It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "'Buyers are using things like inspection negotiations and high insurance premiums to back out of deals,' said Jacksonville Redfin Premier agent Heather Kruayai. 'They’re holding a lot of the cards; today’s sellers need to concede on some details to close the deal.' 'The feeling for buyers right now is this: For the interest rate I’m paying, this home better be exactly what I want or the price better be negotiable,' said Seattle Redfin Premier agent David Palmer."

"The 'Zoom boom' that ignited Napa's pandemic-fueled housing market has cooled as inventory remains low and prices have leveled off. The number of Napa County homes sold in August 2023 compared to August 2022 dropped from 120 to 93, a 22% decline, according to the BAREIS multiple listing service. At the same time, the median sold price of a Napa County home declined 12%, from $957,000 one year ago to $840,000 this August. Ronda Gugenheim, with RE/MAX Gold Napa, has a listing in the $800,000 to $900,000 price range. She’s actually the homeowner, said the real estate agent, who recently relocated to Rio Vista. Gugenheim said she’s had two offers but they were low, and she declined to accept them. 'Everyone wants a deal (but) we’re not desperate' to sell, she said."

"New data on the Austin housing market shows Austin tops the list of markets that favor renting over buying a home. According to Realtor.com's August rental report, renting in Austin is less expensive than buying a starter home. It said the Austin housing market has cooled recently, with prices now about 2% below where they were in August 2022. But the modest price declines are nothing compared with the impact of higher mortgage rates on the average monthly payment. In Austin, the monthly cost of buying a starter home was almost $4,000 – more than 130% higher than the monthly rent of $1,600. The report said the monthly cost of purchasing a home rose by 9.2% from this time last year, but rents dropped a whopping 8%. It said the Austin housing market has cooled recently, with prices now about 2% below where they were in August 2022."

"The federal government is likely to shut down over the weekend, as Congress appears deadlocked on a deal to extend the current budget, a move which creates uncertainty for federal employees that work in Madison. 'As government workers, we're not sitting on piles of cash we mostly live paycheck to paycheck like myself,' said Jessica LaPointe, who has worked at the Social Security Administration office in Madison for more than a decade and who represents federal employees through their union. 'Sixty percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and federal workers are no different,' she said. 'It's stressful. There's a lot of pressure right now to really sit down and look at the finances to figure out what is on auto withdrawal in your bank account — to stopping things like your mortgage being auto withdrawn if there's not enough funds to pay for that.'"

"Lenders and investors are playing a waiting game, and it’s anybody’s guess when time will be up. 'That’s why so much money is sitting on the sidelines. Nobody wants to catch a falling knife,' Red Oak Capital CEO Gary Bechtel said at Bisnow’s DMV Capital Markets event at the Westin City Center. In D.C., commercial real estate investment volume was $353M during the first half of 2023, less than a quarter of the average volume seen over the previous four years, according to Avison Young’s second-quarter office market report. Cortland Chief Investment Officer Mike Altman said taking it slow is the smart play. 'Banks and lenders shouldn’t be financing new deals,' he said. 'This is a time to pause that part of our business.'"

"'No one knows where the bottom is for D.C. office,' Bernstein Management Corp. CEO Joshua Bernstein said. 'I think we're looking at sales that will go below $100 a foot. I think you're looking at mid-block big buildings where there will be parks, and I don't see uses for a lot of the particularly older office in D.C.'"

"A major Canadian office landlord says about 30 per cent of downtown Toronto’s buildings are obsolete and likens leasing office space in the city to playing a game of snakes and ladders. Michael Cooper, chief executive of Dream Office REIT, said the past few years have been challenging for landlords. 'Probably 30 per cent of the space in downtown Toronto requires a ton of money, a lot of investment and it’s questionable if you put the investment in that the building will be worth enough to justify it,' he said. 'That’s what I mean by obsolete – when you put a lot of money in but you’re not actually going to increase the value.'"

