A report from the Herald Tribune in Florida. "It is time to address the elephant in the room – are we in the midst of a housing bubble? While home prices have climbed at an accelerated pace over the recent months, this is driven almost entirely by the economic principle of supply and demand. Prior to the crash, builders, both large and small, were highly leveraged and building on speculation that the demand would catch up to their growing inventory of homes."

"Today, however, the builders that survived that tumultuous time learned valuable lessons and are less leveraged and resistant to building large amounts of inventory beyond what their current demand requires. In fact, most builders would acknowledge that, due to labor and supply constraints, they cannot keep up with the demand for new construction brought about by the limited supply of resale homes."

From KOAA in Colorado. "Rising construction costs are a major contributor to the lack of affordable housing in the Pikes Peak region, giving nonprofit home builders a new set of hurdles to clear. Lewis Medina’s been the CEO of Pikes Peak Habitat for Humanity for a bit now. 'With this affiliate, six and a half years,' Medina said. 'When I started here in the Springs, we had fully developed lots for like $22-28,000. Fully developed lots now are running at a minimum $69-100,000. As a non-profit, we have to raise all those funds to get the land.'"

From Builder Online. "It should not be a surprise to anyone who pays attention to the home building industry that one of the biggest issues facing builders in all areas of the country is the lack of vacant developed lots (VDLs). In 2009 at the height of the last housing downturn, the Atlanta market area had over 150,000 VDLs available during a time when we were starting less than 10,000 houses per year. Even today it appears on paper that we have too many lots on the ground."

"In new-home neighborhoods in the metro area where sales are experiencing rates in excess of four units per month, there are only 3,481 lots available; sales rates of three to four per month have 8,230 lots available; sales rates of two per month have 9,290 lots available; sales rates of one have 12,569 lots available. The remaining 19,000 lots are in new-home neighborhoods with zero sales in the past year, making them essentially non-marketable."

"The main reason these lots/neighborhoods experience no activity is due to them having been developed before the Great Recession in locations not close to traditional employment centers. If you remove these lots from the inventory, the months of supply drops to 20 months and puts Atlanta in the same boat as most other markets across the country—battling a shortage of lots."

The Orange County Register in California. "Bad news: California home prices look bubblish. Good news: Values don’t have to crash painfully to correct the overpricing. Californians were left with understandable scars after the Great Recession shredded psyches, careers, checkbooks and net worths. But that doesn’t mean every time homebuyers get a little nutty — a well-documented California habit — sharp and swift price declines must follow."

"The past year’s surprisingly strong home prices in a pandemic-tattered economy were unnerving. It was a surge propelled primarily by historically low mortgage rates that helped balloon house hunters’ urge for larger living spaces due to revamped coronavirus lifestyles."

"'Bubble' means the price of an asset has exceeded its underlying value. Nobody has clearly explained to me how housing will remain unscathed after the virus is knocked down and the bargain financing disappears — even if the Federal Reserve gives plenty of warning, as it’s promising."

The Los Angeles Times in California. "Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union are still shooting for a sale in Sherman Oaks, cutting the price of their Mediterranean-style mansion to $6 million. That’s the same price they paid in 2018, records show."

From Motley Fool on California. "Yawar Charlie has made his mark in two different careers: as an actor and a real estate agent. He combined those two on the CNBC show Listing Impossible, where agents work to convince clients to follow their plan to make difficult million-dollar properties sell. 'The great thing about working on Listing Impossible is that it's a very accurate portrayal of what it takes to sell real estate in Los Angeles. When you work in the ultra-luxury market, inevitably there's going to be challenges with selling that home. Our show accurately depicts the challenges of selling homes that have been sitting on the market or are problematic in other ways.'"

"'You probably know that real estate has long been the playground for the rich and well connected. And with a set of unfair advantages that are completely unheard of with other investments, it’s no surprise why. But those barriers have come crashing down - and now it’s possible to build REAL wealth through real estate at a fraction of what it used to cost, meaning the unfair advantages are now available to individuals like you.'"

From 48 Hills in California. "Heather Knight, the Chron City Hall columnist, is the latest on the Yimby bandwagon: Her piece this week argues that San Francisco is 'one of the most conservative cities in California' when it comes to housing. If, as the free-marketeers argue, more supply will bring down prices, the problem will just get worse: Unless you can bring down the cost of land, building materials, and labor (and I am not in any way in favor of bringing down the cost of labor by using non-union, exploited workers) you can’t significantly bring down the cost of new housing in SF. Not enough to matter."

