A report from the Mortgage Research Center. "The share of U.S. properties for sale that received competitive offers from buyers in April dropped to the lowest level in more than a year, according to Redfin. 'Higher rates are also limiting homebuyers’ ability to significantly bid up home prices, meaning some homes aren’t selling for as much over the asking price as they would have a year ago,' said Daryl Fairweather, Redfin’s chief economist."

"Riverside, California, saw the largest decline in bidding wars last month, according to the Redfin report. Olympia, Washington, was next, with a drop to 56% from 71% a year ago, with a 70% share compared with 85% a year earlier, and San Diego, at 71% versus 86%, the report said. 'Homes that would have received 10 offers several months ago are now getting two or three,' said Elizabeth Rodriguez, a seller’s agent with Redfin in Riverside. 'That’s because the jump in mortgage rates has forced a huge pool of first-time buyers to drop out.'"

The Naples Daily News in Florida. "Overall inventory in Naples during April increased 16.5 percent to 1,668 properties from 1,432 properties in April 2021. Fueled by a swell of new single-family home listings, up 5.7 percent over last year, broker analysts reviewing the April 2022 Market Report by the Naples Area Board of REALTORS® (NABOR®), which tracks home listings and sales within Collier County (excluding Marco Island), are confident the Naples area housing market has reached a crossroad and is making its turn toward a balanced and healthy market."

"Several top brokers in Naples say the shift indicates the Naples area housing market is redefining itself. Another major factor that signified the market was self-correcting to a new normal in April were the 549 price reductions (33 percent of the inventory) during the month. The report also showed 1.5 months of inventory, the highest level since March 2021."

The Press and Guide in Michigan. "Home sales slipped a bit in April in the Dearborn-Dearborn Heights market. 'Rising interest rates are impacting some buyers, specifically first-time buyers who may have to adjust purchase price or location to accommodate their budget,' said Jeanette Schneider, president of RE-Max of Southeastern Michigan. 'Sellers continue to benefit from quick sales, but with fewer offers coming in than a year ago as buyers have become more pragmatic on which homes they will get actively engaged in bidding on.'"

Hawaii Real Estate Dreams. "Kona house, condo and land sales total 386 units as of the end of April. When compared to the same time in 2021 when we had closed 631 units, and in April alone we had closed 193. That is an almost 39% drop in sales transactions year-over-year… that is a whole heck of a lot of agents who didn’t get a sale last month! Today, out of the overall available houses in Kona, all price ranges, we had 55 fee simple… 31 of them were listed $2 million and up, leaving only 26 houses under that price point to buy. The cheapest is $475K and has boarded up windows… wow!"

The Review Journal. "Southern Nevada homebuilders recorded their second-highest April for new-home sales over the last five years, but rising mortgage rates have slowed the momentum from the first quarter, especially with first-time homebuyers. April’s 913 net sales — sales minus cancellations — fell about 30 percent from March and were down 25 percent from April 2021 when there were 1,215 sales, according to Las Vegas-based Home Builders Research."

"'We can see that April 2022 was still higher than 2018 and 2019, and so instead of seeing the number from this year as bad, it again just shows how great 2021 was,' according to Home Builders Research President Andrew Smith. 'People are still moving here, and our population is still growing. We still have to build and sell homes. It’s not a reset. Nobody is panicking and talking about dropping prices or offering incentives just because of a few weeks of lighter sales. We need to catch up with supply chains, anyway. When interest rates stop (increasing), more people will jump back in,' said Southern Nevada Home Builders Association CEO Nat Hodgson."

The Intelligencer. "No, it’s not your imagination: An economic storm is heading toward New York, and the cloudy skies today could be a cyclone in the near future. Individual bits of bad news keep getting announced here and there, in ways that haven’t (yet) stirred widespread worry in New York. 'The nation as a whole has recovered 95 percent of the jobs lost in the pandemic. We’ve recovered 74 percent. So we’re way behind the rest of the country,' says Greg David, who spent 35 years at Crain’s New York Business reporting on the local economy."

"'We’ve begun to see layoffs in the tech sector. I think unless the markets turn around, we’re going to be hit,' David told me. 'We haven’t recovered the jobs, which are primarily low-wage, tourist-related jobs, retail jobs. And now some of our best-performing industries are going to lose, too.'"

"The mounting financial bloodbath on Wall Street and in the tech sector will eventually be felt throughout the 'real' economy in New York. Layoffs are an obvious measure of distress: Just ask any of the ex-employees of Better.com, a mortgage lender based at the World Trade Center that fired 900 workers a few weeks ago on a Zoom call that lasted all of 12 minutes. The slowing of the mortgage market that contributed to the bloodbath at Better.com is not over."

From The Street. "Venture capital firms such as Sequoia Capital and Y Combinator are sounding the alarm for startup companies that the days of raising capital easily are over. The well-known VC sent 250 founders a 52-slide presentation via Zoom on May 16, alerting them to a 'crucible moment' as higher rates of inflation, volatility in the stock market and several geopolitical issues led to less certainty in the venture capital market. Sequoia told the startup founders that there likely will not be a 'swift V-shaped recovery like we saw at the outset of the pandemic,' and instead recommended that they evaluate their companies for costs that could be slashed."

