A weekend topic starting with WFAA in Texas. "In the last 12 months, realtors have seen some home values go up 50% in certain areas — almost 10 to 15 times the normal rate. Dallas realtor Courtney Michalek told WFAA that she lost a bidding war for a home on the battlefield of North Texas' lucrative and booming housing market. And the reason why is unheard of in the Lone Star state. 'The seller asked my clients and me to take out their option period,' Michalek said. 'So we lost the deal to someone who waived their option period.'"

"If you don't know what an option period is, it's a specified number of days outlined in a real estate contract that allows the buyer to terminate the contract for any reason. It mainly allows the buyer to do their due diligence on the home, to do desired inspections. Michalek says it's necessary if you're planning on living somewhere long-term or if you're really trying to protect your investment."

"It's not the first time Michalek has seen something like this in recent months, and it won't be the last. 'The house could have issues with the foundation, the roof could be a mess, there could be mold; I mean, the list goes on and on,' Michalek said. 'They want us to say, 'Oh yeah, you should definitely forgo your option, period the house is just fine.' I won't do that.'"

"It's just the latest tale connected to D-FW's housing market that seems to be like the Wild West. Forget investing in stocks; real estate is where people in DFW are putting their money."

The Star Tribune. "As the housing inventory has tightened and prospective buyers scramble to write a winning offer, some turn to the written word — and a vow to love, honor and cherish the property — as a way to flatter the owners, humanize themselves and stand out from the pack in a bidding war. Christina Perfetti began 'earnestly' pursuing a starter home last summer. 'It's like a cover letter, to set yourself apart and show why you are worthy,' Perfetti said."

The Venice Gondolier in Florida. "Builders in new communities from Wellen Park to Lakewood Ranch are releasing lots in small numbers and requiring sealed bids from homebuyers without knowing what the final building cost will be. It pushes frustrated new homebuyers to turn to resales, which further depletes the resale housing supply, already at an all-time inventory low of two weeks. It results in ever escalating prices and multiple bids over list price, be it a $250,000 or $3,000,000 home."

"Since the first of this year, I have sold over a dozen homes, one of which sold at list price, all others over list and within one — eight days. But a housing bubble? I don’t see it. At the beginning of COVID, the government instituted foreclosure forbearance programs for homeowners unable to make their mortgage payments due to layoffs and other causes accruing from the lockdown."

"Nearly 5 million homeowners signed up. Many housing bubble advocates predict a doomsday scenario with foreclosures flooding the market, increasing inventory, deflating prices. However, BlackKnight, a leading mortgage analytics firm reports that as of this month, forbearance programs have fallen to 2.2 million homeowners."

"That does not mean prices are not overheated. They are. Prices are rising too fast. As inflation and/or concerns of inflation rise, I expect the 10-year yield to rise to about 2% and mortgage rates to about 4%; enough to taper, cool down the rate of appreciation, but not stop it."

The Gunnison Country Times in Colorado. "When Vail Resorts purchased Crested Butte Mountain Resort in 2018, it was widely anticipated the move would heat up the real estate market in the Gunnison Valley. Since then, the twin accelerants of a pandemic-inspired exodus from cities and historically low interest rates have combined to create price and sale volume levels that are approaching incandescence."

"Property values are notoriously prone to cyclical boom and bust fluctuations, so predicting where any given market is on the curve is critically important to real estate professionals, policy makers and consumers. The problem they all face is that answers are rooted as much in human behavior as hard data."

"But not all real estate professionals are ready to relax. Ryan Jordi of TAVA Real Estate remembers the last time boom turned to bust. '2008 wasn’t that long ago,' he said. 'Up until that point I remember that sort of euphoria when the ski area sold to the Muellers and everything was going to turn to gold, and then it just crashed. I was justifying it to myself at that time by saying, ‘Of course, everybody wants to live in the most beautiful, desirable place,’ and we all know what happened.'"

"Gunnison County Assessor’s Office Communications Manager William Spicer picked up that thread. 'It collapsed, but along about 2012 it kind of got back to where that trend line would have taken you if there hadn’t been this boom-bust thing going on. What has happened since then far exceeds that old-style, organic growth we’d been seeing for probably decades.'"

"That still does not answer the question: is the current market sustainable, or a bubble waiting to pop? Spicer continued, 'That’s where the discussion should go is to ask, what are the drivers of this kind of behavior? And where does it fit in an underlying economic model? And what does that tell you about whether it is stable or not?'"

"'That part of the market under $500,000, I hate to say it, but I’m worried for my friends and neighbors because there’s just not much available,' Berkshire Hathaway’s Teresa Anderson said. 'When property comes on the market at that price, that doesn’t feel like local housing to me.'"

The Financial Post in Canada. "In February, Tiff Macklem, the Bank of Canada governor, said the following when asked about the housing market: 'We are starting to see some early signs of excess exuberance, but we’re a long way from where we were in 2016-2017 when things were really hot.'"

"That was then. Canada’s house-buying mob can travel a lot of ground in three months. A new assessment by the central bank shows the real-estate frenzy is now probably more extreme than it was four years ago."

"On May 20, the Bank of Canada released its annual Financial System Review (the FSR), which amounts to a checkup on the health of the country’s network of banks, shadow banks, asset managers, traders and investment houses. It’s a group over which the central bank has essentially no formal authority. But for one day at least, the FSR gives the governor a bully pulpit from which to attempt to exercise moral suasion."

"Macklem flagged six 'vulnerabilities,' or weak spots, that could cause the system to crumble if hit hard enough with an external shock, such as a recession or the failure of a big financial institution. Two of those vulnerabilities related to housing: the mountain of debt that households have piled up chasing runaway prices, and those runaway prices, which, in some big-city markets, the Bank of Canada thinks are being pushed higher by speculation and naive expectations that home prices only go up."

"Notably, the Bank of Canada’s most recent research suggests that the froth in at least some markets is now worse than in 2016 and 2017. Policy makers reckon that households with mortgages that are 450 per cent bigger than their incomes are vulnerable to bankruptcy. That group represented 22 per cent of all home loans in the fourth quarter, compared with a previous peak of about 18 per cent in the third quarter of 2017."

"A mismatch between supply and demand explains most of the surge in house prices, but there is some mania in those numbers. Macklem’s February characterization of what he was starting to see in Canada’s housing market brought to mind a famous description of stock markets in December 1996: 'How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade?'"

"Those were the words of Alan Greenspan, the former chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve. It was widely assumed that Greenspan was attempting to signal his discomfort with the market frenzy over internet stocks. It didn’t work. The dot-com bubble burst in early 2000. Good thing many of Canada’s housing markets are only excessively exuberant, and not irrationally so."