A report from the Palm Beach Daily News in Florida. "Real estate agents and brokers are welcoming house-hunters with some good news, even if that news is relative: Although November almost always sees an uptick in listings, more properties are for sale right now in the multiple listing service than at this time of year for the past three years. Corcoran Group agent Bill Yahn said more listings are likely on the way. 'A lot of (agents) hold their inventory until the (winter) season starts. So we’re starting to see new inventory on the market. And we’re seeing some of the properties that have been on the market for a while have started to be repriced' a little lower, Yahn said. The price differential isn’t necessarily dramatic, Yahn said, using as an example a house on the North End that might be reduced from asking $16 million to $14 million."

"'There haven’t been many of those (price reductions), but there have been some,' he added. In any event, prices have settled far above pre-pandemic levels, according to sales reports from agencies that do business on the island, even if they are no longer on a rapid rise. 'The feeding frenzy is over,' Yahn said. 'The prices are not going up — but they’ve leveled up.' Many sellers, agents say, are finally adjusting their price expectations in the aftermath of what has been described as a once-in-a-generation real estate boom that drove the market over the last few years in Palm Beach."

From ABC 7. "Rental prices in Lee County look like they’re on the decline. Compared to earlier this year, rent prices in cities like Fort Myers and Cape Coral are significantly lower. So why are prices starting to go down? For starters, it doesn’t look like as many people are flocking to Florida as they were during the pandemic. Sharon Torregrossa, a realtor with VIP Realty said it looks like supply has finally caught up with demand. 'There was such a demand a few years ago that every builder was building everything they could on every lot that they could obtain,' she said."

"Torregrossa said this time last year, if you were looking for a long-term rental in Cape Coral, there were only a few options available. But now, there are hundreds of houses to look at. 'I looked at the rental market on single-family homes and there’s nearly 500 single-family homes for rent in the Fort Myers-Cape Coral area that are looking for long-term rentals,' she said."

The American Statesman. "Through the buyers and sellers he works with, Rob Kellogg, a real estate agent with Realty Austin, has a good grasp of the ups and downs of the Central Texas housing market, a five-county region extending from Georgetown to San Marcos. 'I think rates are the biggest driver of this slower pace of sales,' Kellogg said. 'It's really hurting buyers' purchasing power, and so sellers are forced to reduce prices as a result.' Case in point: A year ago, a unit comparable to one Kellogg was helping market in a condominium community — off East Riverside Drive in the Montopolis area of Southeast Austin — was fetching a price around $440,000. With an initial list price in June of $400,000, the condo saw healthy interest, but with the slower market (he said it was 'dead' in July and August), no offers were received as the summer wore on."

"Five price reductions later, the sellers finally got a contract Sept. 5 for $350,000, $15,000 less than the $365,000 list price by then. The sale closed in October, with the sellers' equity enabling them to buy a newly built home they had picked out in Driftwood. 'We reduced it not even close to what the peak of the market was,' Kellogg said of the condo price, 'but we had to get realistic with the price. There were five, six or even seven units on the market there, so there was a lot of competition. We were fortunate to have the updates.' Kellogg said discounted prices aren't uncommon. 'If a house has been on the market longer than 30 days, you're seeing some pretty serious price reductions all over town,' he said."

"Between the spring of 2020 and the spring of 2022, the market saw a huge increase in home prices. 'During this two-year period, the median home price went from $330,000 to $550,000, an increase of 67%,' said Eldon Rude, a longtime housing market consultant and principal of 360° Real Estate Analytics. Now, 'with sharply higher interest rates and slowing job growth, it’s not surprising that home prices have declined from their record highs in recent months,' Rude said. 'The median home price is down 18% in the last 17 months,' and the supply of housing has increased from a low of less than a month to four months at the end of September."

