It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "The housing market in New Bern remains tight, but things are slowly cooling down, according to Scott Allenspach, a realtor with Keller Williams. 'We're starting to see a trend where buyers are starting to get a little bit more,' he said. 'Prices are coming back down to normalcy. It's higher, but it's still we don't have to pay $25,000 over asking right now and we're not having a hundred offers.' As for Greenville, the housing market appears to be on its way to stabilizing, says Khristi Dixon, owner and broker of Emerald City Realtors in Greenville. 'Well, it's definitely a seller's market still, but we are seeing price reductions more so than we have in the past because I don't think everybody has slowed down their pandemic momentum,' Dixon said. The median home price in Greenville dropped 2% in July compared to a year earlier, according to Redfin. That does signal more homes are selling below asking price."

"As the post-pandemic real estate market in Peoria continues to evolve, this summer has provided a softer, gentler experience for buyers who, last year, faced stiff competition for a limited number of houses. The market is not the same as last year — a fact sellers need to take into consideration, said Realtor Suzanne Monen-Miller. 'There are homes out there that are on for a few weeks, they are having open houses, and they are taking longer to sell. That to me says the home is overpriced,' she said. “We have had sellers who were like, ‘Well, my neighbor’s house sold for X back in 2021 — they got ten offers and it went way over asking price,’ and I’m like, ‘It’s a different market.’"

"According to the latest data from the Space Coast Association of Realtors, Brevard's single family median home price saw a fairly negligible year over year increase in July at $370,000 compared to $369,900 in 2022. The median price for townhomes and condos however did see a drop in July by 12.4 percent year over year to $265,000 compared to 2022's $302,450. It also represents a more than $35,000 drop from June's median price of $301,950. There were 835 closings compared to 890 in July 2022, a 6.2 percent year over year drop. And while it's the third straight month for drops in closings, it's also the first time in three months that closings have been under 1,000 units."

"Home-insurance companies are trying to claw back steep underwriting losses by hiking rates, or pulling back from disaster-prone areas such as Cape Coral. The average annual home-insurance premium for Floridians has tripled in five years, from $1,988 in 2019 to $6,000, according to the Insurance Information Institute, an industry group. There are signs that buyers are growing more cautious. In a recent survey, almost a third of house builders in Florida said buyers’ concerns about home insurance were 'somewhat slowing sales.' The proportion in Southern California was very similar, at 29%, the survey by John Burns Research & Consulting found."

"'Insurance is absolutely having an impact on house purchases—and that’s going to continue to happen,' said Alexandra Glickman, the Los Angeles-based global head of real estate and hospitality at insurance broker Arthur J. Gallagher. She cited an example of a client who was considering buying a $13.5 million home in the Pacific Palisades, an affluent region of Southern California. The home-insurance premiums quoted were $100,000 to $300,000 a year. As a result, the client decided not to go ahead with the deal, Glickman said."

"The flood-insurance program’s new pricing system 'will have devastating consequences for the Louisiana housing market,' said Nicholas Hebert, chairman of the Houma-Terrebonne Chamber of Commerce in the southeastern part of the state. Hebert said the premium for his own home, which is more than 30 miles from the coast, is set to rise the maximum permitted of 18% a year until it hits $7,000, from the current $790. Local lender Gulf Coast Bank & Trust has 'already experienced sales contracts being canceled before the loan application was even complete,' due to higher flood-insurance costs, according to Louis Uzee, head of its residential-mortgage division. He fears sky-high insurance rates will lead to more people being unable to afford to stay in their homes."

"New apartment construction is plunging in the West Coast's biggest metro areas. Developers are on pace to start building fewer than 20,000 apartments combined this year in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose, Seattle and Portland — less than a quarter of what those locations together produced a year earlier. Developers haven't broken ground this year on a single apartment building in San Jose, which by this time last year had 2,272 starts, according to CoStar's data. Costs are forcing developers to abandon projects right before they're ready to build, said Joshua Ohl, a San Diego analyst for CoStar Group. 'Construction financing is extremely difficult right now — even developers with strong balance sheets are having a hard time getting debt for construction,' Ohl said."

"Texas multifamily investors have been on a rollercoaster ever since the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates last year. 'A month or so ago, I went to an office conference, and it was not the same vibe. It was really sad,' one environmental construction consultant said. Austin and San Antonio have slipped into rent cuts, as rents declined about 3 percent annually in Austin. Rents have shrunk even on a submarket basis in Austin, where every submarket beside San Marcos is in the red on the year. With debt growing more expensive, lenders and developers are coming to the table with vastly different expectations, according to Gary Bechtel, CEO of bridge lender Red Oak Capital. He’s had several conversations with borrowers who recoil at paying more money for smaller loans. 'Yeah,' Bechtel said he tells them. 'The markets move, sport!'"

"The Bank of Canada’s back-to-back interest rate hikes put a damper on the housing market rebound this summer, with sales edging down in July for the first time in six months. New listings have now surged 24 per cent since April, Royal Bank of Canada economists Robert Hogue and Rachel Battaglia note. These changing conditions have brought supply and demand back into balance after tightening surprisingly quickly in the spring, they add. The Teranet-National Bank HPI tracks prices after they have been recorded at land registry offices, which means the numbers lag those of local real estate boards. On a year-over-year basis, the largest declines were seen in St.-Catharine’s-Niagara with a 10.5-per-cent drop, Brantford with 9.08 per cent and London with 9.25 per cent."

