A report from the Waco Herald Tribune in Texas. "Home construction has all but fallen off a cliff. The 371 permits issued through September to build new single-family homes in Waco is the lowest since the January-September total in 2016, and is down 32% from the first nine months a year ago. The 22 permits issued in September is the lowest in that month since 2010, and down nearly 48% year-over-year. 'Average days on the market is 72. It used to be what? Five days?' Coldwell Banker Apex residential agent Amanda Cunningham said, only half-joking about how long listed homes now remain unsold. The average home sales price dropped to $290,874 in September, down from $304,773 the same month last year."

From Money Wise. "About 53,000 home purchase agreements fell through in September, according to RedFin. The high rate of cancellations is a continuing trend. In August, about 60,000 fell through - the most on record since the real estate brokerage started tracking that data in 2013. And homebuyers can afford to be choosier now as demand and competition softens. 'House hunters today are taking their time and exploring their options, whereas six months ago, they had to act quickly and pull out every stop to compete because homes were selling almost immediately,' says Tzahi Arbeli, a Redfin real estate agent in Las Vegas."

Bizwest in Colorado. "Despite accepted benchmarks that would suggest otherwise, a prominent broker is firm in his belief that for residential real estate in the Boulder Valley, 'it’s a buyer’s market.' Even so, Todd Gullette wonders what those buyers are waiting for. Gullette, managing broker at Re/Max of Boulder, told a large audience that, 'traditionally we look at whether it’s a buyer’s market based on how many months of inventory we have.' He explained that 'under five months of inventory is technically a seller’s market. I’m going to challenge that, because if we’ve been out there effectively, I think this is really a buyer’s market because we can measure the shift of negotiating power.'"

"'Even with single-family and attached homes with somewhere between three and 3.5 months of inventory, we’re going to realize that the buyers have the power now,' Gullette said. 'If we were talking to a seller right now, they wouldn’t believe that it’s a seller’s market because they’ve lost so much in negotiating power.'"

"Gullette had a dose of reality for people wanting to put their homes on the market as well. 'It’s good for our sellers to recognize that prices have dropped in all areas in all price ranges,' he said. 'You have sellers out there now saying ‘I’m not going to play the game with the buyer. If they want to buy the house, great, but if not, great, I don’t have to sell.' Well, in a couple months you’re going to see these same listings out there for 270 days on the market. That’s them. Those are the ones that aren’t playing with the buyer.'"

The Wednesday Journal in Illinois. "'The 1100 block of Highland Avenue in Oak Park has a long-standing problem. A 1960’s-era home on the block was abandoned mid-flip. A developer took off the top half of the house, and the parkway in front of the house was destroyed for rehab work that was never completed. Vanessa Paszek, who lives on the block, said that shortly after a developer purchased the home in 2020, he demolished a large portion of the home and put fencing around the house. Then, she said, 'We started to see stop work notices plastered on the house, and the work on the house stopped.' Audrey McClenton, who lives next door to the home, said: 'There’s been no roof on the house for at least one-and-a-half years. Racoons are coming in and out. It’s like a nightmare. I can’t sell my house- who’s going to buy it next to this?'"

"McClenton and other neighbors did some research into the home and discovered that the home is owned by a local developer who owns several Oak Park homes, some in similar states of disrepair. Cook County records show that several other area homes owned by Foster Chambers, an independent contractor and real estate agent, or 52nd Ave LLC are in foreclosure or have entered the tax sale process. The 1139 Highland property entered the foreclosure process in April 2021, and McClenton said that through her work as a realtor, she is familiar with the foreclosure process but is unsure why the process has been so drawn out for this home. McClenton is unhappy with the lack of attention to the house. She said she wonders who is responsible for the state of the house, and said: 'They need to tear it down.'"

The Brandon Sun in Canada. "Imagine a thriving commercial district in a city, with a range of amenities. And imagine that commercial district is surrounded by a vibrant residential neighbourhood with hundreds of safe, affordable housing units that are the homes of hundreds of families with young children. Now imagine that same commercial district and residential neighbourhood with drug-addled people wandering the sidewalks day and night, many of them armed with weapons of various sizes. And imagine many of those same people puking, defecating and urinating on the those sidewalks, day and night, while others openly sell or consume dangerous drugs, or engage in a range of sexual activities not far from where children are playing."

"Actually, you don’t need to use your imagination at all. All I’ve done is describe the difference between what it was like when I was a kid growing up in Brandon’s core area compared to the situation now. On the residential side, some real estate agents discourage their clients from buying homes in the downtown neighbourhood, and core area homes listed for sale often languish unsold for months — at a time when housing is in short supply and high demand."

