It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "Sellers dropped prices on more than a quarter of homes listed for sale in the Seattle area in September, slightly higher than the national average, according to Zillow. To entice buyers, Town home developer Erich Armbruster said his firm, Ashworth Homes, has tried rate buydowns, but buyers were more interested in price cuts. The company has lowered prices about 10% from a year ago. Some builders of new homes are slashing prices or advertising buyer credits and interest rate buydowns. Homes in one development near Northgate started this spring in the low $700,000 range, but after multiple price cuts are now listed in the low $600,000 range and are about half sold, Armbruster said. 'There’s really not much more to give in terms of pricing,' he said."

"Greg Parker Jr. tells a story about hustling in his North Philly neighborhood as a teen, then buying his first Philly property in 2005 for about $5,000, and flipping rowhouses until he was making $150,000 a month. It’s a story the personal finance influencer told to get people to invest in properties and pay to attend his seminars. And hundreds of aspiring investors got swept up in the inspirational message. Now, many are saying Parker, known online as Big Bizzneesss, scammed them. Some of the people who say they were scammed by Parker and his wife, Danielle, include a recent Drexel University grad who gave Parker $20,000 to purchase a house. The sale never happened, and now he’s suing to try to get his money back. A South Jersey real estate agent who paid $7,000 for a share of what turned out to be a run-down property with more than $16,000 in back taxes. A Brooklyn man who borrowed money from his 401(k) to pay Parker for the purchase and rehab of a property. He’s out more than $100,000."

"Bay Area workers who took advantage of remote work during the pandemic to move to far away, lower-cost cities now may find themselves in a painful predicament if called back to the office. Some of the hottest cities for those joining the Bay Area exodus are seeing home prices fall sharply from their pandemic peaks. August’s median home prices in Austin, Dallas and Boise, Idaho, are all down 18% from their peaks reached in May 2022, according to Redfin data. The pain is just starting to unfold in other destination cities. Florida, long derided by many Californians, became a popular choice for Bay Area residents favoring low taxes, affordable homes and few Covid restrictions. Miami’s median home price is off 4% and Orlando’s is down more than 6% since hitting a peak in June 2023."

"So are these remote workers being called back to the office stuck with losses? 'That’s the risk,' said Scott Anderson, chief U.S. economist for BMO Economics. 'There are a lot of folks that took out mortgages when rates were extremely low and bought houses during the pandemic — maybe even bigger houses than they probably needed — in markets they might not want to stay in now. There’s some buyer’s remorse we’re going to see. There are going to be some folks who are going to be stuck there.'"

"Kim Zolciak continues to purge her and her family’s closets in a desperate attempt to make some extra cash amid their ongoing financial woes. The former 'Real Housewives of Atlanta' star gave her 3.4 million Instagram followers the opportunity to purchase a couple of pairs of her and Kroy Biermann’s designer shoes Tuesday. While it’s unclear if anyone has actually purchased the items listed on her Story, Zolciak and Biermann’s financial problems seem to be never-ending. Not only is the 'RHOA' alum being sued by BMW for $400,000 and Capital One/Saks for an additional $100,000, but the pair’s shared Georgia mansion is also facing foreclosure."

"The dearth of big-ticket deals and major office trades continues to hobble New York’s investment sales market, which is on pace for its worst year since the depths of the Great Recession. 'This is the worst market I've seen in 37 years,' Compass Vice Chair Adelaide Polsinelli said. 'The good news is we’ll stay alive for '25, and it’ll be heaven in '27. You can only have so many bottoms.' Last month, a portfolio of Inwood rent-stabilized apartment units sold at a 44% discount from the price the seller paid in 2016. In a deal that has yet to close, Clarion Partners agreed to sell a Fifth Avenue office building for $100M less than it paid a decade ago, The Real Deal reported. The per-square-foot price of office sales in the third quarter of $398 was 41% below the trailing four-quarter average, per Avison Young."

