A report from the Orange County Register. "Surviving the slowdown was a key theme at the California Association of Realtors conference last week in Anaheim. Helen Jeong’s most prosperous year as a real estate agent occurred in 2020, when five sales generated the most cash she had seen in her 17 years in the business. A year later, mortgage rates shot up like a rocket, turning the real estate industry upside down. '2020 was my best year,' Jeong said, between pep talks and training sessions at the California Association of Realtors conference in Anaheim. 'After that, I’ve only had one closing per year, and that’s terrible. … Buyers were all priced out.'"

"Burbank-based real estate broker Karol Kochova, who led the session on stress and burnout, said financial stress is taking a toll on agents’ personal lives as well as their work. 'Unfortunately, that trickles down into the family life,' Kochova said. 'It’s heartbreaking … to watch people going through financial hardship and depression.' Some agents are thinking of career changes, she said, while others are taking part-time jobs like driving for Uber or Lyft. Some have taken up meditation, yoga or exercise to deal with the stress, while others are sinking into depression. 'It’s their stress level of not being able to predict what the market is going to do in the next six to 12 months,' Kochova said. Jaime Velarde, owner of Rapid-o Signs in Santa Fe Springs, said the phones stopped ringing at his 'for sale' and 'open house' sign business in 2022. This has been Rapid-o Signs’ worst year for sales since the business opened in 1999. 'Yeah, we’re in trouble,' Velarde said. 'Every year was pretty consistent before that.'"

The Almanac in California. "In San Francisco's Peninsula region, the scramble for properties has subsided, leading to a more balanced market for buyers and sellers. 'In late 2022, the market transitioned as interest rates increased and the IPO boom receded,' said Dana Carmel, founder of the Dana Carmel Group and Represent Realty. 'This has caused home prices to adjust to changing economic factors, leveling out the playing field between buyers and sellers.' Menlo Park, Atherton and Portola Valley are known for being upscale, affluent communities. 'Luxury homes are lingering on the market and slower to sell,' Carmel said."

"Sellers will need to place an emphasis on preparation. 'Gone are the days of putting your home on the market as-is and expecting multiple offers the same week,' Carmel said. 'Investing in your home with fresh landscaping, paint and decluttering makes a big impact on the value.'"

From Bankrate. "Wendy LaManque knows how her life could look without $163,000 in debt from law school holding her back. She had been living it for more than three years when her federal student loans were in forbearance. Taking advantage of her freed up cash, LaManque and her husband saved for a down payment and bought a house in the Catskills of upstate New York. They paid off their car, eliminated their credit card debt, started an emergency fund for the first time, opened a recording studio as a side business, wrote music for their band and even got a dog."

"Now, LaManque’s student loan payments are resuming, and she’s grappling with how the roughly $900 monthly payment could affect her new life and budget. 'I’m nervous about how I’m going to manage that from a time perspective and what that’s going to do to my health,' LaManque says. 'Even if I find a solution that helps me cover my loan payments, I’ll be breaking even and not saving money. … It’s full-on crisis mode over here. The further away I get from being in my late teens and early 20s, the more experience I have with the world and finances, the more I see how backward this entire situation is, that someone with no way to pay back a loan and with no job history could just be handed six figures and say, ‘Good luck kid.’"

The Washington Post. "Madelynne Williams, 37, was fresh out of college and a year into her career as a schoolteacher when she bought a condo at Marley Ridge, a set of three buildings in the heart of Ward 7, in 2008. For young, aspiring homeowners like Williams who worked with limited budgets, the cozy units at Marley Ridge were worthwhile investments. But today, some of the condos have sustained major damage from leaky roofs, among other problems. Multiple owners have catalogued them in lawsuits against the board and management over the past five years. Williams bought the condo for $140,000 in early 2008, according to tax records; it’s now worth $166,600, according to Zillow estimates, a 19% appreciation. Ada Symister, a Marley Ridge condo owner who also described problems getting the board’s attention for unrepaired leaks, bought her unit for $156,400 in late 2006; it’s now worth $162,700, just over a 4% appreciation. Redfin data, however, estimates their properties have depreciated in value by more than 10% and 3%, respectively, since purchase."

