A report from the American Statesman in Texas. "StoryBuilt, one of Austin’s most active urban developers, has launched a major reorganization and furloughed employees as it deals with a financial meltdown. In a letter sent to StoryBuilt investors Friday, co-founder Anthony Siela said that 'in response to current financial realities,' StoryBuilt has furloughed much of its staff over the past couple of weeks and expects to have 'a vast reduction in headcount with the aim of solely focusing on core development services for our projects and partners.' To support the reorganization, StoryBuilt — which has developed projects in Austin, Dallas, Seattle and Denver — will be bringing in bridge capital, he said. 'The foregoing changes may raise concerns about your investment. We plan to continue written communications weekly at a minimum and schedule a virtual town hall meeting next week,' Siela said."

The News Tribune in Washington. "A proposal for 200 new luxury apartments in Tacoma near the Stadium District is over before even starting. A representative for Tacoma-based Harbor Custom Development, in response to questions from The News Tribune, said its proposal for an undeveloped site on Broadway is not happening. The publicly traded company relocated its headquarters to Tacoma from Gig Harbor last year. It also turned its regional focus to multifamily apartment development in Western Washington, instead of single-family homes. The company completed Pacific Ridge, 8445 Pacific Ave. in Tacoma last year. That project had been planned as condominiums, later switching to apartments."

"In its first quarter earnings report released in May, the company showed sales of $9.2 million compared with $28.6 million a year earlier, and a gross loss of of $2 million compared to gross profit of $6.1 million from the same period a year ago. It noted some of the decrease was because of 'large prior year sales in California and Washington that did not recur in the first quarter 2023.' The news of the now-abandoned luxury apartment project is the latest high-profile multifamily project to not go according to plan: — Tacoma Trax, 415 E. 25th St. next to the Tacoma Dome Station, was one of the city's first anticipated transit-oriented projects. It appeared to still be headed for a foreclosure sale Friday (July 21) along with a Kent apartment site. GIS International Group and DMG Capital Group partnered in developing the Kent and Tacoma sites as Madison Plaza LLC."

Sarasota Magazine in Florida. "For the entire North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton MSA, the median sales prices is $524,450. But the median percentage of the original listing price received has ticked down to 96 percent in the MSA for both property types, versus 100 percent in June last year, showing that there’s room for more negotiating between buyers and sellers. In Sarasota, the median time to contract for single-family homes increased year-over-year to 23 days vs. 7 last year and to 35 days vs. 7 in the condo market. 'But those times to contract are no canary in the coal mine,' says local realtor Roger Pettingell, of Coldwell Banker Realty. 'Time to contract is still great. We really should compare numbers to pre-Covid, because last year and the year before will always stand out as anomalies. We also seem to forget that the government added $2 trillion into the system, creating an inflationary environment. It was unrealistic to think those low-interest rates [roughly 3 percent] would persist,' he adds."

"'An interesting point today vs. a year ago is that you may be paying higher interest now [roughly 6.5 to 7 percent], but you would have certainly been paying over the listing price last year and the year before,' Petingell says. 'Buyers were more likely to be in a bidding war. Even though interest rates are higher now, you’re probably getting 3-5 percent off of the listing price, so buyers are having to borrow less. You’re probably better off as a buyer now. You have more choices and are not being pushed into an unrealistic situation. You can get an inspection and have more negotiating power.'"

"In Manatee County, single-family home supply increased by 55.6 percent, to a 2.8-month supply, and condo supply increased by 126.7 percent to a 3.4-month supply. In Sarasota County, there was a 3.2-month supply for single-family homes and a 3.5-month supply for condos, a year-over-year increase of 88.2 percent and 133.3 percent, respectively."

The Tribune. "Though most regions in California saw their housing markets stagnate, the Central Coast region — which encompasses San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Monterey and Santa Cruz counties — experienced the smallest home sales decline relative to the other four main regions of the state. Year-over-year, housing sales declined 18.6% on the Central Coast, the CAR report found. In San Luis Obispo County, median sale price decreased 1.1% from May and 4.4% from June 2022 to $865,000. According to the CAR report, the city of San Luis Obispo experienced drops in median price, sales and listings compared to the previous year, with median price dropping 6.7% to $1.12 million."

"Home prices in Paso Robles remained the least expensive in the county, with median price falling 4% from June 2022 to $685,000. Atascadero featured the second lowest median price in the county, declining 17.3% from the previous year to $705,000. Los Osos saw median home prices decline 4.8% year-over-year to $810,000 in June. Grover Beach’s median home price of $752,000 was the lowest in the county, and was 14.6% lower than in June 2022. The low inventory is ultimately a symptom of 2022’s 'unsustainable, red hot market' that saw inventory get snapped up as buyers looked to buy before rising interest rates and decreasing inventory priced them out, said South County Realtor Barry Brown. 'Generally, the only way you can come off of that is with a market correction,' Brown said. 'I think where we’re at now is a little bit more of — and I hate to use the phrase — but it’s a soft landing, more of a normalized market.'"

