It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "A moratorium on evictions is forcing small landlords on Long Island to run up credit card balances, take out loans and default on their own bills. 'They keep extending the court date, keep extending the court date. You know what?' said landlord Syed Hassan, who used a loan and credit card to pay his landlord $11,500. 'I ran out of money. I have no money.'"

"Boston hotels were decimated by the coronavirus pandemic last year. Average room rates declined 40% to $168.97 in Seaport and South Boston-area ZIP codes, according to STR, while average RevPAR dipped to $55.45, a 76% drop-off from 2019. 'I’ve never seen anything drop that much in my 16 years in Boston,' said Michael Jorgensen, managing director of the yet-to-open Omni Boston Hotel at the Seaport. 'Even in ‘09 and ‘10, it didn’t drop that much.'"

"For all the talk of workers fleeing pricey coastal cities such as New York and San Francisco, one of the most troubled spots in the U.S. commercial real estate market is deep in the heart of Texas. Houston ended last year with a 24% office-vacancy rate, the highest of any major U.S. city, according to Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. After years of construction to accommodate an oil boom that’s now gone bust, buildings are sitting empty, values are plunging and mortgage defaults are piling up."

"'Houston unfortunately has been hit by a double Black Swan event,' said Russell Ingrum, senior partner of the Texas capital markets group at CBRE Group Inc. Two Westlake Park, a two-tower campus in the area, that was valued at $124 million in 2014 sold in December for $19.25 million -- an 84% drop in value."

"The plunge in oil prices in 2014 and again in 2020 upended a speculative construction boom in Houston, said Patrick Jankowski, senior vice president for research at the Greater Houston Partnership. 'It was a bit of a bubble in 2014,' Jankowski said. 'As the energy sector let go of space, it was hard to offset that loss.'"

"Even though 2020 was not a disaster for condo owners in Metro, a record number of units are now for sale. Condos in the ghostly downtown of Vancouver have struggled the most, with the benchmark price now at $641,000, down more than 11 per cent in three years.The state of limbo is also hanging over Greater Toronto. The typical condo price, $579,000, is down $21,000 from its peak at the beginning of COVID-19. The current state of uncertainty has many Canadian condo owners stretched to their financial limit."

"Metro Vancouver owners are paying 54 per cent more to own than rent, says real estate analyst Stephen Punwasi. Condo owners in Toronto pay an even bigger premium; 86 per cent. Since Punwasi believes condo markets in Greater Vancouver and Toronto are inflated in a worrying way, he warns the cost gap reveals 'what kind of premiums people are paying for a lottery ticket.'"

"The chickens have come home to roost for property owners in Kiambu County. After years of speculative buying and hoarding, investors have found themselves stuck with vast parcels but no buyers to match their exaggerated prices. The speculation was driven by insurance companies, savings and credit societies (Saccos), land buying companies and other investors who now find themselves stuck with high volumes of un-serviced and subdivided plots that they cannot offload in the current property market."

"'We have seen the Kilimani and Kileleshwa markets move from steep price growth, in all ways a price boom, until it reached levels that buyers could no longer reach, with the roadblocks in mortgage finance and reduced liquidity from a global pandemic,' said HassConsult Head of Development Consulting and Research Sakina Hassanali. 'Against this backdrop, the loading of extra costs onto developers, as soaring land prices and sky high finance costs, has served in shifting developers to create smaller apartments with lower price tags to allow buyers to continue to access their products at a price that works for both buyer and seller. This shift in supply has led to suburb wide apartment repricing.'"

"Landlords of Hong Kong’s 'Ginza-style'high-rises are struggling to retain tenants as restaurants and bars – normally their bread and butter – battle to stay afloat during the pandemic. Four such buildings were largely empty when the Post visited on Tuesday. 'Eateries can only open until 6pm and can only do business in the lunch hour, but since many people are working from home now, lunch-hour sales have been greatly affected,' said Jeannette Chan Wing-wai, senior director of retail at JLL in Hong Kong. 'You can’t replace those sales with takeaways.'"

"One stat that has changed is the number of New Zealanders who now own more than one home and share their time between them. As a boomer, I look across my peers and many of them own several homes. They are not putting their unoccupied dwellings into the letting pool. They are just enjoying their nomadic lifestyle as they migrate from one residence to the next, empty-nesters building a legacy of empty homes."

"According to the last census, there are more unoccupied dwellings in Auckland today than in London, a city with five times the population. In Queenstown nearly a third of dwellings lie unoccupied. The small return they might make in rental income is immediately brushed aside in the expectation that the property will return two to three times tax-free capital gain over the ensuing 10 years. It’s the same thinking that drives a ponzi scheme."

"Moreover, the easily acquired wealth for this generation spills over to their offspring. Making money is simple, parents assert, passing on their wisdom. Just climb aboard the same guaranteed wealth gravy train. Even prices that fall under the hammer at auction are not a true reflection of market value. There’s a compelling argument that the banks set the prices for entry level houses by how much they’re prepared to lend a first-home buyer more anxious to secure a set of keys than worry about the quantum obligation they have just taken on."

"There are many highly developed places in the world where house prices seldom exceed general inflation, where security of tenure can be obtained with realistic rentals that don’t require taking on gargantuan personal debt, relying on price growth to make any sense. Begs the question — are we buying to put a roof over our heads or have we become blindingly besotted with a highly leveraged gamble?"

"Of course, artificially low interest rates have encouraged the ponzi scheme. Covid may have been the trigger for the recent plunge in rates but with lots of cash sloshing around, no-one should be surprised where it might head. We’ve even allowed it to inculcate our language, using terms like 'property ladder,' as though this is a fail-safe form of investment, regardless of what size mortgage you take on. And while we’re on language, isn’t home ownership a misnomer? It’s the bank who is the true owner. Try missing a few repayments and see who really owns the property."

"As long as Government is expanding the money supply, there’s a cogent argument for salting money into hard assets. But as a society we have to realise we can’t play monopoly with one of life’s essential pyramidal needs. There’s no free lunch. Government has to be bold enough to unravel the threats of runaway demand, and not just seek an answer in more housing supply. If it doesn’t act to curb demand, the risk is the market will make the call. In which case, shelter could go the way of Dutch tulips and all ponzi schemes."