A report from DS News. "'I was consistently busy in the fall, but things got really quiet in March after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank,' said Boise Redfin Real Estate Agent Shauna Pendleton. 'That killed the buyer momentum that had been building and brought us right back to where we were last year when mortgage rates shot up. There’s this fear that everything will crash.' Pandemic boomtowns and pricey Bay Area markets led the price declines in March. In Boise, ID, prices fell 15.4% from a year earlier, more than any other U.S. metro area Redfin analyzed. Next came Austin, TX (-13.7%), Sacramento, CA (-11.9%), San Jose, CA (-10.5%), and Oakland, CA (-9.7%). Boise also saw the largest drop in pending home sales, with a 78.8% year-over-year decline. Nationwide, pending sales fell 26.6% on a seasonally-adjusted basis to the lowest level since the onset of the pandemic (April 2020)."

City Weekly in Utah. "The median list price for a home in Salt Lake City has dropped to $525,000, down from more than $650,000 during the pandemic rush. Provo's average now is $435,000 and St. George is $537,000. But Ogden is one of the most affordable, larger cities in Utah, with a median home sales price last month of $368,000, down 7.7% over last year; and Logan is down 5.1% over last year with an average list price of $370,000."

The News Tribune in Washington. "Another high-profile development in Tacoma has run into financial trouble. Construction of Tacoma Trax, 415 E. 25th St. next to the Tacoma Dome Station, is facing multiple lien filings, according to Pierce County Assessor-Treasurer records online. A notice of trustee sale recorded in Pierce County on March 31 announces a July 21 foreclosure auction for Tacoma Trax and the developers' completed Madison Plaza project in Kent, which is also part of the court filings. The complaint states that Madison-Trax stopped work on the Tacoma property in December. Eugene Gershman, CEO of GIS International Group told The News Tribune regarding the potential foreclosure for both Trax and Madison Plaza, 'I think our lender's being a little aggressive. Cost of construction has gone up,' he added. 'And a lot of projects are not penciling.'"

Bisnow Dallas Fort Worth in Texas. "A $38.7M loan on a Class-A office property in Richardson has been transferred to a special servicer following the downsizing of the building’s largest tenant. The property’s CMBS loan isn't scheduled to expire until 2025, but the threat of an imminent default could explain why the debt has been transferred to a special servicer, said Amber Sefert, managing director of credit and asset management at Trimont Real Estate Advisors. Sefert isn't affiliated with the loan."

"'The borrower may have advised the lender that they do not have sufficient funds to make the loan payments after United Healthcare stops paying rent when their lease expires in June,' Sefert said. 'Alternatively, the borrower could have asked for a reduced monthly loan payment based on the fact that their income will dramatically drop in June when United Healthcare leaves,' she added. 'Either way, this will put the loan in payment default.'"

The New York Post on California. "Rihanna has splashed out a cool $21 million for a nearly 9,300-square-foot Los Angeles penthouse formerly owned by 'Friends' mainstay Matthew Perry,  who purchased the unit back in 2017 for $20 million. Perry later sold the residence in a record-breaking sale that was Southern California’s priciest condo in 2021 for $21.6 million. He hoped to score $35 million. Nick Molnar bought it from the actor. But it looks like Molnar is willing to take a slight loss. Initially listing the home in October for $28 million, Rihanna was able to negotiate it down $8 million, possibly using LA’s new mansion tax implemented on April 1 as a bargaining tool."

The Pacific Coast Business Times in California. "Since 2016, an estimated 40,000 more residents have left Ventura County than new people moving in, the report says. Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, addressed the exodus of people and businesses from California because of high tax rates and the high cost of living and doing business. 'You’ve seen the list of businesses, a list about 15 pages long, major corporations moving out of the state of California to other states, really gutting our tax base,' Coupal said."

"He said the Public Policy Institute of California had an April 13 blog post that stated, 'Our findings suggest that taxes might be a factor in where higher-income people go when they leave the state.' 'And my reaction was, ‘Thank you Capt. Obvious,’ Coupal said to laughs."

