A report from the Naples Daily News in Florida. "Year-to-date, single-family home sales are down 15% over the year in Lee County, the county hardest hit by Ian. In the city of Cape Coral, they're off by 20%, said Denny Grimes, a long-time Realtor. As of August, prices were down 7% in the Cape from last year, compared to 4% countywide. Now, it's more of a buyers' market in Lee County, which means more room for negotiating. Recently, he said, a seller refused to accept $500,000 for his home – $25,000 below the asking price, then had to sell for $460,000, based on the next-best offer. 'We are going to see more downward pressure,' Grimes said. 'Inventory is rising.'"

The Orlando Sentinel in Florida. "One year after Hurricane Ian doused the Orlando region with historic rainfall, dozens of condo owners at the Dockside at Ventura are still not back home. Today, the complex of more than 250 condominiums is a construction site with numerous units stripped down to the studs as crews work to do repairs. Including interest, residents are on the hook for a monthly assessment that would total more than $32 million over the 12-year life of the loan. 'It means I have an extra $917 a month for the next 144 months,' said Jason Buhi, who purchased his condo two years ago. 'I’m going to pay more in the special assessment than I am the retail price of my condo.' Frustrated condo owners rallied in September to recall board members in hopes of stopping the assessments. They wonder if the loan is an effort to drive them into foreclosure. 'I think they’re trying to get our condos,' Buhi said."

From WKRN. "Middle Tennessee State University’s (MTSU) second quarter housing report is out, and real estate in the Greater Nashville area is showing mixed results. 'What you have here is a kind of standstill in housing market,” said Dr. Murat Arik, the director of the BERC at MTSU. 'Think about the fact that the builders [are] also constrained by the higher interest rate. They cannot simply go to the shopping spree to build homes. They also have to also carefully assess their own unique situation.' Arik said we could see the mortgage industry and builders come up with new, creative mortgage products in the next year to help with affordability."

From DS News. "ATTOM has released its Q3 2023 U.S. Home Affordability Report showing that median-priced single-family homes and condos are less affordable compared to historical averages in 99% of counties around the nation. The typical $2,053 cost of mortgage payments, homeowner insurance, mortgage insurance and property taxes nationwide exceeds $2,000 for the first time ever. It now consumes 34.6% of the average annual national wage of $71,214. That is up from 32.3% in Q2 of 2023 and 28.4% the third quarter of last year, to the highest level since 2007."

"'This pattern really jumps out,' said Rob Barber, CEO for ATTOM . 'While lenders will often push the 28 percent rule, especially if buyers have lots of financial resources outside of wages, we now are seeing fully three-quarters of markets around the country pushing the basic lending benchmark."

Mansion Global on California. "In San Francisco, sales of luxury new development units have continued their downward spiral, causing prices to fall and thwarting plans for new projects. Prices are 10.3% lower than last year and down 3.1% from 2019, said Krysen Heathwood, senior managing director, Compass Development Marketing Group, West. Gregg Lynn of Sotheby’s International Realty - San Francisco Brokerage noted that there are no new luxury high-rises in the pipeline and that many units remain unsold at new luxury projects. The pace of sales for new-construction condos has been decreasing for years, Lynn said, laying part of the blame on the pandemic and the resulting option for remote working that people embraced and are loath to give up."

"Heathwood added that buyers who tend to favor developments with the best and most amenities are in a good position to bargain right now. 'Prices are negotiable in most developments, and prices and incentives are the best they have been in years,' she said, adding that this situation is likely to be short-lived as the market picks up. 'Many buyers are jumping in now to take advantage of the lower prices and will refinance later.'"

The Commercial Observer. "Southern California is now home to another example of sharply deflated office values. Pendulum Property Partners, an affiliate of Los Angeles-based asset management firm Ares Management (ARES), sold One Pacific Plaza, a 70 percent leased, 394,000-square-foot office campus in Huntington Beach for $42 million. That’s 66 percent less than the $124.5 million that it traded for almost five years ago. According to Trepp, the property is still encumbered by $90 million of debt from SunTrust Bank, which remains from a $97 million acquisition loan in 2018. Newmark told the Orange County Business Journal that the deal is the first notable lender-facilitated office sale in Orange County in the wake of the pandemic."

