A report from Mortgage Professional America. "Potential home buyers are being edged out of the house market because of high property prices, mortgage brokers have told MPA. Figures show that new home sales fell to the lowest level in more than a year, down by 19.4% compared to June 2020. Sales were also down by 6.6% in comparison to May. Paul Kwon, president at EA Lending, said he was 'definitely seeing a slowdown in the supply demand ratios.' 'Everybody I’ve talked to - including realtors - are definitely saying that prices have been a little bit out of control.'"

"Phily-based broker Yury Shraybman said the increase in prices was 'unsustainable' but did not see that aspect changing any time soon. He said: 'I think that the increase has been significant. It’s unsustainable. In our area, for example, the prices were increasing about 10% a year. So that’s really high and kind of unheard of, but I don’t believe that prices will go down.'"

From Arlington Now in Virginia. "Hello there — massive uptick in Just Reduced properties! Last week, we had 39 total homes experiencing a price reduction in Arlington County. And, this week, the figure has skyrocketed up to 68. That’s a nearly 75% jump."

From WRAL in North Carolina. "By the end of the first quarter of 2021, the gap in the median price between new construction homes and existing homes in Durham, for example, had closed dramatically as existing homes increased in price, according to Zonda. According to Gian Hasbrock, a new home consultant for one of the Triangle and nation’s largest builders, experts are continuing to project appreciation in the Triangle, with estimates for year-over-year change falling at about 8% to nearly 12%.  That’s not 20%, but it’s also not 4%."

"'If you look at one slice of the data, appreciation has changed from 20 percent to 8 percent,' said Hasbrock. 'But looking deeper, it’s a normal reaction to something that was not sustainable, unlike the Great Recession, where the fundamentals were unsound, especially with lending.'"

"In the Triangle, there’s currently a projected 13,000-14,000 total home sites. That means that there’s a lot of 'lot supply,' said Hasbrock. But it’s well below what would be needed. Lot supply in a balanced market is typically upwards of 24 months. The result? 'Pressure on builders not wanting to rush homes to market at pricing that might fool them down the road, because the supply chain is still erratic and unpredictable,' said Hasbrock."

The Puget Sound Business Journal in Washington. "Construction of the two-tower Seattle House condominium project near Amazon.com Inc.'s headquarters appears stalled, while two blocks away there are no signs of life in the project sales center, where shelves are empty and pink insulation has been stuffed into some of the interior window frames. Proposed before the Covid-19 pandemic, the 41-story Seattle House with 1,000 residences is the largest condominium development in the city, where sales of new downtown condos have not exactly taken off in most projects."

"'We are proceeding with the project but we are not starting presales at this time,' developer David Ju said. 'We are currently in the process of defining the timeline for opening the sale center and beginning presale activity.'"

"Construction has wrapped up on on the nearby 41-story Spire tower, where earlier this month the marketing team said 40% of the condos had been spoken for. Earlier this year asking prices were discounted by as much as 10%, with prices now ranging from $485,000 for a one-bedroom on the fourth floor to $4 million for three-bedrooms higher up in the tower."

The Jewish Voice in New York. "A Manhattan condo board was unsuccessful in its desperate attempts to preserve the value of its property by appealing the court to reverse the devalued sale of a penthouse seized and sold by the federal government. The penthouse condominium apartment at the 23-story Walker Tower in Chelsea was seized by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2016, in a settlement to recover money from a Malaysian money-laundering scheme."

"'The board has an 'obligation to preserve the value of the building,' said the board’s attorney, David Kettel, in court papers. 'A sale that is made at less than 40% of market value will also devalue the units owned by other [Walker Tower] residents by tens of millions of dollars,' Kettel added."

The Real Deal on California. "Ekkehart Hassels-Weiler had already purchased a bevy of high-priced homes in Los Angeles and New York when he paid $43 million for an enormous Beverly Hills Post Office mansion in September 2019. But despite Hassels-Weiler’s real estate experience and due diligence, the Angelo Drive home’s numerous construction flaws remained hidden until after the closing, according to a lawsuit filed last week."

"'The result is a catastrophic failure of the building systems and components,' the suit alleges. The lawsuit — which is seeking $36 million in damages — is a far cry from the days leading up to the mansion purchase, when Hassels-Weiler married Omar Romero in a ceremony that featured a performance by Boy George, according to Dirt. The couple were likely drawn to some of the eight-bedroom, 11-bathroom property’s key features, which include white marble walls, a 30-foot entryway seven powder rooms, separate staff kitchen and a bocce court."

From Senior Housing News. "A new firm led by senior living industry veterans, Scarp Ridge Capital Partners, is launching with a $300 million fund targeting value-add, opportunistic and distressed investment opportunities. Scarp Ridge is launching at a time when the senior living market has been dislocated by the Covid-19 pandemic. The average assisted living acquisition price fell 30% in 2020, according to Irving Levin data."