"What does bring down prices? A reduction in demand. We are seeing that now; prices are falling because we are in a pandemic, and people are unemployed, or leaving the city to work remotely somewhere else."

The Times Hub on Canada. "COVID-19 prompted philanthropist Sophie Desmarais to leave Montreal. The youngest daughter of the late Paul Desmarais has just sold her penthouse at the Ritz-Carlton for $ 11 million – shattering a Quebec record for a sale on the real estate brokers’ MLS system. Surprisingly, Sophie Desmarais did not make any profit with this transaction. She had spent $ 11 million to acquire the property in 2016 and was asking for $12.9 million. 'It’s like that,' she sighs."

From Moose Jaw Today in Canada. "It was a 'crazy year' for real estate last year, according to the Saskatchewan Real Estate Association’s economic analyst. The largest average market price increase, 7.7 per cent, was in Moose Jaw. Median home prices in this city jumped 68.8 per cent from a pandemic low of $177,450 to $269,500 by year’s end."

"Among major markets, median home price in Regina increased 1.8 per cent to $277,000 from $266,000. Saskatoon median home price went up 5.2 per cent to $333,000 from $316,500. Swift Current prices fell 20.8 per cent to $237,500 from $300.000. Yorkton prices fell 28.1 per cent to $175,000 from $243,000. Melfort prices fell 30.3 per cent to $170,000 from $246,000. Estevan median price dropped 13.2 per cent to $130,000 from $150,000 while Weyburn ran down 3.2 per cent to $164,250 from $169,750."

From Kent Live in the UK. "Sometimes no matter what you do you just can't sell a property - even if there really isn't very much wrong with it. The last year or so has been incredibly difficult for everyone, particularly for those trying to sell their homes. Its no wonder then, that sellers are slashing asking prices on homes across Kent in a bid to make them stand out to house hunters."

"In many cases estate agents have reduced prices of some homes by more than 20 per cent. And others have had their prices cut by a third. Here are some of the properties in Kent sellers have been slashing the price on in the hopes of getting them to sell."

From Forbes. "Good luck being a vacation-home buyer in 2021 in the U.S. Ironically, we paint an entirely different picture here in expat-friendly Mexico, particularly in San Miguel de Allende, in the very heart of Central Mexico. The vacation- and second-home market here has been over-supplied for two years, with the Covid-19 pandemic only exacerbating an already depressed market that began in early 2019."

"Our current six years of for-sale inventory in a fly-in-only market during an airplane-averse pandemic has decimated prices with discounts reaching as much as 25% from spring 2020 pricing in previously high-demand locations. AMPI Mexico reported that while 2019 sales were down 35% from the year prior, 2020 sales dropped even more. The upshot? San Miguel is clearly a buyers’ market."

From Bloomberg. "Signs of bubbles are everywhere as stock prices jumped by a magnitude not seen since the dot-com era, new share listings boom, and Bitcoin, though volatile, continues its generally upward climb. But if company earnings fall short of expectations or the vaccine rollout falters, there’s a risk markets will lurch as investors take money off the table."

"'There is no escaping that if you enhance liquidity dramatically, the money will go in search for yield and certainly can expose assets to mispricing,' says Agustín Carstens, general manager of the Basel, Switzerland-based Bank for International Settlements, the so-called bank for central banks. 'This is a risk and something that needs to be recognized and that needs to be watched very, very carefully.'"

"As of Dec. 31, $17.8 trillion in debt was trading with a negative yield. Governments from Australia to Spain were effectively getting paid to borrow. Junk bonds in the U.S. were trading at yields similar to those of investment-grade corporate debt that priced just two years earlier. When Peru sold a debut 100-year bond in November, the instrument became the lowest-yielding security of such maturity ever issued by the government of a developing economy."

"Even if things do work out as currently envisaged, there are risks. Japan is an example of the kinds of challenges that crop up if monetary policy remains stuck in place for a long time. Another weakness highlighted by Japan’s ­generation-long experiment with ultra-easy monetary settings is that the quantitative easing has undermined longer-term productivity by propping up businesses that probably should’ve been allowed to fail. That’s what happens when governments and companies can borrow so cheaply that there’s no incentive to make structural fixes that inflict short-term pain such as job losses."

"'Central banks [in advanced economies] are in a global liquidity trap,' says Jerome Jean Haegeli, chief economist at the Swiss Re Institute in Zurich. 'The liquidity bazooka buys time and pushes up asset prices but has zero value in improving economic trend growth. Like a black hole, once you are in it, it is extremely difficult to get out. That’s where we are in central banking, we are in a liquidity black hole.'"