A report from the Cody Enterprise in Wyoming. "Jackson realtor Latham Jenkins said although there may be more demand and profitability available for agents and sellers than ever before, the winning bidder is the sole applicant left feeling happy after an over-priced purchase. 'Then you have 10 angry bidders who missed out,' he said. Because of the expected appreciation that can be expected in the coming years, Scott Richard, owner of Richard Realty, still recommends first-time homebuyers get in the market as soon as they can. 'A house you could have bought a couple of years ago for $160,000, it’s now $300,000,' he said."

From KVUE in Texas. "Houses for sale around the Austin area sat a little longer for the month of June. That prompted broker and owner of Spyglass Realty Ryan Rodenbeck to post on social media a video where he asks, 'are we seeing a slowdown in the Austin real estate market? Are we approaching what could be a bubble?' An analysis of MLS data by Chris Jacobs shows an increase in housing inventory for June. 'We started seeing the agents were saying that they're seeing less multiple offers. I mean, at one point, we were looking at 40, 50, 70 offers on a listing that went down to 30, 10,' he said."

The Merced Sun Star in California. "Prices are surging toward the record for a median priced home in Merced of $344,500, which was set in October 2006. A year ago, for example, the median time that a house was on market before it sold was 13 days. The time on the market is now less than half that, at six days. And the average selling price is now typically 103.5% of the seller’s asking price. But instead of continuing to come down, as it did for much of the past year, that six-day figure has been unchanged for the past three months."

"Is that – along with real estate experts in the Sacramento area reporting fewer homes attracting multiple offers – a possible sign of stabilization of the market, if not a slowdown? 'My take is that the data is starting to show some limits to what buyers are willing and able to pay,' economist Jeffrey Michael of the University of the Pacific told The Sacramento Bee."

From Mansion Global. "A bankruptcy court has slashed another $19.8 million off the price of the historic Beverly Hills, California, estate once owned by newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst and is now asking $69.95 million. Once asking as much as $195 million, the property was relisted in April for $89.95 million before its latest discount."

"The property’s longtime owner, attorney Leonard Ross, had been trying to sell the property at various price points since 2007. In 2019, he placed the limited-liability company that owns the property into chapter 11 bankruptcy. 'The bankruptcy court was very motivated to sell the property,' Anthony Marguleas of Amalfi Estates, told Mansion Global. The price adjustment took into consideration the recent, comparable sale of Villa Firenze in Beverly Hills, Mr. Marguleas said. That property, once asking $165 million, was auctioned in February for $51 million, without fees."

From CNBC. "The great lumber bubble of 2021 has popped. After a jaw-dropping rally this spring, lumber prices have come back down to earth as supply increased, speculative trading action cooled and homebuilding demand eased. Recently, there have been signs of the housing boom fizzling. Weekly mortgage demand fell 6.9% last week to the lowest level in almost a year and a half. 'It was a bubble but it is still double where it was pre Covid,' said Peter Boockvar, CIO at Bleakley Advisory Group."

The Globe and Mail in Canada. "Many of Toronto’s young urban dwellers are reveling in the city’s reawakening and putting weighty real estate decisions on hold for now. 'I can definitely feel the beat on the street change,' says real estate agent Riley Boyko of Cloud Realty, who lives and works in downtown Toronto. Sales began to slow down in April and May across Canada, and the trend appears to be continuing into the summer. Mr. Boyko notices the change most markedly in condos with asking prices under $1-million, which are seeing less interest from first-time buyers than they were a few months ago."

"As listings for single-family houses come onto the market, Mr. Boyko is noticing the odd paradox that buyers move to the sidelines just as bidding wars calm down, instead of taking advantage of the lull. Some properties are not selling on the night reserved for reviewing offers. Others are selling at rich prices but without the frantic bidding that erupted in the early part of the year. 'Buyers only want to buy during a sellers’ market,' he says."

From Business Tech in South Africa. "Did the rental market crash or was it just a blip in the road? The old argument is that ‘securing the roof over your head’ means there is infinite need for housing stock and landlords can negotiate on their terms, says Michelle Dickens, chief executive officer of TPN Credit Bureau. 'It’s a tenant’s market, an oversupply of vacant properties is driving down rental prices as tenants are in the position to shop around for a better deal. No doubt driven by fewer tenants responding to their property adverts, in some instances landlords report zero interest in the property until the price is dropped and re-advertised.'"

