It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "'The sharpest price decline in Utah’s real estate history occurred from May 2022 to January 2023,' wrote the report’s authors, housing researchers Jim Wood and Dejan Eskic. In those eight months, the statewide median sales price of an existing home fell 16%. 'There is no other comparable short-term decline, when housing prices fell so far so fast, in either the Great Recession or the decade of the 1980s,' Wood and Eskic wrote."

"Across the Austin-Round Rock metro area, half of the houses last month sold for more than $460,000 and half sold for less, for a 7.6% decline in the median sales price. Median sales prices have continued to see year-over-year declines as mortgage interest rates have risen. 'Buyers cannot afford the same price points with these higher rates,' said Clare Losey, housing economist for the Austin Board of Realtors. Williamson County: Median price: $435,516, down 8.7% from August 2022. Hays County: Median price: $394,990, down 10.1% from August 2022. Bastrop County: Median price: $339,990, down 15% from August 2022."

"Sierra Nevada Realtors on Wednesday released its August 2023 report on existing home sales in Carson City and Lyon, Douglas, Washoe, Storey and Churchill counties. Active inventory is up across the rural counties by 10.4%. In August 2023, Carson City median sales price for an existing single-family residence was $465,000, a decrease of 8.8% from the previous month and a decrease of 9.2% from the previous year. In August 2023, Lyon County median sales price for an existing single-family residence was $380,000, a decrease of .2% from last month and a decrease of 10.6% from the previous year."

"Whether you are renting or buying a home in the D.C. area, the process can be complicated and expensive. When he looks at the numbers, local real estate agent John Coleman said interest rates make buying a home less attractive. 'Homeownership is a long-term game,' Coleman said. 'If you’re looking to sell it in three to four years, I wouldn’t buy right now. I just wouldn’t. There’s cost-of-sale in terms of buying and then selling … it’s kind of like driving a car off the lot.'"

"To anyone who’s been paying attention, it’s no surprise that the Long Island housing market has been struggling lately. And the slowdown in home sales has also been painfully obvious to people in businesses that have depended on a healthy real estate industry for their own success. 'During the height of COVID, it was like the steroid era of baseball. Interest rates were at 2.5 percent, people with no experience in the industry were making money hand over fist,' Chris Roberti, director of strategic growth for Woodbury-based mortgage lender Hartford Funding told LIBN. 'I was working around the clock and sometimes didn’t even have time to eat lunch. It was crazy. And then all of a sudden, everything kind of fell off a cliff. It was a violent rise in rates and happened in like three to four weeks.'"

"Robert Esposito, principal of Hauppauge-based Relocator Service Inc., has also been riding the housing rollercoaster. During the height of the COVID pandemic, Esposito’s firm was busier than ever, as home sales boomed. But two years later, the housing boom has turned bust, and the company’s residential moving business is now down about 40 percent since 2020. 'This is the first time I’m really noticing how much the pendulum has swung,' Esposito says."

"More than a year after the News4JAX I-TEAM exposed the owner of a Jacksonville fence company for taking thousands of dollars from customers without doing the work, Glen Northrup pleaded guilty on Thursday to organized fraud, a second-degree felony. 'I lost everything, everything,' he said. 'I feel bad right now. The customers got to understand I’ve got to pay lawyers and all the fees I have to pay. I’ve got that paid and now we are going to move forward.' He blames all of this on a bad situation with his business. 'My landlord come in and foreclosed on me so I couldn’t renew the lease, so I lost the business, I lost my home, I lost all my materials back there. I had 10-12 customers’ materials waiting to go, and then my help left, so I was left there holding the bag.'"

"Given more volatile income streams than nearly every other sector, hospitality real estate is on a razor’s edge all its own. Though it doesn’t face the same existential crisis as office, the hotel sector is softening at an inopportune time. 'I think the extend-and-pretend days are coming to an end, especially when banks look at sponsors and find they’re not putting in enough cash at the property level, nor enough cash in the reserves,' Ridgemont Hospitality COO Dhruv Patel said. 'The business transient traveler, that one-to-two-day, quick-hit business trip, I think we’ve all settled into the understanding that it’s never coming back,' said Patel, whose company owns hotels near Oakland International Airport and Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. 'We feel kind of stuck,' Patel said. 'There’s margin pressure through the roof.'"

"Buyers lamenting a shortage of inventory in the Toronto-area real estate market will have a rush of fresh listings to sort through this month. The average price in the Beaches dipped to $1.4-million at the end of August from $1.5-million one year earlier, says Rochelle DeClute, broker with DeClute Union Realty. Increasingly, sellers are wrapping their minds around the current landscape, she says. 'We’re seeing the price change happen in a couple of weeks,' she says of the more pragmatic sellers. In an added twist, sellers are sometimes chasing buyers these days. 'Strategically, if a buyer is interested, there’s no reason the seller can’t write an offer to the buyer,' Ms. DeClute says."

