A report from Yahoo Finance. "Thirty-year mortgage rates cross over 7 percent as elevated rates and affordability woes squeeze homebuyers out of the market. 'Right now the mortgage rates are touching that cyclical high level, I don't think it will break higher,' says National Association of Realtors Chief Economist Lawrence Yun. 'I truly wish the Fed would stop raising interest rates because they are clearly overreacting, the overall inflation rate is calming down.'"

The Marin Independent Journal in California. "Bay Area home prices are falling as mortgage rates climb to their highest levels in more than two decades. In Marin, the median price for detached homes, also called single-family homes, was $1.61 million in July, according to the latest data from the county assessor's office. The figure marked a decline of nearly 6% from the June median of $1.71 million, and a 5% decline from the July 2022 median of $1.8 million. From June to July, median home prices dropped 8.5% in San Francisco to $1.46 million, 3.4% in Alameda County to $1.26 million, 3.2% in Contra Costa County to $900,000, 2.7% in San Mateo County to $1.98 million and 1.4% in Santa Clara County to $1.8 million."

"Sellers now putting houses up on the market are often doing so reluctantly. 'It's definitely more so out of necessity, and they're doing so unhappily because they have a direct comparison point to just a year and a half ago,' said Montana Gabrielle Hooks, an Oakland real estate agent. Hooks said some of her clients have been forced to sell as their employers put an end to full-time remote work. One is stuck selling a recently purchased, spacious new-build in suburban Fairfield after being required to show up to the office in San Francisco. 'They would have never have purchased it if there was even a decent chance that they had to come back to the office so soon,' she said."

The Herald Tribune in Florida. "Roger Pettingell, a luxury waterfront specialist with Coldwell Banker Realty said he did feel the market has returned to normal, pointing to slower sales this summer than the previous two, which he noted was fueled by people making decisions based on the pandemic reality the country was experiencing two and three years ago. 'I would say we are exactly where we always are in August, in every other market besides the last two years,' he said about the current state of the luxury market. 'Now we can look in the rearview mirror and declare the last two years a complete anomaly. They didn't make any sense; we were being flooded by buyers coming out of areas who wanted to be able to live outside and move into these homes with duel offices because everybody was working from home and we had this whole buyer pool that we never saw during summers before. And we don't see them this year.'"

Denver 7 in Colorado. "An Arvada homeowner had to move out of his newly purchased condo only 10 days after buying it because a fire spread to his unit. Now, nearly 16 months later, he is fed up over the lack of progress his homeowners association has had in making the necessary repairs to the building. A reminder is taped to Ted Bauer's door at the Mountain Vista Village Condos, it says 'Habitable, Repairs Necessary' and is dated April 29, 2022. That's the day a fire moved from a unit next door and into his. It burned in the attic and damaged his condo. He said he learned the hard way, that owning a condominium comes with limitations. 'You only own what you see, the space. You do not own that floor. You do not own that wall, that wall, that ceiling. You own nothing. You just own the space. The HOA owns all this. I didn't know that at the time,' said Bauer. 'I bought it April 1, 2022. I paid $300,000 cash to own this. On April 29, I was living in a hotel.'"

The Wall Street Journal. "Thousands of New York City Airbnb listings are vanishing from the market. Hosts are removing listings in response to a city-mandated deadline, and Airbnb is blocking future dates for booking. Starting Sept. 5, city officials say they will enforce rules on short-term rentals more aggressively. Tom DeRose stopped listing short-term rental units earlier this year when New York’s new law passed. The 23-year-old engaged in what he calls 'Airbnb arbitrage': renting apartments, then listing them on Airbnb despite not living there. At his peak, he says he had as many as eight listings and could earn $10,000 a month on a three-bedroom listing during summer months."

"DeRose says he didn’t know this was prohibited when he started. But he says New York’s strong tenant laws and the prior lack of enforcement made it easy. Now, he says the regulations make sense to target people like him. 'I think, overall, what they’ve done is good for New York City. But I think some hosts who aren’t really taking away from the housing supply and are just trying to make a living are getting screwed off this,' he says."

Business Insider. "WeWork dropped a bomb in in its second-quarter earnings on Tuesday. 'As a result of the company's losses and projected cash needs, combined with increased member churn and current liquidity levels, substantial doubt exists about the company's ability to continue as a going concern,' it said. Investors have balked at the situation. WeWork's stock price is down 95% in the past year alone, and fell sharply in premarket trading on Wednesday. As a result, the company's market capitalization has dropped below $500 million — a fraction of the $40 billion valuation it once commanded as a private company."

"Those headwinds dragged on WeWork's financials last quarter. It reported a net loss of $1.1 billion on revenues of $1.6 billion last quarter, and its operating cash outflow exceeded $500 million in the first half of this year. Its failure could be a 'systematic shock' to commercial real estate in many American cities, Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh told The New York Times in June. 'It would pour more cold water on the office market, which is struggling direly,' the Columbia Business School professor and real-estate expert added. He recently warned that troubles in the office segment could hammer cities, spark a credit crunch, and weigh on overall economic growth."

CTV News in Canada. "The tightening of market conditions that unfolded in the spring is 'unwinding rapidly' and Toronto is now the closest it has been to a so-called buyer’s market since last winter, a new report from RBC suggests. 'The spring tightening in demand-supply conditions is unwinding rapidly in BC and Ontario. Softer sales and increasing new listings returned most markets in these provinces to balance, with Toronto the closest it’s been to a buyer’s market since January,' the report states. 'We expect higher interest rates to keep curbing buyers’ enthusiasm for months to come, while possibly forcing the hand of some current owners to sell.'"

