It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "Oh, how the mighty have fallen. San Francisco saw the biggest year-over-year drop in rental costs in September, but Boston wasn’t far behind, according to Zumper. The median price for a one-bedroom apartment in the City by the Bay was $2,830 in September, a 20.3 percent decrease compared with the same month in 2019. In Boston, the median price of a one-bedroom unit, $2,300, reflects a decrease of 8.4 percent. 'Expensive cities continued to decrease in rental prices last month, with yearly drops largely led by the nation’s seven most expensive cities: San Francisco, New York, Boston, San Jose, Oakland, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.,' according to the report."

"There are now about 10,000 apartments for sale in Manhattan, which would be a record, according to Compass. With so many new listings pouring onto the market and so few buyers, the inventory of unsold apartments continues to rise in a city that already had a glut of high-end apartments before the pandemic. The current supply of luxury apartments for sale would take nearly three years to sell, according to a report from Miller Samuel and Douglas Elliman."

"'There is no shortage of apartments for sale, but there is a shortage of buyers,' said Jonathan Miller, CEO of Miller Samuel."

"Related Companies’ sale of a penthouse at its Zaha Hadid-designed condominium in West Chelsea may become the poster child for Manhattan’s strong buyers’ market. The developer first listed the top-floor unit at 520 West 28th Street in 2016 for $50 million, or $7,296 per square foot. Four years later, amid a global pandemic, the 6,853-square-foot condo has sold for $20.2 million, 60 percent less than Related was initially seeking, public records show."

"Pharrell Williams’ ultramodern mansion in the Beverly Hills Post Office area just sold for $14 million. The huge sale still chalks up as a loss for the Grammy-winning artist, who bought the striking home for $15.6 million two years ago."

"Businesses and communities around American Airlines Fort Worth headquarters and DFW Airport could be hit hard by the loss of spending power from furloughed employees. Euless Mayor Linda Martin worries that current American Airlines workers could have trouble keeping their homes without paychecks. 'We’re already feeding a great amount of our community through our mission network and other local charities. And so the food needs, the housing needs, they’ll all trickle down,' she said."

"The moratorium blocks landlords from evicting tenants from their homes, over concern of further spreading COVID-19. Now, landlords are pushing back on the mandate. 'My lender wants to get paid,' said Florida landlord Andy Orfitelli. For Orfitelli in Florida to landlord Rebecca Welsh in Kentucky, many landlords have said they cannot afford the financial burden the moratorium is now putting on them. 'Literally, right now, I am supporting three homes, households, not just mine,' said Welsh, who is currently expecting a child."

"Residents of an apartment complex in Baton Rouge are angry after they received notices from the Sheriff’s Office informing them that their apartment complex is up for sale. 'The Sheriff just came and gave them a notice they have to move because these apartments have been seized and they are up for sale,' says Ophiliea Gray in the viral video."

"John Pasalis, president of Realosophy Realty Inc. says the market for single-family homes in the Greater Toronto Area is still hectic, but the downtown condo market is one segment where inventory is soaring and prices are beginning to soften. 'I think we’re starting to see some sellers sell for a little bit less than they would have even three months ago.'"

"The unease is prompting some owners of units that are less attractive as rental properties to take money off the table. 'There are investors that are trying to dump their real estate,' says real estate agent Cameron Miller. 'The sellers think it’s February, but the buyers think it’s Armageddon – they’re looking for a deal.'"

"They might be feeling it hardest now, but some of us have been here before. The Celtic Tiger housing bubble peaked in March 2007. I purchased and got the keys to my first – and current – home on March 15th of that year, bang in the middle of the month when things went south. When economic historians rake over the remains of the collapse that began more than 13 years ago, there is a fair chance that they will discover a fossilised image of me, standing on the literal peak of the madness and crying like a baby. Barely three years after I bought it, the house was worth less than half of what I paid for it."

"When people of my age could no longer afford to buy homes back then, society’s solution was to pump prime everything with dubious credit, funny money that eventually blew up in everybody’s faces with terrible consequences. That cannot be the solution to the problem this time round. And be in no doubt that a huge problem is coming. Research released this week shows that it is metastasizing and getting ready to explode all over again."

"Shareholders of United Arab Emirates-based Arabtec Holding PJSC, which helped build the world’s tallest skyscraper, voted to dissolve the debt-laden firm in a move likely to threaten thousands of jobs and scores of suppliers and sub-contractors in the Persian Gulf. Construction companies that sprang up more than a decade ago as a building bonanza swept Dubai and much of the Gulf are facing a reckoning as governments pull back on spending."

"Melbourne’s rental vacancy rate has more than doubled since this time last year, while Sydney’s figure has also blown out. 'We’ve got properties there that are advertised and no one’s applied for them for six months,' said Melbourne Asset Management’s Cameron Osborne. 'We have some that were advertised for $650 down to $400 and we still can’t find anybody for them. You wouldn’t want to own an investment in the city at the moment. They’ve been building all these extra properties and no one to move into them. The only thing is to meet the market. Get somebody into your property at whatever cost. The city is just shot. There’s nobody inquiring.'"

"In 2020, Hong Kong topped the global rankings of the world’s most expensive property markets, according to StockApps. A residential property in the city, for example, costs a staggering $1.23 million on average. Influenced by the public health and sociopolitical crises, housing foreclosures in Hong Kong rose by 54 percent in the first seven months of 2020 to 675, as reported by property auctioneer Century 21 Surveyors. Hong Kong’s commercial property market, alternatively, has seen a 30 percent drop in building values in the past 12 months."

"An average price of land in Japan this year fell 0.6 percent from last year for the first decline in three years, government data showed. Among 21,519 sites surveyed across the country, 60.1 percent saw their prices fall as of July 1, according to the data released by the Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry. 'Standard land prices are determined based not so much on actual prices at which transactions were made, but more on expectations for a deterioration in profitability resulting from lowering of rents and other factors,' added Shigeo Hirayama, director of a private think tank Urban Research Institute."

"The steepest fall in commercial land prices was logged in the central Japan city of Takayama, Gifu Prefecture, known for its hot spring resorts, where prices dropped 9.3 percent due to a plunge in the number of tourists. Tokyo's Hino saw the sharpest residential land price drop of 18.4 percent, continuing to fall after the Tokyo metropolitan government designated parts of the city as natural disaster-prone areas."