A report from Business Insider on Florida. "Ken Griffin is selling both of his Miami Beach penthouses for at least a 20% loss, Katherine Kallergis reported for the Real Deal. Griffin bought the two Faena House penthouses in 2015. At the time, the $60 million transaction was the most expensive sale ever in Miami."

From Boston Agent Magazine on Massachusetts. "The MyAffordableLuxury report noted that Boston’s luxury market 'has seen better days,' due to the pandemic. 'According to the Greater Boston Association of Realtors, there is currently a glut of unsold condos in the Downtown area, with inventory levels up 50% Y-o-Y. Might be a great time to snatch a luxury condo in Boston!' according to the report."

The Real Deal on New York. "Right before a foreclosure auction was due to proceed for a loan tied to Wonder Works Construction’s condo project on the Upper East Side, the developer filed a last-ditch motion to stop it. But Justice Jennifer G. Schecter was having none of it. 'The default here predates the pandemic and, since then, [the] plaintiff has been unable to comply with the terms of forbearance agreement,' she wrote in a decision."

"Afterward, the UCC auction went ahead as planned, according to Genghis Hadi, managing principal of the mezzanine lender, New York-based Nahla Capital. Hadi said multiple interested parties had shown up but Nahla ultimately won the auction through a credit bid, which is when the lender bids using debt it is owed."

From Bisnow New York. "Real estate auctions in the U.S. have long been considered a domain of bank foreclosures and little else, but as the coronavirus pandemic increases the need for online transactions — and foreclosure auctions — it has also started to encourage more people to see them as a legitimate way to buy and sell commercial real estate. Buyers still have their doubts, too, Compass Vice Chair Adelaide Polsinelli, a veteran of New York City investment sales, pointed out."

"'It’s easy to get caught up in the competitive excitement of an auction,' Polsinelli said. 'You may be buying a 'pig in a poke' — so how do you congratulate yourself when you just outbid some of the smartest players in the business?'"

"'I think there is likely some kind of place for auctions where you have very difficult pricing discovery, which is never the case in our dense urban markets,' said B6 Real Estate Advisors CEO Paul Massey, a decades-long veteran of the New York City market. 'I don't suspect that a conventional auction … is either in most people's best interests or likely to ever see more velocity than they currently get.'"

From Bisnow Washington DC. "The pandemic has put a strain on midsized real estate companies like Acumen Cos. that own urban apartments, as they have seen vacancy rise with young professional tenants moving home or fleeing to the suburbs. Acumen Cos. Chairman Abiud Zerubabel, whose firm owns about 1,000 apartments in D.C., Maryland, Virginia and Los Angeles, said his portfolio experienced a sharp increase in vacancy in May, June and July as its predominantly millennial tenant base moved out."

"He decided to use this difficult situation as an opportunity to pivot his business model. He shifted from leasing properties primarily to young people with roommates to intentionally targeting families using government-subsidized housing vouchers to fill his buildings. He has now filled his existing portfolio with voucher-holding renters, and he is beginning to acquire properties with high vacancy at discounted prices with plans to fill them up in the same way."

The Californian. "Aleida Ramirez has worked two or three jobs most of her life. She lost all of them in the early stages of California’s shelter-in-place order and over the months that followed, the thousands of dollars she'd been able to save from years of working. October was the first time in her life she missed a rent payment. A dozen distressed tenants gathered in October in front of the property to protest the rent increase and demand management make needed repairs."

"Neither the building’s owner nor Avenue5 Residential, the building’s management company, responded to requests for comment. Clayton’s Crossing qualifies as affordable housing under the federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program. Even if she does convince a landlord to rent to an unemployed single caregiver of two, how would she pay for a security deposit? She says she’s already been fasting to save on food spending; her car’s registration fees are past due."

"'It’s like, which hole do I cover this month?' she asked. So, the U.S. citizen is considering moving to Guatemala, her home country, or Los Angeles, where she has family. 'We’re all in the same boat,' Ramirez said. 'Actually, there’s no boat. I should say we’re all drowning together.'"

From Auto Evolution on California. "If you can afford to buy yourself a mansion during these difficult times, you’re probably looking at new ones. But there’s a 'pre-loved' one with celebrity pedigree that might just be the perfect fit for a respectable car enthusiast. This summer, pop superstar The Weeknd listed his Hidden Hills, California mansion – compound is a more fitting term – for $25 million. That auto gallery with everything else attached just got a considerable price cut, by as much as $3 million."