From Bisnow on Illinois. "Chicago’s downtown office market set another record in Q2, with its vacancy rate hitting 17%, the highest ever recorded and up from 16.2% in Q1. The market seems likely to continue breaking vacancy records for the rest of the year. The upcoming vacancy increases will mostly happen because new office buildings planned before the coronavirus pandemic will soon open."

"Much of the new vacancy is in Fulton Market. The rate for this submarket, the downtown’s hottest before the pandemic, hit 33.3% in Q2, up from 31.9% in Q1. That's by far the highest in Chicago, according to Colliers. Developers completed 320 North Sangamon St. in Q2, one of several mostly empty towers to debut this year, adding another 260K SF of vacant space. Six additional buildings totaling 921K SF are under construction. Three of them are scheduled to be complete by the end of this year, contributing 620K SF."

From Business in Vancouver in Canada. "Vancouver-based developer Bosa has switched a new Calgary luxury condo tower to rentals in mid-construction, an apparent nervy move in a city with rising vacancies rates, flatlining rental rates and falling per-door prices for apartment buildings. According to CMHC, the rental vacancy rate in downtown Calgary, at 8%, is the highest in a city where the vacancy rate has remained unchanged from a year ago around 6.6%."

"Calgary’s rental vacancy rate has nearly doubled since 2019, which Michael Mak, senior economics analyst for CMHC, said was driven by the pandemic and a struggling economy, with high unemployment leading to out-migration and little in-migration from other provinces or countries. Downtown demand has been hampered by the record-high office vacancy rate in the core, at around 29%."

"In the first half of 2021, 26 Calgary rental apartment buildings sold, compared to 14 at the same time last year, but the average per-door price fell to $145,000, down from$178,000 in 2020, according to the Network, a real estate research firm. Urban Analytics confirmed that Arris is the first concrete high-rise in downtown Calgary to convert entirely to rental. It may not be the last, based on what is happening in the city’s glutted downtown condo sector. As of June there were 1,017 condos for sale on the downtown market – accounting for 55% all condos listed for sale in the entire Calgary region."

The South China Morning Post. "Home prices in Shenzhen, mainland China’s most expensive residential property market, have finally declined, falling by as much as 15 per cent, after about 300 rounds of cooling measures were introduced across the country in the first six months of the year. Towards the end of June, the average price of a second-hand home stood at 61,500 yuan (US$9,488) per square metre, or about 15 per cent below a peak of 72,436 yuan per square metre recorded in January this year, according to E-House China R&D Institute."

"Also as part of the latest tranche of cooling measures, parents who had bought homes in good school districts, for eye-watering prices in some subdistricts of Beijing’s Xicheng district, were informed by local education officials that their children would be admitted to schools in other neighbourhoods in Xicheng. Market observers said that such a change to school admissions could cause home prices, not only in Beijing, but across the country, to cool quite drastically."

"Homeowners were also more open to negotiations now if the buyers’ interest was genuine. 'Earlier, it was difficult to make appointments with these owners. After all, without the possibility of securing a seat in a nearby primary school, these homes are not worth much,' said Brian Feng, an agent in Shanghai’s Huangpu district, which is home to some top schools."

The Financial Express in India. "'Offload, offload, offload – get rid of your inventories' – This was the advice last year from Hardeep Singh Puri, the Housing and Urban Affairs Minister, for the Indian real estate developers. This recommendation came close on the heels of a similar statement made by Piyush Goyal, the Minister of Commerce and Industry, as the lockdowns had pushed the realty sector’s recovery from a multiyear slump back to the starting line."

"The choices available to developers, according to Mr. Goyal, were simple: sell off their high-priced inventories at lower prevailing rates or default on loan repayments as there is lack of liquidity in the market. This Catch-22 situation forms the crux of the burden that inventory overhangs pose for the real estate sector in India – weighed down by Rs 3.7 lakh crore worth of unsold housing units in just the top 7 cities."

"However, selling off unsold units will not be as quick a solution as these statements will have you believe. Property consultant Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) has reported that the unsold inventory in India will take around 3.3 years to sell, especially with the demand shock that resulted from pandemic-related complications."

"This brings us to one of the primary challenges faced by developers: the older their inventory gets, the longer it takes to liquidate. This creates a vicious cycle where, if developers choose to wait for a buyer who is willing to pay a property’s true worth, they face the risk of further depreciation in its value. At the same time, offering potential homebuyers high discounts to make the sale can result in massive losses for developers."

From Interest New Zealand. "There has been a surge in the number of Auckland apartments with remediation issues coming up for sale at auction recently, and there's both good and bad news for their owners. The good news is that, perhaps surprisingly, there's good demand for these types of apartments, resulting in competitive bidding at auction. The bad news is that they are selling for hugely discounted prices."

"Of course they are buying at savagely discounted prices. Rating valuations for Auckland properties haven't been updated since 2017, but most of the remediation apartments selling at auction have been going for around half to a third of their 2017 rating valuations, some for less."