"The deal joins other sales that indicate a generational drop in the value of traditional office real estate in Southern California, including but not limited to Orange County. For example, Terreno Realty acquired an office in Santa Ana for the same price it traded for six years ago, and plans to spend another $41 million converting it into an industrial property. Kearney Real Estate also plans to build a 164,000-square-foot industrial center in place of the Elevate@Harbor office campus nearby, and Blackstone notably sold another Santa Ana high-rise office at a 36 percent loss in April."

The Dallas Morning News. "The number of North Texas office buildings listed for sale is growing. But so far in 2023, few have sold. Almost two dozen office properties — ranging from huge suburban campuses to small single buildings — are up for grabs in Dallas-Fort Worth. So why aren’t the deals flowing? It’s because of uncertainty about pricing and the future of the office sector, analysts say. With only about 60% of North Texas workers back in the office since the pandemic, companies are scaling back on space needs, causing leasing activity to dwindle."

"At the same time, interest rates for loans to buy buildings have more than doubled as the Federal Reserve fights inflation. No surprise that office building values are heading down, bringing declining sales with them. About $500 million in D-FW offices changed hands through the end of August. That compares with almost $4.7 billion in North Texas office buys last year. Recent sales prices are about 12% below where they averaged at the peak in mid-2022. 'Prices have got to come down, and you have this stalemate,' said Susan Gwin Burks, senior vice president with Avison Young. 'It wasn’t that long ago that buyers were borrowing in the sub 4% and low 4% range. Now we are in the 8.5% range. That changes the value of an asset considerably.'"

"Office owners faced with expiring debts are working with lenders for a solution — either a new loan or property sale, said Evan Stone with Goodwin Advisors. 'Every lender I’ve talked to doesn’t want the property back,' Stone said. 'What are they going to do with it?'"

Bisnow New York. "Barberry Rose Management has sold a portfolio of rent-stabilized apartment units mostly in Manhattan’s Inwood neighborhood — but at a price well below what the multifamily owner paid in 2016. The 16 properties sold to Coney Realty for $47M, a 44% discount from the $83.6M price that Barberry Rose paid for the portfolio in 2016, The Real Deal reported. 'That’s just a reflection of where the market is,' Cignature Realty’s Lazer Sternhell, who brokered the deal along with Peter Vanderpool, told The Real Deal."

The Globe and Mail. "Even the Bank of Canada’s crack forecasters can’t foretell inflation with a high degree of long-term accuracy. 'And it’s the largest such team, the best trained, has every shred of data that’s available,' former Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz told me in an interview earlier this year. The bank’s staff constantly engage in 'a major debate about the pluses and the minuses and what the risks are – a very informed debate,' he said. 'It doesn’t get any better than that. That’s not the same as saying it’s accurate.' 'I think any economist, if you really pin them down on this, will tell you, the confidence intervals around the things … are pretty wide,' Mr. Poloz said. 'Weather forecasters are better than economists by a long shot.'"

From The I News. "Britain’s housing market has 'stalled' as homebuyers struggle to save large deposits and afford sky-high mortgage rates. Government data shows that property sales in August were 16 per cent lower than last year. This has resulted in sellers having to reduce the asking price by tens of thousands of pounds as the market contracts. Estate agents and mortgage brokers have told i that they are usually very busy in September after the summer holidays, but this month, instead, there has been a 'market dead drop.'"

"'I recently spoke to one of of the best, most professional agents I’ve ever worked with and they said this year’s autumn market, which is normally very busy, has not happened,' said Charlie Landin, founder of property website BestAgent. 'This person is 66 years old, they’re a veteran agent who has seen the last two housing market downturns. They are completely blindsided by this one, because it’s so sudden. They rang me up and said there are no viewings and no offers. Homes are just sitting there.'"

"One property in Clapton, east London, has been reduced by £75,000 since July. The property, now on the market for £600,000, still cannot be sold. On X, one user posted about a four-bedroom semi-detached home on the Kent and Surrey border that had been reduced by £175,000 in August of this year. Mr Lamdin believes the full scale of the issues in the market may not become apparent until next year or the years after, due to the eight-month time lag between agreed sale prices and when these prices can registered with the land registry data."

