A report from WPTV. "With the influx of people moving to South Florida and the Treasure Coast, real estate experts said don't expect to see much of a correction in the market. But there is a glimmer of hope in the rental market. 'As we start going into [the tourist] season, 2023-2024 season, we're seeing a lot of landlords, who have had their homes on Airbnb, reach out to us to market their homes for an annual rental,' said real estate agent Holly Meyer Lucas 'to try to find a tenant who is not an Airbnb-type tenant, so more of a local. As these landlords don't see those prices that they are used to seeing in 2020 and 2021, them moving inventory into the traditional rental space versus being on Airbnb, I think it's gonna stabilize a little bit.'"

From WINK News. "Homes not built on time and homeowners finding problems floor to ceiling once they get inside: That’s what customers of one southwest Florida builder say they’re dealing with, and they want to warn others about their experience. Jenn Grube moved to the North Port area excited to build her own dream home after raising a family. The Grubes chose Zwiercan Homes, saying they loved the company’s models, and with a timeline of 12 to 18 months, they hoped for a quick and easy process. 'We didn’t want the hassle of buying a used home, and somebody else’s problems,' Grube explains. 'Well, we bought a lot more than that. Because nothing was right.'"

"Dr. Kandi Norrell and her husband are still waiting to move into their home, built by Zwiercan. The Norrells say Zwiercan tried to hit her with a 128 thousand dollar overage just a couple of weeks before move-in day. And when the Norrells asked for documents to explain the extra cost, Zwiercan couldn’t produce the paperwork. 'What are we going to end up with and when are we ever going to finish,' Norrell wondered. 'It goes from joy to frustration to anger. If nothing else, I don’t want anyone else to be taken like this. I want justice.'"

KEYE in Texas. "Austin home buyers are finally catching a break after a competitive few years in the housing market. While prices are still high, competition isn't as steep-- with some properties selling under list price. The days of cutthroat bidding wars and making offers on houses sight unseen are over -- at least for now-- thanks to more homes on the market, stable prices, and less competition from other buyers. In May 2023 median home prices were down more than $80,000 compared to the year before. In May 2022 the median home price was $550,000 but in May 2023 it was $467,500."

The Orange County Register. "The median sales price for an existing California single-family house was $836,110 in May. That’s down 6.4% from a revised all-time high of $893,200 in May 2022. Prices fell in 42 of the 53 counties tracked. Ponder the state’s 10 most populous counties, ranking but their year-long price dips …Alameda: $1.26 million median for May – off 17% in a year even after a 15% three-month rally. Sales down 27% in the year. Contra Costa: $888,000 – off 11% (17% rebound) with sales down 28%. Santa Clara: $1,788,000 – off 7% (19% rebound) with sales down 15%. Sacramento: $535,000 – off 7% (7% rebound) with sales down 20%. Los Angeles: $744,770 – off 7% (2.5% rebound) with sales down 21%. San Bernardino: $455,000 – off 7% (after a 2.5% drop past three months) with sales down 23%."

The Real Deal. "Tides Equities is feeling the brute force of rising interest rates. The firm’s co-founders, Sean Kia and Ryan Andrade, have told investors to expect capital calls — injections of equity from limited partners — to help boost the portfolio, according to a copy of an investor letter from Tides Equities obtained by The Real Deal. The Los Angeles-based investment firm became one of the most aggressive multifamily buyers in 2021 and 2022, scooping up more than $6.5 billion worth of apartments across Sun Belt markets, some of which saw double-digit rent growth during that period."

"But those acquisitions were almost all made using floating-rate loans in a period of low interest rates. 'Properties that had previously been positively cash flowing' during renovation periods 'suddenly became strapped for cash, as the operating revenues increasingly went towards the rapidly rising mortgage payments,' Tides said in its letter. 'Many properties entered negative cash flow territory.'"

"At nine properties — in Mesa, Arizona; Las Vegas; and Fort Worth, Austin and Lewisville, Texas — Tides’ reported debt service coverage ratio is less than 1, meaning the firm is not yielding enough income to meet debt payments."

From Bisnow. "A tall wall of hard-to-refinance debt in the formerly high-flying and still in-demand multifamily sector is coming in October and November. In October alone, well over $4B in commercial mortgage-backed securities loans associated with multifamily properties will come due, and November's total will be nearly $4B, multifamily investor Gray Capital reports, citing CoStar data. Those totals don't count non-CMBS loans, so the actual total will be even higher than those figures."

"The fourth-quarter 2023 wall is the legacy of a peak in multifamily investment sales that happened exactly two years earlier. Interest rates were still historically low then, while demand for apartments, and the rents they commanded, were headed for the sky. A lot of buyers were inspired by fear of missing out, Gray said. 'It's a complete financial quagmire,' Gray said. 'Demand for housing is surprisingly strong now, but the financial realities of how these assets were financed just ahead of a sudden and rapid rise in interest rates has created this situation.'"