"'This is not what I expected. I’m still in dismay,' Williams said. '[I] believed that it would appreciate like other properties in the city.' In 2021, she moved out of her Marley Ridge condo and is finishing repairs before renting it out, she said. She’s renting an apartment in the meantime while paying the mortgage for her condo. '[Purchasing my condo] was me, like, achieving the American Dream,' Symister said. But with the damage that was never fixed, like her perpetually leaky roof, 'it’s an American nightmare … To this day, I feel like it was the biggest mistake I’ve ever done in my life.'"

The New York Post. "Rental prices continue to tumble nationally, particularly in the places that saw the largest surges in prices. Rents fell the most in Austin, at -8% year over year in August. The metro was followed by Tampa, FL (-5.5%); Dallas and Raleigh, NC (both -5.4%); Portland, OR (-5.2%); San Francisco (-4.9%); Orlando, FL, and Riverside, CA (both -4.8%); Las Vegas (-4.6%); and Phoenix (-4.5%)."

"'Sellers got used to the fair value of homes being inflated, so they were not going to sell for less than [what folks] got during the frenzy,' says Stephanie Douglass, co-founder of Open House in Austin, a real estate brokerage that works with first-time homebuyers. 'Instead of lowering prices, sellers [have been] renting [out their] properties, which flooded the rental market.'"

Bisnow on Pennsylvania. "For all the talk of whether the economy is heading for a soft landing or a harsher recession, bad times are already here for commercial real estate in Philadelphia. Low interest rates and pent-up demand created a deluge of construction starts from late 2020 through mid-2022 in multifamily writ large. Investors who used the low-interest-rate environment to secure long-term, fixed-rate debt for their portfolios now find themselves being asked by contemporaries in cash crunches to provide rescue capital, panelists said."

"'You’re getting a call from someone who controls an asset that has no liquidity, and it’s a potential conversion or a piece of land,' Post Brothers co-founder Matthew Pestronk said. 'Throw out the lowest number that they won’t be insulted by, say you need this much time to execute, and you’re getting answers of, ‘Huh, let us think about that.’ It’s a painful period, but opportunities are starting to emerge.'"

The Toronto Sun in Canada. "How does the cliché go? That a real estate agent will never not tell you that it’s a great time to buy or sell? Survey a group of honest, experienced real estate agents at the moment and I would bet most would be saying that it’s not a great time to be buyer or a seller. The theory went, even reduced demand would still hold its own against Toronto’s structurally insufficient supply and prices would remain sticky. However, I don’t think anyone quite expected the dramatic thud that greeted us after Labour Day, especially once the Bank of Canada mercifully announced a pause to their rate hiking campaign. Rather than seeing the renewed vigor we witnessed after last spring’s conditional pause, not much happened."

"A buyer I worked with this month with a budget of $700,000 would have been qualified at $1.2M at the peak but the price of the properties we’re looking at have perhaps adjusted all of 10%. Adding to the complexities of this new market, we have more inventory starting to pile up even further solidifying the reality that if one has something they need to sell, their buy needs to come after. This is the absolute inverse of the rhythm that has dominated the market for years and years. Showings have slowed. Great homes that once wouldn’t have even made it to market without being snapped up before the photos were back are now often sitting. In all but a select few pockets of the city, offer dates are a game of Russian roulette. The market is balancing out and because the shift happened so quickly, to many it feels like the bottom is falling away."

"For sellers used to holding all the power it’s a new world. Having your house take longer than a week to sell, having to be patient, having to negotiate rather than simply relying on buyer competition to do the heavy lifting, contending with conditions — it’s all basically foreign at this point."

The Daily Mail. "Asking prices are being slashed across the South East of England as home sellers struggle to find a buyer. Eight of the 10 places in the UK that have seen price reductions of 5 per cent or more are in the South East, according to data shared exclusively with This is Money by the property website, Zoopla. Thanet in Kent, which includes the town of Margate, has seen more than one in five of all its current property listings have asking prices slashed by 5 per cent or more in the last 90 days. Dover, Brighton and Hove and Surrey Heath have also all seen almost one in five available listings reduced in price by at least 5 per cent in the last 90 days. Rightmove has also also reported that more than a third of homes for sale have had their asking prices cut, the highest since January 2011."

