A report from the Arizona Republic. "Metro Phoenix home sales are slowing, so sellers brace yourselves. 'This is not a good time to test a price higher than market value for your home,' said Tina Tamboer, senior housing analyst with The Cromford Report. 'The seller’s market weakens on a daily basis.'"

The Beat of Hawaii. "Vacation rentals throughout Hawaii are out of wack, with high supply and pricing, and low demand and occupancy. This was reported by the State’s Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism in their Hawaii Vacation Rental Performance Report for October. If this trend continues, we expect a softening of nightly rates and more deals ahead for vacation rentals. The number of vacation rental nights available last month 761,000. But of those, just 387,400 nights were rented. That comes to an occupancy rate of 50.89%. Hawaii hotels, by comparison, are excelling in occupancy, reaching 74.5% last month."

The Boston Globe in Massachusetts. "Clover’s story is a microcosm of how the commercial rental market in downtown Boston operates today, approaching four years since the COVID-19 pandemic upended foot traffic and business patterns. Restaurants and retailers still struggling to meet the terms of leases they signed before COVID are approaching landlords with creative proposals to restructure their monthly rent check. The answers often determine the fate of the business. Absent flexibility from building owners, businesses worry that downtown will see even more vacancies and that tourists and office workers slowly returning to the neighborhood will have less reason to make the trip. Consider the worst-case scenario: Downtown falls further into post-pandemic disarray or a long-feared 'doom loop.'"

"Bessie King of downtown lunch mainstay Villa Mexico, for example, plans to send a proposal to her landlord on Water Street to not increase the rent this coming year. If the rent goes up, she said, they may be forced to close. 'In our current scenario, we have zero profits,' King said. 'We will go under.'"

The Washington Examiner on California. "A combination antique shop, printmaker, and event venue in San Francisco is expected to be auctioned off next year. The business, known as BoxSF and owned by Mark Sackett, is hosted in a building that currently has a broken window and its address, 1069 Howard St., is next door to a drug sobering center. Sackett told the San Francisco Chronicle he purchased the building at $1.575 million in 2004, but now cannot be refinanced because as many as 30 lenders have refused to help the existing $2.5 million mortgage. Sackett expects the building will be sold 'at a massive loss' due to six lenders telling him they 'are not making commercial real estate loans in San Francisco due to the state of the city.'"

"'[San Francisco city officials] don’t even return my calls,' Sackett said. 'They care about bike lanes, nonprofits, safe injection sites. … They have just ignored small business . . . I’m just done with San Francisco and the bullsh** here. It’s out of control.' San Francisco's real estate market has suffered, with the latest example being when the apartment complex for NEMA San Francisco's commercial mortgage-backed securities loan decreased for the second time. While the 2018 value was $543.6 million, the current loan is down 48% to $279 million."

The Ventura County Star in California. "Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, home prices in Ventura County have shot up as if out of a cannon, dipped slightly, and now appear to be leveling off at a modest annual growth rate. Our annual decline in sales volume of 33% was significantly more than the declines in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino or San Diego Counties. Home sales in Los Angeles County, for example, dropped by 23% from September 2022 to September 2023, and sales in Orange County were down 18%. The first two years of the pandemic, prices in Ventura County rose by as much as 20% per year. Home prices early in the pandemic 'went up unrealistically, they went crazy,' said Carolyn Triebold, an agent with Real Broker in Camarillo. She said we’re now seeing a 'soft landing' from those highs, with prices staying flat or growing slowly for most of 2023."

"The last time home prices rose by more than 10% per year was in the early 2000s, and that ended with a massive crash in values starting in 2007, when the bubble burst. Triebold said she doesn’t see that happening again because homeowners don’t have nearly the same debt levels that they had during the early 2000s boom."

Business Insider. "Nearly a third of all outstanding US government debt is set to mature in the next 12 months, according to an analysis from asset management firm Apollo. A chart shared by Chief Economist Torsten Sløk in September showed that the share of US public debt set to mature in a year or less has steadily risen toward pandemic-era levels and is now at 31%. In terms of dollar amount, that's $7.6 trillion, a high not seen since early 2021, and is a source of upward pressure on US rates, he added. In addition, public debt maturing in the near term accounts for more than a quarter of US GDP."

The Globe and Mail in Canada. "What kind of person would sell you a newly built home for less than fair value, and give you free cash to boot? The kind of person who can’t qualify for a mortgage on that property and is about to lose all their deposit – and potentially be sued. It’s happening as we speak. With borrowing costs near multidecade highs, most lenders require borrowers to prove they can afford payments at rates above 8 per cent. That makes it too hard for some to get final approval for regular financing, even if they already had a preapproval. In other cases, buyers have got divorced, lost income, racked up too much debt or lack enough provable self-employed earnings. Or their new-build no longer appraises for a high-enough value to get fully financed, and they have limited down payment funds."

