A report from the San Antonio Report in Texas. "Almost two years after announcing that Frost Bank would offer home loans again, that new department is 90 people strong and has just begun rolling out three mortgage products in San Antonio. Notably, that includes what the bank calls its 'Progress' mortgage, which offers qualified lower-income customers the opportunity to finance 100% of the cost of their home, doesn’t require private mortgage insurance and covers up to $4,000 in closing costs. 'One of the primary reasons we started to offer mortgage loans again was because we knew there was a gap in products for lower-income folks,' said Bobby Berman, group executive vice president of research and strategy. The San Antonio Board of Realtors reported a 6% decline in home sales compared to 2022 in its July report, and a median price that dipped 2% year over year. Homes spent an average of 57 days on the market, a 104% increase from the previous year."

Community Impact in Texas. "While homes in cities across the Austin-Round Rock metropolitan statistical area have been hit with high interest rates in recent months, data from the Austin Board of Realtors shows that the market is continuing to stabilize. Median home prices across the metro is down 10% for an average of $462,000. In Travis County, year over year the median home price was down 9.2% to $545,000. In Williamson County, year over year, the median home price was down 11.7% to $428,350. In Hays County, year over year, the median home price was down 10.5% to $405,243."

Sarasota Magazine in Florida. "Summer is traditionally 'low season' around here, even when it comes to the real estate market. 'Two years ago, investors could come in and buy and sell faster, but higher interest rates are slowing that down,' says Daniel Jittu, owner of 27 State Realty in Sarasota. 'You’re also seeing subpar houses being overpriced. People can’t afford to renovate but are still seeking top dollar.'"

KTVU in California. "The Bay Area saw another drop in home prices last month, as mortgage rates continued to soar. In the Bay Area, San Francisco saw the biggest drop in the median price of homes, dipping more than 14% to $1,460,000 in July. It fell 8.5% from the previous month. Napa County also saw a significant year-to-year drop of about 13%. But compared to the previous month, prices were actually up almost 10%. The median home price in that county was $927,500 in July, up from $843,750 the previous month. Alameda County saw the steepest decline in sales year-over-year with a 19% drop. The median home price there last month stood at $1,260,000."

The Real Deal. "Veritas Investments, a prominent multifamily landlord in San Francisco, is seeing red flag indicators on two loans tied to a portfolio in Southern California. San Francisco-based Veritas is not making enough income from 11 of its apartment complexes in Los Angeles County to meet its monthly debt payments, as rising rates have ballooned debt costs, according to Morningstar data. Since interest rates have shot up since last June, many commercial real estate firms that used floating-rate loans to buy properties can’t raise net income fast enough to meet their bigger debt payments. In January, the landlord defaulted on $1 billion in loans tied to 95 rent-controlled properties in San Francisco. Currently, the firm is awaiting the results of a debt auction for loans, backed by a total 2,452 units in two portfolios."

The Post and Courier in South Carolina. "An online bankruptcy auction this week could offer a glimpse at what’s to come for aging timeshare developments along the South Carolina coast. The bidding on the dual-tower oceanfront Yachtsman Resort, which is straddling the half-century mark, starts Monday and runs through Wednesday. The minimum opening offer has been set at $4.4 million for the Myrtle Beach property. The 11-story vacation getaway, with 160 condominiums along Ocean Boulevard near 14th Avenue North, fell victim to the same type of owner apathy and abandonment that took down the tiny Sand Castle South timeshare property on the Grand Strand a few years ago. 'Not enough people paying,' said bankruptcy attorney Rick Mendoza. 'There were over 7,200 owners of record,' Mendoza estimated. 'About half of them have gone AWOL.'"

From CTV News. "According to a new survey, a third of Canadian homeowners polled said they regret their current mortgage situation, according to a survey taken by the Real Estate and Mortgage Institute of Canada (REMIC) which completed an online survey of 1,000 random Canadian homeowners. Some of its key findings show many homeowners are experiencing a form of 'mortgage malaise' said REMIC CEO Joe White. This is a stressful time for homeowners like Maggie White, a new homeowner who despite working a full-time job in the aerospace sector, has had to take on a second job as a cashier to afford her mortgage payments. 'It just started increasing and increasing and by the time June came around of this year our payments were more so 2,300 a month,' said Maggie."

"'It's been very stressful, financially,' said Maggie. The 25-year-old first-time homebuyer and her husband couldn't handle the constant increases to their variable rate and eventually locked into a long-term fixed rate this summer. But at this rate, their mortgage payments are still overwhelming. 'I'm hoping I won't have to continue doing two jobs but our mortgage rate is still high as opposed to what it was last year,' she said. 'So I may have to continue this into the new year.'"