"The summer pause in real estate activity in the local housing market extended through September, with prices, sales and listings all down compared to the previous month. The average sales price of a home in the area was down nearly $25,000, to $536,927 in September. The highest average monthly price this year was $602,591 in May. 'There’s been a definite pullback in the market,' said Windsor-Essex County Association of Realtors president Mark Lalovich. 'September definitely was a disappointment.' The most price sensitive sector of the market has been homes listed at $900,000 and above. Sales of homes in that price range dropped from 44 in August to 19 in September. 'Interest rates definitely remain front and centre for buyers,' Lalovich said. 'People are looking but not acting and not acting in a way to create a sale.'"

"Property sellers are waiting over a month on average before dropping the asking price for their home, analysis shows – but they risk getting thousands of pounds less in doing so. On average this year, they are reducing the price by around 5.1 per cent, which equates to just over £14,000 on the typically priced home of £280,000. Richard Donnell, executive director at Zoopla, explained: 'Over-pricing runs the risk of potentially getting less than you hoped as buyers can see the property sticking so this may encourage them to try it on more to get a bigger discount to the asking price, even if it’s been reduced. There are some people who won’t sell at the moment unless they get a certain price and life is tough for them at the moment, as they might be pricing too high.'"

"The value of real estate sales in Kuwait declined during the third quarter of 2023 to KD 800 million, the lowest levels recorded since the third quarter of 2020. The expatriate population continues to face challenges that limit their spending and even force some to leave. Additionally, restrictions on granting visit visas to expatriates have contributed to a surge in vacant apartments, with their numbers exceeding 50,000 uninhabited rental investment apartments by the end of the first half of this year."

"Hundreds of thousands of Australians are flooding financial crisis hotlines in desperate need of help, on the brink of losing their homes as they struggle with sky high mortgage repayments. The majority of calls in the year to September came from New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria, while overall volumes were up almost 30 per cent compared to the same time last year. A number of financial crisis services news.com.au spoke to reported similarly high levels of need from those with mortgages. One said the number of calls related to mortgage stress 'has never been so high.' A source from one service described the scenario playing out as having reached a 'critical mass.' If a large enough proportion of mortgages fail – that is, a flood of Aussies lose their homes by defaulting on their home loans – the source said: 'We’d all be screwed.'"

"Packed inside a small office in Hong Kong’s financial district, about 20 people wait for a property auction to start. Of the 24 properties up for sale, the majority are foreclosed homes. But in a display of the caution that has gripped Hong Kong’s market and is contributing to a price slump, the prospective buyers are wary. Only one of the properties sells, with the rest failing to meet the minimum price or attracting no bids. Other firms are also seeing a spike in distressed sales. The number of foreclosed properties handled by C S Auctioneers rose to almost 300 in September from about 100 at the beginning of 2023, according to Mr Alger Cheng, general manager of the firm’s auction department."

"Banks are now open to price cuts in order to speed up sales, 'knowing that the inventory of foreclosed homes will only increase given the down cycle,' Mr Cheng said. Such properties can be 20 per cent lower than the market price. House prices may fall another 5 per cent in the second half of 2023, which will create a vicious circle as borrowers are discouraged to repay loans when their debt becomes higher than the property value, said Mr Louis Chan, the head of Centaline’s residential division. 'The total number of foreclosed properties could increase to more than 1,000,' he said."

"China's second-largest real estate developer is close to bankruptcy, leaving millions of property investors nursing heavy losses. To make matters worse, the country's real estate crisis -- which first unfolded two years ago -- has become a slow-motion car wreck. Ordinary Chinese people, who for years believed that property was a safer bet than the country's volatile stock market, have become increasingly scared of losing down payments on new properties that may never be built. as new projects continue to dry up, small businesses and workers are finding themselves owed hundreds of millions of dollars. The shadow banking system -- a network of trusts outside of the main banking system -- is also nursing huge losses."

"A $35 billion restructuring plan for Evergrande, agreed in April, is now thought to be in doubt. 'One still has to find a way to cover losses, so that's why things are moving slower than what might be ideal,' Antonio Fatas, a professor in economics at INSEAD Business School in Singapore, told DW. 'You are now seeing the political struggle to allocate blame for this,' he added, referring to the reported arrest of Evergrande's CEO, who the company said later was being held on suspicion of 'illegal crimes.'"