A report from the Dallas Morning News in Texas. "The median Plano home sale price dropped from $540,000 in March 2022 to $500,000 in March 2023, a 7% decrease in line with neighboring Collin County cities. Median home prices for Frisco, Allen, McKinney and Richardson decreased by 1%, 17%, 7% and 6%, respectively, according to a presentation given to the Plano City Council. In 2019, Plano entered into a Voluntary Collection Agreement with Airbnb and entered into the same agreement with HomeAway (VRBO) the following year. In February, when bullets from a shooting connected to a Plano property listed on Airbnb and VRBO entered a nearby home, the city received $52,963 from Airbnb and $1,986 from VRBO, according to the report."

From WTOP News. "According to Maryland Realtors, the median selling price in Allegany County — that’s the Cumberland area — was just $127,450 in May. That’s down 3.7% from the median price in May last year. Somerset County — on the Chesapeake Bay — ranks as the second-most affordable area, with a median selling price in May of $162,000, down 25.7% from May of 2022, though that’s based on just 17 sales last month. Baltimore City ranks as the third-most affordable place in Maryland. In May, the median selling price was $225,000, down 6.3% from 2022. There were 6,657 home sales across the state of Maryland last month, down 24.2% from a year earlier."

The Hartford Courant in Connecticut. "A sale of The Millenium apartment tower for delinquent property taxes has been averted just days before a planned auction, but the owner, downtown Hartford’s largest commercial real estate landlord, has a new problem: a move to foreclose on three, historic buildings planned for renovation. The lender on the purchase, the former owner of the buildings, is seeking to foreclose on the properties, arguing, in court papers filed May 26, that the loan matured in March. By not paying off the balance of the $3.6 million loan, Shelbourne is now in default, according to court documents."

"Benjamin Schlossberg, Shelbourne’s managing member, said that decision came because Shelbourne had anticipated moving ahead much quicker with conversion of the upper floors of the buildings to. either apartments or commercial loft space. 'This a foreclosure brought on by maturity,' Schlossberg said."

Bisnow New York. "A loan on a luxury apartment tower with views of Central Park has been transferred to special servicing ahead of a potential default despite record multifamily rents in Manhattan. A&R Kalimian Realty’s 43-story glassy residential tower The Aire, which sits close to Lincoln Center on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and features amenities like a private party deck and courtyard, has struggled to make its debt payments ahead of its CMBS loan's maturity later this year. 'Borrower indicated the residential rental market in New York has been decimated in relation to COVID-19, thus, they are offering rent reductions and free rent to retain tenants and rent vacancies,' loan servicer commentary from April reads."

The Boston Globe in Massachusetts. "To many here in Boston, San Francisco has long felt like a more sophisticated, successful West Coast cousin. As tech workers continue to work from home in droves, leaving office towers alarmingly empty, San Francisco’s commercial core has curdled, with major retailers departing almost daily from high-end corridors along Market Street and Union Square. In place of office workers and tourists, homeless people — many wrestling with addiction — have become even more of a presence. Street crime has soared, and according to city surveys, residents feel less safe than they have in decades."

"As tech workers continue to work from home in droves, leaving office towers alarmingly empty, San Francisco’s commercial core has curdled, with major retailers departing almost daily from high-end corridors along Market Street and Union Square. In place of office workers and tourists, homeless people — many wrestling with addiction — have become even more of a presence. Street crime has soared, and according to city surveys, residents feel less safe than they have in decades."

"Like the Bay Area, Greater Boston has experienced a net population loss as high housing prices and the rise in remote work have led people to flee for cheaper climes. Boston actually has vulnerabilities San Francisco does not: It is more reliant on suburban commuters for its workforce, and on commercial property taxes — largely propped up by leases on office towers — to fund its city budget, notes Tracy Hadden Loh, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. The troubled MBTA doesn’t help matters. Then there’s homelessness — that vivid symptom of economic distress. 'Boston is flirting with the death spiral given all that’s going on,' Loh said."

The Los Angeles Times in California. "For decades the Los Angeles financial district was the beating heart of downtown, the corporate muscle that gave the city of sprawl a soaring glass skyline. But the pandemic and the wave of remote work hollowed out its skyscrapers and helped shutter many restaurants and businesses that relied on crowds of workers. While the neighborhood shows signs of recovery, few expect it to return to being the bustling hive of suits and ties that it was."

"Owners of buildings facing foreclosure sometimes don’t have enough money to build out new tenants’ offices, as is customary, which hinders strapped landlords from recovering financially. Commercial landlords are getting hit on multiple fronts, said Jessica Lall, managing director of the downtown office of CBRE. 'What we’re seeing is a perfect storm when it comes to the office distress in downtown L.A.,' she said. Those issues are compounded by 'the general perception around downtown being unsafe,' she said. 'All urban centers are grappling with that issue right now.'"

