumann was left walking the streets of New York barefoot, fighting for his job, the company still had a few things going for it. For one, it had become New York City’s largest occupier of commercial office space. By the end of 2019, having spent profligately to expand in the run-up to its IPO, WeWork was leasing almost 9 million square feet in the city — more than the Empire State Building, One World Trade Center, and Google’s giant West Side office building combined."

"A fifth of its offices in the city were empty this summer, and WeWork is far from the only office supplier facing headwinds: Moody’s predicts that commercial rents will drop by 21 percent this year — a steeper decline than the 19 percent dip that occurred during the global financial crisis. It’s clear now — in the midst of a global pandemic — that New York City’s real-estate market is undergoing a historic collapse."

"What supercharged WeWork’s growth, however, was its ability to raise money to keep expanding as the economy began to boom and rents started to rise. One senior employee recalled a pivotal moment in 2016, just when it seemed as if the company could no longer find investors willing to fund its growth."

"'We said, ‘Nobody else in the world is going to invest,' the employee told me. 'Then, all of a sudden, literally the only guy in the entire world who could give the company the one drug it was craving shows up at the door.' The man at the door was Masayoshi Son, the founder and CEO of SoftBank, who, over the next three years, would go on to pour more than $10 billion into WeWork."

"Adam Neumann met Masayoshi Son in January 2016, when Neumann flew to India for a start-up conference'I just came here five days ago for the first time, so I’m still an early student of India, but here is what I’ve observed,' Neumann said onstage. 'For a very spiritual country — and I can definitely tell you this is the most spiritual country in the world — I’m surprised a little bit from the amount of talk I heard about valuation and raising money and bubbles.' The crowd laughed nervously."

"At one point, WeWork’s West Coast team met in Seattle to come up with projections that could satisfy SoftBank’s demands. But as the team surveyed the real-estate market in cities up and down the coast, they came to a troubling realization. 'There was literally not enough real estate in these cities to reach these numbers,' one person involved in the discussion said. New construction was popping up all over Seattle, but the team found that WeWork could have occupied every new building going up in the city and still not hit the goals Neumann and Masa were setting before them."

"The money was being funneled to consumers, who were happy to receive heavily subsidized services, while Bird and DoorDash and MoviePass all burned cash to acquire customers, hoping that one day they could charge full price. For businesses without Warren Buffett’s 'moat' protecting them, a new model existed: 'capital as a moat.' Can’t beat ’em? Drown ’em in cash."

"It had long been Neumann’s goal to make WeWork 'too big to fail' — becoming as entrenched in the real-estate world as the big banks had been in the financial system — and Masa’s money seemed as if it might help him do just that. And then it all fell apart. Masa’s money was now something of a poisoned chalice: It had enabled the company to grow at a remarkable pace, before sending it hurtling off a cliff."