"'I think it's still very hot,' said Clinton Wilkins, a mortgage broker in Halifax, referring to the housing market. 'We're still in a seller's market here in Halifax and that is certainly not the case across the country. I can tell you that there are reports out of Ontario in Alberta and B.C. that their housing markets are down 30 to 50 percent in terms of activity.'"

The Globe and Mail. "Toronto-area homebuilders say a perfect storm of factors has more real estate developers pausing or cancelling new projects. Experts close to the industry say the confluence of rising costs and demand weakened by successive interest rate hikes by the Bank of Canada has knocked the starch out of the industry. 'We launched a condo project in late June, and that launch, we were pretty confident in the Pickering market,' Joseph Messina of Highmark Homes said. 'We had a lot of interest, we handed out 800 brochures and information packages. But people just aren’t signing. I don’t think it’s the interest rate; it’s the uncertainty.'"

"After years of non-stop increases in the hard costs of construction, many builders are facing the dilemma of being unable to sell homes that would make them money. BILD and real estate consultants Altus Group released figures on Wednesday that showed the GTA is seeing record lows in new home sales: July saw 1,190 new homes sold – the lowest in 10 years for that month, and 50 per cent below the 10-year average of 2,384. The whole year has trended that way: year-to-date the GTA has sold 12,189 new homes (that’s detached and condos), which is 43 per cent below the 10-year average for January to July. By comparison, by the end of July, 2021 more than 26,800 new homes had sold in the GTA. 'Building is easy, we can all build a house,”' said Mr. Messina. Affording it is the harder part."

From Business Live. "More than 45,000 companies in the North West are facing 'significant financial distress,' according to Begbies Traynor. New research from the Manchester-headquartered insolvency group shows that 45,579 businesses in the region are in trouble as inflation and interest rates bite. The largest volume of distressed businesses are found in a trio of key economic sector hubs in the North West region: construction, real estate and support services which, together, make up 41% of the total (18,838) number of significantly distressed firms. Gary Lee, partner at Begbies Traynor, said: 'We regularly see company directors who have a business loaded with debt that looks more vulnerable every single month as the Bank of England increases rates. The era of 'cheap money' is over and smart company directors are already restructuring or refinancing their operations to survive. These types of companies will only see conditions worsen as more people face paying more each month for their mortgage. They’ll have to offer something really special to entice people to spend as we head into the second half of 2023 or they face extinction.'"

Western Australia Today. "The Federal Court has ordered embattled builder Modco Residential be handed over to liquidators, just days before the company’s growing list of fed-up creditors had been due to consider a proposal by administrators. Federal Court Registrar Phillip Allaway ordered the company founded by Perth glamour couple Yusuf Khan and his wife Cynthia Lu be wound up on Tuesday, opposing an eleventh-hour bid by Modco’s lawyers to halt the move. The pair will now begin their investigations into the company, which has debts in the order of $5 million according to a report filed with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission this week."

"The company pinned its woes on the overheated construction market and issues with indemnity insurance, refuting media headlines on allegations the company was not paying its bills. But as its customer base rapidly grew, its construction times ballooned, leaving behind a trail of broken promises and dozens of distressed homeowners, at least four of whom took their battle to the State Administrative Tribunal."

From Bloomberg. "A Hong Kong businessman whose wife was arrested in Vietnam in 2022 has emerged as the latest desperate seller in the city’s increasingly turbulent property market. Mr Eric Chu is offloading properties ranging from a hotel to luxury apartments in Hong Kong, sometimes at a significant loss, after his Vietnamese wife became embroiled in one of the most high-profile scandals in the South-east Asian nation. The couple have commercial real estate valued at about HK$8 billion (S$1.4 billion) in the city, after already selling at least HK$1 billion worth of properties in the past few months. While the sales are more likely the result of individual financial problems, the low transaction prices threaten to dampen sentiment in Hong Kong’s already weak market."

"The couple began actively investing in Hong Kong’s property market in the mid-2000s, buying everything from houses on the Peak to skyscrapers. Now they are selling into a commercial property market that is at its worst in almost a decade. The fire sale coincides with a number of distressed properties that are on the market, including those formerly owned by beleaguered Chinese developers. China Evergrande Group’s creditors have yet to find a buyer for its Hong Kong headquarters, almost a year after seizing it. Property tycoon Chen Hongtian also had a commercial building taken by a creditor, which put it up for sale recently. Hong Kong office values have declined about 35 per cent from their peak in 2018, according to Colliers International."