From Global News. "Slowing housing markets in many parts of Canada are pushing some home sellers to make hard-fought concessions on price — or delay their plans to sell until next year — in the wake of higher rates. The main thing that’s changed in the region is how long it takes to sell a home, according to Lorna Willis, an agent with Re/Max Finest Realty in Kingston, Ont. While the average days on market in Kingston now stands at 24 days, she says it can take between three and six months to land a sale now. 'It’s definitely been a shock for sellers, what’s changed,' Willis tells Global News."

"Despite signs that some jurisdictions are shifting into — or may already be in — a buyers’ market, Hanif Bayat, CEO of the financial analysis platform WOWA.ca. says sellers are not 'adjusting their price as fast.' In Ontario, he says many sellers are still accustomed to the market of a year or even six months ago when they held more negotiating power in the face of fervent buyer demand. 'The sellers are not used to this environment … they don't know that they don't have that power that they had before,' he says."

The Sydney Morning Herald. "Borrowers can be stuck in ‘mortgage prison’ when they can’t refinance because they cannot meet the requirements that banks use to assess loans, which typically factor in a buffer of 3 per cent on top of the current interest rate in case of future rises. They can also be trapped by negative equity or low equity, but this is less common since home prices have been rebounding this year. It’s a predicament more Australians could find themselves in, given Reserve Bank estimates that 20 per cent of owner occupiers would be unable to refinance if the cash rate lifted to 4.6 per cent. Investors, who face higher rates, could have greater difficulty."

"Shore Financial chief executive Theo Chambers said every rate rise increased the proportion of people unable to refinance. Some clients were being forced to sell, but these were typically those who stretched themselves to buy investments or secondary homes in the market boom. Mortgage Choice Dee Why’s James Algar said a small, but growing cohort of his clients were stuck in mortgage prison, others were working through their options to reduce mortgage stress – such as changing lenders, extending their loan terms, or switching to interest only loans."

"'I think [I saw] five people [last week] where even though they have enough equity to do it, they’ve not got enough income any more [to meet higher serviceability requirements] to make a move, it’s more prevalent now that people have loans they couldn’t re-borrow again,' he said."

South China Morning Post. "Developers are offering sweeteners such as delayed down payments to home buyers in Shanghai, one of the more resilient property markets in mainland China, in an attempt to spur demand in the face of slumping sales. The second-hand home market is faring little better, said You Liangzhou, the owner of Baonuo, a Shanghai-based property agency. Some owners are being forced to reduce their prices by as much as 6 per cent to find a buyer, something that used to be rare in Shanghai's property market."

"'Given the current market conditions, home buyers are generally taking a wait-and-see approach,' said a research note by Centaline's Shanghai bureau. 'On the one hand, market sentiment is not high, as supportive policies are less than expected. On the other hand, the sluggish sales performance makes it hard to increase prices, thus a 'floor price' this month could be a 'ceiling price' next month, which makes buyers hesitate to buy.'"

From CBC News. "The worksharing giant WeWork was supposed to fundamentally alter the future of the office. It raised billions of dollars, signed leases in office towers across North America, but filed for bankruptcy protection last week. Analysts say it collapsed, at least in part, because it never had a viable business model. 'It didn't really have a clear path to profitability. It never made any money,' said Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at the financial services firm Hargreaves Lansdown. Streeter says WeWork is just the latest in a string of high profile, well-funded ideas that failed spectacularly. 'This is a lesson for would-be investors not to believe the hype,' she told CBC News."

"There's a model here that has played out repeatedly over the past 10 years. Tech companies move in to disrupt an existing industry. There's a wave of hype about the innovation. The new service loses money in the hopes of eventually turning a profit. But as often as not, those profits never materialize. But the experiment has fundamentally changed the existing industry. The author and tech expert Cory Doctorow has coined a term for this process. He calls it 'enshittification.'"

"'Here is how platforms die,' he wrote in an essay first published on his website earlier this year. 'First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.' He points to Uber, Amazon and Airbnb as just a handful of examples. In Uber's case, Doctorow says the company raised billions of dollars that allowed it to operate at a loss. He says the belief was that if the experiment didn't work, things could just go back to the way they were. But that's not what happened."

"The taxi industry was decimated. In some cases, public transit was reduced as well because prospective riders were simply taking an Uber instead. He recently got off a train to find there was no connecting bus, no taxis and as Uber cuts back, there were no ride-hailing services available either. 'That's the lasting legacy here is that we don't just have this era in which, you know, small businesses are chased out of the industry, it's that we then go back to a status quo that's worse,' said Doctorow."

"When you zoom out, all these industries are very different. And the startups that challenged them are unique in their approaches. But there's one common theme: Cheap money. For nearly 15 years the world was awash in cheap money. Extremely low interest rates made investors willing to indulge companies that lost money without a clear plan to profitability. Now, as interest rates have shot up, and the willingness to take on risk has plummeted. And that may well change the way these startups take on existing industries. But it won't undo the damage done along the way."