A report from Reuters on New York. "Clarence Hamer doesn’t expect to hang on to his house much longer. His downstairs tenant owes him nearly $50,000 in back rent on the four-bedroom duplex he owns in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Without those rental payments, Hamer has been unable to pay the thousands he owes in heat, hot water and property taxes. In September, after exhausting his life savings, he stopped paying the mortgage, too. 'All I have is my home, and it seems apparent that I’m going to lose it,' said Hamer, a 46-year-old landlord who works for the city of New York. 'They are going to foreclose. It’s only going to be a matter of time. And rightfully so, I can’t blame them. Apparently we are all in this together—unless you are a landlord.'"

From Patch New York. "Two Brooklyn neighborhoods had some of the highest home price drops of anywhere in New York City last month, according to a new report. An address in Park Slope took the top spot for the home with the highest percentage drop in price. The 44 Prospect Park West home dropped $300,000 and now is on the market for just under $650,000, according to the study."

From Housing Finance. "In the latest National Multifamily Housing Council’s Rent Payment Tracker, which draws on collection data for 11.5 million professionally managed apartment units, 75.4% of apartment households made a full or partial rent payment by Dec. 6. This is a 7.8 percentage point drop from the share who paid rent through Dec. 6, 2019, equivalent to 894,864 households, and compares with 80.4% of renters who paid rent by Nov. 6, 2020."

"'It should not come as a surprise that a rising number of households are struggling to make ends meet,' says Doug Bibby, NMHC president. 'As the nation enters a winter with increasing COVID-19 case levels and even greater economic distress—as indicated by last week’s disquieting employment report—it is only a matter of time before both renters and housing providers reach the end of their resources.'"

From Arlington Now in Virginia. "Question: Have you seen a decrease in condo values with all the inventory currently on the market? Answer: One point I’d like to make prior to sharing the data findings is that the data is based on condos that have sold/closed, and there are many condos still sitting on the market or under contract that won’t show up in this analysis. The market has also worsened (for sellers) each month since July, so properties that went under contract in July/August likely did better than those later on in the year. Therefore, it’s likely that, as the units close that are currently struggling to sell or just now coming to market, the data will get worse (larger decrease in values)."

The Herald Tribune in Florida. "About 5.5% of Sarasota-Manatee mortgage loan borrowers are 30 or more days delinquent on their mortgages, according to CoreLogic. 'Borrowers who fell behind on their mortgages early this year continue to move through the delinquency funnel,' CoreLogic said."

"In September, every state logged an annual increase in overall delinquency rates. For months, popular tourism destinations showed the highest increases, with Nevada (up 4.9 percentage points), Hawaii (up 4.7 percentage points) and Florida (up 4 percentage points) again topping the list for gains in September. Similarly, nearly all U.S. metro areas logged an increase in overall delinquency rates in September."

From Seattle PI in Washington. "November’s Seattle condo market results were quite respectable. By area of the city, all neighborhoods with the exception of West Seattle realized increased median sales prices and most by double digits. West Seattle dipped 9.1% last month. Inventory remained abundant as was noted with a 60.8% year-over-year increase in available units that reflected 799 Seattle condos listed for sale in November. Capitol Hill had nearly doubled its number of condo listings compared to a year ago (+98.9%), with downtown/Belltown and Queen Anne trailing at +69.4% and 67.1%, respectively."

From Chicago Magazine in Illinois. "Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone, and now, home-sellers and developers are cutting their prices too. This Mount Greenwood optical illusion just took a $15,000 price cut, bringing it down to $399,900 worth of cantilevered goodness. (It’s not a huge price cut, but how could I not include this? In exchange, here’s a $485,000 bungalow in the West Town/Smith Park area that’s down $44,000. Oscar Mayer built this golf-course estate for his son in 1967. With a $250,000 price cut, all six beds, nine baths, and 7,500 square feet can be yours for $1.35 million."

From Bisnow California. "Tens of millions of Californians are under new stay-at-home orders lasting into the new year as the coronavirus health crisis worsens. For many in commercial real estate, these shutdowns, while anticipated, will still hit hard. 'It’s just adding more dire consequences on top of preexisting ones since March,' said Donald Wise, senior managing director of commercial real estate investment banking firm Turnbull Capital Group."

