It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "The Collier County construction company, Metro Home Builders Inc. filed for bankruptcy and has now stranded families in the middle of the building process. Chris and Silvia Ceron are one of the families caught in the middle of a build. 'They were going to finish our home with the latest pull on our loan which was $45,000. The quotes we were getting ranged from $186,000 to $194,000,' said Silvia Ceron. 'Where are we going to come up with that extra money?'"

"There is some good news if you want prices to keep coming down. According to the Intermountain MLS, we saw continued drops in homes sold and median price for July. In Ada County, the number of homes sold dropped by 4.7% and the median price dropped by 8.5%. In Canyon County, we saw similar trends, with the number of homes sold dropping by 9.0% and the median price dropping by 8.3%. In Twin Falls County, despite the median price standing pat, the market is turning frigid. There's a 31% drop in the number of homes sold month to month. We expected these numbers to climb for the summer real estate season. That is not the case."

"The Central Texas housing market has continued its cooling trend, according to the new report from the Austin Board of Realtors. According to the July report, the City of Austin’s current median price for a home was $550,000, which was down 12% compared to last year."

"Musician The Weeknd made a splash in 2019 when he paid $21 million for a 8,000-square-foot penthouse on the 18th floor of Emaar Properties’ Beverly West at 1200 Club View Drive in Westwood, according to property records. A pandemic and market slowdown later, The Weeknd, born Abel Tesfaye, has sold the penthouse for $19 million or $2,390 per square foot. The Weeknd’s transaction takes place shortly after another ultra luxe penthouse made news with a price cut. In July, a 13,000-square foot penthouse at Four Seasons Private Residences Los Angeles, located a few miles away from The Beverly West, announced a price cut to $37 million. Its original ask was $75 million."

"Los Angeles rich are feeling the pinch: Its ultra-luxury housing market is subject to deep discounts, brokers say. In this year’s second quarter, median prices for luxury single-family homes fell more than 25% from the first quarter and are down more than 13% year over year, according to a report from Douglas Elliman. 'This is how I’d sum it up,' says Marc Noah, a broker with Sotheby’s International Realty Beverly Hills. 'Buyers feel that they can take advantage of sellers because of where the market is.'"

"Savanna, one of the biggest office investors in New York City, prospered in the 2010s with funds that targeted distressed assets after the Financial Crisis. But its recent activity — including defaulting on debt, repeatedly extending loans and reducing its ownership stake within individual properties — indicate distress is increasing in Savanna’s own portfolio. 'There’s probably a fair amount of buyer’s remorse at this point, across all the property types,' Manus Clancy of Trepp said of the office market as a whole. 'You expected values to stay high. That hasn’t been the case. We’ve seen values really fall.'"

"Many Canadian homebuyers waiting patiently for construction to finish on their pre-sale unit are being met with cancellation notices from developers. The building environment is souring — leaving some unhappy customers scrounging to get their deposit, or more, compensated. Two out of three builders tell CHBA that they’re building fewer units, while 22 per cent of developers have fully cancelled projects in recent months. In today’s market, many condo projects are coming to completion in a market where values are depressed — not elevated. 'A purchaser might be lucky if the builder cancelled, because the value may have dropped below the original purchase price,' says Bob Aaron, a Toronto-based real estate lawyer."

"Doesn't 2018 seem like another age? We were pre-Covid, part of the EU and you could get a 1.89 per cent fixed rate on your mortgage. I know because I did, to buy a three-bed semi just inside the Hertfordshire arc of the M25. Fast forward five years and the rate switch we were eventually offered by NatWest would see our monthly payments soar by £470. Adrian Anderson, director at mortgage broker Anderson Harris, says a scramble for ever-evaporating fixed deals caused 'panic' among borrowers. 'With rates pulled at such short notice, my colleagues and I have been submitting applications until 11pm and over the weekend. It is a mentally challenging time as an advisor as it feels like we are constantly delivering disappointing news.'"

"Shahram Shaida, co-founder of homebuying platform Allbricks, says his own mortgage payments have doubled since late 2022. 'I really feel for Brits who are looking to remortgage this year,' he says. "Many fear losing their homes, with many forced to look at trying to get a second or third job. Homeowners feel like they’re being punished for something they haven't done.'"

"Angry investors in trust products of a leading Chinese shadow bank have lodged complaint letters with regulators, pleading with the authorities to step in after the big Chinese trust firm missed payments on dozens of investment products. Zhongrong International Trust Co., which managed assets worth $108 billion at end-2022, has missed payments on dozens of products since late last month. 'We hope to get the attention and the support of the state, to urge Zhongrong Trust to candidly respond to concerns of its clients,' said the letter addressed to the NFRA and dated Thursday. 'Every day, a large number of people gathered at business departments of Zhongrong Trust are praying for the firm can give an explanation to investors … investors are immersed in unlimited horror and fear every day.'"

"China’s gargantuan economy has come out of three years of 'zero covid' policies not with a roar, as many inside and outside the country had hoped, but with a whimper. The extent of the crisis was made clear Thursday when Evergrande Group, one of China’s largest property developers until it collapsed in 2021, filed for bankruptcy protection in New York. This came just days after Country Garden, one of China’s largest private real estate developers, revealed it owes more than $200 billion and is on the brink of default. Dozens of other developers have been unable to pay their bills."

"Buying real estate became one of the main ways for China’s growing middle class to accumulate wealth and created an expectation that land and home values would continually increase. Because of this, developers required people to pay for a home in full before it had even been built, lending the system a 'Ponzi-type element,' said Logan Wright, director of China markets research at Rhodium Group."

"In Penglai, on the coast of China’s Shandong province, work on a block of luxury apartment towers in a Country Garden development ground to a halt last week. In a now-familiar scene, blue notices appeared on the walls: The property developer, Country Garden, was no longer paying its bills. The construction company refused to keep building. Hundreds of home buyers were outraged. They’d already paid upward of $200,000 and had been expecting to move in by the end of June, said a real estate agent in Penglai who gave only his surname, Liu, to avoid attracting the ire of authorities. Instead, the home buyers were met with 'delays, false advertising and corner cutting,' said Liu — and were left wondering where their money had gone."

"'In the long run, the market is not going to come back to its golden age like 10 years ago, that age has simply gone,' said Shitong Qiao, a Duke University law professor. 'The Chinese government is not going to be truly committed to revive the real estate market — the ideal is to have a soft landing.'"