A report from The Times. "Northwest Indiana's housing market peaked with 12,000 home sales in the seven-county area in 2021 but remains hot. Demand is strong but is waning, said Northwest Indiana Realtor Association CEO Pete Novak. It's been waning nationally since the beginning of 2022 and in Northwest Indiana since July 2022. 'We're in our 14th, 15th, 16th month here where we've seen a decline in home sales as well,' he said. 'Each year since 2021 we've seen a substantial drop. Between 2021 and 2022 there was an 11% and this year were down 17%. That's almost a third of sales.'"

"It remains a seller's market, Novak said. In a normal market, sellers used get 92% to 94% of their asking price as a result of negotiation. 'There were times during the pandemic when the entire market was getting more than the asking price if you can believe that. That's how crazy the market was. I don't think I'll ever see that again in my lifetime,' he said. 'That's changing. It's balancing more.'"

The American Statesman in Texas. "Mandar and Asmita Shinde are international homebuyers from India who, after seven years of living in Seattle, now call Austin home. Mandar Shinde, a tech business developer for Amazon, originally came to the U.S. from Nagpur, India. Since January, he and his wife, both 40, have been leasing a home in Liberty Hill. But by next summer the Shindes and their 4-year-old son plan to move into a new home in Leander once the house, which Perry Homes will start building soon, is completed. They expect to receive $30,000 in incentives, plus another $5,400 in closing costs if they use Perry Homes' preferred lender, Mandar Shinde said."

"He said it made sense to contract to buy a house to take advantage of the current housing market, which he said is 'sideways' now — but won't always be. 'Once the market goes up, incentives will go away and prices will go up quickly,' he said. 'At least you can capitalize on the situation before it goes crazy again.' Across the Austin region in general, home prices and the volume of sales have been declining since the spring of 2022 as mortgage interest rates have risen. The most recent housing figures, for October, show that sales fell 4.1% in the five-county Austin region year-over-year. Half of the 2,337 houses that changed hands sold for more than $435,000 and half sold for less, for a 7.5% decline in the median price compared with October 2022, the board said."

The Denver Post. "Colorado’s population is growing at its slowest pace on record, with domestic net migration turning negative last year and the population declines long seen on the Eastern Plains taking hold in one large Front Range county. Colorado is now home to the four most expensive metro housing markets outside a coastal area — Boulder, Denver, Fort Collins and now Greeley, according to the real estate research firm Zonda. But one upside of slower population growth is that the state has chipped away at its housing deficit. 'We have been on a big bull market (in construction) since we came out of the Great Recession. Did we sell so many homes between 2017 to 2022 that we borrowed from future demand?' asked Ted Leighty, CEO of the Colorado Association of Home Builders. When it comes to categories like luxury apartments in downtown Denver, too much supply might be a short-term problem."

"Jefferson County provides a foreshadowing of impacts on what the state’s aging population might look like. Although counties across the Eastern Plains have long struggled with population losses, they have now shown up in heavily populated Jeffco, which has lost an estimated 7,000 people since 2020."

The Lookout in California. "Santa Cruz County’s housing market picked up its pace a bit in October after a slow start to a typically busy time for local real estate agents. Across the board, the less frenzied market means agents are seeing fewer offers per property, and fewer of those offers going over the asking price. Coldwell Banker agent Jessica Wallace said the persistent high interest rates have kept final prices down. Wallace also said that, on average, properties are selling for about 96% of the asking price. That’s a huge difference from the low interest rate days of 2022 and 2021, when buyers were more likely to pay over the list price. In those years, properties sold for an average of 102.4% and 104% over asking price, respectively."

"'And most properties aren’t getting multiple offers at this point, maybe two or three at the most, unless it’s something really special and really underpriced,' she said, recalling the frenzied pandemic-era market, when properties would routinely get 10 or more offers."

Yahoo Finance. "During the pandemic, Demi Fox, a homeowner and Realtor, was ultra-focused on upgrading her home, taking on remodeling and DIY projects. But now Fox has put on the brakes and is less willing to dole out money for upgrades for her Simi Valley, Calif., home. 'We were going to do the kitchen but we’re holding back right now. Looking at the numbers, I said ‘nah,’ Fox told Yahoo Finance. 'I like using my own money when I remodel. I don’t like to use any kind of loan.' Fox is among many homeowners who are rethinking their remodeling plans following the boom during the pandemic. Less savings, higher interest rates, and the lack of housing activity in the resale market are among the reasons the industry is bracing for a slowdown."