The Wall Street Journal. "For much of the past decade, the San Francisco Bay Area has strained to absorb the torrid growth of the tech sector. As head counts of highly paid engineers swelled, housing costs soared, traffic gridlock rose and homeless tents spread on city streets. Now a small but prominent roster of tech companies and investors are doing something about it: leaving."

"Keith Rabois, a well-known San Francisco-based venture capitalist moving to Miami was frustrated with declining quality-of-life issues like homelessness and the state’s relatively high taxes, among other issues, and he realized he could do his job well from afar. 'It became clear there were much better places to live,' he said."

The Columbian in Washington. "Clark County’s constrained housing supply shows no signs of loosening, according to the latest report from the Regional Multiple Listing Service. Sale prices saw a dip in November, although they remain higher than they were a year ago. The average sale price fell from $473,400 in October to $453,000 in November, compared with $416,100 one year earlier. The median price fell from $425,000 in October to $410,000 in November, compared with $384,500 in November 2019."

"The price drop came as a surprise, wrote Mike Lamb, a broker at Windermere Stellar in Vancouver, because the ongoing strong demand has pushed prices higher in previous months. He speculated that the decline might have happened because the region’s inventory is so small and the few homes that were listed in November 'just happened to be less expensive.'"

The Philadelphia Inquirer in Pennsylvania. "Philadelphia property mogul Chris Rahn doesn’t have a corporate office, a business phone number, or a company website. What he does have is a long and low-key record of deals throughout the city that’s earned him a quiet reputation as a wizard of real estate — and, more recently, a growing stack of lawsuits with his name on them. Interviews, legal filings, and a complaint to city prosecutors suggest Rahn might not be the only one who loses when those bets go south."

"Rahn and his business-partner-wife Christine Pasieka and their companies are defendants in at least seven ongoing lawsuits, most by lenders and investors, in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. Rahn and Pasieka are alleged in one to have defrauded their partners on a proposed Hilton hotel near the Pennsylvania Convention Center out of $1 million. In another, a Rahn company is accused of borrowing more than $1 million from an 88-year-old New Jersey woman and never paying her back."

"'I think what he tries to do is take advantage of people,' said Lisa Solanke, unhappy about her own real estate dealings with Rahn."

"He had less luck with the three-acre site that had been part of the recently decommissioned St. Joseph’s Hospital at 16th and Girard Streets, which he acquired from the North Philadelphia Health System in 2015 for $3.5 million. Rahn built a complex of three adjoining apartment buildings, each with 40 units, at the property. But he has not been able to get Philadelphia Water Department clearance to connect two of those buildings to the city’s water grid because the project had been built without rain-permeable paving stones required to help prevent flooding during storms."

"He told inspectors in early 2019 that the correct material would be installed within six weeks but still has not, a Water Department spokesperson said. Rahn said that officials had approved his original plans without flood-prevention measures, so it was unfair to require him to implement them now. In the meantime, the revenue-starved project’s main mortgage has been refinanced at least four times in what appears to be an effort to stave off foreclosure. Those efforts now may be coming up short."

From Honolulu Civil Beat in Hawaii. "I am now in my seventh year of serving as one of nine members of the state’s Land Use Commission. The LUC is responsible for moving land from Hawaii’s conservation and agricultural districts into the urban district — for housing and other purposes. Each fall, in the lead up to the opening of the next legislative session, developers and their lobbyists and allies start to squawk about our 'housing crisis!' They then, under the guise of creating affordable housing, propose projects that will fatten them."

"Here are the three myths I hear most often at the LUC. Myth: We don’t have enough, or build enough, housing. Truth: As the pandemic took hold and tourism shut down, it became clear that the over 80,000 newly vacant visitor units in the state were far more than what was needed to house our homeless population, which was estimated to be around 6,500 statewide in 2020."

"Even in non-COVID times, the vacancy rate at the high end of the residential market is significant. Think of all the dark windows in luxury buildings across Hawaii. A 2019 survey of Hawaii property owners with out-of-state addresses indicated that 52% of them left their units vacant or loaned them to family or friends."

"I am not suggesting we commandeer those units, but they disprove the claim we don’t have or build enough homes. We actually do OK at building housing – take a look at the Kakaako skyline – just not housing that most residents can afford."