It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "The tough housing market has been especially hard for condo owners. Rufina Cappelli has lived in her St. Petersburg condo for 28 yards, but this month, she’s grappling with a new reality — the skyrocketing cost of her HOA dues. 'It was $376 for years,' said Cappelli. 'Then, suddenly in October, they said it was going up 43 percent. The Florida condos have allowed their reserves to get very low, and this condo is kicking the can down the road.' New mandates from Florida legislators are prompting many condo owners to sell their properties before the assessment fees are due. 'People are competing to sell their properties,' said Sara Taylor, a real estate consultant in Clearwater. 'We’re seeing price reductions to entice buyers to come in, and we’re seeing people who just can’t afford it having to list their condos and find another place to move.'"

"Deciding whether it’s the right time to sell your home is a very personal choice. Local market dynamics also play a large part in whether it’s a good or bad time to sell, says Katie Severance, a Realtor with Douglas Elliman in Palm Beach, Florida. 'In some areas, selling now is the right thing to do because prices are still climbing — or, at least, are not yet falling,' she says. 'In other markets, prices are falling fast, so it might be best to wait to sell until the market correction stops and interest rates come down and stay down, which will spur sales once again.'"

"High rents have become a fact of life in the Bay Area. But as landlords try to deal with increasing vacancies, some are trying to sweeten the deal for apartment hunters with incentives, including free rent. 'There are a lot of incentives going on right now for people looking for a place to rent. Such as reduced security deposit, first month free, or the second month free,' revealed Noah Cerezo, a real estate agent representing Esposo Properties, overseeing more than 300 rental units. 'For sellers, it's hard to sell when they're stuck on prices that they were able to sell their homes for in 2021 when rates were low. And now, you barely have any buyers that can even qualify for a loan. So what happens to these buyers? Well, now they have to rent.'"

"A growing share of Austin homeowners are selling their houses for less than they paid for them, per Redfin. Some Austin area homeowners lost upwards of five figures on their sale this year amid higher interest rates. Nearly 5% of Austin metro homes sold at a loss from August to October — up from 0.75% a year ago. The median loss was around $35,000. Losing money on your home sale is becoming more common across the U.S. The highest share and largest losses were in San Francisco. Roughly 1 in 7 owners there lost money on their home sale, with a median loss of $122,500."

"A fourth price chop was unleashed by the sellers of a lakefront Kenilworth mansion in a bid to draw buyers for a property that has been on the market for more than a year. The 11,000-square-foot home at 501 Sheridan Road in the North Shore suburb is down to a $7.9 million asking price, a 43 percent reduction since it was first listed at $14 million in 2022. The property trimmed $1 million off its asking price on Tuesday from its last price of $8.9 million. Nancy Nugent, an agent with Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty representing the house, said the family of the sellers are more ready to part with the home after a year on the market, and that it’s been a sentimental process."

"'I said to my client, ‘Look, we need to push this out to some lucky buyer that understands the value,’ because I have a lot of people … circling the block,' she said. 'I know who they are. They’ve come to the house one way or the other. They’re waiting and watching and I said we need to give the buyer the best value proposition in terms of the pricing.' The home isn’t the only high-priced listing to take a price cut in recent weeks. So did the most expensive listing in Chicago, a Lincoln Park mansion which recently shaved another $4.4 million off its ask, as well as the second-priciest listing at the exclusive St. Regis condo tower, where a unit got a $1.1 million reduction down to $7.6 million."

"Buying and building in New York City has always been expensive, but rising interest rates and inflation, combined with a lack of government incentives, have brought the commercial real estate sector in the nation's largest city to a crawl, some of the industry’s biggest names said. Of the $75B to $150B of office debt coming due in the next three years, Hines Senior Managing Director and Head of New York Jason Alderman said 'all of it is going to be underwater.' 'From an office perspective, I was doing some simple math,' he said. 'It’s depressing, and it's kind of hard to talk about.' Deals were done four years ago with the expectation of rent growth and a positive spread, which has entirely disappeared, he said. 'A [4% cap rate] on $1 of income that you thought was going to become $2 within 10 years — the values are probably down 50% just on that one bit of math,' he said."

"As winter activities ramp up across Canada, so will the home prices nearest to ski hills, according to a report by Royal LePage. At the beginning of this year, home prices in ski regions did post a year-over-year decline, Royal LePage noted, largely due to high interest rates and the increased cost of living. 'Uneasiness' about the economy also played into the decline in price, the report reads. In British Columbia, where sellers of homes near ski hills this year saw, at times, double-digit price losses, single-family detached homes are expected to rebound slightly in 2024, the report notes. In the Sun Peaks region, home prices dropped 21.3 per cent between 2022 and 2023."

"Housing starts are falling way behind targets to provide more housing supply, according to data from the City of Windsor. Municipalities across Canada are engaging in a big push to build more housing to keep pace with demand and help bring more supply to the market to rein in affordability. Brent Klundert, chair of the Windsor Essex Home Builders Association, says many factors are at play. 'Once those interest rates move as they did, they become, you know, a dead project because they're just not feasible anymore. You can’t make the numbers make sense,' he said. 'All of a sudden, the feasibility of that project isn't as great as when that application first went in.'"

"UK property transactions fell 17% in October as high interest rates are making it harder to climb the property ladder. Anna Clare Harper, CEO of sustainable investment adviser GreenResi, said the fall in housing transaction is not surprising. 'Firstly, we are still coming down from a bubble caused by COVID and stamp duty reductions, which created double-digit house price growth for much of the past three years,' she said. 'Secondly, the higher base rate is designed to cool demand and therefore pricing in the economy, and it is working to plan.'"

"The property slump sweeping the globe has claimed a new high-profile victim: René Benko, an Austrian-born retail and department-store magnate who also co-owns New York’s Chrysler Building. Benko’s main holding company, Signa Holding, said Wednesday it is filing for insolvency in Austria. The move, similar to U.S. bankruptcy procedure, puts billions of dollars of company debt at risk and casts uncertainty over a property empire that includes stakes in the largest department store chains in Europe, upscale British retailer Selfridges and a now-stalled Hamburg tower that would have been among the tallest in Germany."

"Signa, which valued its property portfolio at nearly $30 billion at the peak, doubled down on investments as the market crested. It buckled over recent months because of rising interest rates and poor performance of Benko’s trophy holdings. The collapse has already led some European banks to mark down the value of their loans to the group. Signa said efforts to negotiate with lenders in recent weeks had failed and it now intends to undergo a restructuring. It pointed to troubles in the retail sector. 'Investments in this area have not brought the expected success,' it said."

"A debt crunch at Swedish property group SBB has left the European Central Bank at risk of losses and highlighted the 26 billion euro ($29 billion) exposure it built up to Europe's now stricken real estate sector through its crisis-era bond buying. Two sources familiar with the matter said that the ECB's SBB bond holdings totalled a few hundred million euros. One SBB bond is now trading at roughly half its face value, showing investors were pricing in some risk of an eventual debt default. When SBB, which is now junk-rated, recently bought back bonds at a small discount to stabilise its finances, the ECB was among the sellers, one person familiar with the matter said."

"In total, it spent around 5 trillion euros on government debt, company bonds and other assets, which it usually holds until maturity. Yet as far back as 2016, the ECB warned of a property bubble in parts of Europe, while at the same time buying bonds in real estate companies in the region under the scheme. 'It is hard to understand how the ECB ended up buying the bonds of property companies, while at the same time warning of the risks of property price inflation,' former ECB chief economist Otmar Issing told Reuters. 'It contributes to inflating the bubble, while risking its reputation as well as financial losses,' he added."