From News 18. "Popular startups in India including Unacademy, Cars24 and Vedanta, have let go of over 5,000 employees in India this year. Ola has laid off about 2,100 employees during January-March this year, followed by Unacademy (over 600), Cars24 (600) and Vedantu (400). This apart, e-commerce firm Meesho has laid off 150 employees, furniture rental start-up Furlenco 200, influencer-led social commerce start-up Trell 300 employees and OkCredit has let go of 40 employees."

"Recently, in a letter to employees, Unacademy co-founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal has said, 'We must learn to work under constraints and focus on profitability at all costs. (Funding) winter is here. We must change our ways. We will focus on organic growth channels instead.' He added that some people are predicting that this funding winter might last 24 months. 'We must adapt. This is a test for all of us. We must learn to work under constraints. We must focus on profitability at all costs… We must survive the winter.'"

From Reuters. "In Toronto’s far-flung suburbs, just a few months ago a typical three-bedroom house would have fetched 40 offers on bidding night and sold well over the asking price. Now, home-buyers have become hard to find. 'You're not getting the bidding wars anymore,' said Tim Keung, chief executive of TimSold Real Estate, a local agency. 'A lot of buyers are ... sitting on the sidelines, waiting for this big correction to happen.'"

"They are not alone. A decade-long boom in housing prices from the United States to Europe and Asia is facing its first real test as borrowing costs rise and high inflation eats into households' budgets. Beyond Toronto, home prices are already falling in some of the places that have seen the biggest appreciation, such as China, New Zealand and parts of Australia. Growth has slowed in Singapore and South Korea and volumes are dwindling in the United States and Poland."

"In Poland, where such loans are the norm and the central bank has raised rates from 0.1 per cent to 5.25 per cent since October to stem now double-digit inflation, the government is stepping in to help borrowers via payment holidays. In the northern town of Rotmanka, 31-year-old office worker Maciej Kawka has seen the monthly mortgage payments on his small flat rise by 18 per cent since he took out the mortgage in 2018. He now pays 1,650 zlotys (US$384.62) a month."

"However, he expects payments to increase to 1,800 to 1,900 zlotys when the latest two central bank hikes are factored in, further pressuring his finances which are also being squeezed by surging energy and food prices. 'Our budget will be much tighter: No holidays, nothing that goes beyond day-to-day life,' Kawka, who lives with his wife and daughter, said. 'But if (rates) keep rising I don’t know what will happen.'"

"Canada and New Zealand show how fast that can change when higher rates cool demand. 'Right now, if there are 10 things on a buyer's wish list and the house doesn't have eight of them, they're just going to pass,' said Brad Goetz, an agent at Canada's Right at Home Realty. 'Where prior to this, it was just like, 'Hey, it has four walls and a kitchen and a bathroom. We're good.'"

The Globe and Mail in Canada. "Toronto-Dominion Bank economist Rishi Sondhi forecasts a double-digit percentage decline in the national average home price over the March to December period this year. Bank of Montreal senior economist Robert Kavcic predicts a 10-per-cent to 20-per-cent drop in the home price index in certain regions. 'When we speak of housing correction it’s not a question of if, but where, how much and for how long,' Mr. Kavcic said in a research note. 'Suburban markets in Ontario look shakiest,' he said."

"Realtors have described a sudden change in buyer sentiment. Some homes are not fetching any offers and sitting on the market for upward of a month. That is in contrast to the first two years of the pandemic when homes drew dozens of bidders and sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars over the listed price. 'The pandemic housing boom is clearly winding down. Bidding wars are easing and prices are beginning to flatten,' said Phil Soper, chief executive officer of Royal LePage. 'When markets overshoot as they have for the past two years, they correct.'"

From News.com.au in Australia. "A Queensland family has been left reeling after learning that their $18,177 home deposit is in jeopardy because the building company has gone bust. Mum-of-two Ashley Wu, 38, and her husband, bought a vacant lot in Ipswich, 40km from the Brisbane CBD, in October last year. They planned to build a dual property for $363,500 and signed with Gold Coast-based construction firm Pivotal Homes. But late on Thursday, managing director of Pivotal Homes, Michael Irwin, revealed that the company had collapsed."

"The future of Pivotal Homes’ more than 200 new home builds has now been thrown into chaos, including that of Ms Wu. 'I don't know what to do now,' she told news.com.au. 'I don't know what’s going to happen, I really hope we can get the money back.'"

"Ms Wu was especially blindsided by the shocking announcement because just a day earlier, she had been negotiating a new price for the build and had come to an agreement, in what she says must have been a sign that staff had no idea of the company’s impending demise. Indeed, Pivotal Homes’ sales manager Tom Egan told news.com.au that he and the company’s 15 other workers were corralled into a boardroom around lunch time on Thursday, where they were all terminated on the spot."

"Earlier this year, Pivotal Homes asked Ms Wu if she would fork out an extra $34,000 for her $363,500 build. Ms Wu consulted with her solicitor, who said legally she didn’t have to pay them any extra because the contract was fixed. But understanding the stress the building sector was under, Ms Wu negotiated with the company and ended up agreeing to pay an additional $24,000. On Wednesday, they finally reached an agreement, which is why the land owner was confused to hear that just a day later the company had gone bust."

"Staff were also asking Ms Wu to sign off on drawing contracts that could then be sent to the local council less than 24 hours before the company officially went under. 'I really regret buying this [land] to be honest,' she said. 'I should have bought something that was already built. I’m very scared to build now.'"