The Vietnam Express. "In the past two months, rental prices for apartments in HCMC have dropped by a further 10 to 15 percent due to Covid-19 impacts. A Q2 VnExpress survey found that apartment rents in HCMC were continuing to fall despite a 30 percent slump last year. Since May, when the new Covid-19 wave in HCMC turned complicated, luxury apartment rents in District 2 that typically ranged from $1,300-1500 a month dropped to $1,000 and even $900."

"In Binh Thanh District, fully serviced luxury apartments with areas of up to 80 square meters that had a daily rent of $43 have seen this plunge by up to 35 percent since the new Covid-19 wave struck. A few minutes away from the center, District 4 used to be a bustling market for rental apartments, but, since the new Covid-19 wave, the rent for luxury apartments here have recorded the strongest dip in a decade. In 2020, rents of luxury apartments on Ben Van Don Street dropped by 30-35 percent and have dropped another 10 percent this June."

The Philippine Star. "The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said the Residential Real Estate Price Index (RREPI) contracted by 4.2 percent to 132.2 in the first quarter from 138 in the same quarter last year primarily driven by the fall in prices of condominium units and duplexes. The nationwide house prices in the first quarter were also 1.6 percent lower than the 134.4 in the fourth quarter of last year due to the lower prices of duplexes, townhouses, and single detached or attached houses, which more than offset the higher prices of condominium units."

"'Nationwide house prices contracted due to the subdued demand for residential prices amid the pandemic,' the BSP said. Latest data showed prices of condominium units fell by 10.7 percent to 163.2 in the first quarter from 182.7 in the same quarter last year. Prices also declined by 15 percent in the third quarter and by 8.4 percent in the fourth quarter of last year. 'This is the third consecutive quarter that condominium prices declined owing to the lackluster demand for condominiums in the NCR,' the BSP said. Likewise, the price of duplex housing units plunged by 20.7 percent to 132.6 from 167.3."

"BSP Governor Benjamin Diokno said the regulator has sharpened some of its macroprudential tools to monitor and contain the potential buildup of risk arising from banks’ exposure to the property sector. 'These tools include the cap on loan to value ratio, limits on real estate loans, monitoring of banks’ real estate exposures, and the real estate stress test limit,' Diokno said."

The Sydney Morning Herald in Australia. "The collapse of Champlain Towers in Miami, Florida should elicit sympathy and fear in equal measure. Florida is the birthplace of resort-style high rise residential development that has been copied in cities around the world, including Australia. The result was an unprecedented condominium building boom. By 1975, there were as many apartments in Florida as there had been in the entire United States five years before. The boom was fuelled by developers promising a lifestyle of sun, sand and recreation. However, the reality was darker with developers exploiting purchasers through a range of nefarious practices so bad that the condominium market threatened to implode."

"Australia has one advantage over the US and that is uniform strata legislation that imposes obligations to repair on the body corporate. That’s where our advantage ends. Building defects are rife with many purchasers buying into a world of pain. In all the fuss and noise around building defects, a basic point seems to be forgotten. It is entirely reasonable to assume that a brand-new apartment building will be defect-free. This is because developers are perfectly capable of building defect-free buildings; they do so in the commercial sector all the time. They fail to do so in the residential sector because of split ownership, and because they have been allowed to get away with it."

From Stuff New Zealand. "House prices nationally are now 12.4 times the average wage due to a drop in home affordability in recent months, new Massey University analysis reveals. Massey University professor Graham Squires said, two years ago, the price-to-income ratio was 8.9, so it had now increased by 3.5 across all regions, which was significant and indicated a dramatic separation between prices and wages. But what was interesting for this quarter was that wages had fallen slightly, he said."

"The Government's tax policy changes, which were announced in March, did not appear to have had an impact on the market at this stage, he said. 'If you look at the froth in the market, it hasn't really gone backwards, so the buzz has continued. It's the New Zealand way, for people to keep going until there is actually a dip in the market.'"