From Mises.org. "The local paper’s headline posed the question, Do renters have the upper hand in Las Vegas right now?' '[The apartment project] offered us two weeks of no rent to get us moved in on the timeline we wanted, said a renter who was also given passes to the Life Is Beautiful music festival as part of the deal. 'They also throw resident events every month providing food and entertainment,' she added. Las Vegas Review-Journal business reporter Patrick Blennerhassett reports deals like this are not uncommon. Websites for Las Vegas apartment projects indicate apartment owners 'are doling out a multitude of perks.'"

"Evidence of this surge is visible all over Las Vegas with dozens of large multifamily units in various stages of construction. But Vegas is not an anomaly. The Wall Street Journal reports that more than 950,000 multifamily units are under construction, three times the number for apartment construction twenty years ago. Wall Street Journal’s Will Parker writes that Sunbelt cities are the most exposed. When covid-19 vaccines came out, demand for multifamily housing surged and rents increased 25 percent. But now, that growth has disappeared. Parker identifies Phoenix, Atlanta, and Las Vegas as markets where rents are falling."

From CTV News. "Gerald Comeau has been leading a one man protest in front of Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) headquarters in downtown Toronto for the past six months. Despite working two jobs, Comeau told CTV News Toronto he comes down almost every day to protest with a sign, chanting: 'Shame on me, for trusting RBC.' Comeau claims he paid a $30,000 penalty to break his five year fixed mortgage in April 2021, so he could sign up for another five year mortgage that had a rate of two per cent. But he said when interest rates started going up, so did his monthly mortgage payments."

"'I got a call from the bank that said, ‘Oh, Mr. Comeau your rates have gone up four times already.’ I said, ‘No, you’ve got the wrong guy. I broke my mortgage last year, which cost me $30,000 and I got a fixed mortgage,’ Comeau said. That’s when the bank told Comeau the contract he signed was for a variable rate mortgage. 'Two months I was telling them what I wanted and why I wanted it and they said, ‘Too bad, you should have read it before you signed it,’ he said. 'Now, I pay $1,100 a month more for this and that's on top of the $30,000 I paid to break the mortgage.'"

From The I in the UK. "Insufficient stress testing could have left mortgage holders exposed to rising interest rates, experts have told i. Lenders were not required to factor inflation into their affordability checks for mortgages meaning that some borrowers could struggle to make repayments as interest rates rise on top of the cost of essentials. The average interest rate for a two-year fixed rate mortgage has hit 6 per cent and Britain is currently experiencing the highest core inflation rate for three decades – 8.7 per cent – for longer than was expected, while essentials such as food have an even higher inflation rate of 18.4 per cent."

"While many mortgage lenders will have stress tested their customers’ ability to repay loans at 6 or 7 per cent, they may not have factored in their ability to repay mortgages against the backdrop of such high living costs, experts say. Last year, the Bank of England scrapped the mortgage market affordability test which forced banks to be sure that mortgage borrowers could afford a three-percentage point rise in interest rates before they could be approved for a home loan."

"'There will be some people for whom this testing wasn’t sufficient in the current climate, we don’t know how many people will be adversely affected by rising rates yet,' added Richard Donnell , executive director of the property listing website Zoopla.. 'Affordability testing seemed draconian at the time and priced many young people out of home ownership. But, with mortgage rates rising toward 6% and rise in the costs of living some people are now questioning whether it went far enough. The Bank of England clearly needed a better crystal ball in 2015.'"

ABC News in Australia. "In September, Amber Daines and her partner will get a big shock. Their mortgage repayments will be up by about $3,000 a month after they roll off fixed mortgages in the coming months. 'We took out the [new] loan with the idea [that] we would at least have three years to try and get some of that principal down before interest rates would change,' she said."

"She was also comforted by the reassuring words of Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe (at the end of 2020 and through most of 2021) — that rates were unlikely to rise until 2024. Despite his assurances about rates staying low, the RBA ended up lifting rates at its most aggressive pace on record. She questions the messages that regulators and policymakers give people that encourage them to take on too much debt. Amid the escalating rise in housing, grocery, electricity and other costs, Ms Daines is thinking of selling one of her properties."

"The couple have two mortgages – one is a mostly fixed (80 per cent), partly variable (20 per cent) rate on their home in NSW's central coast, which they purchased for just under $1 million in July 2021. The other is an interest-only loan on their original home in Gladesville in the Lower North Shore of Sydney – where they were living before the move to the central coast, but which is still mortgaged. They are renting that out, but she says the rent is not going to cover the mortgage and they may be forced to sell it. 'That's a pretty big deal — that was never the plan,' she says."

"Ms Daines says while the RBA can not predict events like the war in Ukraine and other factors that lead to a spike in inflation, it is 'disappointing' that the RBA gave the wrong message to the Australian people. 'Like many people, we borrowed based on the idea that [it] looked like the smartest people [were] making those decisions about the economy.'"