A report from Seattle Met in Washington. "Who: Kim Colaprete, managing broker withTeam Diva Real Estate of Coldwell Banker Bain. Years in the business: 22. I sold something in 2016, what seemed like a pretty modest house in Bitter Lake, and we had 25 offers. I was just like, I don’t know why people keep bringing me offers. It was weird because the house wasn’t exceptional, you know? It’s different with something stunning and unique with a view. It was the first indication to me that our market was shifting from a normal market to an, Okay, now we’ve hit the mark in Seattle where we have more people here than inventory and that’s never going to change again."

"There’s been some kind of weird experiences with my buyers where we put in an offer and the other agent told us there were multiple offers, but I knew that it wasn’t a multiple offer. There was legit no proof this agent would show me. They said the other [potential buyer’s] escalator is the same as yours, but they kept changing the price that they wanted us to come to. What happens in a market like this is agents tell their clients they’re going to get multiple offers and going to sell over list price and that doesn’t happen and they back themselves into a corner. That’s the kind of behavior that I think gives listing agents a bad name and makes buyers really wary of Realtors, and that pisses me off."

"There was an incident that happened last year where an agent posted a social media video created by her company, professionally produced, where—legit, on the video—she said they lied to the other agent about another offer so she could get $25,000 more. The company had to take down the video, and she was shredded by people. That is a severe violation of ethics, and that’s the kind of bad behavior that I think doesn’t get talked about enough. Like, that’s illegal, you’re not very bright, and you obviously don’t know the rules."

From Boston.com in Massachusetts. "Joe Aiello of Gumshoe Home Inspection in Winthrop found significant termite damage in an attached garage when clients hired him to inspect a 5,000-square-foot home in Concord. He also discovered small leaks in the opper heating pipes in the basement (he suspects there are similar ones in the walls) and a dangerous situation with the electrical panel. Those problems are expected to cost several thousand dollars to repair, but it won’t be the seller bearing the cost. His clients already had purchased the home — without requiring an inspection."

"Real estate agents say more prospective buyers than ever are waiving home inspections to make their offers more attractive to owners in this frenzied seller’s market. 'I have been handling real estate closings since 1998 and have never seen a market like this,' said Dina B. Browne,a partner at Bletzer & Bletzer, P.C. in Boston. 'I don’t think we’ve yet seen the repercussions that will follow with all of the waivers, as those buyers are just moving into their homes. There are a lot of first-time buyers waiving these inspections who are only able to put a 5 percent down payment. If they get in there and the furnace goes, I don’t think they’re going to have the money to replace it, and that’s what scares me.'"

From Spectrum News on New York. "The U.S. housing market frenzy is starting to show some signs of cooling off as more homes hit the market. It’s good news for potential homebuyers who’ve been outbid time after time in their search for a new place to call home. The average home in Rochester sells for about $170,000. That's 25% higher than just a year ago. And they’re going fast, with an average of five days on the market. 'I’ve never seen a market like this,' said Richard Sarkis, a veteran real estate broker with Howard Hanna. 'It's definitely the sellers who are in control.'"

"'If there was ever a time to put your house on the market, now is the time,' said Fred Corsi, Howard Hanna’s Western New York regional president. 'It’s not unusual for buyers to have to write offers on 8, 10, 12 houses before they actually get one.' Corsi believes it’s also a correction, of sorts, that the average home price in the region was a bit lower than it should have been. He says buyers should manage their expectations. Sellers want strong offers, and no contingencies, like traditional home inspections."

"'My advice to sellers is jump into that market, take that risk because we are finding that listings are increasing,' he said. 'There are more houses coming into the market over the last six weeks, so that the inventory is starting to creep up a little bit'"

From Gotham Magazine in New York. "Power broker Kirsten Jordan checks in to give us the real deal. The market is extreme. There are pockets of bidding wars in the A neighborhoods and an inventory surplus in the B neighborhoods, which have been overdeveloped expecting to get $2,000 per square foot. These prime areas are seeing rapid absorption as we speak, and soon enough, we will see faster absorption."

"Inventory in Manhattan is dipping below 7,000 per sources as of today. This is so exciting! We foresee a strong rebound in the very near future, so reduction in negotiability as well as number of days on the market. This will further reduce shadow inventory."

From Community Impact on Arizona. "Real estate professionals tell tales of low inventory, high competition, bidding wars and fast turnarounds on home sales. The reason, the real estate professionals said, is a simple one: supply. Maricopa and Pinal counties’ population increased about 290 people per day in 2020, according to Vintage U.S. Census estimates."

"People who are waiting for this real estate bubble to burst will be disappointed, experts said. It is not a bubble, and experts do not expect a real estate crash like the one that occurred during the Great Recession. However, signs from later in the spring and into summer show the strength of the seller’s market is waning. Mark Stapp, at Arizona State University, said the pandemic further exacerbated the problem for working-poor buyers, a category he said can include residents from teachers to phlebotomists."

"'In places like the southeast Valley, the greatest share on a percentage basis of new home building growth is built for higher median incomes,' Stapp said. 'People are getting pushed out of the market to places like Florence or Coolidge where the price of land is cheaper.'"

"The experts say it will take longer to sell a home, and the process will look more like traditional home selling from the past couple of decades with fewer bids and buyer concessions. 'If you’re in a weak seller’s market, [prices] won’t rise as fast as right now,' said Tina Tamboer, senior data analyst for The Cromford Report, which provides detailed information on the Greater Phoenix residential resale market. 'You might see it like 1% [per month], and that’s a 12% gain a year. That’s pretty amazing.'"

