A report from Auction.com. "The great promise of short sales and other distressed pre-foreclosure sales as a foreclosure alternative is most fully realized in a competitive and transparent online auction marketplace, according to the Auction.com Market Validation Program (MVP) for pre-foreclosure sales. It’s important to put short sales and other pre-foreclosure sales on the front burner of foreclosure prevention strategy as the mortgage servicing industry works through the millions of mortgages that are delinquent and in forbearance as a result of the 2020 recession."

From Mansion Global on New York. "Manhattan’s high-end real estate market saw an unseasonably strong performance, according to a report from Olshan Realty. Beth Benalloul of Corcoran, who represented the developer of the 1010 Park Avenue apartment said 'the market in general is better and we have been aggressively telling people we are working with pricing.' On Friday, the sponsor lowered asking prices on three other units, with discounts ranging from 18% to 30%."

From KSNV in Nevada. "The calendar may play a factor in easing tight inventory around the Las Vegas valley, as homeowners in forbearance will need to make some decisions about keeping their homes or putting them on the market. 'We know there is shadow inventory that will be hitting the market eventually, because of homes that are in forbearance,' said longtime Las Vegas realtor Pam Junge, who says Nevada is second in the nation behind Hawaii for distressed homeowners and forbearance numbers."

"'Forbearances are starting to expire. Most banks were giving people three-month charges up to one year, and we are approaching that one year mark very fast,' she said. While no one wants to speculate on a housing bubble in the future, Las Vegas Realtors President Aldo Martinez says the Las Vegas real estate market has shown great resilience over the past two decades. 'Real estate has always been able to sustain itself, even in the worst market. In 2006 and ’08, we were setting records selling. Even though it was bank-owned, people were still buying it.'"

From Bisnow Washington DC. "Apartment rents in the D.C. area experienced the sharpest drop in decades last year, with the District feeling the most pain, but developers continued to break ground on new projects. 'In the fourth quarter, it does seem like the bottom fell out a little bit,' JPMorgan Asset Management Managing Director Allina Boohoff said. 'There were a lot of deliveries in D.C. proper that were counting on new college graduates, new people coming in, that were just frankly not there.'"

From Realtor.com. "Rents fell in 37 of the nation's 100 largest counties in December, according to realtor.com®'s monthly rent report. Rental prices are plummeting the most in the highest-priced tech hubs. 'San Francisco is resilient and the demand will be there in the future, but some landlords are really struggling to fill their apartments,' says Charley Goss, at the San Francisco Apartment Association."

"Across Chicago, landlords have been trying to tempt renters with price reductions and months of gratis rent. But there are some types of housing that are sitting empty longer than others. While townhouses and duplexes with courtyards are still clamoring for tenants, units with direct-entry from the outdoors are getting rented out a bit faster than the glut of brand-new apartments and condos in The Loop."

"With an influx of new units built over the past half-decade—3,000 in just the past three years alone—Honolulu and greater Oahu have been experiencing rent decreases for the past half-decade. Then the pandemic hit. This disrupted the tourism industry, leading many furloughed or unemployed hospitality workers to leave town. Their empty apartments added to the glut on the market."

"Landlord woes in Boston didn’t stick to just the south side of the Charles River. Like many of the higher education institutions in the metropolitan area, elite Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the wealthy county's Cambridge have gone remote. That means that the rentals normally occupied by students are empty."

From Remax in Canada. "In 2020, the unthinkable occurred: the red-hot Toronto condo market experienced an unforeseen downturn. Units in the sky suffered a setback – something that nobody would have envisioned at the start of the year. The real estate industry has often discussed buyer’s fatigue, but a new phenomenon arose in this challenging market: seller’s fatigue. Some condo owners were unable to either rent their units or sell them – even at deep discounts – in a market that was witnessing a rapid injection of supply."

From The Guardian in the UK. "Stretching across a 230-hectare riverside swath from Vauxhall Cross to Battersea Power Station, straddling the boroughs of Lambeth and Wandsworth, the Vauxhall Nine Elms Battersea (VNEB) 'opportunity area' has been trumpeted as the biggest regeneration project in Europe. With around 5,000 homes completed over the past five years, and a further 15,000 in the pipeline, the new district has all the makings of a similarly exclusive fiefdom, an international investors’ playground where regular Londoners are pushed to the very edges, or cut out of the picture altogether."

"VNEBis a place where penthouses with private chapels and running tracks loom above crumbling council estates across the railway line, where scores of flats lie empty, held by secretive shell companies in off-shore tax havens, and where the division between absentee investors and owner-occupiers confined to poor doors could not be more stark. Dogged by allegations of cronyism and gerrymandering, it is the product of politicians in thrall to property developers, driven by a blind faith in the market – even when investors started to realise that they might have bought into a mirage."

"In one snapshot, looking at an agency that listed 35 new-build properties for sale during an eight-month period, the constant relisting made it look as if there were in fact 368 properties for sale. Rather than roughly £50m in market value of apartments advertised, the distortion would have made it appear as more than £500m. In another example, a £3.6m flat was re-listed 15 times in six months, making it seem like the average asking price in the area was skyrocketing."

"Hundreds of luxury flats in Battersea and Nine Elms were continually being listed for sale, then taken down and immediately relisted. It was being done at such frequency across so many developments that it distorted the market across the whole area. 'It gave the impression that there was not only a lot of activity,' said Propcision’s director, Michelle Ricci-Zak, 'but that the average price in that area was going up – when actually we proved it was going down.'"

"The manufactured flurry also gave the impression to potential buyers that flats were 'flying off the shelves,' she said, when in fact the developers were struggling to offload them. The reality was that they were selling off homes in bulk at steep discounts to corporate landlords and institutional investors, with prices slashed by up to 38%."

"'If you buy prime property in London,' said Ling Zhang, a Chinese investor who has acquired a handful of new-build apartments in the capital in recent years, 'you want it to feel like London – not China. I also think there are far too many identical ‘luxury’ apartments being built in the same location for it to be a good investment. Chinese buyers are very concerned about location, and we mostly prefer north of the river, close to the universities. Many people send their children to London to study, then rent out the apartments when they graduate.'"

"Henry Pryor, a prime property buying agent, is frank: 'I’d rather buy a flat in Wuhan than Nine Elms today.'"

The Globe and Mail. "GameStop shares shares sank on Tuesday and a silver buying spree led by small investors subsided as a Reddit-driven trading frenzy that has shocked global financial markets over the past week started to show signs of fizzling out. Analysts said the silver pullback may show the limits of small investors’ impact in a large market, while posts on the popular Reddit forum WallStreetBets expressed concern that silver buying could cost traders their grip on some stocks."

"Reddit moderators had on Tuesday removed one of the most popular posts suggesting buying silver and many WallStreetBets posts focused on riding out the volatility. 'WHO IS HOLDING GME WITH ME?' read one top post. 'I’M HOLDING EVEN IF MY PORTFOLIO GOES DOWN TO ZERO,' read another."