A report from the Advocate in Louisiana. "When David LeBoeuf listed his Gentilly house for sale in May, he thought the newly renovated, two-bedroom cottage would move quickly with a price tag of $315,000, or roughly $190 per square foot. But three months later, LeBoeuf has lowered his asking price to $285,000 and still hasn't gotten a single offer. Homeowners who might otherwise be trying to sell are taking down their for-sale signs for now, and when possible, are offering their properties for lease instead. LeBoeuf, who bought his Gentilly house as an investment property to begin with, says he’ll take that route if he doesn’t get an offer close to his asking price. 'For me, it might make more sense to rent it and try to sell for the original asking price later,' he said. 'Because right now, it’s drowning me.'"

"LeBoeuf’s experience is not unique midway through 2023, which is shaping up to be the worst year for residential real estate in New Orleans in more than a decade. After gradually cooling throughout 2022, the COVID-era housing boom that launched bidding wars among buyers and fostered unrealistic expectations among sellers has come to a screeching halt. 'It’s very frustrating to go from getting multiple offers within hours of listing a house to sitting on the market for 60, 90, 120 days,' said LeBoeuf's real estate agent. 'And you can’t bring the price down low enough to even get an offer because the buyer pool has been cut by two-thirds.'"

"'Sellers are freaking out a little bit because everybody has a short memory and all they know is what their friends told them about how fast their homes sold last year,' said Scott Brannon, a Realtor with Latter and Blum. 'But, really, we're back where we were before COVID.'"

Summit Daily in Colorado. "Summit County’s housing market has seen a significant decline in real estate transactions compared to the same time in 2022. For those on a fixed rate who purchased their homes before the interest rate spike, they are now experiencing what real estate professionals call golden handcuffs. In some cases, it can mean doubling of monthly payments for homeowners, said Dishon Lutz, president for the Summit Association of Realtors. 'I would say our market is not very fluid. People are feeling very stuck,' said Leah Canfield, a broker associate for Coldwell Banker Mountain Properties in Breckenridge. 'Being able to have fluid movement without a lot of friction I think is the sign of a healthy market. And right now we’re kind of in a stagnant market because of those factors.'"

"Paired with interest rates, Canfield said another reason for the decline in transactions and increase in days on market could be local short-term rental regulations. In the past two years, limits on the amount of properties that can hold a short-term rental license have been enacted. Canfield said she’s seen more home buyers struggling to sell in Zone 1 compared to Zone 3. 'If you cannot get a short-term rental license, the property is seeing more of a decrease in its value and having a harder time bouncing back from the price softening we’re seeing,' Canfield said. 'We’re seeing that already and I expect that to be true, at least over the short-term.' As properties remain on the market longer, it’s typical for prices to inevitably drop."

Candy's Dirt in Texas. "We’ve been eagerly awaiting Goose, an energy-efficient housing development in Lake Highlands from StoryBuilt, but the project may be on hold. Local outlets are reporting that management changes, employee furloughs, and financial concerns took StoryBuilt, formerly known as PSW Homes, and its Goose development at Walnut Hill Lane and White Rock Trail to a grinding halt. Attempts to reach StoryBuilt’s Austin-based public relations office Thursday, but the number listed on the company website was no longer in service. According to The Real Deal‘s report, StoryBuilt was in the midst of a 'financial meltdown.' The company’s co-founder, Anthony Siele, addressed the matter in a letter to investors. 'As you are aware, StoryBuilt has recently struggled with focused growth, reporting/financial controls, and liquidity,' Siela wrote. 'This has materially affected our performance as a business and our partners.'"

The Union Tribune in California. "Demand for San Diego County homes, affected by rising interest rates, hasn't been this low since the Great Recession. Real estate firm Reports on Housing says demand, measured by the number of pending sales the previous 30 days, is the lowest it's been since it started tracking in 2012. Looking at a more normal time in the market, the firm said pending sales were down 75 percent of the three-year average from 2017 to 2019. The data is point-in-time, as opposed to a monthly report, and tracked the 30 previous days from July 25."

