A holiday topic starting with In Maricopa in Arizona. "It’s no secret that right now, the real estate market is once again changing. Dayv Morgan, a Maricopa Realtor, has spent the last 13 years selling real estate. Morgan said the biggest difference between now and a few months ago, isn’t necessarily price, but the longer time for homes to sell. While it’s impossible to know what the future holds, Morgan is someone whose experience, in many ways, mirrors the meteoric rise of Maricopa itself."

"Morgan moved to Maricopa in 2006. Morgan found a new community with inexpensive housing in what looked to be an up-and-coming city. But in 2006, the real estate bubble that fueled the Great Recession was in its final throes. While homes were cheaper in Maricopa than the Valley, prices were getting ready to crater everywhere. 'I think I was a little naive really, to where the market was,' Morgan said. 'The first house we bought was in 2006, which was pretty much the peak of the market here. We paid $236,000 for that little house. It was 1,500 square feet, brand new. We loved that house. I don’t think we really understood what was happening with the market, until one of my neighbors made the comment that our house was only worth, you know, $100,000 or something like that. We said, ‘there’s no way.’”

"Unfortunately, the neighbor was correct. 'I was really just oblivious to what was happening with the market at the time and turns out, it was worth even less than a hundred thousand dollars,' Morgan said. The Morgans ended up losing their home and the bank sold it for $80,000, about a third of what they paid for it."

The Idaho Press. "Chris Sabala, owner of Hornet Construction, is attempting to bring more relatively affordable housing to Harris Ranch — one of the most expensive places to live in the Treasure Valley. Between Jan. 1 and Aug. 1 this year, the average new home closed for $1,472,750 in northeast Boise, said Matt Weston, owner of Western Real Estate Services. Sabala is selling the 1,020-square-foot home he built on South Durham Way for $429,900."

"'This is more of an experiment for me,' Sabala said in an interview. 'I’ve tried to acquire in there for years. And then this popped up and it was perfect because there was only a garage on it, the trailer had been removed.' Sabala purchased a lot in the Golden Dawn Mobile Home Park, which is in the middle of the Harris Ranch development. The mobile home park has single- and double-wide mobile homes, and approximately half of the homes are rentals, said Clint Wheeler, who lives in the park."

"He said half of the rentals are owned by corporations that 'don’t give a hoot,' leaving weeds to grow and homes to fall into disrepair, which is why he and his wife Deb Wheeler are 'thrilled' about Sabala’s recent build. 'It’s a big improvement to the neighborhood,' Deb Wheeler said. 'This is a 50-plus-year-old mobile home park.'"

"The mobile home park has had two other homes, both of which are older, go up for sale, according to Sabala, and they’re each about $300,000. 'We’re old timers so we’re always shocked at the prices in this area and Harris Ranch, and all around here million dollar homes. $450,000 is certainly affordable in comparison,' Clint Wheeler said. 'A new home in that price range is pretty hard to find, with that quality.' Sabala’s home was built by two or three people, Clint Wheeler said."

The Lewiston Tribune in Idaho. "The cost of homes in Clearwater County rose by 55% in the decade ending in 2020 while median income in that jurisdiction increased by less than 1.5%. Those statistics are an illustration of how extreme the housing shortage is in north central Idaho, said Brian Points, president of Points Consulting. The cost of homes in Clearwater County rose by 55% in the decade ending in 2020 while median income in that jurisdiction increased by less than 1.5%."

"The increase in the gap in earnings and housing prices was the most acute in Clearwater County, but the pattern repeated itself throughout north central Idaho, Points said. During part of the same decade, more than 30% of the population in north central Idaho was considered cost burdened or severely cost burdened because of how much they were spending to keep a roof over their head, according to the housing assessment. Those labels come from the U.S. Housing and Urban Development's definition of affordable housing."

"Families should be spending no more than a third of their gross income on rent or a mortgage, plus utilities and property taxes, according to the agency. Since 2020, the housing market has gotten even tighter, with the price of a home in north central Idaho that cost $250,000 in 2020 climbing to more than $313,000 by this summer, according to the housing assessment."

"The numbers add up to a housing crisis with no easy or immediate solution that's affecting families throughout the Northwest, said Steven Peterson, a clinical associate professor of economics at the University of Idaho. 'It's making people poor,' said Peterson, who has studied the economy of the region since 1995 after 10 years as a Realtor. '(If) a greater portion of your income is going for housing expenses, that is basically reducing the standard of living for a significant portion of the population,' he said."

