A report from the Idaho Statesman. "For the first time since the years after the Great Recession, city officials project that Boise homeowners will see decreases in their property taxes. The same trend is happening across most of Ada County, said Brad Smith, the chief deputy at the Ada County Assessor’s Office. He said the last time property values went down was in 2012. Since early last year, home prices in Boise have fallen by 10%, Boise Regional Realtors President Debbi Myers told the Statesman by phone. Across Boise, Meridian, Nampa and Caldwell, homes have seen a 4.2% decrease in value since early last year, according to data from the National Association of Realtors. 'The explanation for that is really pretty simple,' Myers said. 'We were undervalued pre-COVID, and then we had a surge during COVID that was not in line with any reality. And now it’s kind of correcting back to where it should be.'"

The Dallas Morning News. "From July 2021 to June 2022, the median age of Texas homebuyers was 56, according to new research from Texas Realtors derived from a National Association of Realtors survey. That’s almost nine years older than the typical buyer from just a year before, who was 47. During the same period, the share of first-time buyers in the market dropped from 32% to 24%. A decade before, 39% of Texas buyers were first-timers. In 2023, home prices across the state finally stalled out. As of April 2023, Dallas-Fort Worth single-family home prices had sunk 5% from a year before to $404,450 while sales were down 8%."

Yahoo Finance. "Many cities across the country, some homes are selling for tens of thousands of dollars less, sometimes even hundreds of thousands of dollars less than they were just a year ago. Here to explain, Yahoo Finance housing reporter, Rebecca Chen. 'So the numbers that we're seeing show that some of the San Francisco housing are $220,000 less than just a year ago and this is per house. Experts we previously chatted with say, it's because buyers are just not as aggressive in the market. There's not as much wealth in the tech ecosystem. So there's not that much IPO going on, the VC funding has really dried up and because of the tech layoffs. And also, we are seeing that pandemic boomtown prices are really coming down.'"

"'So Austin, Texas, Boise, Idaho, prices are dropping in these places as well. And Austin saw a 15% decline this year. It's about $85,000 less compared to last year per house in Boise, and this is really the market where in the last two years, market went crazy over. It's skyrocketed over 40% in just one year. And in Boise, Idaho we're also seeing similar things where it's a 15% drop, and that's about $80,000 less in a house compared to last year.'"

The Guardian on California. "Once home to some of the most expensive and sought-after office space in the world, San Francisco today is suffering from one of the most hollowed-out downtowns in North America. Walking along Market Street, the main thoroughfare, 'office space available' and 'for sale or lease' signs solicit new businesses. Office vacancy in the first quarter of 2023 ranged between 26.4% and 29.4%, depending on the tally. It has sparked speculation that the city is at the verge of a so-called 'doom loop,' a spiral down into debt that will force it to cut social and transportation services, which will in turn perpetuate more disinvestment."

"'San Francisco really placed a bet on huge commercial office development, more than anywhere else maybe in the world,' said California assembly member Matt Haney. 'They placed the biggest possible bet on something that went bottom-up. They lost. So now we have to adapt and adapt quickly.'"

"Sitting in Salesforce Park was Chris Carlsson, a local historian and co-director of Shaping San Francisco, which provides walking, biking and bay cruise history tours of the city. He gestured to the soaring towers around. He thinks their value is about to crater. 'The people holding that value will lose it. And they will be sad, and they’ll be jumping off buildings, and they’ll be freaking out,' said Carlsson, who sheds no tears for property investors. 'That’s fine. That’s capitalism, right?'"

From Bisnow. "Activist investor Jonathan Litt shorted major office-owning REITs in the earliest stages of the pandemic, and so far he has proved prescient. Litt reiterated his commitment to short bets focused on office buildings in urban cores in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday. Litt said his Land & Buildings Investment Management continues to maintain a short position on Washington, D.C.-based JBG Smith, whose stock has already lost 62% of its value since May 2020. Litt declined further comment to Bisnow when reached through a representative."

"New York office buildings are now projected to lose 44% of their value by 2029 due to 'persistent' remote work keeping demand in excess of supply, a new academic study published this week found. Buildings with expiring leases see less hope than ever of maintaining similar cash flows, especially as inflation drives operating expenses upward, Litt said. 'This isn’t a work-from-home story anymore,' Litt said on CNBC. 'This is a financing story ... And as these debts come due, there’s really nowhere to go because lenders aren’t lending to the space.'"