"The pandemic unleashed home improvement demand in 2020 and 2021. The unique circumstances of the time made people rethink their relationship with their homes. Financing those projects got easier, too. Three rounds of stimulus checks fattened checking accounts. Historically low interest rates made borrowing cheap. And home equity was soaring because the housing market took off. 'It was really easy to take cash out or equity out of the home,' said Eric Finnigan, vice president, research and demographics at John Burns Research & Consulting. 'We saw a huge spike in cash out refinance activity, which then showed up in account balances for people's checking accounts and savings accounts.'"

The Toronto Sun in Canada. "For a brief moment the week before last, it seemed there may be a glimmer of a sliver of hope on the horizon for the real estate market. All it took was Jerome Powell, Chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, announcing that the Fed would be holding interest rates. But ten days later, the fixed mortgage rates remain largely unchanged and the bond yields are trending back up again. And, of course, lest the markets be confused about his hawkishness, Powell came back out on Thursday and announced the Fed’s position that the battle against inflation may not yet be won and more hikes are on the table."

"Hopefully this settles once and for all that anyone attempting to paint a rosy picture out there is either stuck in the denial phase or quite literally has something to sell you. Or perhaps both? With a recession looming and real estate markets appearing to be in a deep freeze everywhere but in Alberta. Social media abounds with side-by-sides of listings of properties bought during the run-up now being sold at gasp-worthy discounts – in some cases landing back in the ballpark of 2018 pricing."

"So far these aren’t the norm. For now, they’re one-offs reflecting the desperation of highly-leveraged sellers forced to capitulate. But one can assume the desperation is mounting in every single over-leveraged Canadian who has up until now hoped to white knuckle their way through and wait out the storm. Whether that looks like pulling the property to relist in the spring, or opting to rent out the house rather than sell in these market conditions, at a certain point something will have to give."

The Vancouver Sun. "The New York Times told the world about B.C.’s unusually grim housing crisis last decade when it ran articles with headlines such as the 'Housing Frenzy that Even Owners Want to End' and 'The Wild West of Canadian Political Cash,' which looked at developers’ outsized influence on governments. Those years of out-of-control, largely unregulated property investments, which caused drastic unaffordability in Metro Vancouver, are captured in bold, and sometimes painful, detail in a new book by David Ley , a University of B.C. geography professor emeritus. He outlines the dark consequences of the blind faith that Canadian and B.C. governments put in libertarian, growth-at-any-cost ideology."

"A significant part of the problem goes back at least a decade, to when the federal and B.C. governments were desperate to attract foreign capital. The business immigration program, by which the wealthiest could gain entry by 'investing' in Canada, brought 200,000 people to Vancouver alone, says Ley. They had tens of billions of dollars to pump into the economy, with the heftiest portion channelled into the 'asset' of housing. Large Vancouver property developers, along with those in London and Sydney, opened scores of sales offices in East Asia to serve business-class immigrants and other affluent transnationals. The director of marketing at Vancouver-based Westbank said, 'China is now a big part of this business … right now I have a rule when we talk about projects, if the Chinese market doesn’t want it, I have no interest in it.'"

"While the federal Conservatives shut down the investor-class immigration program in 2014, the doggedly free-market B.C. Liberals, especially the minister responsible for housing, Rich Coleman, remained gung-ho on funnelling more offshore cash to the housing industry. Meanwhile, the B.C. Liberals chose condo marketer Bob Rennie as their chief fundraiser, welcoming tens of millions of dollars in donations from the development industry, far more than from any other sector."

"According to Ley, when the NDP defeated the economically libertarian B.C. Liberals in 2016, it was largely because of housing. The trouble is, the damage from that era carries on to this day. As Ron Butler, the Vancouver-raised president of one of Canada’s largest mortgage companies, says: 'The most important thing to understand about foreign capital is it never goes back.' No matter if the money comes from China, Iran or the Middle East, Butler says, once here 'it just sloshes around,' mostly in real estate."