The Real Deal. "For the past few years, Texas multifamily was one of the hottest real estate investments in the country. Not anymore. Industry players think the trouble has only just begun, and that might be a lagging assessment. Plenty of properties already are being sold at major discounts, and once-mighty development pipelines are all but dead is some cities. No segment of the asset class is safe. A deluge of Class A apartments will come online in the next 18 months, giving developers little power over pricing. Meanwhile, many of the Class B and Class C value-add properties that were bought for record prices in 2021 and 2022 have seen major declines in values."

"Scores of small developers, syndicators and Main Street investors are now staring down a massacre in the Lone Star state. The picture in Texas multifamily has changed so severely that the recent past sounds like a totally different era. Landlords are in a vise — on one end, they’ve lost pricing power due to the enormous amount of similar, newly built projects flooding the market. On the other, many of the construction loans that funded their developments are maturing. Developers can either sell their projects or refinance them, but in many cases, neither option is an easy one."

"In the far-off glory days of 2021, Class B and Class C apartment complexes traded for record prices. Outside companies poured money into Texas multifamily as they backed away from offices and hotels, while syndicators raised millions from unassuming investors for value-add deals promising huge returns. The buildup left all corners of the market — developers, investors, lenders and brokers — on a precipice. Now, some are about to fall off the cliff. While firms with deep pockets might be able to ride out those temporary disruptions, the same can’t be said for smaller syndicators, operating on $50,000 checks from small-time investors who are now wary of throwing more money after what can look like a sinking ship."

"J.R. Ellis, an investment sales executive at Greysteel, a real estate advisory firm, has marketed several such properties, but the buyer pool is soft. Many current owners paid such premiums in the run-up that they’re selling for a loss, if they can find a buyer at all. 'There is a lot of distress in the value-add space specifically,' Ellis said. 'No question they are selling for below what they bought for. The question is how much below the loan amount.' While pricing varies based on submarkets and deal specifics, he estimates many of these properties will sell for a 30 to 35 percent discount from peak pricing."

Bisnow San Francisco in California. "Gouges left by the pandemic in San Francisco's real estate market and general economy are slowly healing, but like any deep wound, they're leaving scars. For property in the city, the marks left behind come in the form of a great reset, bringing values back down to earth after their sky-high climb in the years leading up to the pandemic. Before the pandemic, office rents in San Francisco hit $100 per SF, beating out Midtown Manhattan and well above the national average of $33 per SF at the end of 2019, according to Cushman & Wakefield."

"Today's office rents in San Francisco are closer to $70 per SF, according to CBRE. That translates to lower sales prices, with properties trading for $200 to $300 per SF, down from $800 to $1,000 per SF before the pandemic. Deals that serve as examples of these pricing trends are piling up. The building at 350 California St. sold for $200 per SF, down from its pre-pandemic price tag of $800 per SF. The former Wells Fargo Tower at 550 California St. went for $120 per SF, and 201 Spear St. traded for $200 per SF. Low office demand isn't entirely to blame. Rising interest rates have made once-manageable loan balances untenable for many investors, causing them to default. 'When loans hit this [real estate-owned] status, it’s generally considered a sign that they can be had at fire sale prices,' David Putro, head of CRE analytics at Morningstar, told Bisnow."

From ABC 10. "If you own a home, you probably have a mortgage. Lenders generally require homeowners to have fire insurance, which we’ll refer to as ‘homeowners insurance’ throughout this story. In the past two years, most of the major companies in California’s homeowners insurance market have paused or restricted new business, causing availability to plummet and prices to go up. ABC10 sat down with a group of Tuolumne County homeowners to see how the insurance crisis is affecting them."

"Cathy Townsend is on the FAIR Plan after getting dropped by two insurance companies. 'I'm single, divorced. I'm on a fixed income and I don't know what I'll do if I can't afford the house,' she said, tears filling her eyes. 'My payment has doubled and I'm not making any more money.' She recently gave ABC10 an update, saying she changed her deductible in order to make insurance affordable. Elaine Hagen moved to Tuolumne County in 2014. 'We've been canceled by our homeowners insurance at least five times, possibly six,' she said. 'The costs keep going up, and I don't know what folks are going to do. It's just terrifying.'"