"Almost every inch of Idaho, Oregon and Washington is feeling the pinch, including places that are remote or not scenic. It used to be that people might work in Lewiston and commute from a nearby town where houses were less expensive, but now even that flawed option is less likely to be a possibility, he said. 'The scary thing about the current crisis in Idaho is it's every place and everywhere,' Peterson said. '... There's no place to escape.'"

The Press Enterprise in California. "Riverside County homebuying has cooled by 33% in a year as house hunters were scared off by 48% higher house payments. That left Riverside County home prices down 3.2% from their peak after the No. 9 worst July for sales on record. Here’s what my trusty spreadsheet found in DQNews’ report on closed transactions in Riverside County in July: The median: $579,500 for all residences —  down 2.5% in a month and up 10.4% over 12 months. Record Riverside high? $598,500 set in May. So, prices are -3.2% off their peak."

"Pandemic era? 18 price records have been broken since February 2020."

From USA Today. "The housing market 'is giving off a lot of mixed signals' lately, said Neda Navab, president of brokerage operations at real estate company Compass in New York. Buyers, sellers and real estate agents already are adjusting to the slowdown, said Navab, who notes that home sales prices, though lower, remain high. 'The market simply could not, and was never expected to, grow at that pace indefinitely,' Navab said. 'Whether this trend will continue long enough for the market to enter a true 'recession,' or if this is simply the start of an expected 'correction' to historic norms, still remains to be seen.'"

"Los Angeles real estate investment adviser Andre Stewart, CEO of InvestFar, a startup, believes Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell is far from finished playing a key role in the housing market's future. 'The FED also has a $2.7 trillion mortgage dilemma, combined with high-interest rates, it's very unlikely the Federal Reserve can unwind its balance sheet,' Stewart said. 'But if they do, prepare for a collapse, not a correction, in housing over the next 18 to 24 months.'"

From Reuters. "Canada’s soaring house prices will decline sharply next year, but still not enough to make them affordable as the Bank of Canada is set to continue raising interest rates and keep them higher for longer, Reuters polls showed. Fuelled by near-zero interest rates, already-elevated prices in one of the world’s hottest housing markets have surged over 50 per cent since the pandemic began. Although prices have declined nearly 6 per cent since the BoC started hiking the overnight rate in March, analysts say it will take years for affordability to return, if ever."

"A median of seven responses on a separate question showed prices needed to fall nearly 18 per cent to be fairly valued. A few said they need to fall much more. 'The fact is home prices have been disconnected from incomes and rents for quite some time,' said John Pasalis, president at Realosophy Realty. 'Even if benchmark house prices fall another 30 per cent nationally, this will just put prices back to Feb. 2020 levels (pre-COVID) which were not affordable at that time, but buyers will also be faced with higher interest rates compared to 2020.'"

Newshub New Zealand. "A breakdown of predicted retiree homeownership rates has been revealed in new figures published by the Retirement Commission, which point towards a larger chunk of over-65s being forced to continue paying a mortgage or renting later in life. The report showed about two-thirds of renters aged between 65 and 74 were spending 40 percent or more of the $463 NZ Super income on housing. That figure was worse for those still paying a mortgage, with more than half of people in the same age group spending over 80 percent on repayments."

"Te Ara Ahunga Ora policy director Suzy Morrissey said retirees were being forced to use large amounts of their NZ Super to cover housing costs. When NZ Super was introduced, it was with the underlying assumption that those accessing it would be mortgage-free homeowners. 'Today, the reality is very different. There are declining homeownership rates, more people needing to continue working longer because they still have mortgages to pay, are paying rent or haven't been able to save enough to retire.'"

"By 2040, the 40 percent of people in their early 60s still renting would equate to as many as 600,000 people. 'It's a real challenge for people to make ends meet if they are having to use substantial amounts of their NZ Super to cover housing costs,' Dr Morrissey said."

From ABC News. "Like hundreds of thousands of other Australians, Madeline and Jacqueline Darkovska are prisoners to their mortgage. The 24-year-old twin sisters are among borrowers who purchased at the height of the pandemic housing boom and are finding it impossible to refinance their home loan. And with another double interest rate hike expected on Tuesday, the sisters — who are already struggling to meet higher mortgage repayments — fear they could lose their home in the coming months."