"Investors have soured on office landlords. Dream’s units are trading at $10 per unit. That is about 76 per cent lower than in January, 2020. Dream is not the only office REIT that has lost significant value over the course of the pandemic. Allied, Slate Office and True North Commercial are also down about 70 per cent, with Slate Office near penny-stock status."

"Home prices in Mississauga and Brampton remain quite high–the average home price in Mississauga was $1,057,232 in August, while that number hit $1,013,744 in Brampton–but a new report suggests that prospective buyers now have more houses to choose from. Housing supply in the Peel Region (which is comprised of Brampton, Mississauga and Caledon) actually improved quite a bit between January and August 2023, with detached housing listings growing 91.9 per cent and semi-detached and townhouse listings growing 182.6 per cent. 'In Peel Region, Brampton and Mississauga both had active detached home listings double from January,' the report reads, adding that similar activity was observed in the Durham region. 'Compared to August 2022, 2021, and 2020, active detached home listings are up in almost every city, showing supply in the GTA is recovering to pre-pandemic levels.'"

"Interest rates in Thailand should not be raised because doing so would adversely affect the housing market where demand is weak, say analysts. In addition to boosting the tourism sector, the government should encourage tourists to visit more than one time by luring them via property purchases. Vichai Viratkapan, acting director-general of the Real Estate Information Center (REIC), said the condo market this year was unfavourable due to weak demand among local buyers. 'Unsold completed condos are a worrying issue,' he said. 'In the second quarter, remaining unsold units didn't increase significantly but there will be an additional 4,000 units completed in the future.' There were 32,618 unsold units under construction that would be completed in the next few years, up from 30,034 units in the first quarter, and 20,694 units that had not started construction, up from 15,565 units."

"Speaking on RTHK's Hong Kong Today programme, Hannah Jeong, head of valuation and advisory services at Colliers said that a relaxation of mortgage rules in July hasn't so far helped the property market in the face of high interest rates, as she urged developers to cut prices to clear thousands of unsold homes. 'So if we look at one of the recent developments sold in the New Territories, in the first launch they were only able to sell 22 percent of their target number of units,' Jeong told RTHK. 'So I think the developers need to adjust the price more reasonably to clear these accumulated units, because unsold units are exceeding 20,000 as of now. This is an extremely high rate. It's about 12 percent higher than December last year.'"

"She said many buyers were holding off on purchases in the expectation that prices will slump further. Jeong said she expects a further fall in prices of up to ten percent in the year ahead unless the government takes action to bolster the market, for example by withdrawing stamp duties introduced as a measure to cool the market in 2010. The measures had been very good for curbing speculative activity, Jeong said, but buyers now understood there was little room to play the residential property market as an investment, and were now looking into it as a way of saving."

"'When I think about it, I cry,' says Mrs Guo about the home she had bought. 'It's hard, and I feel sorry for my son and myself.' In 2021, just months before the Chinese property giant Evergrande showed the first signs of crisis, Guo Tianran (whose name has been changed on request) and her husband bought an apartment off-plan for their only child from the top-selling developer. The couple, nearing their 60s, had scrimped to afford the $30,000 (£24,500) down payment on the yet-to-be-built flat. They bit the bullet in pledging to use 75% of their income to pay for the mortgage. In Henan, the central Chinese province where they had bought the home, building work ground to a halt. 'We saw the main frame being built, and suddenly we heard that Evergrande was falling. Then construction stopped last year,' she says."

"Mrs Guo says she and other Evergrande buyers aren't sitting idly by either. They have formed three groups on WeChat, with nearly 500 members each. 'We have organised ourselves to go to the government. With so many of us they can't possibly ignore it,' she said. She also told the BBC that she had been warned by local officials not to speak to the media, and fed promises that construction work at the Evergrande property where she bought a flat would resume soon. But a few members of her group check on the construction site every day. They've seen only a few workers and minimal progress. 'Some of us have stopped paying the mortgage,' Mrs Guo says. 'If the bank pushes too hard, they will sleep in the lobby of the bank.'"