"Still, in recent years, federal, provincial and municipal governments are at least starting to share some common ideas, Ley says. They’re recognizing investors are overwhelming wage earners in the housing market. They are recognizing that 'in major cities, real-estate investment has become global' and that a 'freewheeling' market is vulnerable to tax fraud and money laundering. They also recognize that new housing and rental 'supply” must be affordable, and that “taxation is one appropriate vehicle to manage speculative demand.'"

News in English. "Never before have there been so many unsold homes on the market in Norway, nearly 20,000 not including those developers are trying to sell in new projects coming online. The real estate brokers’ association Eiendom Norge reported last week that a total of 19,944 homes on the market remained unsold at the end of October. That’s the highest number since the organization started charting sales in January 2009. 'The supply of homes on offer is high now, but the number of new homes coming on the market is declining,' said Henning Lauridsen, managing director of Eiendom Norge."

South China Morning Post. "Joseph Lau Luen-hung, a property magnate and one of Hong Kong's wealthiest men, said high interest rates are forcing businesspeople to recalculate their investments and potential returns. 'Whether it's selling fish balls or [investing in] real restate,' it should only be done if there is a profit, Lau said. But he stressed that he would not dare to buy property now. 'It's better to hold on to the money now.'"

From Mises.org. "Sovereign debt is eating the world. Lining up a financial crash that could make 2008 look like a picnic. How did we get here? In short, governments and central banks deluded themselves into thinking that unlimited deficit spending financed by unlimited money printing won't do what they've done for literally millennia -- plunge the economy into stagflation. They are, of course, wrong. And we're seeing the catastrophe unfold before our eyes."

"The story begins in the 1970s when Nixon broke the global gold standard, unleashing permanent deficits worldwide. But the latest chapter starts in 2008 when central banks bailed out the financial system by effectively printing trillions of dollars. At the time, everybody knew that much printing would cause inflation, perhaps with a 12 to 18-month delay. But it didn't. Why? Banks held on to the free trillions to plug the trillion-dollar-sized holes in their balance sheet. Combined with a freebie, China's manufacturing miracle lowered the cost of consumer goods."

"Central bankers concluded that the impossible was now possible. Meanwhile, a second useful myth was shattered by Japan: that national debt was deadly. Again, everybody knew that public debt above 100% or 125% of GDP would end the world. But Japan crossed that line 25 years ago. And nothing happened. Now, there are idiosyncratic reasons for Japan -- largely the proportion of debt that is domestically held. But the lesson was learned: debt doesn't matter. So, deficits don't matter. So printing doesn’t matter, and debt doesn’t matter."

"Both are contrary to literally millennia of economic history. In fact, printing money not only leads to inflation, it is literally the only thing that leads to long-term inflation. We have hundreds of defaults as evidence that governments will always default when the debt gets big enough. In fact, we've had 14 sovereign defaults since Japan crossed 100%. Unfortunately, this dangerous confidence went from belief to reality worldwide with covid. To bribe voters into lockdowns, countries around the world spent money as fast as humanly possible. And central bankers financed those deficits as fast as humanly possible.It all came to roughly $10 trillion in new money in just a few years. In the US, by 2021 roughly one in three dollars had fresh ink on it."

"This scared central banks, who know that out-of-control inflation puts their independence at risk — Congress will take it away if voters get too angry. They first responded by crushing the real economy with rate hikes to bring down private spending so the government could keep spending. But now we’re seeing the second shoe to drop from terrified central banks: they’re actually pulling back from financing government deficits. The Fed has already reduced its balance sheet by over a trillion, selling off federal debt to try and rein in inflation."

"This is effectively taking central banks out of the game because they can’t finance government deficits if they’re simultaneously trying to drain money from the economy. Put it together and debt-to-GDP ratios over 100% in basically the entire world — nearly 150% for the US — are running into paralyzed central bankers. This is driving investors to fear that maybe major governments can’t handle the debt and that maybe they will default. The final piece of the crisis is the shrinking economy."

"Because the primary way central banks fight inflation is by choking off the private economy with interest rate hikes. That's precisely how central bankers responded to the inflation of these past two years, hiking rates a total of 276 times worldwide. This is now crashing most of the world economy into recession. Recession, historically, makes deficits and debt even worse — by several trillion in the case of the US. So it's the three horsemen, a perfect storm of inflation, sovereign debt, and recession."