"Henry Pryor, a professional buying agent, says that buyers need to be wary of taking the asking price too literally. In his opinion, an asking price is not necessarily an indication of value, nor is it a statement of what the seller might accept. It is also not necessarily what the estate agent advised, or what a mortgage valuer might sign off on. Pryor says: 'It's amazing how many people mistake an asking price for value. It is a combination of the greed of the owner and the 'enthusiasm' of the agent to get the business. The biggest discount to asking price that we have achieved so far this year is 11 per cent but one of our best deals resulted in paying 10 per cent more. 'Remember, the asking price isn't a statement of value or an indication of what the seller will accept.'"

7 News in Australia. "Kathy Mattiello is one JND Homes client who has been waiting two years for her Sydney home to be finished. Mattiello said mould is growing on the timber frames because they have been exposed to wet weather since January 2023. She said it’s likely they’ll have to start the build from scratch because the home’s structural integrity has been compromised. 'There’s a good chance they will have to demolish it … which is a huge setback,' she said. 'It’s really left our whole life in limbo.'"

"Young couple Rosie and Sam Tramontana signed with JND Homes in September 2021, but are yet to move into their house. They allege they found a number of defects at different stages of their build that JND Homes did not accept accountability for. Sam said, over the past two years, other JND Homes’ customers told him the builder had not responded to their unsettled debts. He said he hasn’t heard from the builder in two months regarding his own house. 'I just don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel,' Sam said. 'There’s homeowner’s properties that are being vandalised now … I empathise with them. So far this year, 21 NSW builders had an administrator appointed, and 69 builders are classified as 'in liquidation.'"

Stuff New Zealand. "A Waikato couple’s dream to renovate a heritage countryside villa turned into a 'nightmare' after a builder went into liquidation, leaving the house incomplete with 'substandard' work. Barry Young entrusted Refresh Renovations, a renovation company with a network of 44 franchisees nationwide, and signed up with their franchisee in Waikato to renovate a four-bedroom Cambridge villa he bought in 2021. The three-month renovation project started in February 2022, but turned into what the couple describe as a 'painful' never-ending battle as the company’s former Waikato franchisee owner Ajit Singh went into liquidation."

"'Refresh Renovations put us in contact with their Waikato territory renovation specialists who did not know how to read plans, deal with council, complete building work to code, project manage or pay their contractors with the money we gave them,' he said. 'The franchisee owner Ajit Singh went into liquidation and ran off to Australia with a lot of our money.'"

Business Insider. "Recent developments at Chinese property giant Evergrande aren't quite inspiring confidence in China's real estate market. The company's troubles have been deepening recently, which have torpedoed its share prices. On Tuesday, Evergrande's shares tanked 7% by midday, extending a slump that took the stock down as much as 25% on Monday. This means Evergrande's share price has plummeted 27% this week. Evergrande is worth about 5.3 billion Hong Kong dollars, or $678 million, now – a massive fall from grace from the company's heydays in 2017 when it was worth nearly 420 billion Hong Kong dollars."

"Evergrande's stock has been hit by a series of bad news in the last few days. They include the cancellation of key creditor meetings this week that were announced on Friday and another notice on Monday that it would be unable to issue new debt. Late on Monday, Caixin, a Chinese financial news outlet, reported that Chinese authorities detained Pan Darong, a former chief financial official at Evergrande. Authorities also imposed restrictions on Xia Haijun, a former CEO at the property giant."

"China is trying to revive its property sector by stimulating consumer demand, but consumers are unlikely to be clamoring for new apartments amid record-high youth unemployment rate and slower economic growth, experts told Insider. In fact, there are way too many empty homes in China. A former top China official said there could be enough vacant homes in China to house up to 3 billion people — which is nearly 10 times the population of the US."