"It is not easy to sell in the luxury residential market either. The upscale sector saw transaction volume declined by 24 per cent in the second quarter from the first three months of the year, according to Savills. Sustained high interest rates, stock market turbulence and a lack of affluent mainland Chinese buyers contributed to the fall, the firm said. Savills expects distressed sales to dominate the market, with few transactions and volatile prices in the near future."

South China Morning Post. "Two years after the bond default by one of China's biggest real estate developers created the first shock waves, Beijing's promise that everything is under control is becoming increasingly harder to sell to investors. Fears jumped further this summer as ailing developer China Evergrande Group then reported a combined loss of 812 billion yuan (US$112 billion) for 2021 and 2022 - a figure higher than its total earnings since it was established in 1996. The Chapter 15 petition, which referenced restructuring proceedings being carried out in Hong Kong and the Cayman Islands, also raises a multitude of questions for Beijing."

"How can it comfort hundreds of thousands of people who are making mortgage payments for homes that have not been delivered? How can it appease worried investors who are shunning Chinese equities? How can it turn around a growing number of bearish views about China's financial system and its economic growth? Global investors, Chinese homebuyers and economists are now holding their breath to see which domino will be the next to fall, and what tools Beijing can use to prevent its own so-called Lehman moment."

"'The next few weeks are crucial, as the clock is ticking for some of the major developers,' said Larry Hu, chief China economist at Macquarie Capital, who attributed the ongoing property woes to a downward spiral between confidence and sales. 'Now the game changer is a package of policy measures, which is strong enough to turn around the market expectation and pull the housing market out of the current downward spiral.' The one-way bet on property is now waning as the myth that China's property prices will keep rising has been broken."

From ABC News. "Its weapons are dispatched to all corners of the globe, from the Republic of Congo in Africa, to Venezuela in Latin America, and across Asia from Myanmar to Indonesia. But for much of the past 15 years, China has been developing a different kind of bomb, one that now has become increasingly unstable and that threatens to detonate from within. Until recently, the Middle Kingdom was considered an economic miracle with its transformation from dirt poor subsistence economy to a sophisticated global power the fastest in human history. But the speed of that change has been accompanied by the largest and most rapid buildup of debt in history that has infected every aspect of its economy and society."

"In the past few months, the country has slid into deflation, its trading status has been derailed by a massive drop in both exports and imports, direct foreign investment has plunged and the corporate titans that once strutted the global stage are nursing massive wounds, some of them fatal. Adding to its woes, more than one in five of its youth are out of work. Local governments and ordinary citizens alike are reeling from a rapidly deflating property bubble that has left many nursing huge losses. The great fear is that the country’s toxic property crisis will infect the financial system and there are signs that already is occurring."

"Like most financial crises, much of the problem stems from debt. But it is not just the amount of debt. It is more to do with the speed at which it has been accumulated and the way it has been spent. Much of it, however, has been accumulated since the global financial crisis, increasingly spent on ever more desperate 'stimulus programs' that kept growth ticking over but failed to deliver adequate returns. With each massive cash injection, the projects became ever more marginal."

"If President Xi Jinping wanted a glimpse of his country’s economic future, he need only gaze across the East Sea towards his long-time nemesis, Japan. For much of the past 30 years, Japan has flirted with recession. But in the post-war era, immediately before it all unravelled, it was the poster child of economic dynamism, after hauling itself out of the rubble to rapidly challenge the United States for global domination. A trading and manufacturing powerhouse, its status as one of the world’s richest nations was accompanied by a property boom unlike anything the world had ever before seen."

"At one stage in the mid- 1980s, the Imperial Palace, a 1.15 square kilometre haven of tranquillity in the middle of bustling Tokyo, was valued at more than the entire state of California. Golf club memberships could cost up to $US3 million ($F6.79m) and corporate Japan lashed out on a global expansion binge, snapping up everything from Hollywood movie businesses and office towers from New York to New Zealand. Then it all came to a crashing halt."

"In the late 80s, the real estate bubble burst, its stock market unravelled and its banking system endured ongoing credit crunches that have led to economic stagnation ever since. That’s despite decades of quantitative easing (the first country to implement it) and ultra-low interest rates. Right now, China appears on a similar path. Like Japan, its demographics are terrible. A rapidly ageing and shrinking population, courtesy of the one child policy of decades ago, will commit it to ever-higher investment in aged care, the cost of which will be borne by an evershrinking workforce. That’s where the similarities end. Unlike democratic Japan, the country now is ruled not just by a single party but a single person determined to cling to power."