"Steven Thomas, founder of Reports on Housing, said pending sales are a more authentic view of demand because packed open houses don't necessarily tell you anything. 'We get the argument from people that there is crazy demand out there,' he said. 'The problem is the same buyers are writing multiple offers because they aren't getting anything. It makes it appear that there are tons of buyers in the marketplace.' In the first half of 2023, only 1 percent of the nation's homes changed hands, said Redfin, which was its lowest in at least a decade. San Diego metro had one of the lowest turnover rates in the nation with seven in every 1,000 homes changing hands, close to the weakest home market in the country — San Jose — with six in every 1,000."

The San Francisco Chronicle in California. "Earlier this month, Chinese billionaire Zhang Li finally agreed, after six months of negotiations, to be extradited to San Francisco from his London home. For a while it seemed that Zhang, who had been charged with bribing former San Francisco Public Works boss Mohammed Nuru in exchange for favorable treatment, would be held accountable for his role in the sprawling corruption case. As it turned out, Zhang’s day in court would be short-lived. He paid two fines — one for $1 million and one for $50,000 — and prosecutors agreed to drop the charges after three years. By 9 p.m., on the day he had arrived from London, Zhang was jetting off home to China."

"Yet, Zhang’s company, Z&L Properties, left behind a trail of broken real estate deals, lawsuits, blighted properties and empty retail spaces across the Bay Area.In January 2022, San Francisco Opera singer Chester Pidduck was thrilled to learn that his family had been selected for a below-market-rate condo at the Oak. The 1,100-square-foot ninth-floor, two-bedroom condo looked out across at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Pidduck still hasn’t received his $12,500 deposit back and is talking to an attorney about a possible lawsuit. A similar unit could cost $1 million in the current market, which the family says it could not afford. 'The timing was so perfect. We were so excited — this was a major lottery win,' he said. 'And now it’s all gone. We feel we have been incredibly screwed by Z&L. I couldn’t believe they could just walk away like that.'"

The Real Deal. "The nation’s largest owner of rental houses continues to fatten its portfolio having dropped wads of cash to acquire a massive Sun Belt portfolio. Dallas-based Invitation Homes paid $650 million for almost 1,900 single-family homes, including $495 million in cash, the Dallas Morning News reported. The sale equated to about $340,000 per home. The seller wasn’t revealed, but it’s highly likely that it was Barry Sternlicht’s Starwood Capital Group. Invitation was nearing a deal to buy Starwood’s roughly 2,000-home portfolio a month ago. Starwood, which bought the portfolio for more than $1 billion in 2021, was looking to offload the assets to bolster its real estate investment trust."

Bisnow New York. "Less than a year after Thor Equities turned 470 Broadway over to its lender as it was staring down the barrel of a foreclosure lawsuit, the company has reacquired the building for less than a third of its previous value. A Thor affiliate acquired 470 Broadway for less than $8.1M this month, according to city property records. The Joe Sitt-led firm in October transferred the deed to the two-story building to LNR Partners in a transaction valued at $25.4M. The purchase price was $8,077,750, a far cry from the property's appraised value of $29.2M when the CMBS loan was originated in 2012. The loss for the CMBS trust on the deal amounted to roughly $16.2M, according to the Morningstar Credit database."

The Globe and Mail. "When the Bank of Canada restarted monetary policy tightening in June, it placed the blame for more interest rate hikes squarely on consumers. Rapid-fire rate increases last year were supposed to have squeezed household budgets and forced people to cut back on spending. By early summer, however, it looked like many Canadian shoppers had missed the memo. Spending blew past expectations in the first quarter, aided by unseasonably warm weather in January. Through the spring, Canadians continued to splurge on travel, entertainment and restaurants."

"Interest rate hikes, after all, work with a lag. And so far, only a third of Canadian mortgage holders have seen their monthly payments increase, meaning much of the impact of higher interest rates on household finances has yet to be felt. Becky Western-Macfadyen is seeing that lag time in action. The St. Catharines, Ont.-based financial coaching manager with Credit Canada has been helping clients manage inflationary pressures over the past two years. More recently, she’s been fielding calls from homeowners with fixed-rate mortgages who are expecting their payments to jump by $500 to $1,000 a month in the coming quarters. 'It’s no longer just about, ‘Oh, I can just cut out my coffee spending.’ Everyone’s already done that stuff. So we’re finding so many more people have already cut what they can and they’re really at that bare bones,' Ms. Western-Macfadyen said."