"The bank says that a 24 per cent increase in listings that has occurred nationwide since April has now fully reversed the declines seen earlier this year. Going forward, the bank anticipates that conditions in the real estate market will be 'bumpy' but it is not calling for outright price declines at this time. The average selling price of a Toronto home across all property types peaked at $1,334,062 in February 2022 before dropping to a low of $1,037,542 amid what RBC previously called a 'historic' housing correction brought about by the Bank of Canada’s aggressive interest rate hiking cycle. The average selling price in July was $1,118,374, up about 4.2 per cent from one year prior."

The Deep Dive in Canada. "Another late-night fire hit a row of pre-construction sold properties over the weekend. At least eight under-construction homes were destroyed at Keonig Road on Saturday, August 19. The Ontario Fire Marshall, along with the Halton Region Police Services (HRPS), has launched an investigation. No cause for the fire has been identified as of this writing, but the blaze has been determined to be suspicious. The fire is the second incident in Burlington this month. Six unoccupied under-construction Branthaven townhouses, part of the Millcroft Towns project, were destroyed in a fire that was reported at 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday, August 2. These Burlington fires follow a string of similar incidents in the Greater Toronto Area. The trend has also hit Ottawa, when an under-construction rowhouse on Esban Drive was swallowed by flames at around 1 a.m. on Tuesday last week."

The Daily Mail in the UK. "The housing market is in a deep mid-summer freeze, with viewings last month falling off a cliff. Henry Pryor, a professional buying agent and property expert believes if Propertymark's figures are correct, then further house price falls should be expected. 'If correct, then the housing market may have just entered a nuclear winter,' says Pryor, 'estate agents will be offering up their first born child to persuade you to view a property. They'll send a limo to pick you up and take you there and then beg you to make them an offer. Any offer.'"

From Bloomberg. "SBB, the landlord at the center of Sweden’s commercial property crisis, was slammed with a downgrade of five steps further into junk by Fitch Ratings in a fresh blow for its new chief executive’s efforts to stabilize finances. Grappling with an $8 billion debt pile, SBB has become emblematic of how a year of central bank rate hikes have upended real estate in the biggest Nordic economy. Property empires built on cheap credit are teetering after suddenly facing a twin challenge of sliding asset values and higher financing costs."

"The industry is now trying to figure out how to repay mountains of debt, and investors have taken note. SBB’s bonds have long been trading at distressed prices, reflecting junk-grade rating levels. Its shares have lost more than 90% of their value since the start of last year."

News.com.au in Australia. "A tradie left hundreds of thousands of dollars out of pocket from a building firm going bust is calling for greater protections for subcontractors to spare him more financial pain. For Tasmanian electrician Kyle Skipworth, at any given moment, he is usually owed around $500,000 in unpaid debts from several builders. But as building companies drop like flies, leaving a trail of devastated creditors in their wake, he is growing increasingly concerned that every month could be the last for his own business."

"Mr Skipworth, a young dad-of-one based in Hobart, is calling for greater protections for ‘subbies’ as they are the ones ultimately left to foot the bill every time a builder collapses. 'Builders have all the power in negotiations. They withhold payment and there is nothing we can do,' he told news.com.au. Mr Skipworth, 31, was financially impacted when Tasmanian builder Multi-Res Builders Pty Ltd went into liquidation in May owing $3.5 million. He wore the loss of $102,000, having to take out a small business loan to keep his company afloat. For the past year he has been paying off the loan, which comes in at $500 a month including interest. At the moment, he thinks another builder is on the cusp of bankruptcy, after waiting for a $10,000 payment for months."

"Mr Skipworth recalled how he was working for Multi-Res Builders in May last year and 'I was two months in before I realised I had a problem.' 'They used the debt as leverage to keep me working,' he explained. 'They just didn’t pay. It was just the promise of payment.' As a result, the debt continued to pile up, with his invoices going unpaid. It got to a point where he refused to work for them any longer. For a while, things were at a standstill, until a new subcontractor was brought in to finish the job. Then in March this year, his worst fears were realised; Multi-Res Builders had appointed liquidators. 'I was disappointed, I’d held hope for 12 months that the company was generally reasonable and would honour their word,' he said. 'When they liquidated I knew then I wasn’t going to get my money.'"

The South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. "Almost 4,000 homebuyers rushed to snap up flats at CK Asset Holdings' Coast Line I in Yau Tong on Sunday, just a week after all units in the other phase of the project, Coast Line II, sold out on their first day of sales. CK Asset, the flagship property developer of feted tycoon Li Ka-shing, priced the flats in Coast Line I at an average discounted price of HK$15,939 (US$2,035) per square foot. That was slightly higher than the average HK$14,868 per square foot price tag at last weekend's sale, which itself was about 16 per cent cheaper than the most recent launch in January of Wheelock Properties' Koko Rosso project in the same neighbourhood."

"The prices of new flats launched recently were 20 to 25 per cent lower than those of second-hand apartments of the same quality in the neighbouring areas, said Chan Wing-kit, CEO of the residential division at Centaline Property Agency. 'Although the property market has been in a downturn, as long as there is a discount, people will rush to buy flats,' he said."

From Reuters. "China unexpectedly lowered several key interest rates earlier this week in a bid to shore up struggling activity and is expected to cut prime loan rates on Monday, but analysts say moves so far have been too little, too late, with much more forceful measures needed to stem the economy's downward spiral. Once China's top-selling developer, Evergrande has become the poster child of an unprecedented debt crisis in the country's property sector, which accounts for roughly a quarter of the economy, after facing a liquidity crunch in mid-2021."

"'The China property sector is like a black hole, so many developers have been dragged into it since two years ago after Evergrande,' said Winner Zone Asset Management CEO and CIO Alan Luk. 'The central government has yet to introduce (strong) measures because this is too large a hole to fill.'"