A report from US News and World Report. "'Even though new home sales have been solid, builders are increasingly having to react to weaker demand amidst growing unaffordability,' said Bright MLS Chief Economist Lisa Sturtevant. 'While the median price of existing homes continues to increase, in October, the median new home price was down 17.6% year-over-year, the seventh consecutive month of price declines, and the biggest yearly price drop on record.' The report from the Census Bureau showed prices fell to a median of $409,300 from the prior month’s $418,800 level. 'New home prices peaked back in October 2022, with the median sale price at just under $500,000,' Sturtevant added."

Curbed New York. "The prevailing wisdom is that you pretty much can’t make a bad real-estate investment in Manhattan. Plaza buyers might disagree. For many, owning an apartment at the fabled hotel has meant losing money or at best breaking even on resale. Sure, the condos were wildly overpriced at the start, but it’s been 15 years since sponsor sales started closing — years in which billionaires and oligarchs and other assorted LLCs set ever-higher Manhattan records in neighboring buildings like 432 Park and 220 Central Park South. These days, many sellers aren’t even trying to get more than they paid in 2008. 'Everyone thinks their home is a palace, but at the end of the day, the market is the market and they become more realistic,' says a broker who has sold extensively in the building."

The Daily Mail. "A growing number of homeowners are selling their properties at a loss as peak prices seen during the Covid pandemic start to plummet. Three percent of all homes sold in the US between May and July returned less than the owners purchased them for, Redfin has revealed. San Francisco topped the charts by a country mile for the area where sellers were worst-hit - with 12.3 percent of homeowners passing on their properties at a loss, costing them a whopping $100,000 on average. Chicago came in third with 6.5 percent selling at an average $26,000 loss, followed by New York where 5.9 percent of properties sold at an average loss of $100,000. In Cleveland, 5.8 percent of homes sold at a loss, losing $18,000 on average."

"The total value of homes in San Francisco has fallen by roughly $60 billion since last summer, a separate Redfin analysis found. 'Some condos in the Bay Area are now worth less than their owners bought them for in 2018 and 2019, in part because commuting from Oakland and other outlying areas into downtown San Francisco isn't really a thing anymore,' said local Redfin Premier real estate agent Andrea Chopp."

The San Francisco Chronicle. "Hayward-based modular homebuilding company Veev, once valued at $1 billion, is reportedly on the verge of closure, marking a significant downturn for the first unicorn in the technology-enabled property industry. Founded in 2008 by Amit Haller, Ami Avrahami and Dafna Akiva, Veev had successfully constructed more than 170 residential units in the Bay Area and had ambitious plans for an additional 300 single-family houses in Northern California by the close of 2025. The company is poised to shut down its current entity, with an assignee taking charge of asset management and their subsequent sale in the U.S. Investors in the company, including prominent names like Khosla Ventures, Brookfield Growth and Zeev Ventures, are unlikely to recoup any of the $600 million collectively invested. Similarly, Katerra, a Menlo Park-based construction tech startup backed by SoftBank, went bankrupt in 2021 after it raised over $2 billion in funding."

From Bloomberg. "The selloff that’s ripped through green stocks looks set to continue into 2024, bringing a fourth consecutive year of losses, according to Bloomberg’s latest Markets Live Pulse survey. Almost two-thirds of the 620 MLIV Pulse respondents said they plan to stay away from the electric-vehicle sector, and 57% expect the iShares Global Clean Energy exchange-traded fund — which is down about 30% this year — to extend its slide in 2024."

"The gloomy outlook comes as green investors navigate the shock of a post-pandemic world shaped by much higher interest rates. And, there’s also the persistent political backlash in many US states, as well as an evolving regulatory backdrop that has the potential to expose greenwashing and further hurt valuations. Chat Reynders, who’s been a sustainable investor for three decades, calls the downturn in green assets a 'watershed moment' for the industry. 'We’ll look back and say this was an era of extraordinary speculation,' said Reynders, who helps oversee about $3.5 billion. 'Whether there was a meme stock or a green stock, everyone was marketing and selling extremely hard.'"

