A report from Yahoo Finance. "The last bastion of the housing market faltered last month. Sales of newly built homes decreased 8.7% to a seasonally adjusted rate of 675,000 units last month from the revised July rate of 739,000, according to the Census Bureau. The decrease in activity reverses much of the good fortunes homebuilders enjoyed this year and underscores how even higher mortgage rates are blunting all corners of the housing market — despite attractive incentives. Elevated rates have also been hammering the resale market, with sales of previously owned homes sliding to the lowest level for the month of August since 2010, National Association of Realtors chief economist Lawrence Yun said on a press call. The pace, which was down 15.3% year over year, was also the third slowest of the current housing cycle. 'A majority of builders are using incentives, including trimming prices and offering financing assistance,' said Keith Gumbinger, vice president of HSH.com ahead of the report. 'We’ll learn how successful those incentives were in getting buyers to sign the dotted line.'"

CBS 5 on Arizona. "Since 2018, home prices in Flagstaff have almost doubled, but for the first time since then, prices have dropped slightly and remained steady, and interest rates might be to blame for both. Kelly Broaddus has been working in real estate for 25 years. She said low interest rates post-pandemic spiked housing costs. 'Once COVID hit, and interest rates went down to try to stimulate the economy, things just went bonkers,' she said. Now, the high interest rates have helped the housing market stabilize a little, but they’re not the solution. 'They really didn’t come down too much there,' Broaddus said. 'It just made the the market a little bit more sluggish, just a little slower you know. But I think sellers are still really reluctant to admit that maybe they need to lower their prices.'"

The Chaffee County Times. "For anyone looking to buy a home, Julie Kersting, Broker at First Colorado Land Office suggests having a conversation with their lender to see what costs are looking like. 'It’s important to work with a lender and have a relationship with a local real estate broker so that when the opportunity presents itself, the client is ready to make a knowledgeable decision quickly,' Kersting said. With the rates as high as they are, most sellers aren’t getting multiple offers on their listings. This may make them more likely to sell with fewer showings and often at or below the list price."

The Wall Street Journal. "Rising interest rates are hitting Americans’ finances. Daniel Waddell started looking for a home in St. Paul, Minn., in January. Mortgage rates kept ticking up during his search. He eventually bought a three-bedroom, one-bathroom home this spring after offering over the asking price. His mortgage rate is about 6.5%. Waddell and his wife are deferring other purchases because of the $2,600 monthly mortgage payment. The 25-year-old consultant would like to replace the car he has been driving since the start of college, but he now plans to put off that purchase as long as he can. Even so, Waddell said he is glad they got the house. Otherwise, he and his wife might have given up. 'Rates are obscenely high and it doesn’t seem like they’re going down anytime soon,' he said."

Community Impact on Texas. "Median home prices in Leander and Liberty Hill were down year over year in August, homes lingered on the market longer and fewer were sold compared to last year, according to the Austin Board of Realtors. Year-over-year median home prices in both cities dropped with a nearly 9% drop in Liberty Hill's 78642 ZIP code and a 16% drop in Leander's 78641 ZIP code. Despite the price drop, fewer homes were sold compared to last year. Additionally, homes sat on the market longer this August compared to last. Homes in the 78642 ZIP code stayed on the market more than twice as many days as last year."

WWBT on Virginia. "Richmond City Council unanimously approved an ordinance concerning short-term rentals on Monday night. Officials hope the new ordinance will alleviate the current housing crisis, but some people say it could hurt them financially. 'This is my livelihood and it’s the livelihood of a lot of short-term rental hosts in the city of Richmond. 90% of Airbnb hosts that host in the city of Richmond will lose their opportunity to host … if you can’t have unhosted stays,' said Terricinia St. Clair, an Airbnb superhost ambassador and a co-host in the Southside of Richmond."

Bisnow New York. "An eight-story, 92-unit luxury condo property spanning a full Hell’s Kitchen block is heading to a foreclosure auction, the latest sign of difficulties for Xin Development Group International. The property’s retail anchor tenant is big-box retailer Target, but that doesn’t seem to be enough to keep it afloat. Mezzanine lenders have filed to foreclose on Xin Development’s Bloom on Forty Fifth, with an auction set for Oct. 11, according to a public notice. Selling units in the building or refinancing will be almost impossible amid a foreclosure suit, said Adelaide Polsinelli, a broker and vice chair at Compass. 'Those developers developed at the height of the market. If they didn't sell out, chances are they're in trouble,' she said. 'Their debt may be coming due. And then what?'"

"Not helping matters for Xin Development is that New York City’s luxury condo market has been stagnant over the past few months, Compass broker Vickey Barron said. 'The world is nervous in general. So many people have analysis paralysis in a healthy market,' she said. 'When you have a market with uncertainties and people nervous about what’s happening globally, in real estate it’s just another reason for them to panic.'"

The Mercury News in California. "The owner of a prominent, empty office building in Mountain View has tumbled into default on their loan, fresh evidence that financial woes have widened for the Bay Area’s wobbly commercial real estate market. The office building is located at 590 East Middlefield Road at the corner of Logue Avenue, according to documents filed on Sept. 21 with the Santa Clara County Recorder’s Office. The property owner group that defaulted on the loan is SHP Middlefield, an LLC affiliated with Sand Hill Property Co., one of the Bay Area’s most successful and active developers. 'There are many nice buildings like ours sitting vacant. It is high quality. But now this whole area is dead. There is no tenant activity.'"

