A report from the Flathead Beacon in Montana. "As an affordable housing general contractor, Layne Massie is struggling to reach his goal of bringing reasonably priced homes to the Flathead Valley. The developer’s home prices have jumped an average of $40,000 to $50,000 more in the last year as lumber prices see historic highs. 'We are not able to build affordable housing anymore,' Massie said. 'We’re still building and we’re still selling houses, but they’re not what I would call affordable.'"

"At Big Mountain Builders, a high-end residential construction company, owner Marc Daniels is experiencing similar difficulties. In the past year, his home prices have jumped roughly 30% to 40% because of spiked lumber prices. Montana’s lumber sales were up 15% in 2020, after adjusting for inflation, compared to 2019, according to the report."

From Nevada Public Radio. "Home prices across Nevada continue to soar. 'The primary reason I am not concerned about a crash is lending standards today,' said Jonathan Gedde, CEO of SimpliFi Mortgage. 'There is really no comparison between the lending standards of today's environment and the lending standards in 2006.'"

"Elias Benjelloun, who is with a real estate brokerage firm that has partnered with the city of Las Vegas to increase homeownership in the Black community, said a friend of his was able to buy a home with just $700 down because she got help with the down payment."

"Aldo Martinez, the president of the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors, also doesn't believe there is a housing bubble that will burst, but he is concerned about a couple of trends in the market right now. The first is the price of new homes. He said the appreciation of new homes is concerning. Martinez said he had a client that was shopping for a new home in February, and by the time they got it in April, that price had gone up $132,000."

"'That is so unrealistic to me and my mindset for an appreciation on a home,' he said, 'That hyperinflation on the new home is really concerning to me.'"

"He believes when Las Vegas returns to full employment people who have stayed out of buying and selling because they've been unemployed will return to the market, softening it. 'I think that the biggest blow to homeowners is going to be those who bought new homes during this period of high appreciation,' he said."

"His second concern about the market is the number of people who are ignoring good bids on the homes they're selling to jack up the price. He said of the more than 8,000 homes that moved from being active on the market to being under contract in the last 30 days, more than 1,600 moved back from under contract to active. 'That means that 20 percent of the buyers that are winning the bids after all that frenzy are getting some type of buyers remorse, once that offer is accepted, and they're backing out,' he said, 'Or they're making multiple offers on properties at the same time, which is not a recommended practice.'"

The Brooklyn Reader in New York. "Many people wonder how to move forward and are pessimistic about what the future may hold for themselves and their neighbors. The June 30 deadline for the rent and mortgage moratorium is approaching fast, and if we do not take action, Brooklyn is in for serious trouble. I can personally say that I witnessed thousands of homes in pre-foreclosure and nearly ninety homes per week that were scheduled to be auctioned off at the court in Brooklyn alone."

The Orange County Register in California. "'Builders are moving fast to buy land and get communities opened up as quickly as possible to meet today’s homebuyer demand,' says economist Ali Wolf, who follows the new-home market for Zonda. 'Contrary to the last cycle, home shoppers are armed with a good down payment and great credit scores. But there’s certainly a psychological component as well where people are afraid of missing out.'"

"But Wolf has 'affordability' concerns as the buying spree pinches house hunter’s budgets, noting 'the biggest wildcard remains mortgage interest rates. If interest rates rise too much too quickly, that will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.'"

"Curiously, new homes have recently become an 'affordable' option. In March, the regional new-home median sales price of $570,500 was up only 4% in two years compared with existing homes’ $683,000 median, which was up 27% in two years. Existing condos’ median price was $530,000, up 19% since 2019."

The Globe and Mail in Canada. "New data released by the Canadian Housing Statistics Program show that one in five City of Vancouver property owners own more than one property, with similar levels in Toronto. The report suggests that homeowners who own more than one home – in some cases, three or four, or more – is a growing group and is concentrated in Vancouver and Toronto."

"The data is valuable because it will inform policy, says Andy Yan, director of the city program at Simon Fraser University. He said it brings into question 'filter theory,' which says that the more supply built, the more opportunities for lower income people to move onto the property ladder. The theory doesn’t account for property hoarding, which might have been driving the market in the past year."

"'This latest rush in Canadian residential real estate, is it young people buying their first homes like what happened after the Second World War? Or is this a speculator class adding a second or third property to their hoard?' Yan asked."

"Urban Planning Professor David Hulchanski at the University of Toronto says that in academic circles, the phenomenon of multiple home ownership is not new but it is growing and changing. The old landlords of yesteryear might have run rooming houses as a revenue stream. Today, the options for revenue include short-term rental, or the property might serve for other family members, or they might just be 'safety deposit boxes' in which to store cash."

From The Age in Australia. "Apartment building in Melbourne is set to plummet, with a respected property research company tipping the number of units completed across Victoria to plunge from more than 16,000 this year to just 800 in 2024. With lead-in times for a large apartment complex of up to five years, Charter Keck Cramer forecasts that in 2024 Victoria will build just 4 per cent of the number of apartments completed at the sector’s 2016 peak, when 19,400 were built."

"Rental vacancies in central Melbourne have soared to 8.4 per cent – twice the rate of the broader metro region – with desperate landlords cutting rents below levels seen 10 years ago. Apartment prices too have tumbled, but not as dramatically as rent."

"Developer Ashley Williams said his compan had faced a challenge selling all the apartments in its recently finished Botanic project in Southbank, unlike its house-and-land packages on Melbourne’s northern fringe, which were 'selling like hot cakes.' 'We’ve been working with purchasers to settle those apartments and it’s been a very slow and a very tough process,' he said. 'We’ve got another site just around the corner which we’re ready to start marketing that we’ve put on hold while we deal with leftover stock and wait for market confidence to return.'"

"Mr Williams said the apartment sector was coming off a 'cyclic peak' with many large projects, often built by foreign builders and directly pitched to the overseas market, coming to market and struggling to achieve sales. He said a plunging rate of apartment construction had implications for jobs as well as housing supply."

"'Traditionally, the industry has had a view that slow and steady was best for everyone,' Mr Williams said. 'But the problem when you get these shocks to the cycle, and you have all these people working building apartments and all of a sudden there’s no new jobs, no new projects to take over. Construction jobs then, disappear, fall away.'"