The Mercury News in California. "Facing a colossal backlog of complaints in the thousands from residents about graffiti, unkept lawns and trash, San Jose is set to adopt a pilot program that would result in fines to scofflaws and give more power to code enforcement officers to reduce the blight that is making downtown an eye-sore. Just two doors down from the blighted hookah shop on 398 East Santa Clara Street where the mayor spoke sits Tofoo Com Chay Vegetarian Cuisine. Its co-owner, Kim Le, said that the closure of the hookah shop last year had a big impact on her business. 'There’s always graffiti,' she said. 'And smashed windows. I think people are afraid to go on this block because the scene is abandoned.'"

Fromm Storeys. "Last month, economists at the Bank of Montreal released a report on Canada’s 'affordability conundrum' that delivered some sobering news for anyone paying attention. Instead of asking when we might see market housing become affordable again, is it time to ask — at least in certain urban markets — if it’s time to accept high prices as the new normal? After all, even when we do see price drops in Vancouver and Toronto, they are negligible, not near enough to resume the affordability of a decade ago."

"Mortgage payments as a percentage of income in Vancouver are at 95% and 83% in Toronto, far above the historic average for those cities. Clay Jarvis, mortgage and real estate expert for NerdWallet, says the country has painted itself into a corner where home prices are concerned. 'We’re dependent on real estate for driving both GDP and personal wealth in this country, so if some silver bullet policy magically brought home values back to where they were in 2013, we’d be looking at pure economic carnage,' he says."

The Globe and Mail. "Owners of multiple properties are dominating the condo investing market in smaller cities in Ontario and B.C., new data suggest. New data prepared for The Globe and Mail from the Canadian Housing Statistics Program shows that the majority of condos that are used as an investment property in those two provinces were owned by individuals and businesses who hold a minimum of three condos. It shows that the bulk of investment condos are owned by investors who are slightly bigger fish as opposed to individuals making a one-off purchase, such as parents buying a condo for their children. It also shows that these larger-scale investors dominate smaller cities where property prices are cheaper than Toronto and Vancouver."

"In Windsor, Belleville, Sudbury and St. Catharines-Niagara in Ontario, more than 80 per cent of the condos used as an investment property were owned by an individual or business with a minimum of three condos, the data show. In Hamilton, Kingston, Kitchener-Waterloo region and Thunder Bay, more than 70 per cent of condos used as an investment property were owned by these larger-scale investors. In Toronto, the second priciest real estate market in the country, the proportion was 46.7 per cent. It was a similar situation in British Columbia: In Abbotsford, the share was nearly 70 per cent, whereas in Vancouver, the country’s most expensive housing market, the percentage was 45.6 per cent."

"'The numbers indicate that there are a lot of people buying multiple condos,' said Brian Doucet, an associate professor at the University of Waterloo’s school of planning, whose research includes gentrification, housing and neighbourhoods. Mr. Doucet said he has heard anecdotes of individual investors coming into a new building and saying, 'I will take this whole floor.'"

From I News. "Shortly after 7am, the phones of mortgage brokers across Britain started buzzing at rapid speed with messages from 'panicked' borrowers. When news of inflation remaining at 8.7 per cent was announced by the Office for National Statistics on Wednesday morning, an immediate reaction followed. Housebuilders, mortgage brokers and those trapped in houses they can’t afford are now bracing for an even higher interest rate rise from the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee tomorrow."

"For some in the mortgage industry, the pain of those being hit by rates is unavoidable. Justin Moy, managing director of Essex Home Finance, said that his email inbox was full of 'panicking borrowers screaming for help.' 'I would say the current environment doesn’t allow us to do our job properly. We’re becoming Del Boy mortgages – if we don’t sell them by tonight, they’re gone as the rates are completely different tomorrow. We’ve got to a stage where anything I tell my customers at 9, 10am are gone by 2pm, because the banks will change the rates. It’s soul destroying that we’re working in this environment.'"

"Gareth Davies, director of South Coast Mortgage services , said that he felt he was becoming the 'grim reaper,' having to inform clients of debts jumping by hundreds of pounds a month. Mr Moy told ithat if the situation didn’t improve soon, a cold winter was in store for those with mortgages. 'This is a ticking time bomb – nearly 2 and a half million are coming off fixed rates between now and the end of next year, and they’ve never seen a rate higher than one point something,' he said. 'Those people who bought in Covid, they bought with cheap rates and they bought a little bit over the odds for the property – things looked cheap, but now they might have caught the cold twice with rates shock and initial price shock. Interest rates of 5.5 per cent become a massive problem. If we haven’t got inflation under control by then, we have a serious problem. In October, November, December, there will be about a million people coming off fixed rates and they’ll be losing £500 a month, right before Christmas.'"