The Globe and Mail in Canada. "Sales in the area dropped 38.4 per cent in March from the same month last year, according to the Waterloo Region Association of Realtors (WRAR). The average price for all residential properties in March was $779,017, which marks an 18.6-per-cent decrease from March, 2022, according to WRAR. Alexis Victor, real estate agent with Royal LePage Signature Realty, points to one property that was listed with an asking price of $1.9-million last year, then taken off the market when it failed to sell. More recently it was relisted with an asking price of $1.5-million. 'People have realistic expectations and they are putting their properties on the market because they want to sell them, whereas before they just wanted to see what they could get.'"

"Some homeowners became panicked when the Bank of Canada moved last year to aggressively lift its key interest rate, she says, but lenders have been working with some people to help them stay in their properties, she says. She adds that some homeowners may be forced to sell if the Bank of Canada raises rates in the coming months. 'Some people are hanging on by a thread.'"

"Faisal Susiwala, broker at Re/Max Twin City, sees a possible shift in the market later this year. 'Inventory is at a low level. I expect that to change drastically coming into the fall. We feel it at ground level.' So far, homeowners are holding on in the face of higher rates by 'robbing Peter to pay Paul,' he says. Buyers who purchased in the spring and early summer of 2018 and took out a five-year fixed-rate mortgage will see those agreements coming up for renewal in August and September, he says. He sees potential for trouble for some of those folks who took out a home equity line of credit (HELOC) in 2020 and 2021 when interest rates were as low as 1.5 per cent. Many people decided to take advantage of the low borrowing costs to put in a backyard pool or build an addition, he says. Now the variable rate on a HELOC is around 7.2 per cent, he points out."

The Irish Times. "Walking through the suburbs of Luxembourg, the evidence of a decade-long real estate boom is frozen in time. Once-rural villages have developed into satellite suburbs, the streetscape nearly unrecognisable as farmhouses gave way to geometric, glass-fronted new-build developments in gleaming white and grey. You can easily get lost. Streets exist that did not before. The pace of the development has been such that Google Maps has not kept up with the change and still shows fields where rows of new-build apartment buildings now stand."

"Despite a growing population and high demand for affordable homes, however, many of these apartments are empty. The development was accompanied by one of the steepest rises in house prices in Europe over the last decade. Prices more than doubled between 2010 and the third quarter of 2022 in Luxembourg, rising by a striking 140 per cent. Among European Union countries, only Estonia and Hungary saw steeper rises. In Ireland, house prices rose 50 per cent in the same period, putting us firmly mid-table."

"There are signs now that this decade-long trend is coming to an abrupt halt across the Continent. 'The bubble is bursting,' one long-time Luxembourg real estate investor told me. 'The new builds are not selling at all. Zero.' The length of the cheap money era made some people forget how closely tied house prices were to interest rates."

"At its peak, prices for new property in prime Luxembourg locations tipped €18,000 per square metre. Many developers built, expecting a payout like that and paid for land accordingly. Now, they are holding off on dropping their prices because they don’t want to make a loss. 'Fourteen thousand, eighteen thousand a square metre was normal,' one investor recalls. 'Now, you’re lucky to get ten thousand. The new builds, they cannot sell because at ten thousand a square metre they might just break even.'"

"It all makes for the anachronistic situation in which brand new homes stand empty, advertisements posted in their windows and the debris of recent building work stretching around them. Across Europe, it is clear that the long housing rally has peaked. In the second half of 2022, Germany saw the biggest six-month fall in house prices in more than 20 years."

"In Copenhagen, the number of houses sold in September halved compared to the same month the previous year. It was the lowest number of monthly sales since 2012. In November, the Netherlands saw its biggest quarterly drop in house prices since 2013. All in all, two thirds of the economies tracked by the OECD saw house prices decline in their most recent quarter. Denmark saw a drop of 5.9 per cent compared to the previous quarter. In Sweden, the drop was 4.6 per cent. From Latvia to Germany, Italy to the Netherlands, house prices declined."