The Real Deal on California. "One LA is hoping two price cuts will do the trick to move the luxe, record-setting condo. The unit was Los Angeles’ priciest condo in 2022 when it hit the market with an ask of $75 million, but now a buyer can scoop it up for half that. The 13,000-square-foot penthouse, located at Four Seasons Private Residences Los Angeles, is now listed at $37 million. In March, its price was reduced to $50 million. It has been on the market for nearly a year. Billy Rose, co-founder of The Agency, who has the listing, said the penthouse is now at the right price. '$75 million was aspirational, but One LA is a singular, one-of-a-kind property, and it is hard to know what the market will bear,' he said."

The New York Post. "Martha Stewart has finally offloaded her West Village triplex — albeit for significantly less than she once hoped. However, Stewart didn’t live there. Her daughter Alexis did. The palatial Manhattan abode, at the Richard Meier-designed 165 Charles St. that’s right on the West Side Highway, first listed in 2019 asking an ambitious $53 million. Over four years later, the three-story, 9,500-square-foot residence has at last found a buyer, but the new owner forked over just $31 million for the pad, or 42% under ask. Despite the luxury, when Alexis listed the units in 2019 she explained that there was one thing her unit lacked: A yard."

Rough Draft Atlanta in Georgia. "The loan backed by a skyline-defining office tower in Buckhead is in reportedly in default, adding to the list of high-profile buildings in Atlanta facing financial distress. Starwood Capital Group has defaulted on a $212.5 million mortgage on Tower Place 100. The mortgage matured July 9 and Starwood failed to refinance or pay off the debt, Bloomberg reported. According to CBRE, nearly 30% of all metro Atlanta office space is either vacant or listed as sublease space, meaning it’s under lease but the tenant is looking to give it to another would-be renter. That’s a modern record high for the Atlanta area. Some hotels in Atlanta are also facing financial hardship. Last week, a hospitality holding company relinquished 19 hotels across the country, including the W Atlanta — Downtown, to cut costs and reduce its debt. The 763-room Sheraton Atlanta Hotel also faced loan default earlier this year, setting the stage for an imminent foreclosure."

From Global News. "As the weather heats up in Canada, cottages prices are cooling down. Mark Pedlar is a broker with ReMax Bluewater Realty Inc. in Ontario’s Grand Bend area. He said he’s seeing a 'softening of the market,' with a 10 per cent decrease in average price for that region. 'The inventory is up, and the sales unfortunately are down right now. So it is a softer market than what we’ve seen the last two years,' Pedlar said. 'There's still good value for the sellers, but even better value for buyers looking for a deal that they might have missed out on last year.'"

The Telegraph. "As anyone who has experience of it won’t need telling, the UK rental market has long since passed the point of being merely exasperating. Sue Hull has spent almost three decades building up a small buy-to-let portfolio, which she hoped would support her into old age. Today, she is considering dismantling her little empire of houses in Essex and Sussex, because the numbers no longer stack up. 'I don’t want to sell; I have to,' says Hull, 49. 'I actually love being a landlord, giving a home to families and seeing their children grow up, but I got into this business to make a profit, not just to scrape by.'"

"Landlords such as Tabitha Masters*, 42, who bought a three-bedroom flat in Kew on a buy-to-let mortgage in 2013, now find they are running out of options. 'I tried to sell it the year before last to release some capital towards buying a family home, but the market was flat and it just sat there for six months,' explains Masters. 'It doesn’t really make me any money – the rent covers the mortgage, my tax bill and any minor repairs – but as I’m on an interest-only deal, I’m running the risk of going into negative equity now that property prices look set to drop. My plan is to sit tight and try and hold on to it for as long as I can in the hope that eventually we will pass through the storm.'"

"One of the main reasons why many investors got into the buy-to-let game was the dearth of alternatives. Professional investors called it the 'hunt for yield.' In the decade-and-a-half in which interest rates have hugged the floor, there has been a desperate scramble to find any assets from which they could squeeze even the tiniest trickle of income."

Market Watch. "As China’s economic recovery continues to underwhelm, observers’ sights are turning from the country’s intractably weak consumer sector to the more worrying downturn in the enormous Chinese real-estate market. Average citizens who have stored most of their savings in housing are suddenly finding their main nest egg a dwindling investment. Buildings in some of the country’s biggest cities stand eerily vacant. And the 100 biggest developers saw their sales values fall more than 28% last month, on a year-on-year basis."

"In the tech hub of Shenzhen, famous for having been the center of southern China’s 'workshop of the world,' growth was explosive for decades, even by China standards. That has begun to dry up, and an anecdote from a recent report illustrates the boom-to-bust times. In 2020, there were 51,000 professionally rated real-estate agents in the city, according to a report this week from the Shenzhen Real Estate Intermediary Association. That number has since halved. And that only includes registered agents, in a country rife with off-the-book agents whose position in the sector is even more precarious."

"Last week, China’s commerce ministry rolled out a set of policies to spur consumption of household products such as furniture, appliances and interior-decor items. The gambit at boosting overall weak consumption and the struggling housing sector went over poorly with locals, among those who noticed at all. 'I don’t need new curtains or a sofa,' said Beijing homeowner Jiang Ming, who is 58 and retired. 'I’d like the value of my home to start rising again. I wonder if the good days are over.'"