"Real estate professionals said they are frequently asked when the market will crash. 'When you say ‘crash’ to somebody like me or a real estate agent who lived through 2008, they think of a drop in value by 50%,' Tamboer said. 'So that’s why you’re going to be like, ‘Nope, not going to happen.’”

"Tamboer stressed that no one can predict the market. She said she only projects where the market is headed based on the data trajectory from the moment, which now shows the seller’s market weakening. 'Even though we are seeing this crazy, insane market soften, and it has been softening for three months, we’re not necessarily expecting it to go into this buyer’s market that we saw in 2006[-09], because that was the result of over 10 years of overbuilding and speculative buyers,' Tamboer said. 'Now we have people who actually need a place to live.'"

The Sioux Falls Argus Leader in South Dakota. "Today’s buying frenzy for homes feels eerily similar for many, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader reported. And it isn’t just buyers that are concerned. The bubble question is taking center stage. In order to slow the impact of COVID-19 on the housing market, the Federal Reserve bought over $1 trillion in mortgage bonds last year. 'I am a little bit concerned that we’re feeding into an incipient housing bubble ... I think we don’t need to be doing that with the economy growing at 7%,' St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said in a statement to the Wall Street Journal."

"'At the end of the day, we looked at the market and how tough it was going to be to compete with other offers,' said one buyer. 'Yes, we paid more, but after losing out to individuals paying cash, we had to adapt on the offers we made.' This Sioux Falls home went well over asking, 'Yes, we paid more, but after losing out to individuals paying cash, we had to adapt on the offers we made,' the buyer, who wished to remain anonymous, said."

From Salon. "Yesterday morning, a burglar tried to break into my home. Thankfully the doors were all locked, but a few houses down wasn't so lucky; our neighbor was home and is now pretty traumatized to have experienced a home-invasion burglary. By the time the police arrived, the burglar was long gone in a stolen car. A friend is trying to sell his condo in downtown Portland but large parts of downtown have been turned into a giant homeless camp so there are few buyers even in this hot real estate market. The nearby streets are pockmarked with tents and the curbs frequently sport human waste."

From KTVI. "The housing market frenzy may have peaked for the year even as homes sold at their fastest pace and at record-high prices, according to Redfin. 'In June we entered a new phase of the housing market,' said Redfin Chief Economist Daryl Fairweather. 'Home sales are starting to stall because prices have increased beyond what many buyers can afford. This summer I expect home prices to stabilize as more homeowners list their homes, realizing they likely won’t fetch a higher price by waiting longer to sell.'"

From Bloomberg on Canada. "They’re the kind of exotic mortgages that one typically associates with the reckless, go-go housing market that gripped the U.S., circa 2005: Put down 5% cash and get 3% back; or, wilder yet, put down nothing at all. So when these products -- and others like them -- started popping up in the normally cautious Canadian financial industry, it raised alarm among policy makers in Ottawa."

"This is year twenty-five of the great Canadian housing bull market, a nearly uninterrupted straight line up that has few parallels in the world. At a time of soaring real-estate prices all over the globe, only one major economy -- New Zealand -- has a frothier housing market than Canada, according to an analysis by Bloomberg Economics. And after all those years of price gains, including a 21% surge since the pandemic began, millions of middle-class Canadians have no chance of scrounging together the money needed to make a conventional down payment of 20%."

"In Whitby, a booming Toronto suburb nestled against the banks of Lake Ontario, this is a lament that mortgage broker Sherry Corbit hears constantly from first-time home buyers. More than half of them, she says, are opting for loans that either allow them to borrow the money for their down payment or that provide cash back after the closing. A year ago, these products made up a small fraction of her business."

"Asked whether this worries her at all, Corbitt, who works with some of Canada’s biggest banks, whips out a statistic she’s proud of: In her 13 years in the industry, not a single client has defaulted. 'We’re never going to see what happened in the States,' she declares. 'It’s just not possible here.'"

"Canada may still have a raft of regulations that prevents the riskiest of applicants -- those who fell into the subprime category in the U.S. in the aughts -- from ever getting a mortgage, but many of those who are approved for loans today are taking on debt loads that were once unthinkable."

"A couple months ago, Josh Doornenbal plunked down C$1.1 million (about $870,000) for a three-bedroom house in the suburb of Langley for his family of five. He borrowed over C$800,000, an amount that equals more than eight times the C$100,000 annual salary he makes at an IT firm. It’s a staggering amount of debt -- nearly double the Bank of Canada’s threshold for identifying highly leveraged borrowers. Even for loan officers increasingly ready to take on risk, it was an unnerving sum. Doornenbal, 33, pledged the home’s basement rental suite as a source of income -- he figures it’ll pull in about C$2,300 a month -- to bring down the debt ratio."

"After many rejections, he found a credit union willing to green-light his loan application. Credit unions, which are provincially-regulated in Canada, are among those willing to underwrite some high-ratio mortgages, along with nonbank specialty lenders and major banks. 'We worked hard to find a real creative solution,' Doornenbal said."

"Back in the Toronto suburbs, Corbitt, the mortgage broker, is busier than ever. Her business jumped 60% last year and is on pace to surge another 20% this year, she said. Much of this growth is coming from people who are getting pushed out of their rental homes by landlords who’ve decided to sell their properties amid the boom. Rather than hunt for a new rental in a suddenly fiercely competitive market -- bids pour in for properties as soon as they’re listed -- folks are opting to take the plunge and buy. This is what drove Doornenbal’s decision, too."

"'Well if I have to be evicted,' Corbitt says clients tell her, 'maybe now’s the time to buy.' It all feels a little rushed, she acknowledges. 'A lot of first-time buyers are not ready.'"