"During the pandemic, Wise’s Turnbull Capital Group has zeroed in on providing preferred equity to distressed hotel and resort owners. Wise says requests from hotel and resort owners have increased exponentially each week, and he said he expects to be increasingly busy, as the new shutdowns are set to overlap with many forbearances timing out."

"Property taxes are also coming due for many properties, and many owners are so lacking in liquidity they may not even be able to pay their transient occupancy taxes. For hotels, 'the vast majority of the carnage has not really started yet,' Wise said."

The Wall Street Journal on California. "In the summer of 2018, two newly built, enormous mansions sitting next to each other in a swanky Bel-Air neighborhood represented the peak of Los Angeles’s high-end building boom: One house sought $188 million, the other $180 million. More recently, the neighboring spec mansions have become known for something else: steep price cuts. Last year, the $188 million home sold for just $94 million. And now the $180 million home, built by celebrity plastic surgeon Raj Kanodia, is slashing its asking price to $99 million."

The Houston Chronicle in Texas. "Houston has its fair share of luxury home foreclosures. And another one just hit the market in Sugar Land. The waterfront Mediterranean-style estate in the Lake Pointe subdivision spans more than 3,700 square feet. It's listed at $800,000, down from $929,000. The home at 15402 Oyster Creek Lane in Sugar Land is under foreclosure. The property has been on the market since 2019 and recently saw a price reduction of 14 percent."

From RE/MAX Canada. "Toronto real estate could be in for a change in 2022, if a proposed vacant home tax gets the green light. RE/MAX Executive Christopher Alexander highlights the possible negative impacts of such a tax, which he says 'could deter buyers and further deepen the glut of condos on the market. Furthermore, many of these buyers are hard-working Canadians who purchase a single condo unit as a savings and investment vehicle, to fund things like their children’s education.'"

The Hong Kong Standard. "The owner of a 3,860-sq-ft house at Botanica Bay on Lantau Island lost HK$8.4 million in book value after it was sold for HK$100 million. The saleable area was 4,711 sq ft and the price was HK$ 21,227 per sq ft. The owner had purchased the independent house for HK$107.4 million in 2016 and paid HK$1 million more for the parking space. And a 255-square-foot home at Amoy Garden in Kowloon Bay was sold for HK$4.7 million after a price cut of HK$500,000."

The Wall Street Journal. "China’s household debt ballooned in the first half of the year, rising by about $380 billion, according to new Bank for International Settlements data. That increase was almost four times as large as the second-place U.S. And it compounds one of China’s biggest economic vulnerabilities. The reluctance to cut rates reflects the government’s concerns about previous rounds of let-it-rip credit growth, which have left the housing market displaying telltale signs of rampant speculation."

"Units that could house hundreds of millions of people, equivalent to about a fifth of the urban housing stock, are estimated to be vacant."

The New Zealand Herald. "The University of Auckland has had to offload a boutique Remuera mansion at a massive discount after buying a leaky home for its former vice-chancellor. That meant the university only profited on the rise in land value but made virtually no capital gains on the home itself despite owning it for 16 years through multiple Auckland housing booms."

From Newsroom. "The developers who caused an environmental disaster on an idyllic Fijian island are now being pursued by investors, with some fearing the barely begun development is part of an elaborate scam. About 200 investors are out of pocket after the Fijian government stopped the planned 370-bure resort and casino on Malolo Island - which would have been Fiji's largest - from going ahead, after Newsroom revealed the Chinese backed developers had caused serious environmental damage. The project was described at the time as 'environmental vandalism.'"

"Two groups of investors who paid over at least $35 million now want their money back with the Malolo resort bogged down in legal cases and appearing to have little or no chance of ever being completed. Now, two groups of these investors, one based in Beijing and another in the US, are set to launch separate class action lawsuits against the companies involved after paying up-front for units and never seeing their money again."

"The two groups represent unit-holders based in Beijing, and similar individual investors in the US. Both have engaged lawyers with the intention of filing class action suits, the former specifically against the multiple, franchised agencies employed by Freesoul to sell the units to investors in Beijing.Peter Liu, whose parents paid approximately $200,000 up front for one of the bures in 2018, says none of the investors have seen their cash again, and they have nothing to show for it."

"He spoke privately to the investors who set the chat up, who told him they believed it was likely the project was a 'scam' and the money collected by the agents on behalf of the developments had never left the country."