"He fears that growing numbers of people will find themselves in negative equity with unaffordable mortgages. 'This reporting time lag is creating a horrible trap,' Mr Lamdin told i. 'Buyers are at risk of overpaying because they are unaware of falling house prices because of it. For people with large mortgages this could be devastating. I’ve spoken to people who bought two years ago and fixed for five years who are realising that when they remortgage in 2025, they a) might not be able to afford their repayments and b) are looking at serious negative equity.'"

Mansion Global. "The growth couldn’t last forever. For the last two decades, Germany has worked to revive its automotive manufacturing and export industry. But times are changing. Rising energy prices, Covid-19-related supply chain disruptions and inflation have all made Germany more vulnerable. The German housing market has followed suit. Residential home prices fell by 9.9% year over year in the second quarter—the steepest drop since 2000, according to government data released Friday. Berlin’s home prices have fallen the least of any of Germany’s major cities, declining 5% compared to a year ago, according to Ziegert Group. The median price of an apartment there is €5,238 (US$5,528) per square meter."

"In Dresden, the median home price in the second quarter of this year was €3,077 per square meter, down 3.5% from the same time last year. Munich isn’t immune to the housing woes plaguing the rest of the country. The asking price for apartments in Munich has dropped from a high of €9,750 per square meter to just under €9,000, according to recent data from Christie’s. Hamburg, traditionally known as a port city, has become a hub for some of Germany’s major aeronautics and biotech firms. Home prices fell 7.3% in the second quarter of 2023 compared to 2022, according to data from Dr. Klein, a construction financing company. Apartment prices were down 14.5%."

From Newsweek. "The Chinese government has denied any knowledge of the legal quandary facing Hui Ka Yan, the founder and CEO of Evergrande who was put under police control this week in the latest episode in the mega developer's years-long fall from grace. China's Evergrande Group announced on Thursday that Hui, its chairman, was suspected of unspecified 'illegal crimes,' and that mandatory action had been taken in line with the law. The statement also said trading in the firm's shares would be halted until further notice and advised securities holders and potential investors to 'exercise caution.'"

"Hui joins a list of half a dozen tycoons to be investigated for financial crimes in the last decade, coinciding with Chinese President Xi Jinping's rise to power and his far-reaching anti-graft campaign in the public and private sectors. As much as 70 percent of household wealth in China is tied up in property, according to estimates cited in an August joint report by the Asia Society Policy Institute and the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions. Meanwhile, property accounts for about 30 percent of China's GDP."

"While Evergrande was overleveraged, and the three red lines compounded the market's woes, 'the most important driver behind China's boom-bust has been a weakening in the fundamentals in housing demand for the longer term, just as the housing bubble was heating up,' Guonan Ma, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, told Newsweek. No company was 'too big too fail' in China, said Gary Ng, an economist with the international financial services provider Natixis, and that he doubted any bailout was forthcoming coming for the troubled property giant "

The Sunday Times on China. "Farmer Chen Mei spent all her savings and borrowed from family and friends to cobble together 346,000 yuan (S$65,000) to help her son buy a flat in Kunming, capital of south-western Yunnan province. The flat was supposed to be ready in 2021, but construction stopped after the developer ran out of money. Madam Chen, 53, told The Sunday Times: 'I cried for days, and my son and husband had to console me and watch over me to stop me from doing anything silly. I’m also too ashamed to face my relatives and friends, even though they said that they understand my situation and do not pressure me into paying them back.'"

"A slump in China’s property sector has had ripple effects across its economy, puncturing consumer and business confidence, and leaving many ordinary citizens like Madam Chen and her son high and dry. At their peak in the late 2010s, home prices in Shanghai were as high as London’s; even in cities less developed than Shanghai such as Chongqing and Tianjin, double-digit increases in the price of homes yearly made them out-of-reach for many locals. But good times for the developers unravelled three years ago."

"In cities from Guangzhou to Xi’an, home owners made headlines when they staged a protest by moving into their unfinished apartments in bare-bones buildings, where they survived on limited water and electricity. In Kunming, Madam Chen’s son and hundreds of other home buyers are doing the same to put pressure on the authorities to do something about their situation. Madam Chen worries that without a flat, her son’s prospects of marriage would be slim. 'How is my son going to find a wife or have kids if he doesn’t have a flat?'"