It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "The Acadiana real estate market could be leveling out after months of runaway activity for months. Home sales dipped in Lafayette Parish and in the region last month, typically a busier month for home buyers, after months of unprecedented growth, according to data from Bill Bacque. Dips in other markets across the country have led many analysts to question if activity was final cooling off or, a worst-case scenario, the market is in a housing bubble, which would result in home values plunging."

"'Is that possible? Yes. Is that probable? No,' Bacque wrote in his monthly report. 'It appears April could be the peak of our nearly year-long run in demand. (T)he demand driven air that has inflated our housing bubble will begin to ease and will lead to a market correction. Whether it is a mild sustainable correction or a chaotic crash depends upon how rapid and significant these influences occur.'"

"Windermere Chief Economist Matthew Gardner noted that many condo owners decided to sell amid the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and more out of the urban downtown core, leading to high inventory and lower demand. Some downtown properties even began offering price reductions to attract new buyers, giving them the upper hand. 'The good news is the Seattle condo market has settled back down with inventory dropping and sales rising. Because of the shift in this market there was a price reset, but this appears to be luring buyers who previously thought they could not afford to buy downtown, leading to more balance between supply and demand,' Gardner said."

"2021 has been a big year for Journal Square following a deal to renovate the iconic Loews Jersey Theatre. Despite the hum of construction, there are a few prominent developments that have stalled in the neighborhood. Ironstate’s Urby Journal Square, slated to break ground last year before COVID-19 hit, remains a surface parking lot and the company officially shelved another Urby project along Sip Avenue earlier this year."

"Jeff Godfrey, who spent the last 11 years living in Brooklyn, realized a longtime dream this spring: He moved to Manhattan. Mr. Godfrey, a 34-year-old artist and bartender, who scoured various listings sites for months after realizing that, thanks to plummeting rents, the borough was finally within reach. In April, he pounced on a spacious, newly renovated two-bedroom on the Lower East Side that rents for $2,400 a month — the same price he was paying for an unrenovated two-bedroom off the Halsey J train stop in Bushwick. The new place is even rent stabilized."

"Benjamin Knop, a 23-year-old restaurant manager, lived in East Harlem when he was a student at Marymount Manhattan College. But he grew tired of paying more than $1,000 a month to share a 'really old, rundown three-bedroom apartment with five other people.' Last June, Mr. Knop was searching on StreetEasy and found a $1,600 rent-stabilized one-bedroom on the Upper East Side. 'I was like, ‘This has to be one of those fake listings,' he said. 'When I went to see it, it was also no-fee. It blew my mind. I was like, ‘Jackpot!’"

"The pace of the Toronto-area real estate market has dropped a gear after a highly charged start to the year. Bidding wars are less heated, some properties are sitting longer and some homeowners have delayed their plans to list. Elli Davis, a real estate agent with Sotheby’s International Realty Canada, does not see a dramatic slowdown coming, however, because sellers who put their plans on hold during Ontario’s COVID-19 stay-at-home order are now planning to launch their properties as restrictions ease. 'Every day I’m getting two to three appraisal calls,' she says."

"Buyers are still circulating, but many who planned to purchase this spring did so in the early months of the year. Jimmy Molloy, an agent with Chestnut Park Real Estate Ltd., says sales were front-loaded this year as low interest rates and optimism about the economy encouraged buyers to jump in early. 'We’ve used up in four months what we would use up in six months,' he says of the volume of transactions in a normal year. 'We need to replenish the buyer pool as well.'"

"Is South Africa’s spectacular house price bounce, which started in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, coming to a screeching halt? Siphamandla Mkhwanazi, an economist at FNB, said the bank is starting to see a slowdown in the demand for housing by consumers and mortgage applications, which is starting to negatively affect house prices. Mkhwanazi said the demand for housing and mortgage application volumes have declined in the past two months, which suggests that 'the interest rate-induced demand may have peaked.' Put differently, the novelty of low-interest rates might be wearing off."

"In the recent past, the infamous auctioneer's hammer has not landed on most of the lucrative properties put on sale. Many reasons have been given for this, such as a prevailing property sector slump and now the Covid-19 pandemic. But one that has been missed is overvaluation of the property. Sector experts reckon that valuers have refused to adjust to the reality of the depressed economic times. 'When property prices are increasing there tends to be inherent overvaluation. When a drop in price occurs, there is a lag in price reduction, leading to overvaluation,' Kenya Professional Realtors Association (KPRA) Director Gerald Githinji told Real Estate."

"Property auctions have become a staple in the back pages of local dailies as foreclosures haunt mortgage holders and other borrowers that are unable to pay loans. Garam Investments Managing Director Joseph Gikonyo said this might be the best time for liquid investors to get into real estate. 'This is known as a buyers market, it's rock bottom and can never go lower than these prices.'"

"Felix Apollo, the proprietor of Victoria Blues Services Auctioneers, said investors buying property now would benefit from the low prices. He, however, lamented that low purchasing power owing to the pandemic has seen auctioneers stuck with properties."

"More than 40 per cent of apartments under construction are in Melbourne, concentrated in the inner-city areas. Sydney’s apartment pipeline is spread around the city’s footprint where foreign investment is vital. 'Domestic and foreign investor demand remains much more subdued and this is keeping pre- sales demand for new apartments muted and seeing few new apartment projects commence,' said JLL national head of residential research Leigh Warner. 'This is particularly the case in Sydney and Melbourne, where the population impact of Covid-19 has been greatest and where there is more residual unsold stock in recently completed projects.'"

"For a city as opulent as San Francisco, it's long been jarring to see the extreme poverty of those experiencing homelessness on its streets. If you walk around downtown, tents, makeshift cardboard beds and human excrement can be seen littering the sidewalks. Impoverished people lie on the ground as a blur of highly paid professionals whiz by."

"San Francisco is pretty typical of major American cities these days, especially on the West Coast. Tent cities filled with poverty-stricken people have sprouted up from San Diego to Seattle. Homelessness wasn't always this bad. 'In the 1970s, there was an adequate supply of affordable units for every low-income household that needed one — and we really didn't have homelessness,' says Nan Roman, president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness."