A weekend topic starting with Ag Web. "As mortgage rates climb to 20-year highs, near 8%, current high-interest rates are eating away at the housing market. This year is currently on pace to see the fewest home sales since 2008. However, farmland sales aren't witnessing the same sticker shock. In North Dakota, Pifer's Auctioneers says it just set a new land sale record in the state. Jim Rothermich, vice president of Iowa Appraisal, calls this a bell ringer for the state of North Dakota. Looking at Iowa, he says land market conditions remain steady and strong, but aren't as hot as they were a year ago. 'Since peaking around May 2022, the market has declined a small percentage and is now pretty much in equilibrium, or flat,' Rothermich explains. 'Sales north of $20,000 per acre still happen but nothing like they did in 2022. I do not think we'll see a double-digit decrease, but there is potential for a single-digit decline.' When comparing 2023 to the hot markets of 2022, he says it's clear land values have cooled off."

Bisnow South Florida. "The developer of an unfinished 48-unit Coconut Grove condo project has handed over the deed to the site after its lender pushed for foreclosure. The Miami market and Coconut Grove neighborhood saw condo prices leap in recent years, driven by an influx of new arrivals during the pandemic that has waned but not abated. Coconut Grove’s average condo sale price in the third quarter was $1.9M, up 39.2% from a year earlier, according to data from Douglas Elliman. 'We had a market up to 2019, and then we had a completely different market after the pandemic,' Enilda Rubin, a realtor with The Keyes Co. who has worked in Coconut Grove for 25 years, told Bisnow in May. 'I sold a townhouse in 2019 for $625K, and the same townhouse today is $1M, $2M, $3M.'"

From Fortune. "When Jacob Fuerst and his wife decided to leave North Carolina for a job opportunity in New Hampshire last year, they knew it would be hard to find something that would compare to the 3,000 square-foot home they were leaving behind. But they were confident—after all, they had already bought and sold three homes during their life together. But this time is different, he says. 'I’ve worked my entire life, I’m not asking for the moon,' Fuerst tells Fortune. 'I should be able to afford a house that is big enough for my family.'"

"Home prices in New Hampshire are up more than 50% since the onset of the pandemic and mortgage rates have more than doubled, so when the family decided to relocate to the state, Fuerst found they were seemingly locked out of the market. This time, the $460,000 sale of his North Carolina home wasn’t enough to buy up north. He and his wife offered close to $700,000 on a place before pulling out when the inspection found the roof would require an additional $70,000 in repairs. After trying to negotiate with the homeowners, he says he was told: 'if you won’t buy it in this condition, somebody else will.' In this market, that isn't hyperbole."

Flagstaff Business News in Arizona. "Confirmation bias and click bait can be a dangerous combination. The disingenuous reporting of economic and housing data has been extremely common this last year, especially on mainstream media. Comparing limited data points and comparing only to the 'Unicorn Years' of 2020-2022 are often the culprit of these click bait headlines. I use the term 'Unicorn Years' to not confuse the housing phenomena with other issues and real pain caused by the global pandemic. Indeed, what happened to housing during those two years was truly an anomaly caused by variables never before seen in our housing history."

"You’ve likely seen this on countless headlines and I’m going to be brief here. During the Unicorn Years there was a foreclosure moratorium as part of the CARES Act, making foreclosure illegal under broad circumstances. Naturally, you are going to see a rise in foreclosure activity once that moratorium is over. However, big picture below shows general foreclosure activity is actually trending downward and nowhere near levels of the 2006-2008 real estate bubble."

"Admittedly, this one is a bit more difficult to understand primarily due to the wide fluctuations in prices in the last 36 months. Simply put, if we compare pricing now to the height of the highest, wild bidding war sales during the Unicorn Years of 2% mortgage rates then yes, it would appear that prices are reduced and significantly reduced in some cases. We have also seen a confusing mix of competing bids but also price reductions in the 2023 market showing that sellers and their real estate professionals have had a difficult time finding 'true market value.' The reconciliation here is not unlike the previous two issues in that the bigger picture and broader data on general market value does show a solid foundation of housing values at this time. Charts show national trends from three sources all agreeing on general trend that markets will end the year not with the wild 2022 predictions of 20, 30, 40% slashes, but most markets, including Flagstaff, will end the year in low single-digit appreciation."

Next City on Arizona. "In June 2018, a fence went up around Arrowhead Mobile Home Park in Flagstaff, Arizona. By that time, any remaining mobile homes were empty. Some of them were still adorned with the faces of their past residents, murals painted by local artists as a final protest. The residents themselves had lost their years-long fight to remain in their homes. The former Arrowhead residents, like a growing number of people across the country, don’t need to be told that housing is being auctioned off at a global scale."