From Reuters. "U.S. hotel owners could see greater pressure on their ability to service the loans backing their properties, as a decline in leisure stays coupled with rising costs are expected to pinch their profits. According to a Moody's report, nine of the 19 commercial mortgage-backed security (CMBS) loans that liquidated in the second quarter of 2023 were hotel loans that initially defaulted in 2020, selling at a loss after the borrowers failed to work out a solution to avoid default. Perhaps the hardest-hit in this category are hotels along the coast of Florida. 'It would not be a surprise if every hotel owner on Miami Beach is facing not just an increase in hurricane, flood and wind storm insurance premiums, but at a multiple of 2-3x,' said Eric Goldberg, co-chair of the real estate law practice at Olshan Frome Wolosky."

Blog TO in Canada. "Condo construction feels never-ending in Toronto, where developers continue to jam shiny skyscrapers into new parts of the downtown core. With so many cranes constantly erecting new buildings on demanding deadlines, it often seems like many modern builds are finished as quickly and as cheaply as possible for maximum profit, which has led to issues like falling glass, flooding, paper-thin walls, elevator snafus, inferior insulation, and worse. Glass-walled buildings notorious for shoddy fabrication and ongoing problems also tend to become prime spots for short-term rentals, turning them into ghost hotels and making matters for actual residents even worse."

"One popular Reddit thread from this week exemplifies this perfectly with a photo of the crumbling brick exterior of the brand new XO Condos at King and Dufferin, with the original poster joking about the low standard of new construction in the city. 'I live nearby and watching this building go up has been baffling. The developer seems to have cheaped out on every aspect: facade, entrance, trees, internal fit out,' one local commented. 'If you want a real laugh, take a look at the renderings. The entire community has been conned and the developers will walk away with a big bag of cash either way.'"

The I in the UK. "A mother-of-two said she 'felt sick' when she found out her mortgage repayments will jump from £1,700 to £2,600 a month at the end of her current deal. Hannah Hardman, who works in tech, and her husband bought their four-bedroom detached home in Kent in 2019 on a five-year fixed rate mortgage of 2.35 per cent. With the uncertainty over the Bank of England base rate decisions and their current mortgage deal coming to an end, the Hardmans made the choice to take up a fixed two-year deal at a rate of 5.72 per cent on the advice of their mortgage broker. Ms Hardman, 33, said she felt 'shellshocked' by the news of the increase which is set to kick in in February."

"'We’re going to be moved on to a 5.72 per cent rate which just makes me feel sick,' Ms Hardman said. 'The monthly repayments go from just over £1,700 to over £2,600.' Ms Hardman, who already works condensed hours and relies on her children’s grandparents to lower childcare costs, said the significant rise in mortgage payments will put more demands on her and her husband’s finances. 'It puts a lot of pressure on me and my husband professionally to advance in our careers and try and perform at work to try and secure pay rises that will enable us to just be able to maintain. I think we’re just having to be really mindful of needs versus wants.'"

From ABC News. "Home buyers reeling from the collapse of multiple builders in South Australia say they did everything they could, as the state government runs a campaign encouraging consumers to 'do their homework' before signing a contract. The government's consumer awareness campaign follows the collapse of four building companies in recent months. While many South Australians affected by builder collapses can access a $150,000 insurance payout, home buyer Geoff Browne cannot because, as he later discovered, the mandatory building indemnity insurance was not taken out."

"He said he and his wife felt that they had done everything they could when researching their house and land package, including engaging a real estate consultant. Mr Browne said by the time red flags were starting to appear, it was too late. 'We'd spent a lot of money by that point and we went, 'Well do we continue or do we try and get out of this and risk losing everything we'd put into it', which was quite a large sum of money,' he said."

The New Zealand Herald. "Two recent cases involving leaky homes revealed that the housing market can be fraught for prospective home buyers. The first case involved an 81-year-old businessman who, with his wife, doctored a Land Information Memorandum (LIM) report so they could sell their leaky home at full market price. In another case, two realtors waited until the sale of a house was finalised before disclosing a building report that showed areas of the property had moisture readings nearly eight times the normal range. NZ Herald senior reporter Lane Nichols has reported on real estate disputes for a number of years, and tells The Front Page podcast families who fall victim to wrongdoing can be left tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket."

"In the recent matter involving the doctored LIM report, Nichols says the buyers purchased the home only to discover years later that the actual LIM report held by Auckland Council referenced 'major moisture-related cladding defects.' Four years later, at a time when the market was running hot and property prices were rising fast, the couple sold the property at a loss of $25,000 – but this does not take into account how much they lost in potential capital gains over that period (one estimate suggested the loss was as high as $290,000)."

From Bloomberg. "Hui Ka Yan, the billionaire chairman of beleaguered property developer China Evergrande Group, has been placed under police control, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The move is the latest sign that the saga at the world’s most indebted developer has entered a new phase involving the criminal justice system, after authorities earlier this month detained some staff at its wealth management unit and two former executives were also reportedly held. 'It is too early to say Evergrande will end up in liquidation, but such risk is clearly rising,' said Gary Ng, senior economist at Natixis Asia. 'For the government, it shows no single developer is too big to fail in China.'"