Blog TO in Canada. "There are a handful of trends that show how badly Toronto's housing market is flopping right now, and the latest may be the most concerning of all. As noted by local mortgage expert Jason Geall, more and more owners are defaulting on their mortgages, leading to an increase in cases of power of sale. 'Is this going to be the new norm? Seeing 'power of sale' on top of for sale signs?' Geall asked in a video Monday, standing in front of a property in the bougie York Mills area of Toronto. In the background, viewers can see an example of the phenomenon he's talking about, in this case, for a vacant plot of land that lenders have seized to sell and get their money back."

"'We've been hearing so much about power of sales going up and up in the last little while — is this the start?' he adds, referring to a graph showing, per data from the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board, that residential power of sale listings in the GTA broke new records in October. 'Seeing this type of stuff even in the high end areas is definitely kind of concerning.' This is just one example of things extremely atypical of our perpetually (and still) overpriced market: major developments put on hold, sales slowing to a trickle and buyers walking away from hefty deposits knowing their finished home won't be worth what they paid."

ABC News in Australia. "Apartment buyers caught in a commercial dispute over alleged structural issues say the saga has highlighted gaps in consumer protection. Single mum Bethany Evans put down a $100,000 deposit on a three-bedroom apartment at the beleaguered Shenton Quarter development in Perth, in October 2021. Problems at the project first emerged in March this year, when the CFMEU released vision of cracks in the concrete, which it claimed was evidence of structural issues."

"Ms Evans told 7.30 it felt like a 'red flag,' however the developer assured her that remedial works were normal. She also had a lawyer review her contract and found that there was no way out of it. Work on the site continued and Ms Evans was hopeful she would be living in the million-dollar apartment early in the new year. Those hopes were dashed when workers walked off the site three weeks ago. Ms Evans said she was left in the precarious situation of needing to find her fourth rental property since putting down the apartment deposit. 'I have bought a promise – not a property, a promise,' she said. 'I don't feel confident about going through with the purchase. I will need to see some really strong validation that there are no structural concerns.'"

"Ms Evans said this left apartment buyers in a vulnerable situation in the event that defects emerged after they had moved in. 'If the builder should go under, there is no protection on a building like this,' Ms Evans said. 'I am not sure I can afford that.'"

From WION. "China is witnessing a spontaneous wave of protests across the country, all thanks to its crumbling property sector. According to Freedom House’s data, more than 1,777 property-related demonstrations have taken place in the tightly monitored country between June 2022 and October 2023. Almost 100 demonstrations are taking place in China every month, with as many as 276 cities witnessing such protests regularly. In August 2023, about 100 workers-led protests took place, three times more than those took place the same month a year earlier."

"And notably, these are not one-time incidents. According to Nikkei Asia, one in seven protests were linked to past protests, which shows that the Chinese government has failed to address the concerns of suppliers, contractors and construction workers. All of them have gone unpaid for months. On the other hand, millions of homebuyers are also writhing in anger after having channelled all of their investments into unfinished house projects, even as the country’s top developers, including China Evergrande Group and Country Garden Holdings, default on their borrowings."

"China’s property sector is the backbone of the Chinese economy, contributing more than a quarter of the world’s second-largest economy. But the past few years have been a roller coaster ride. Investments have run dry, the housing market has cooled, which has led to a steep decline in prices. Last year, such protests did bear fruits, when the CCP was forced to abruptly end its draconian Zero Covid policy amidst mounting anger. This year too, the crisis in China’s property sector has tested people’s patience for too long. As the Chinese government continues to adopt a heavy-handed approach towards dissent, and as courts continuously fail to address the grievances of the victims, this wave of protests will only get stronger and more lethal (for CCP) with time."