"Many people have come to very different conclusions about the current situation. They may see the rise in short-term rentals, second homes, and general growth as part of a larger pattern. They don’t dispute the rampant construction of luxury-priced housing or the notion that housing has become dominated by people who see it as nothing more than a way to turn a profit. But rather than asking how we can change any of this, they ask why they should care. Or more pointedly, if they have the money, why shouldn’t they go out and buy a second home in one of these places right now? In tourism towns, it’s often said half-jokingly that people 'either have a second home or a second job.' It seems we’re all in that town now."

"We are taught to think in binaries. The market is booming or busting. The world is made up of haves and have-nots. We are profiting or losing. But COVID further revealed the cracks in this simplistic thinking, and nowhere was this clearer than the housing market. Of course, real estate companies would have appreciated the boom, until the number of people buying houses dropped in 2022. And those selling their homes benefited immensely, just as long as they could find somewhere else to live. For the vast majority looking to remain in a place, however, faced with rising rents or home prices or property taxes, losing the identity they’d long-attached to their home, there is no question of what to call it. This is a bust."

"They face a dwindling and increasingly desperate set of choices. In order to cover the ballooning property tax, a retired couple on a fixed income forgo badly needed medical check-ups and prescriptions. Unable to afford housing elsewhere, a young mother stays in an abusive relationship. Seeking a way out of expensive and unstable rentals in a dangerous neighborhood, a couple with two kids puts half their monthly income toward a mortgage. The pattern repeats across the country. Those who benefit from the boom become more skilled at obscuring their role in the concurrent bust."

The Bellingham Herald in Washington. "The development company responsible for constructing three unfinished multi-million dollar residential condo buildings along Bellingham’s waterfront has defaulted on its contract, according to Bellingham Port Commissioner Michael Shepard. Harcourt Developments, the company originally selected in 2015 as the lead developer for about 19 acres of the Waterfront District, will likely lose the opportunity for future development there, Shepard indicated. The residential units in the buildings, which range in price from $550,000 to more than $3 million, were originally expected to begin housing people by the end of this year."

The Globe and Mail in Canada. "As the insolvency and bankruptcy process of Ontario builder StateView Homes stretches into its sixth month a class-action lawsuit is calling into question a loophole in Ontario law that leaves some new home purchase deposits unprotected. Currently, if you sign a preconstruction contract to buy a freehold home in Ontario any cash deposits made as part of that deal are not required to be protected by a legal trust and can be spent at will by the developer. But if you buy a preconstruction condominium, those same kinds of deposits are held in trust and cannot be spent."

"As more developers face a challenge finishing projects amid high costs of labour and credit, the freehold-condo distinction could make a serious difference for new home buyers. In the case of 765 buyers who gave $77-million in deposits to the insolvent StateView Homes, it’s already a big problem. Under insolvency and bankruptcy law, the freehold status of the townhomes means the depositors are considered unsecured creditors who will only get paid after secured lenders. That has spurred legal action by two parties representing the interests of the buyers. Sotos LLP has filed a class-action lawsuit challenging StateView’s contracts and Tarion Home Warranty has filed a separate motion to retroactively establish depositor trust for insolvency proceedings."

"'We’re making a public interest argument,' said Denna Pourmonazah Jalili, an associate with Sotos. 'This issue is coming up more and more. The real estate boom has incentivized a lot of greediness and overzealousness.'"

The Local. "Property prices have fallen almost 14 percent from their peak last spring, with the price of a detached home falling 15 percent and bostadsrätt homes (a Swedish type of condominium) falling 10 percent. But SBAB predicts that prices will keep going down. 'We haven’t seen the full effect of interest rate hikes on the housing market yet. We think that prices will fall 20 percent from the peak [in spring last year] before things turn upwards again,' said SBAB’s chief economist Robert Boije."

From Sport Bible. "More than a decade on from when Xi first outlined his dream, China’s football fortunes have fallen. Poor investment, an alleged high-level corruption scandal and a three-year global pandemic have left the country’s football aspirations in tatters. Another theory, that is somewhat aligned with the first, is that though China may still have the appetite for a Messi theme park, it can’t afford it. Chinese property giant The Evergrande Group collapsed in 2021, sparking the country’s worst property market crisis on record. The upheaval at the company worsened in September this year after its chairman was placed under police surveillance and current and former executives were detained."

"Why does this matter? Well, beyond having an impact on China’s entire financial system, many people bought property from Evergrande before building work began. Since the collapse homes have been left unfinished, suppliers allegedly haven’t been paid and some of the millions of Chinese people who put their savings in property-linked hedge funds face the prospect of not getting their money back. Essentially China is on the brink of a credit crunch. As China’s second-largest development firm, it is also possible the development of the theme park was directly through Evergrande, or another real estate company on the brink, Country Garden. Essentially, it’s a bad time to build a house in China, let alone a big, obnoxious amusement park. "