From Market Watch. "Cash-strapped landlords with maturing property debt aren’t being scared off by 12%-16% rates of interest, said Ben Miller, CEO of Fundrise, which recently launched a new $500 million credit fund to make property loans to borrowers in need of liquidity. 'We have been turning away deals. We have too many deals,' Miller told MarketWatch on Friday. 'The problem is too any deals and not enough dollars in the world today. The team has been trying to prioritize what we think are deals with the lowest risk.'"

"Miller pointed to stress evident among small-time syndicators in multifamily properties, as highlighted by The Wall Street Journal, as an example of fallout already hitting real estate as credit conditions tighten. 'They are the first to get foreclosed on because they are less capitalized,' he said. 'But institutions have the exact same problem.'"

The Toronto Star. "As bills pile up, many Canadians are already feeling the pain and making difficult choices as they struggle to repay debt — and a series of reports this week revealed just how bad it’s getting. Even Canada’s Big Five banks, those reliable generators of profits, are feeling the impact. Their quarterly earnings took a hit this week as they reported putting aside billions of dollars to shield themselves from bad loans. One finance expert said that could eventually make it even harder to borrow as the banks rein in their own spending."

"It’s all taking a toll. A report from BDO Debt Solutions published Thursday said 30 per cent of respondents to an online survey in April feel 'overwhelmed by debt and don’t know what to do about it.' During the early years of the pandemic, when interest rates were still low, government support was flowing and banks weren’t aggressively collecting missed loan and credit card payments, and 'it was really masking the fact that people were using credit to make ends meet,' said Mike Braga, senior vice-president and licensed insolvency trustee at BDO."

"'Now that things are getting back to normal from a business perspective,' said Braga, 'collections are ramping up and interest rates are increasing. You’ve got this perfect storm of all of these individuals with debts that they thought were manageable before, who can no longer manage.'"

"'Borrowers have been dealing with a higher rate environment for several months ow. We are seeing insolvencies, impairments and losses increasing toward longer-term averages,' said Graeme Hepworth, chief risk officer at RBC, adding, 'the full impact of higher rates on the economy will take time to translate into credit losses.'"

"RBC reported a 14-per-cent drop in profit on Thursday, which was partially because it recorded $600 million in PCLs. But Canada’s largest bank also said its expenses were up significantly and CEO Dave McKay attributed that in part to 'aggressively' hiring too many people last year, saying it 'overshot by thousands of people.'"

The Globe and Mail. "Dubbed the Great Consumer Squeeze, Canadians are facing the outcomes of the twin shocks of declining purchasing power, as the cost-of-living is increasing faster than wages, and fast-rising interest rates, forcing consumers to devote a greater share of their income to debt repayment. Now, despite these current positive signs of solid consumer confidence, there are alarming signs that a rising number of households are struggling with their debt."

"In some instances, particularly in British Colombia, Alberta and Manitoba, insolvencies are now above their prepandemic levels. Interestingly, households in B.C. and Alberta are also among the most indebted in the country, thereby making them more vulnerable to the sort of shocks we have seen over the past year. But the headline insolvencies numbers do not tell the full story. The proposal component of insolvencies, also referred to as a renegotiation of terms, is rising at a rapid pace, while bankruptcies remain subdued. Proposals in Canada are about 10 per cent above their 2019 levels and every province between Ontario and B.C. has proposals well above their prepandemic levels; in Manitoba, this figure is 50 per cent."

"Although the fast-rising and high level of proposals may be a return to normal, it also suggests that an increasing proportion of households are falling behind on their financial obligations and require a change in their lending terms to avoid bankruptcy. With the strong labour market enabling a steady stream of income for borrowers, lenders prefer revising their lending terms instead of dealing with the higher costs of bankruptcy and foreclosure."

"In this context, the labour market is the Achilles’ heel of the Canadian economy. A change in the labour market owing to a negative shock or a delayed adjustment to the sharp increase in interest rates has the potential to rapidly change the economic outlook. Given the high level of household debt and the high cost of servicing this debt, most Canadian households require two or more incomes to remain current on their payments. A significant change in the employment conditions and job losses would likely lead to an even greater surge in insolvencies, compounding the impact on the wider economy."

"Even in the absence of such a shock, we should expect insolvencies to continue to rise. As interest rates remain close to their highest level in a decade, more and more borrowers will be renewing their loans at higher interest rates, some of which may become insolvent because of the significant impact on their payments. Moreover, as insolvencies are a lagging indicator of the economic cycle, peaking about a year after a shock, the current rise in insolvencies likely barely takes into account the full extent of the rate hikes of the past year."