The Globe and Mail in Canada. "Muskoka realtor John Fincham has a piece of advice you’d never expect to hear from an agent: Now is not the time to buy a cottage. That’s particularly surprising when you consider that cottage prices have tumbled rapidly across Ontario. In the first three months of the year, listing prices experienced a dramatic drop of 31 per cent year-over-year in Peterborough and the Kawarthas region, from an average of $1.2-million to roughly $855,000. Agents in areas such as Muskoka and Haliburton also say listing prices can sometimes be a volatile statistic; anecdotally, they have seen property values drop about 15 to 20 per cent from pandemic highs."

"Mr. Fincham says interest rates and the migration back to cities will lead to even more deterioration in the market of cottages priced under $3-million, which is seeing weakness after years of meteoric growth. 'I’ve had five calls today from people who have to get rid of their cottages because they can’t afford them – because they bought them either on variable mortgages or a line of credit,' Mr. Fincham said in an interview earlier in the fall."

The Vancouver Sun in Canada. "A B.C. man seeking to cancel a high-end condo purchase and recover millions in deposit funds in one of Vancouver’s most expensive, soon-to-be-completed, residential towers has filed a lawsuit alleging a 'lack of transparency and fair dealing' by the developer and its agents. Real estate experts and the plaintiff’s lawyer say the allegations — none of which have been proven in court — reflect some of the current challenges facing pre-construction condo buyers and developers who rely on those sales to fund their projects. Cameron Davis, a Vancouver realtor with Rennie and Associates Realty, anticipates more lawsuits involving other condo projects completing soon — and in turn, developers becoming wary of building new projects."

"'Developers are holding and not bringing new product to market because of market conditions, and buyers will be looking to get out of the deals that they got into years ago,' he said. 'More pain is coming. I had a client at Vancouver House (a downtown condo tower) that walked on pretty much a million-dollar deposit there,' Davis said. 'For the buyer, walking on their deposit is actually less of a damage to them than actually completing on a condo that’s worth considerably less than what they paid for it, and then layering on the financing piece.'"

This Is Money. "Home buyers are enjoying 'the best market conditions in years' with a glut of homes for sale now forcing sellers to accept offers well below their asking prices, according to Zoopla. One in four sales are being agreed at 10 per cent or more below asking price, the property portal's latest analysis has found. It says buyers are in a strong bargaining position thanks to more homes hitting the market and fewer rivals to complete with. At the same time, the number of homes available for sale has reached a six-year high with 34 per cent more properties for sale now than there were a year ago. This rebound in supply has been felt particularly in the three and four bedroom family homes market - a trend seen across all parts of the UK."

"Richard Donnell, executive director at Zoopla says: 'These are the best conditions for home buyers for some years with more homes to choose from and with sellers more prepared to negotiate on price to agree a sale. There is a growing acceptance that what a home might have been worth a year ago is now largely academic given current market conditions.'"

The Wall Street Journal. "Chinese authorities are taking more forceful action to contain the growing financial troubles of one of the country’s biggest shadow lenders. Police in Beijing said over the weekend that they had taken 'criminal coercive measures'—a euphemism for arrests—against multiple employees of Zhongzhi Enterprise. The privately held conglomerate operates several businesses that sold investment products to many wealthy individuals and companies in China, and has struggled for months to make promised payments to investors."

"Investors who bought Zhongzhi products have gathered in social-media groups and in person over the past few weeks and tried to figure out ways to pressure the conglomerate to repay them, according to people familiar with the matter. At one recent protest, dozens of people hung banners and shouted slogans such as 'Zhongzhi, return us our money!' and 'contract fraud!,' according to a video seen by The Wall Street Journal. In a social-media post on Saturday, a branch of the Beijing police department asked investors to come forward to report their losses. But some investors said they were reluctant to do so since they might get implicated in the process, and felt they weren’t likely to get most of their money back."

"Zhongzhi last week said it has liabilities of $59 billion to $64 billion, and assets of $28 billion. The total amount it owes could be far larger because the company didn’t include off-balance sheet liabilities in its calculation, said Zerlina Zeng, a senior analyst at CreditSights, a research firm. 'The recovery rate for investors will be very, very low,' said Zeng. Chinese businesses have lost money, too. China’s sprawling trust industry, which had more than $3 trillion in assets under management at the end of June, has long been a source of financial support for property developers."