"'We knew when we started raising rates that it was going to be really hard to assess how much would be enough to cool off consumer spending,' said Tim Lane, a former Bank of Canada deputy governor, who retired last September, five rate hikes into the current tightening cycle. 'You had a whole set of models where all the parameters were estimated in a period when there was little or no inflation. And so clearly, those models were not going to be very reliable,' he said. In short, you can add the strength of consumer spending to a growing list of things central bankers underestimated over the past few years – a list that includes, most prominently, the momentum of inflation in 2021 and early 2022."

The Telegraph in the UK. "When Anna Smith’s mother died, she inherited her retirement flat. But what might usually be a welcome windfall soon became a nightmare. The flat took two years to sell, and in the meantime service charges racked up at a cost of £4,500 a year. Although her mother bought the flat 10 years ago for £220,000, Smith had to accept £155,000 to sell the McCarthy Stone flat in Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham, this month. 'The considerable decrease in the equity has really been quite shocking,' says Smith, who spoke using a pseudonym. Sebastian O’Kelly, of campaign group the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, says the retirement housing sector 'has been a disaster. It’s destined not to increase very much, given the repeated scandals in this sector and the appalling financial costs. Resale values are so often atrocious.'"

"Chris Longley, 57, says his father Ronald poured his life savings into his McCarthy Stone retirement home in Folkestone, Kent, at the age of 75. The new home cost him £163,500 in 2007. After Ronald’s death in 2015, Longley inherited the flat and put it up for sale, originally listing it for £139,000. Five years later, he finally found a buyer and sold the flat for £30,000. Longley says retirement homes are often painted as 'the new future for people that retire, which is safe and secure. But a fool and their money are easily parted. They don’t really know what the resale values are going to be. I’ve got my own mortgage to pay,' he says. 'What you’re looking at is this financial millstone around your neck.'"

All Homes in Australia. "Canberra house hunters hoping to purchase are in luck, with a new report revealing the city’s housing market has stabilised. The latest Domain House Price Report revealed Canberra’s median house price stands at $1,034,057 – unchanged from the previous quarter. 'House prices have finally hit a trough in Canberra,' said Domain chief of research and economics Dr Nicola Powell. 'It actually happened in March but now it’s flatlined.' Despite that, house prices in Canberra are now down by about $140,000, or 11.9 per cent, from their June 2022 peak. In percentage terms, Canberra has fallen the furthest from its price peak of all the capitals."

From Barron's. "Ally Liu, 27, graduated from Beijing’s prestigious Peking University with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in finance, and now works at an investment firm. She said she’s exhausted from long hours at work. 'It’s embarrassing, but I’ll just say it,' she said in an interview from China’s capital. 'I want to find a guy.' After a long pause, she added, 'But it’s hard.' China’s marriage rate steadily increased until hitting a peak in 2013, when 13.5 million marriages were recorded. By the end of that year, a precipitous decline began—one that continues. Last year the marriage rate hit half its 2013 level, at 6.8 million, according to China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs."

"The factors complicating Liu’s romantic pursuits are manifold. Either she is drained of energy and pressed for time, or the potential suitor is. Her close relationship with her parents compels her to abide by one of their marriage demands: a spouse must own a home and ideally a car or other investments, or come from a rich family. Both the causes and effects of the marriage falloff are being widely discussed in China. For one, the rising unemployment rate for the youth cohort has broken record after record each of the past few years. Joblessness for this group, aged 16 to 24, hit a record high of 21.3% in June."

"This sky-high jobless rate has given companies that employ younger workers—most notoriously tech firms—extreme leverage over their employees. If one wants a job at all, he or she may be forced to work the '996' schedule—9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. Amid these work conditions lies a vast property market that is both unstable and out of reach for an increasing number of Chinese. Many young men were caught up in the recent spate of defaults among China’s large developers, which left millions of already-purchased units unfinished, leaving the owners in limbo."

"The government is in a difficult spot. It wants to boost the property market because rising prices means rising wealth for the hordes of Chinese who put their life savings in housing. But this would exacerbate the unattainability of purchasing property. Not only are private companies reluctant to shrink working hours or take other employee-friendly measures because of cutthroat industry competitiveness, but firms could impede government from doing so, said Eli Friedman, chair of International and Comparative Labor at Cornell University who specializes in China."

"'If the government were to require fewer working hours without a reduction in wages—which would be necessary for people to still afford living expenses in large cities—you would see tremendous pushback from companies, as it would undermine a key tenet of their business model,' he told Barron’s."