"Ms. DeClute says the current environment remains a sellers’ market but she is also seeing an increase in motivated sellers. Many homeowners are shocked, for example, when the time comes to renew a mortgage and they see payments double. Some are deciding to step out of home ownership as a result. In midtown Toronto, properties that were changing hands for $2.1-million or $2.2-million are now more likely to fetch $1.9-million or $1.95-million. Victor Tran, mortgage specialist with rates.ca., says 'purchase transactions have been down the drain.' Most of the people he sees struggling are holding investment properties, Mr. Tran says, adding that he has not yet had clients who are giving up a principal residence. Mr. Tran predicts an uptick in inventory in the coming weeks as sellers enter the traditional fall market. But he adds that some owners are also buckling under the financial pressure and feel they have no choice but to sell. 'A lot of people are on edge.'"

"The UK housing market is facing ongoing challenges, with house prices continuing to fall, the latest Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors residential market survey shows. 'Viewing levels have been lower being a holiday period. Sales are being agreed, but below vendor expectations, many of whom are not aware of the impact of interest rates on values. Buyers are expecting discounts and sales are agreed when parties to a chain agree to share those discounts,' said Anthony Filice of Kelvin Francis Ltd from Cardiff."

"People in Sweden have become more pessimistic about house prices, with the bank SEB's September housing indicator showing a rise in the share who expect falling prices. 'Housing price expectations have long resisted following economic developments but the expected fall has finally come,' said Américo Fernández, SEB's private economist. He said that a lower-than-expected turnout of buyers at the first weekend for house viewings after the summer break appeared to have dispelled sellers' expectations for higher prices. 'This month, economic reality and the chilly reception to the big viewing weekend appears to have forced households to lower their future expectations somewhat,' he continued. 'In the coming autumn, we can expect a peak in interest rates, wavering power prices, and ever emptier wallets, which taken together suggests a suppressed and uncertain situation for house prices.'"

"Finland's economic downturn will last longer than expected, driven by weaker export demand and a rapid slowdown in construction activity in the face of high interest rates, the Bank of Finland said on Friday. Hundreds of construction companies have already gone bankrupt this year in Finland, and the coming months do not look much brighter. Real estate data shows that new apartment sales in August dropped more than 60% year on year. 'This year housing construction will drop below the level it hit during the (2007-2009) financial crisis,' said Jouni Vihmo, chief economist at the Confederation of Finnish Construction Industries."

"QV Nelson/Marlborough manager Craig Russell said it was still a 'low sales volume environment' – though listing numbers were expected to increase in spring, as they typically do every year. 'There is still an oversupply of modern typical homes in the Richmond location, which have been sitting on the market for an extended period. A number of properties are also affected by conditional contracts, and in particular chain sale situations whereby the sale of a vendor’s property is contingent on the sale of the purchaser’s property.'"

"A NSW family has lost $59,000 in the wake of their builder going into liquidation. Chris Le, his partner, and both their sets of parents had paid a hefty deposit to Simone Homes to build them a house on a plot of land in Eagle Vale, in Sydney’s southwest. It’s a double whammy for the Le family, because, as building work never commenced and the land was not yet titled, the construction company was not able to take out a Builders Warranty Insurance policy. That puts the unlucky family in the same boat as other unsecured creditors and they are unlikely to receive the full amount of their deposit back, if anything. 'This whole thing has been nothing less of a dumpster fire,' Mr Le told news.com.au."

"Construction worker Shi Tieniu bought a presale apartment in an industrial city in northwestern China's Shaanxi province, billed as a 'superior product' to be 'passed down through generations.' Eight years later, it is an unfinished shell, and every night he must climb 20 flights of stairs to sleep in a threadbare room without water, heating or electricity. 'I almost never drink water, wash my face or brush my teeth,'" said Shi, 39, who moved into the Gaotie Wellness City complex in May. 'I want this to be finished as soon as possible, so my elderly parents have somewhere to spend their final years… I have no money now, I've lost my family property and all that's left is this unfinished building.'"

"Shi and a few dozen desperate home buyers live in the block in Tongchuan city as part of a nationwide campaign to pressure authorities to address so-called 'rotting' or unfinished homes that have become more common during a years-long property slump that has bankrupted many developers and left others massively indebted. Many of Shi's neighbours are retirees who had bought apartments for their unmarried sons, or labourers who cannot afford to rent elsewhere. To enter the complex, residents pick their way through an overgrown field, past abandoned construction machinery to a hole in the wall."

"'My life savings were spent here. My son is still unmarried. I'm already 60, after a few years I won't be able to climb so many stairs,' said a resident and former coal miner surnamed Gao who paid 240,000 yuan for a flat in 2018. 'You cannot rely on these houses. Look at how they turned out now, and how it has destroyed my family,' said home buyer Qi Xiaoxia, 65. 'My son is now 36. I borrowed money from all my relatives and friends to pay for the house. These past few years, we've tightened our belts to repay… but we still have no house and my son has no wife.'"