A report from the Hawaii Tribune Herald. "'I’m telling sellers that if they get an offer that’s even slightly acceptable, they should take it,' said Jen McGeehan, Realtor with Coldwell-Banker Island Properties. 'My sellers are starting to price themselves a little bit better, but they’re not hungry enough yet to set a price that will move within 30 days.' Through the end of March, 430 Big Island homes have been sold this year, down from the 728 that were sold by the same point last year. Sales in South Hilo and Puna have been particularly tepid. Through March, 59 homes were sold in South Hilo, little more than half of the 104 that were sold in the first three months of 2022. And while Puna saw 289 homes sold in the first quarter of 2022, only 175 sales have been completed by the end of the first quarter."

From WTOP News. "'Dr. Terry Clower, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University, provided an overview of the region’s economy for the more than 100 attendees. He noted that while the Northern Virginia economy is resilient and the unemployment rate is low, there are headwinds. 'We’ve lost a bit of our mojo,' Clower said. Among the challenges is that the Washington region as a whole has seen a significant slowdown in population growth — and Fairfax County’s population actually dropped by 3,400 people between July 2021 and July 2022, according to Census estimates. 'That’s a scary number,' Clower said."

"Prince George’s and Montgomery counties in Maryland, as well as the city of Manassas Park in Virginia, also lost population during that time. 'In a region this size, that’s a statistical blip,' Clower said. 'This problem is getting worse…. We’re losing millennials who’ve decided they can’t afford $1.3 million for a single-family home in Arlington.'"

The Orlando Sentinel in Florida. "In January, sales dropped in January to their lowest point since 2009. Most real estate agents predicted that would happen when the Federal Reserve started raising interest rates last year to curb inflation, said real estate agent Chris Winn of Bloom Home Group Realty in Orlando. 'People have been sitting and waiting to see what’s going to happen,' he said. In the last month, Winn says he started getting more calls from people who want to list their houses. 'It feels like there’s this push coming that is going to put us back on track for what we would see seasonally.'"

"While Winn noted that some sellers are cutting their prices, he said that people who price correctly 'are getting pretty close to what they’re asking. Those sellers who are maybe overly ambitious … they’re the ones that end up doing the price reductions.'"

The Real Deal on California. "A joint venture between WeWork and Rhone Group has defaulted for not paying its mortgage on an office tower in San Francisco’s Financial District. The venture launched by the coworking and private equity firms, both based in New York, defaulted on a $240 million loan for the 20-story building at 600 California Street, Bloomberg reported.The property, owned by funds managed by a venture formed by WeWork and Rhone in 2019 to buy and oversee real estate, includes WeWork coworking offices as an anchor tenant."

Yahoo Finance on Texas. "Landlords in Houston and Dallas are having a tougher time filling their empty office buildings with new tenants than any other market in the country, according to office market statistics compiled by CoStar and JPMorgan. Why? One reason: They overbuilt when interest rates were low. Houston and Dallas put up more new office space between 2010 and 2021 than all regions except New York. Despite the disruptions of the pandemic, they still have millions more square feet under construction. Vacancies now are higher than any other metro area, despite attempts to fill the gaps with heavy discounts."

"'Refinancing risk over the near term is high and it's gonna be really tough because interest rates are so high,' Itziar Aguirre, CoStar's director of market analytics for Houston, told Yahoo Finance. 'There's gonna be a lot of foreclosures. I think there's gonna be bankruptcies. There's gonna be a lot of distressed sales.'"

From Business Insider. "While offices have been going through a paradigmatic shift as more workers do their jobs remotely, apartment buildings have experienced robust demand from tenants. But fault lines have emerged for investors who paid top dollar for assets that depended on substantial rent increases and persistent low interest rates to achieve profitability. Those kinds of optimistic projections became increasingly necessary in the booming markets of 2021 and 2022, when investors grew voracious for apartment-building acquisitions, boosting competition and prices."

"The problems could mushroom as more mortgages expire at properties where fix-and-flip strategies have stalled, throwing a growing number into default. The problems could mushroom as more mortgages expire at properties where fix-and-flip strategies have stalled, throwing a growing number into default. There are signals of stress. A Trepp analysis found that in Washington DC, for instance, 71.9% of multifamily properties financed with CRE CLOs didn't earn enough rent to cover their debts. Trepp attributed some of the pain in that pool of troubled loans, which totals about $1 billion, to the remote-work policies among federal government offices — the dominant tenant base in the city — which have allowed workers to migrate and work from afar, weakening the local rental market."

"Falling property prices have compounded the problems for investors. MSCI estimated in February that apartment-building prices had fallen on average by about 8.7% year over year. In April, Green Street estimated they'd declined by 21% from a year ago. As these short-term debts come due, they will be difficult to swap with commensurately sized loans today, because of the falling values, higher interest rates, and lender caution. That could force landlords to pour in millions of dollars to pay the difference — cash they may not have."

The Globe and Mail. "Romspen Investment Corp., one of Canada’s largest private mortgage lenders, is locked in a court battle with its largest borrower after multiple loan defaults allegedly totalling $333-million – unpaid debt that has hindered its ability to fund investor redemptions."

"Romspen has asked the Ontario Superior Court to appoint a receiver to take control of three properties that underpin the distressed loans. If approved, the receiver could sell the properties as it sees fit and the proceeds would allow Romspen to recoup some, or all, of the money it is owed. The three affected properties are located in Toronto: Woodbine Mall and Rexdale Mall, in the city’s northwest corner, and 1500 Birchmount Rd., in the city’s northeast corner."

"A growing number of private lenders and funds are grappling with elevated redemption requests. In Canada, Ninepoint Partners LP had to restructure its flagship private-debt fund last year after 25 per cent of investors wanted out. More recently, in December, Blackstone Real Estate Investment Trust, one of the world’s largest private real estate investment funds, had to limit redemptions because so many investors wanted their money back."

"Private lenders often struggle to fund elevated redemption requests because the very nature of their loans makes it hard to recoup cash quickly. Private loans made to riskier borrowers often cannot be sold easily – and when they are, the sales may be conducted at deep discounts."

News.com.au in Australia. "Horror stories have emerged from some of the hundreds of customers left in the lurch by collapsed construction giant Porter Davis as the scale of the crisis becomes clearer. Dozens rallied on the steps of Victoria’s Parliament House on the weekend, demanding more robust safeguards to protect consumers from falling into their own perilous situation. Victim and organiser of Sunday’s protest, Mike Tarno, estimates that 800 families have lost between $30,000 and $50,000 and said many were left without insurance. He accused the company of taking deposits right up until it went into liquidation, telling Sunrise: 'Companies don’t usually go into liquidation overnight.'"

"Another Porter Davis collapse victim, Anil Vemula, wept on parliament steps as he revealed the pain of not knowing whether he’ll see his $33,000 deposit for a build again. 'They robbed us, they cheated us, they left us in the dark, we don’t know what to do now,' the father-of-two – who spent three years saving for his deposit – said through tears on Sunday. 'Three years of our savings. I have two kids, we make a lot of sacrifices. We need help. We need our deposits back.' He said 'not a brick' had been laid."