A report from the Marin Independent Journal in California. "The median price for a detached home in Marin County wobbled to $1.7 million last month, about the same level it was six months ago and about 20% lower than the prior year. The figure is based on the latest data released by the county's assessor's office. The median price in April 2022 was $2.12 million, a peak for the county before the monthly figure fell as low as $1.5 million. 'We're still seeing a lack of inventory,' said Arun Burrell, a 20-year agent whose office is in San Rafael."

"Around the Bay Area, the median price for a single-family home last month was $1.25 million, a 17% decline from the prior April, the California Association of Realtors reported Thursday. Year-over-year sales volume declined nearly 39%. Other median prices in the region last month included $1.59 million in San Francisco, a 23% decline over the prior April, and $840,000 in Sonoma County, a 3.4% decline from the year before, the association said. Statewide, the median home price last month was $815,340, a year-over-year decline of about 8%. The number of sales fell 36% over the prior year."

The Los Angeles Times in California. "Downtown San Francisco is in distress. Indicators of urban well-being point in the wrong direction: office occupancy, BART ridership and retail foot traffic are down, as is the city's population. Every week brings news of another high-profile exit. Now barely a day passes without the San Francisco Chronicle or another publication referencing a 'doom loop' in the city. Like most people who had a good run for too long, San Francisco didn’t see it coming."

"Technology, the force that propelled San Francisco to the top, also carried the germs of its doom. At the start of the pandemic, tech stocks had been boosted by remote work tools. But when the shutdowns finally ended, they tanked, dragging down everything else — much as the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank helped trigger the death spiral that shook confidence in and ultimately took down First Republic. As the seemingly infinite IPO cash tsunami receded, it revealed the city’s less sightly realities that accumulated during the tech boom: homelessness, addiction, deficient public services. The pandemic didn’t help. Yet it didn’t cause the city’s current plight — it merely accelerated existing problems. Now that the tech bubble has burst, the costs are being borne by the rest of us."

The Telegraph. "Simon Mitchell’s office in Union Square, New York City has had an eerily empty feel since the Covid pandemic. With four in five desks unused in a space with capacity for 300, the marketing manager only goes in when he feels like he might have some company. Union Square was once known for its bustling bars and restaurants, into which office workers would swarm as they enjoyed their fast-paced city lives. The change in the area today is stark."

"Mr Mitchell, his partner and their one-year-old baby moved to Queens just after the pandemic. He has no intention of returning to the office full time. 'Rents are sky high and if you can avoid paying City prices on food and have a flexible lifestyle, why would you go into the office more?' he says. Meanwhile, the level of workers returning to the office has plateaued at around 60pc, data from The Real Estate Board of New York shows. The consultancy group has warned of a coming wave of 'zombie' buildings rendered barely functional due to low vacancy rates. Some skyscrapers are already lifeless."

"There is currently around 22.7 million sq ft of sublet space in New York, with this figure rising as companies look to shrink their office footprints. Agents note that the majority of companies releasing space are in the tech or media industries. According to JLL, around 25 million sq ft of office space in Manhattan alone has sat empty and on the market for more than 24 months."

Bisnow Boston in Massachusetts. "The problems in Boston’s office sector keep getting worse, with no clear resolution in sight. As tenants continue to consolidate footprints in an effort to brace for more economic pain, top Boston commercial real estate executives told Bisnow they are worried about the future of the city’s office assets. 'I’m very concerned,' HYM Investments CEO Tom O'Brien, one of Boston's largest commercial real estate owners, told Bisnow. 'We’re in a very different place than we’ve ever been.'"

"In the first quarter, the city’s vacancy rate has matched that of the Great Financial Crisis over a decade ago at 18.8%, according to Colliers. Boston recorded 3.4M SF of negative net absorption during Q1, the fourth consecutive quarter of negative absorption, as more companies have put space back on the market. Cushman & Wakefield Executive Vice Chair John Boyle, a top broker in the firm's Boston office, said the firm estimates that office demand is at least 50% down from its peak levels. 'They're well aware of the challenges that lie ahead,' Boyle said of Boston's office owners. 'These people are very thoughtful, curious, smart people. And they don't need me to say, 'You better be careful,' because they're well aware of it.'"