"'We've been struggling a lot,' says Madeline, who had been working casual shifts as a clerk for a Perth hospital before losing her job and having to call on her mother, Val, to help her make the required mortgage repayments. 'I haven't been able to afford a lot of things, based on lack of basic living, haven't been able to purchase a lot of food for myself or even help pay for my car bill, mortgage, everything,' she tells ABC News."

"Late last year, the nation's banking regulator, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), introduced more stringent 'stress tests,' requiring loan applicants to show they can afford monthly repayments at 3 per cent more than the current rate. However, Madeline and Jacqueline got into the property market when the stress test was just 2.5 per cent above the then rate. In December 2020, the sisters took out a $360,000 loan to build their dream home, enticed by first home owner grants and the $25,000 HomeBuilder Grant (they later missed out on the $25,000 because they learnt that siblings did not qualify)."

"At the time of taking out their loan, their only option without a 10 per cent deposit, was to go with a small lender on a high variable interest rate of 4.54 per cent. With four back-to-back rate rises, their repayments have shot up by more than $500 a month, and with more rate hikes expected to follow by year's end, they could end up with a variable rate of about 8 per cent. That's a dire prospect the sisters have been contemplating as they fight to hold on to their home in Aveley on the outskirts of Perth. 'We'll probably have to sell the house if we can't keep up with the repayments — it's really scary for us,' Madeline says."

"'Mortgage prison is where you can't refinance, and the main reason that would be is if the equity in your property falls below 20 per cent,' RateCity's research director Sally Tindall says. Ms Tindall says someone in Sydney who bought in December of last year with a 20 per cent deposit, is likely to be in mortgage prison already because the peak of the Sydney market was in January of this year and has been falling ever since. Add to this, the number of people who can't pass the banks serviceability tests, and that figure may well run higher than 176,000."

From Small Caps on Australia. "Oh, please spare us the violins and the flood of adjectives that are accompanying the current 'historic' property price 'plunge.' The only thing worse than the whining that accompanies the property price falls was the fawning words of adulation that accompanied the seemingly never-ending, double-digit boom in housing prices that preceded it."

"It is almost as if several Property Commandments have been broken at the same time, leading to tough times at the Property Temple, which in recent years has been a place that has attracted huge audiences – many of them also addicted to home reno and flip television programs. One of those commandments to be broken is the old line peddled by every real estate agent since Adam – property prices never go down."

"On average, over the long term and applied across several major Australian markets that commandment still holds water but at this specific moment it is absolutely wrong. Another broken commandment is the old 'you’ll never lose money on property.' Well, at all points of the cycle many people do just that and at the moment their number could be rising a little. If they don’t lose money on the actual property, many owners lose it big time on the loan, given the sheer quantity of money required to buy a property now and what effect even a small interest rate rise can have."

"What the falls don’t really leave much of a dent in is the poor levels of house affordability, with anything lost on the price generally taken up – and then some – in the form of higher interest rates. Indeed, with rates rising, affordability is arguably going down even as prices go down as well, given that most property buyers will have a loan. That will be even more the case this week when interest rates rise again."

"To really have an impact on affordability, prices would need to come down by the same sort of serious double-digit percentages that that some of the banking shock jocks are predicting. There was a time in the 1990s that you could buy a property for four times the median or middle income but that number has climbed to seven times the median income, or perhaps eight if you live in Sydney."

"The most annoying thing about the property price mania – other than the vagaries of the imprecise statistics available – is the air of unreality that still surrounds current price levels. To the casual observer, property seems like a one way bet to success, with the only blips on the horizon the current 'shock horror' falls, which have upset the 'natural order.' This sort of fantasy comes about through a concentration on capital value, with of course no allowance ever made for transaction costs, interest, rates, insurance, management fees and land tax."

"Property also has some natural investment advantages – it is an easy asset to borrow against to a very high level and it is one of the few assets that an astute buyer can add value to through alterations and renovations. However, it is not perfect and it can and indeed does produce losses at times. When it does, that is a great time to celebrate the rarity of such volatile reversals rather than start to wail and complain that the natural order of the universe has somehow been disturbed."