"Some smaller markets have seen sharp drops from their peak prices in the spring of last year. On a seasonally adjusted basis, the Peterborough, Ont. index decreased 16.3 per cent from its peak in May, 2022. Windsor, Ont. fell 15.1 per cent in the same period. Abbotsford-Mission, B.C. slid 14.2 per cent from the index peak in April, 2022."

"Developers broke ground on roughly 14,550 homes in the first half of 2023, according to fresh data by number-crunchers Statistics Sweden. That represents a 57 percent fall on last year and the lowest number of new builds since 2012, painting a worrying image for Sweden's housing supply. The situation is even more dire if you look at some of the big metropolitan areas. In the Greater Stockholm region, construction started on roughly 3,180 apartments and terraced or semi-detached homes in the first six months of 2023. That's down from 8,046 in the same period last year – or in other words an estimated 60 percent drop. Greater Gothenburg’s declining construction rate was somewhat less bad than the national average, with a 44 percent drop in new builds. But Greater Malmö saw a 66 percent drop, with only an estimated 734 homes built in the first six months of the year."

"A fabrication company has collapsed into liquidation just months after shutting down its phone lines, letting staff go and ghosting tradies. On Tuesday, Sydney-based YME Metal Projects Pty Ltd, which subcontracted to building companies completing metalwork such as ballustrading and handrails, went into voluntary liquidation. Jason* is the owner of one small business owed around $30,000 from its collapse and he is fuming. 'You try to take people at their word. It means nothing,' the Sydney tradie told news.com.au. 'I dropped some material off at the end of the month, I heard a conversation between a staff member, they had the phone on speaker, when I walked in, what I heard made me realise that they had serious cash flow (issues),' he said. Growing concerned, he rushed back to the site to try to get some of his material back several months ago. 'I got a little bit back but hardly anything,' he lamented."

"Another creditor, Max*, who also did not want to provide his real name, is owed around $26,000 from YME’s demise. 'They’ve been a client of ours for a number of years,' Max told news.com.au. 'There came a time where there was a mad rush to get all these jobs finished (which is) a telltale sign they were going broke.' When he chased them over his money, he said YME had 'disappeared off the face of the earth.'"

"China is attempting to defuse risks from its $9 trillion pile of off balance-sheet local government debt, without resorting to major bailouts. At the center of this dilemma are local government financing vehicles, companies set up across China to borrow on behalf of provinces and cities but not explicitly in their name. Several companies haven’t been able to generate enough income to pay interest on loans. Banks are unwilling to lend, investors are shunning their bonds, bonuses are being cut and it’s becoming harder to find viable investment projects, the employees said. Some regions have been frozen out of the bond market entirely. 'We’re in a total mess right now — no one would like to buy our bonds,' said an accountant surnamed Yang, who works at a LGFV in western China. Salary levels at the company have been frozen since 2016, and staff are leaving, she added."

"Just two years ago, Yang Huiyan was the mysterious majority stakeholder of a sprawling real estate empire worth billions of dollars. But in a stunning reversal of fortune triggered by China's ongoing property woes, she is now locked in a desperate battle to prevent the collapse of the company founded by her father, Yang Guoqiang. Country Garden is one of the largest developers in China, operating across a range of sectors including construction, property investment, and hotel management. Unlike Evergrande, Country Garden's woes largely came as a surprise."

"'It had always been seen as less risky property developer,' said Victor Shih, director of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego. 'The belief was that for Country Garden, because the distribution of [its] land bank tended to be in favourable places, their sales would not suffer, and they should be able to repay their debt. But I think one of the underlying dynamics that's very interesting here is that unlike in previous downturns in the real estate market … we are seeing prices drop even in Shanghai, and Shanghai property prices have basically been on an upward trajectory without any interruption.'"

"Less than two years ago, Ms Yang was worth an estimated $US30 billion, making her Asia's richest woman by a long shot, according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index. But her fortune has been cut by more than half in a matter of months, after Country Garden sought to raise cash by selling discounted shares last year, as China was gripped by a mortgage boycott. At some sites construction has slowed or completely stopped, with workers telling Reuters they haven't been paid since January – although a statement from the company disputed this."

"With many cash-strapped Chinese developers now on shaky footing, there are fears this may have knock-on effects on ongoing builds of pre-sold housing projects, exacerbating an already diminishing confidence among the wider public. While this is yet to play out, the Chinese cultural belief that money would be safe in houses is being put to the test, according to Fraser Howie, an independent analyst who specialises in the Chinese economy. 'Where we now find ourselves after 20 plus years of this [economic growth is] there simply is a huge oversupply of property, particularly in the lower tier cities, where building has well outstripped demand,' he said. '[Now] you've got people who don't necessarily have enough money to spend or are wanting to save their money, a job market that is much tighter, you simply don't have the demand you had before. And so the previous model of selling properties to new buyers, and that will fund the future development is starting to fall apart.'"

"There have been various predictions of a stimulus announcement by the CCP, but so far any responses have been conservative. 'I think the capacity for China to have a big stimulus is much more limited than it was in the past,' says Mr Howie. 'You also have the problem that stimulus no longer works in the way it once did, if you've got too many roads, bridges and houses, building more of them doesn't solve any of your problems.'"