A report from Mansion Global on New York. "Of the 16 contracts signed on homes asking $4 million or more in the week ending Sunday, seven were for trophy homes with eight-digit price tags, according to a luxury market roundup from Olshan Realty. Big price cuts continued to lure in buyers. The average luxury home last week was discounted 18% before going into contract. The second-highest deal was for a two-bedroom apartment at The Ritz Tower. The sprawling unit went into contract asking $24.5 million—down nearly 38% from its original $39.5 million asking price."

From Patch Massachusetts. "Did you see our story on Tewksbury's most-expensive house listing last week and decide $4 million was too much for you? Well you're in luck: the price dropped $1 million in the two weeks since."

The Los Angeles Times in California. "Herbet Wertheim must’ve really liked what he saw in Rancho Santa Fe. He just dropped $23 million on a 33-acre estate. The posh community’s previous record had stood for two decades after a 25-acre estate just down the street traded hands for $22 million in 2000, records show. He tried to sell the place for $60 million in 2015, but with no takers, ended up donating it to UC San Diego. The school’s governing board soon put it back on the market, most recently offering it for $30 million in September."

The Denton Record Chronicle in Texas. "The evidence overwhelmingly points to a housing bubble in North Texas. The only real question is the severity of the disconnect. It is worth noting that Denton County has 16,000 fewer people with jobs. It would be easy to assume that anyone selling a home in the current market must be making money. That’s not exactly true. Over on the north side of Denton in the community of Beaver Creek, one unfortunate home seller apparently unloaded a home in 2020 for over $10,000 less than what they paid in 2017."

"This LGI Homes community has a heavy investor presence. One of Wall Street’s biggest landlords, American Homes 4 Rent, owns 49 of the 339 properties in the neighborhood. When you leverage up to purchase a home with no money down, it can be tough to sell your home later when owner occupancy levels are low relative to the surrounding market."

From SW News Media in Minnesota. "Joseph Boehmer personally owns and rents out six properties within Scott County with eight total tenants. He also manages approximately 80 properties throughout the metro area spanning into Carver, Washington, Hennepin, Le Seur and a few other counties. A couple of his tenants are just a few weeks behind as they’re now receiving smaller unemployment checks and three of them haven’t paid their rent since the shutdowns in March, he said."

"'You’re talking five months of trying to pay your mortgage while you’re not receiving any money,' Boehmer said. 'There's no recourse.' If a tenant’s unable to pay rent, he takes on the late charge from his mortgage company."

"'I’m going to take a hit and make sure my tenant doesn't see it or recognize it because I can't keep piling stuff. It's kind of like a credit card situation, if you just keep piling stuff on them they’re eventually going to quit. It's one of those things where you just kind of give up and then what do we do? We’re at the point of no return,' he said."

From Bisnow Washington DC. "An Alexandria office building has sold to a buyer that plans to turn it into condos, the latest in a string of office-to-residential conversions in Northern Virginia. The buyer plans to convert the vacant office building into a 54-unit condo project. The project is one of at least seven office-to-residential conversion projects to move forward in Northern Virginia over the last two years. The most recent one came Monday, when PRP announced it closed the financing to convert the office building at 4900 Seminary Road in Alexandria into 213 luxury apartments."

"Northern Virginia has led the region in the office-to-residential conversion trend, as it has a large number of old, vacant office buildings with a relatively low cost basis, but experts say rising vacancy in the District could spur more conversions in the downtown office market."

From Multi-Housing News. "The self storage sector ended 2020 on a high note, with notable improvement in street rate performance across the country. Although development activity maintained a steady pace across the country in December, a total of 23 projects were abandoned. The growing number of abandoned projects might be a sign of a slowdown in construction activity, although this might help oversupplied markets to restore the balance between supply and demand."

The Globe and Mail in Canada. "Apartment vacancy rates in Toronto hit a record high late last year, spiking to 5.7 per cent as demand weakened during the pandemic and sent monthly rents tumbling. All that occurred as a record number of new condo units were completed and Airbnb hosts converted their spaces to long-term rentals when tourism evaporated. Toronto’s ultralow rental vacancy rate and soaring home prices had pushed real estate companies to develop condos and apartments. Last year, 23,000 new condo units were completed in the Toronto region and 22,434 are due this year, according to Urbanation. Many more are in the pipeline."

From Remax Canada. "A year ago, the monthly rent for a typical one-bedroom apartment or condominium in the Toronto real estate market was among of the highest in the world. What a difference a year makes, showing just how quickly a lucrative market can change almost instantly. Mom-and-pop investors have been walloped by the coronavirus pandemic that sent rents plummeting. What seemed like a surefire real estate investment, now weighs on the wallets of condo owners who are looking to rent or sell their units. Many are forced to decide if they can afford to pay more on their mortgage than they collect in rent, or sell the property and endure a loss on their investment."

"As condo towers dominate Toronto and Vancouver’s skylines, tens of thousands of these units are sitting vacant during the COVID-19 public health crisis. Indeed, there might be light at the end of the tunnel, but if the economy fails to recover or the pandemic does not diminish by the summer, the vulnerabilities in Toronto real estate could be exposed."

From Edgeprop Malaysia. "Industry leaders do not foresee the property prices continuing to move downwards as current price has bottomed. Real Estate and Housing Developers Association Malaysia (Rehda) Malaysia president Datuk Soam Heng Choon said the current property price has 'hit the rock bottom.' 'The selling price now is the result of the input cost made of the spiking building material price and additional cost incurred due to the pandemic. All developers want a quick sale so that they can pay the contractors and so on to move the business,' he said."

"Also taking part in the session were Malaysian Institute of Architects (PAM) president Datuk Ezumi Harzani Ismail and Master Builders Association Malaysia (MBAM) deputy president Oliver Wee Hiang Chyn. Ezumi concurred that current property prices are affordable as the pandemic has already adjusted the market. 'Whatever that is overpriced will not work anymore. The pandemic has adjusted the market and what we have now in the market is affordable and matches the income level of the local buyers,' he shared."

"Wee stressed that the property price may not reduce to the level which the market wishes for. 'The selling price is a reflection of the additional construction cost due to the pandemic,' Wee said."

From Domain News in Australia. "A glut of vacant inner-city apartments once used as short-term accommodation has helped push Melbourne rental prices to a four-year low, with new figures showing more than half the short-stay listings in the CBD were withdrawn in the last year. And city agents are warning owners to take any tenant they can get now rather than hoping for a pick-up in demand for short-stay letting."

"As many owners offered empty units for long-term lease, residential rents in the CBD fell by 27.3 per cent in the year to December, to a median $400 per week, on Domain data. Residential vacancy rates in inner-city Melbourne spiked to 14.1 per cent in December, up from 3.3 per cent a year earlier – the highest rate in the country."

"Pawan Sinha runs a short-term rental business and has been forced to slash the number of properties he manages from 112 to 60 in less than a year. 'I had 112 apartments before COVID started that I was using for short stay. One of the operations [in a South Yarra building] we had to permanently shut down,' said Mr Sinha, who is also is a Victorian director of the Australian Short Term Rental Association."

"'The irony is most of those apartments are still available for lease. Releasing [them] to the rental market is not helping [landlords],' he added. Operators who had taken up residential leases were in a 'difficult situation' according to Mr Sinha. While he had been able to secure some rent relief he was unable to request rent reductions or grants available to residential tenants due to the property being used for commercial activity."

"As a result, he’s been forced to return the keys for many properties to agents with unresolved disputes over rent owing, resulting in 26 cases pending before VCAT, with the properties then being re-listed on the longer-term rental market."