A weekend topic starting with News 10 in Oregon. "J.J. Kramer a realtor with John L Scott, said he does not believe that price increases and bidding are perpetuated by realtors. 'The market speaks, it doesn't really have anything to do with the real estate agents, I mean, we are out engaging the field a lot, trying to locate where the good inventory is and trying to price it correctly,' he said. 'None of us--I'm speaking for myself, but I'm pretty sure that my fellow friends would agree--we're not trying to increase the prices.'"

From Summit Daily in Colorado. "'We’re coaching our clients to be ready to go, have their track shoes on,' said Jack Wolfe, broker at LIV Sotheby’s International Realty in Breckenridge. 'We’re just in a situation where if you hesitate, you may not get the home.'"

From Central New York. "Jackie Collins and her husband are looking for a new house, but so far, they haven't had much luck. 'We've put offers on two houses with what we thought were extremely aggressive offers with 20%,' Jackie Collins said. 'But come to find out, all the houses we have put offers in for have gone for $100,000 over asking price.'"

"Stories similar to Jackie's are becoming common. This market is so unique that Paul Pichoske, who has been in the industry for 35 years, said this is uncharted territory. 'I've never seen anything like this. People are putting their houses on the market and the same day getting multiple offers over asking price,' Pichoske said."

"With the Central New York real estate market growing so quickly, Pichoske warns people to use caution. 'If you go back to 2008, to the mortgage crisis, people had bought high, and then they couldn't afford their property anymore. They were in a position where they were negative equity,' Pichoske said."

From Yahoo News on Canada. "One factor at play, realtor Claire Knight notes, that she’s never seen in her 16 years as a realtor, is buyers being unable to find a house. 'Even when they find a house, they’re competing, and they have to pay way over what it’s truly worth; it’s discouraging people,' said Knight."

From Better Dwelling in Canada. "Canadian real estate markets have become such a large bubble, even a crash can’t fix prices. Even an earth shattering 30% crash can’t make these cities affordable for most. First, let’s start with down payments in Gangster’s paradise — Greater Vancouver. At February’s prices, the GVA would require 307 months of savings (31 years) to save the minimum."

"Greater Vancouver real estate prices start to look reasonable with a 30% drop. Only by contrast though. A typical home would take 90 months of savings (8 years) to save the minimum down payment. In Fraser Valley it would take about 68 months of savings (6 years). Keep in mind, this is still just for a typical home. A 30% price drop for detached homes would still need 320 months of savings (26 years) for the minimum down payment."

"Did I forget to mention the mortgage payments aren’t possible for people making those wages? In Vancouver, you currently need to earn at least $147,600 to make the payments on a typical home in February 2020. Over in Fraser Valley, you can get away with $143,700 per year. That’s 44% and 40% higher than the current median household income, respectively."

The Financial Post in Canada. "Canada’s housing market has finally gotten so crazy that it is prompting talk about something almost sacred to homeowners: the tax-free profits they realize when they sell their main residence. Yet for Canadian policymakers, even just thinking about thinking about touching the capital gains tax exemption could leave them with few allies in the real estate industry. 'It will be an atom bomb on the retirement savings of Canada’s vast middle class,' said Tim Hudak, chief executive of the Ontario Real Estate Association."

"The exemption is one of the modern engines of Canadian homeownership and retirement planning, which may keep policymakers steering clear of messing with it in any fashion. 'Every single person says that at the end of the day, if I don’t stay in my own home, I can realize the entire fair market value on a tax-free basis, and then use that money to help fund or supplement my retirement,' said Jamie Golombek, a Financial Post writer."

"A lot of people are also counting on that nest egg to continue to grow. 'Even on the heels of a 15 per cent year-over-year growth, more people than ever have told us that they anticipate prices will go up,” said Paul Taylor, chief executive of Mortgage Professionals Canada. 'And that is a bit of a speculative warning sign, if you like.'"

From Domain News in Australia. "Soaring property prices have caught the attention of the nation’s regulators, but they have emphasised they do not yet see any worrying rise in risky loans. And potential home buyers are piling into the market, with a new survey showing home-buying intentions are at their highest level since 2015. New loans written as interest-only – where the borrower does not have to pay off principal for five years – were 31.2 per cent higher than a year earlier."

"With prices rising, potential buyers have been willing to take on more debt to get into the market, with a 26.3 per cent rise in loans that are at least six times the borrowers’ income over the past year. CBA chief economist Stephen Halmarick said low interest rates and government support for first-home buyers encouraged people into the market despite sky-high prices. 'The most important metric [the RBA] will be looking at is the quality of the lending, making sure its loan-to-valuation ratios are not too high, and people are not taking on too much debt. It’s not the level of debt; it’s the quality of the loans that’s important.'"

From News Hub New Zealand. "The value of houses needs to drop by 55 percent or Kiwis need a 120 percent pay rise for current house prices to be 'affordable', according to analysis. But the Government refuses to admit it. It won't set a target for housing affordability outcomes from its major market intervention. There is an international measure of housing affordability called the median multiple - the ratio comparing the median house price to the median household income."

"The dream is a median multiple of three - affordable - house prices three times incomes. Three to four is classed as moderately unaffordable while four to five is seriously unaffordable, and anything above that is severely unaffordable. New Zealand's rating is off the scale - 6.7, that's countrywide. It's even higher in our big cities. But the Government won't set a target to lower it. One factor: House prices might need to fall, which is politically taboo."

"'Are politicians willing to see house prices go down?' asks economist Brad Olsen. 'Because as much as we'd love to see incomes go up, they're just simply not going to go up fast enough to change this housing crisis.'"

"And if we wanted to shoot for the stars - actually affordable housing - house prices need to drop by 55 percent or we need whopping pay rises of 123 percent - our pay more than doubling. It might happen - pigs might fly - but there's another way. 'We need to stop treating housing as this solid gold un-impenetrable investment that never goes anywhere but up,' says Olsen."

From Stuff New Zealand. "The reported anger of property investors at the Government’s new housing policies, announced last week, is misdirected at best. Under the new law any owner who sells a property that is not their family home within 10 years of purchase after today will pay tax on the profit. That could be as high as 39 per cent, depending on other income and the amount of the profit."

"Investment in existing housing has never made a real contribution to the nation’s economy regardless of how long the properties were held before sale and speculators should always have been paying taxes anyway. The new law does not add to the latter liability. If investors are angry with anyone it should be past administrations which allowed the situation to develop to the level it has. A look in the mirror might also reveal some other culprits as well."

"Investors and speculators in real estate are equal contributors to a ridiculously overheated housing market, and they should have seen these changes, or something similar, coming at them like a freight train at least five years ago. There have been warnings enough that the booming house market would not be allowed to continue without Government intervention. If anything, that intervention has taken too long."

"Howls of protest from property investors, speculators and the real estate industry were also predictable but these social parasites deserve little sympathy when we see rents as high as $700 a week for a basic house and nearly $1million to buy one. Families with well above average incomes had no chance of ever getting out of the rent trap and buying their own home under that system."

"Successive Governments from both sides of the political divide have failed, so far, to adequately address the problem. It has always been too easy to applaud the accumulation of wealth, no matter how it was accumulated, and to blame the poor for their poverty."

"There was no doubt that the housing market needed to be cooled down, rather than extinguished, if we were to see a meaningful reduction in the number of people sleeping in cars and under bridges. If that means a dramatic fall in house prices it will not come soon enough for some, and it will not be the first time speculators have lost capital on unwise investments."