"As more space sits vacant in Boston, landlords and city officials have been hit with the difficult challenge of what needs to be done to these buildings to attract people back into the city. The city has 17M SF of Class-B space with a 25.8% vacancy rate as of the first quarter, according to Colliers. Rents for these buildings also fell by 13%. 'You have new towers, like the one where we're delivering right now this year, that do well during times like this, but there are Class-B and C buildings, which really are not doing well,' HYM's O’Brien said. 'We have literally millions of square feet of space that will be difficult to fill because of everything that's happening in the market on all those fronts.'"

The Globe and Mail in Canada. "Andrew Graham didn’t know it yet, but the swift collapse of a bank 4,300 kilometres away in Santa Clara, Calif., was about to mess with his Toronto-based fintech, Borrowell Inc. The cash infusion wasn’t a matter of life or death; Borrowell was close to breaking even, putting it in much better shape than most startups. But the funding would provide a cushion of financial comfort during what was proving to be a prolonged tech downturn with no end in sight."

"'It was a punch to the gut' and prompted Borrowell to scale back growth initiatives and lay off some staff, says Mr. Graham. He’s since talked to other founders who had recent financing deals fall apart late in the process – but few came as late as Borrowell’s. 'I know we’re not alone out there.' He’s right. He’s also one of the luckier ones."

"And this is just the start of the Great Tech Shakeout. The next year will be a death zone for many young companies as 'you’ll see a bunch of businesses shut down or sold for next to nothing,' says Chad Bayne, co-chair of Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP’s emerging and high-growth companies practice."

"According to the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association, the value of VC deals in Canada in the first quarter dropped 71 per cent year-over-year as deal volume fell by 24.3 per cent. And that decline still likely has a way to go. VC funding took 10 quarters to bottom out after the dot-com bubble burst more than two decades ago and nine quarters after the Great Recession of 2008-09. We’re five quarters into this downturn, and Crunchbase says global dollar volumes invested crashed by 59 per cent in the first quarter of 2023, to US$76-billion, compared to the fourth quarter of 2021."

"So what does all this mean for Canada’s tech sector? It finally seemed to be on a sustained roll after significant retreats following the dot-com bust and Great Recession. Well, with the economy in no hurry to rebound, a wide swath of once-high-flyers are looking more like the walking near-dead. It’s a vastly different landscape than what existed 18 months ago, when giant investors such as Tiger Global and Softbank were aggressively throwing huge sums at young companies with relatively little forethought and cheering them on to spend, spend, spend."

"In early 2022, Andrew McLeod, CEO of Certn (Canada) Inc., got a term sheet from one fund that told him, 'You have 18 months to spend $150-million,' he says. Victoria-based Certn operates an online background-check service. 'There was no way we could efficiently spend $150-million in this business with our fundamentals in 18 months. I think there were certain founders that got caught in the unicorn trap.'"

"RenoRun CEO Eamonn O’Rourke was one of them. The Montreal-based startup ran an online delivery service for general contractors, and it was one of many backed by Tiger in Canada. From the time it received its first venture cheque right up to June, 2022, Mr. O’Rourke told The Globe in March, investors and board members kept telling him to grow faster. Then the downturn hit, starting with a steep drop in publicly traded tech stocks in late 2021. Soon after, it spread to private companies as interest rates rose and demand cooled. The 'grow at all costs' mantra went out of fashion quickly. Reaching profitability – or just plain surviving – was the new goal."

"As companies sought to preserve cash, they laid off waves of employees – and the carnage has continued. So far in 2023, job losses in the sector have topped 197,000 globally, compared to 164,500-plus in all of 2022, according to Layoffs.fyi. A slew of Canadian tech companies have also made senior executive changes. It doesn’t matter that many of the companies seeking cash raised vast sums during the market peak of 2020-21. Many are finding it exceedingly difficult to find the capital they need at palatable terms, even if they’ve cut staff, squelched expansion plans and otherwise reined in their ambitions."

"For some it’s too late. Ed Bryant, CEO of Ottawa-based Sampford Advisors, a midmarket tech-focused mergers and acquisitions advisory firm, says he’s turning away a growing number of small venture capital-backed companies with less than six months of cash that are looking to sell. 'We feel quite strongly we can’t sell them – there’s too much risk for us to take,' he says. 'They don’t have options. There’s a lot of junk that no one wants to buy.'"