It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "Contrasted with the relatively healthy real estate market of May 2019, single-family sales were down 9.7 percent in Massachusetts last month. 'You have to go all the way back to 2015 to find May sales that low — that really stood out to me,' said Warren Group chief executive Tim Warren. Buyers may have finally been pushed past their breaking point, Warren said. 'You have to wonder, with prices rising so rapidly, whether there are enough people with enough income to keep paying these prices,' he said. 'People aren’t getting those kinds of raises. The two big crashes we’ve had, in both cases, the number of sales had fallen and then prices started to fall the following year.'"

"Real estate investors in the first quarter of 2021 have purchased and flipped 57,155 single-family homes and condominiums nationwide, according to ATTOM Data Solutions. It the lowest home-flipping activity seen since 2000. 'The first quarter of 2021 certainly marked a notable downturn for the flipping industry, with the big drop in activity suggesting that investors may be worried that prices have simply gone up too high,' said Todd Teta, Chief Product Officer at ATTOM. 'After riding the housing boom along with others for years, they now might be having second thoughts.'"

"After five years and several price chops, the domed penthouse atop the historic former NYPD headquarters at 240 Centre Street finally found a buyer — for about a quarter of what the seller first expected. Ahmass Fakahany and his wife sold the 5,500-square-foot co-op at last for $10 million, property records show. When the unit first hit the market in 2015, Fakahany set the asking price at $40 million. When no buyers came forward, the price was slashed repeatedly: First to $35 million in 2016, and again to less than $28 million in 2017. In 2019, it tumbled to under $20 million."

"Joe Montana has tossed his Napa Valley estate onto the market again. Now, the price has been sliced to $24.5 million. Montana and his wife initially listed the villa for $49 million in 2009. Two years later, the price was lowered to $35 million. In 2019, it was relisted for $28.9 million. Now that it’s being offered at half its 2009 price, perhaps a buyer will finally step off the sidelines."

"More than 2 million homeowners are behind on their mortgages and risk being forced out of their homes in a matter of weeks, a new Harvard University housing report warns. Karen King, who is five months behind on her mortgage in Birmingham, Alabama, told CBS MoneyWatch she is 'terrified' that her home could be taken away. King, 51, a staff member at the Tuscaloosa Housing Authority, fell behind on payments last year after her job switched her to part-time hours during the pandemic. She now owes $4,200. King returned to full-time hours in January, but has only been able to pay her normal monthly mortgage amount—no more."

"'King said she will have to try to strike a special payment arrangement with her mortgage provider, but she's nervous about having that conversation because she's unsure if the lender will accept an unusual payment plan. 'I can't necessarily pay extra on the mortgage, so I'm hoping I could work out something with them,' King said, adding that she's willing to tack on five payments at the end of her home loan. 'I actually would prefer a deferment.'"

"Legal Aid of Nebraska said 27 eviction hearings were scheduled this week in Douglas County. Rick McDonald said he owns 23 rental properties, and the majority are single-family homes. He said he's struggling to cover his own costs with the slowdown in income. 'I probably have 20% of all my properties where the tenants are behind in their rent or haven't paid anything,' he said. His bank has been flexible, but it's not an indefinite agreement. McDonald said the frustration may lead some landlords to leave the business. 'Wanting the name of a realtor, what do I do? How do we get out of this? I'm done. I'm finished,' he said of phone calls he gets from other owners."

"'I'm between a rock and a hard place. So, I supply them with names and numbers I have, to call these people, see if you can get help, and I'm willing to work with them and stuff, but at some point, the bank's gonna be knocking on my door,' McDonald said."

"Has the Canadian housing market reached its zenith? Will the red-hot housing market begin to cool down? The Royal Bank of Canada’s senior economist Robert Hogue did an excellent job of succinctly summarizing the state of the Canadian real estate market recently: the mania has toned down, fewer homeowners are listing homes for sales, homebuyers are declining faster than sellers, and a reversal of the 'unsustainable spike' is unfolding. Real estate agents and market analysts alike will undoubtedly hone in on the summer months like a guided missile!"

"The London property market suffered its biggest monthly fall in a decade in April. One agency chief described the market shift as buyers becoming more 'realistic rather than romantic' in what they’re willing to pay. And the supply of properties on the market is also increasing, as more people are putting their homes up for sale. 'This reality check has blown some of the froth off the market,' Jonathan Hopper, chief executive of buying agency of Garrington Property Finders, told the Standard. 'The gravity-defying price rises are starting to ease.'"

"Housing rents have fallen by 10 to 15 per cent in parts of Bengaluru and other cities. A number of properties, especially flats, are vacant as tenants who left for their hometowns to be safe from the Covid-19 surge, cope with financial instability or avoid getting stuck in lockdown are yet to travel back. Farook Mahmood, the chairman of Silverline Realty, said that Bengaluru had seen a dip in the range of 10 to 15 per since March last year, linking the trend to job losses, salary cuts, falling business and oversupply of rental apartments. 'Landlords were not ready to reduce rents during the first wave. They have realised now that there is no point in waiting for higher rents as senior professionals and company executives are facing salary cuts,' said GN Rishikesh, a property owner and consultant in east Bengaluru."

"Landlords in Sydney and Melbourne who rely heavily on international students are asking up to 10 per cent less for rent than they were a year ago just to keep their properties occupied. Chinese international real estate website Juwai.com says the average asking price for units in the city’s inner west, which is popular with international students, has fallen by 9.8 per cent over the past 12 months. Meanwhile, rents in the area are down 8.8 per cent compared to a year ago."

"Christine Cheung from Loyalventure Property in the Docklands estimates 'around 20 per cent' of the rental properties she has on her books, mostly in the CBD, are sitting empty. She says many landlords have had to slash their rents just to attract tenants, and even then, they don’t always find anyone. Ms Cheung says most landlords have opted to sit tight and wait for international borders to reopen rather than sell at a loss. 'The price is too low to sell, and even if they wanted to sell, no one wants to buy a CBD apartment at the moment. There are too many negative comments, and vacancies are too high,' she says."

"The spectre of ghost houses has haunted New Zealand for years, but it’s actually a bit of a bogeyman, says property commentator Ashley Church​. With a lack of supply blamed for the country’s housing crisis, the nearly 200,000 unoccupied dwellings identified in the 2018 Census would surely be a handy addition to Aotearoa’s housing stock. These empty houses range from modest suburban properties to million-dollar dumps, with even Sir John Key’s palatial former residence in Auckland, which sold for over $20 million in 2017, reportedly sitting empty."

"The average number of people per household has been 2.7 since 2006, while the population grew significantly. 'If we’d had a shortage of housing, that average household occupancy figure should have got higher since 1987, it should have gone up - it’s gone down. It’s gone from 3.29 in 1986 to 2.87 in 2013, it’s actually dropped,' he said. 'There’s only two ways that could happen - the population’s dropped, which it didn't, or we built more houses than we needed.'"