"As a result, a small but growing number of preconstruction buyers are compelled to sell – assign – their contracts to others before their home is completed. And they’re sometimes selling for whatever they can get, to recoup get some of their deposit and reduce legal risk to the builder. 'There may be opportunities in distressed assignments next year,' said Ben Rabidoux, an analyst at Edge Realty Analytics. 'You’re starting to see some pretty wild assignments coming online – people effectively giving up their deposits, selling for 2019 pricing.'"

The Daily Hive in Canada. "Adam Cantor has just listed his two-bedroom condo in a suburb south of Vancouver for sale. It’s not what he wanted to do — after all, he’s called the South Surrey unit at Morgan Crossing home for 14 years. But he decided it was the only viable option when he learned his monthly mortgage payments would double at renewal in January. Cantor is going through a divorce, and hanging onto the condo after paying out his ex was just barely tenable. But renewing his five-year fixed-term mortgage when Canada’s prime rate sits at 7.2% is pushing him over the edge."

"He pays roughly $1,900 per month toward his mortgage, but as of January, he would be looking at about $4,000 monthly, renewing at a higher interest rate. With strata maintenance fees rolled in, his total monthly housing costs would approach $5,000. He’s looking for somewhere he can rent for about what he was paying for his mortgage. '[I’m] frustrated, I guess,' he said. 'It’s like I have to downgrade my lifestyle for the same cost. I don’t know if it’s actually sunk in yet because I’ve just literally listed it. But owning a property right now, for me, is not necessarily a need. You’ve got to do what’s best for you.'"

From I News. "The owners of more than 11,500 rental properties were behind on their mortgage payments over the last three months as rising mortgage rates continue to cripple landlords’ finances. Data from UK Finance, the banking trade body, found that there were 11,540 buy-to-let mortgages in arrears of 2.5 per cent or more of their overall loan in the third quarter of 2023, up 29 per cent on the three months before. Experts have said the rising costs are having a drastic effect on landlords’ personal finances and resulting in an exodus from the rental market."

"'This is a staggering rise in arrears and sadly unsurprising. Worryingly, we have not seen the worst of this. Landlords rely on rent to cover their mortgage payments, and many will not have the personal resources to cope,' said Ranald Mitchell from Charwin Private Clients. 'Falling into arrears like this has a huge impact on their ability to remortgage for years to come, and it will have far-reaching consequences for their credit profiles. What was once a dream has turned into a nightmare for many.'"

"'The buy-to-let sector has been hit harder than any of late. As if the taxation changes weren’t bad enough, we now have higher interest rates causing untold pain,' said Craig Fish, director at Lodestone Mortgages and Protection. 'Historically, landlords would have had surplus funds to weather this storm, but those reserves are now depleted and so mortgages go unpaid. The worst is yet to come, and it seems there is no solution. I predict a horrible ending.'"

From News.com.au. "Just about everywhere you look, there are worsening signs that Australia is no longer the lucky country. From record-high rents to skyrocketing mortgages, a cost-of-living crisis to the alarming emergence of a ‘working poor’ population, the country faces an unprecedented storm of factors putting pressure on millions of people. And very few Aussies are immune. An estimated 3.7 million households are battling serious levels of food insecurity, not-for-profit Food Bank revealed in its 2023 Hunger Report. Food insecurity describes the need to make 'unenviable choices about what and when they eat' such as skipping meals or going whole days without eating."

"Martin North is the principal of economic research firm Digital Finance Analytics and tracks household cash flows, with data indicating more than half of mortgage holders are in cash-flow deficit each month. That is, half of all mortgage households are now spending more than they earn every month. 'Looking in detail, we find that recent purchasers, especially young growing families, are most exposed,' Mr North said. Many bought when mortgage rates were sitting around two per cent, and when then-RBA Governor Philip Lowe assured people the official cash rate would likely remain on hold until 2024. It didn’t. Home loan rates are now sitting at about six per cent."

From Bloomberg. "As China’s embattled shadow banking giant Zhongzhi Enterprise Group Co. faces a criminal probe, lawyers and analysts are assessing the damage to investors. One estimate puts that at about $56 billion. More than three quarters of investor cash would be lost, with just 100 billion yuan ($14 billion) being recovered from debt of as much as 460 billion yuan, according to one scenario outlined by Ying Yue, a lawyer at Leaqual Law Firm in Shanghai. He expects a slow and drawn out court process, based on the experience of other cases."

"Sun Jianbo, founder of Beijing-based asset manager China Vision Capital, said soured assets are typically sold with a 70% discount. That means investors may recoup about 13% of their money, based on Bloomberg calculations. Authorities over the weekend said they’ve opened criminal investigations into the money management business of Zhongzhi, days after it warned of severe insolvency and revealed a shortfall of $36.4 billion in its balance sheet. Investors were urged to report leads and file their complaints online. The case is a wake-up call for wealthy Chinese investors who have often sought high returns in products sold by loosely regulated firms like Zhongzhi. Ying noted investment recovery ratios in similar cases are well below 23%."