A report from the Real Deal on Florida. "John Rosatt sold his waterfront mansion in Fort Lauderdale’s Las Olas Isles for $7 million, nearly five years after putting it on the market. He bought the home in 2015 for $12 million and listed it for $11.95 million the next year. He even hosted a live auction of the house in 2018. The most recent listing price was $7.5 million in August."

The New York Post. "The Astor Suite at the Plaza hotel is back on the market for $19.95 million, down from its original $55 million in 2008. The current asking price also marks a loss. Fashion billionaire Jürgen Friedrich and his wife bought this suite for $25.49 million in 2007. In 2017, Friedrich slashed the price to $39.5 million. Sources tell The Post that Friedrich stands to lose even more money on the deal, since he invested around $8 million into renovating the residence along with a one-bedroom guest apartment next door."

From Bloomberg on New York. "New York’s real estate market started 2021 with a whimper. Rents in Manhattan and Brooklyn had the steepest year-over-year drop on record in January, according to StreetEasy. Home prices in January also showed major declines compared to a year prior. 'Inventory has been at record highs, and buyers have had more options,' says Nancy Wu, an economist at StreetEasy. 'What’s happening now is that sellers seem to be coming to terms with the fact that there’s record inventory on the market, and unless they reduce prices significantly, it won’t sell.'"

"This oversupply, Wu says, is particularly pronounced in the luxury tier, which StreetEasy pegs at over $3.7 million. 'There’s 25% more inventory than last year in the luxury tier,' she says. 'This glut of inventory means that prices have even more room to fall, which would then lead to more contracts. So it’s a pretty busy market right now.'"

The Universal Hub on Massachusetts. "Perhaps the biggest reason why rents haven’t tanked in East Boston and elsewhere is that landlords have been creative with incentivizing renters. Vacancy rates in Downtown increased by 2600% while in outer Boston and the Suburbs, the effects were lightly felt, East Boston included. In February of last year, the East Boston vacancy rate was 1.19%, about the same as the city’s vacancy rate of 1.24%. Now the vacancy rate sits at 3.78%, while the city’s vacancy rate is an unthinkable 5.57%."

"These short term uncertainties are fueling landlords to really lower the barrier of entry for renters. We’ve seen landlords offering no or reduced fees for a majority of listings, and we’ve even seen incentives for as much as 3 months rent for free to begin a lease."

From Patch Illinois. "Chicago is among the cities to see the steepest decline in rent prices. In the past year, the cost of rent has decreased by 12.5 percent in the city. Jenna Weinerman, vice president of marketing for moving concierge app Updater, said for the first time in four years, more people moved out of Chicago than in. Some city landlords have been offering big perks, including up to five months of free rent for new leases, to attract renters, Ericka Rios, cofounder of Downtown Apartment Company, told the Chicago Tribune."

From Reuters on California. "San Francisco was already a land of unaffordable housing before the coronavirus hit, with the median single-family home price still hovering above $1.5 million even as of December thousands of residents are leaving the Golden Gate city. Data from high-tech sources like cellphone location trackers to old-school change-of-address forms have started to put some scale around the reversal of fortune the City by the Bay now faces, with anywhere from 1.5% to perhaps 3% of its population exiting for surrounding counties or other states over the past year. Housing prices are beginning to follow suit."

"'The Bay Area is hurting,' cellphone data firm Unacast said in an analysis concluding that about 46,000 people had left the Bay Area’s 10 counties, with more than 13,000 leaving San Francisco itself. 'The exodus from both city centers and Silicon Valley is very real,' and may have resulted in a blow to local incomes of around $12 billion."

"In San Francisco it meant a nearly 7% drop in the median home price from November to December, a 23% decline in rents over the year, and a 15-year high in available condominiums, according to data posted online by Norada Real Estate Investments. Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank President Esther George said she saw a 'worrying scenario' if jobs, population, and work locations reshuffle to such a degree that homeowners cannot pay mortgages and businesses can’t afford leases."

"'Any significant change in the location of economic activity, regardless of its specific form, has the potential to significantly affect the valuations of residential and commercial real estate,' George said, with implications, for example, to the stability of financial institutions."

From Willamette Week in Oregon. "Parking data shows Portlanders are staying out of downtown. One reason downtown Portland feels so deserted: Its renowned dining scene remains largely shuttered. Another key indicator of how hard the industry has been hit can be found in liquor sales. In Multnomah County, sales to licensees, i.e., bars and restaurants, plummeted 86% from December 2019 to December 2020. In Portland's central city, average rents are dropping. Perhaps we're seeing the first effects of a construction boom that started four years ago."

"But here's another theory: People are still moving to Portland from out of state, but they'd rather not live too close to the tear gas."

From My Northwest in Washington. "Local business owner Joey Rodolfo has lived and worked in Seattle for nearly four decades. But after a year that saw property destruction and crime escalate in the downtown core, he decided it was time to pack up and move his company to Arizona. For those still in Seattle, he remains concerned that tensions could come to a head sooner rather than later."

"'My wife and I have a condo downtown, and I will tell you, we have talked to plenty of people that live in the neighborhood that are sick and tired of being sick and tired,' he described. 'It’s a point of no return in the near future. My belief right now that our city is circling the drain, and it’s going to take something dramatic to turn this thing around.'"