It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "Palm Beach County buyers looking for an existing single-family home had more to choose from last month than at any time in at least two years, with active listings and months’ supply doubling and tripling compared to what was available during the same period in 2021. A report by the Broward, Palm Beaches and St. Lucie Realtors group found there were nearly 4,600 active listings on the market last month, which is more than double the amount in November 2021 and 6% higher than last year. Yet, despite the cornucopia of houses for sale, the number of closed deals dropped to its lowest total since January with just 914 sales completed."

"'I have people waiting to make offers right now because they’re not sure what’s going to happen next,' said Realtor Don Moore. 'It’s not a buyer’s market right now, and some people think it will decline next year, so they are not as eager.'"

"Oklahoma City home sales slumped more in November, and the supply crept up again with so many sitting unsold − slowing both month to month, which can be explained by the usual decline toward the end of the year, and year over year, showing the persistence of malaise in the market. Some buyers have given up on 2023, said Keri Gray, broker and owner of KG Realty. 'I have a lot of clients looking to move in 2024, but as for 2023, it has been my slowest year on record,' she said. 'Buyers are waiting for the bottom to fall out because they are wanting 'deals.' I do not think these 'deals' are going to be what we saw in the mid 2000s.'"

"Elevated interest rates are behind market slowdowns across both commercial and residential real estate sectors in Spokane and Kootenai counties this year, according to some real estate industry specialists. Dave Black, CEO of Spokane-based commercial brokerage company NAI Black, says, 'Business is about half of what it was in 2021 and even 2022 … which were actually record years for us.' The median single-family home price in Kootenai County in November was $525,000, down 4.5% from the median price in November 2022, according to the Coeur d'Alene Regional Realtors' Market Snapshot report. Jared McFarland, board president of the Coeur d'Alene Regional Realtors, says contraction provides relief to homebuyers. 'We needed things to slow down a little bit because it was an exaggerated market with such a low inventory and prices rising so fast that we needed to step back,' he says. The market slowdown has allowed inventory levels to rise, resulting in improved buying conditions with fewer bidding wars and more negotiating leverage for purchasers, he says."

"Kanye West is ditching his Malibu masterpiece for $53 million — a few years after splurging $57.25 million on the coastal crib. Insiders tell The Post that a concoction of factors, including the artist’s shaky finances, played a key role in his decision to unload this unique oceanfront abode, even at a loss. 'Let’s just say the cash flow isn’t really flowing at the moment,'' a source revealed, peeling back the layers of West’s motivation. “The renovations turned out to be a bigger hassle than expected.'"

"Phoenix saw some of the largest home price increases in the U.S. during the pandemic-era housing boom. Phoenix's market also fell sharper and faster than almost any other major city in the U.S., Zillow senior economist Nicole Bachaud tells us. The drastic change has left potential buyers confused and unsure when or if they should enter the market, she says. 'I don't think there's a Realtor in town that's going to miss 2023,' Phoenix Realtors president Butch Leiber tells us. The Valley tracked just over 64,000 sales so far this year, the lowest annual tally since 2008, when the housing market crashed. In 2021, we saw more than 100,000 sales."

"Things are not OK in Realtorland. The US housing market is still reeling from pandemic-era shocks, home sales are stuck in a rut, and mortgage rates, while inching downward, are still near two-decade highs. It's a bad time to be a buyer, and maybe a worse time to be a seller. Despite all this upheaval, there's another story brewing in which the stakes for everyone in real estate. The biggest threat facing the industry is a mounting wave of class-action lawsuits that accuse the National Association of Realtors, along with some of the country's biggest real-estate brokerages, of conspiring to rip off consumers by keeping the commissions paid to agents unfairly high. These cases are expected to reach major milestones in the next year, and the ramifications could be staggering."

"'There are going to be real-estate agents who are not able to articulate, let alone demonstrate, their value. Those folks will probably be out of the business very quickly,' John Kwoka, an economist and antitrust researcher at Northeastern University, told me."

"Around 60 per cent of Canadian mortgages are up for renewal over the next three years, according to RBC, putting millions of homeowners at risk of shocking increases when their fixed-rate mortgages renew. 'Is four per cent a lot of relief for somebody that's holding at 2.5 per cent fixed rate? You know, it's better than six, but it's not going to provide a ton of relief for those borrowers,' Vancouver-based mortgage broker Andy Hill said in an interview with CTV News. 'There's certainly going to be a renewal shock, regardless to how far rates go.'"

"And even though the bond markets are anticipating interest rates will go down, that doesn't guarantee a rate cut. The Bank of Canada said it still needs months of data to ensure inflation is trending down. Meanwhile, a Tuesday report from Scotiabank economist Derek Holt said Canada's inflation data 'leans more towards a hike than a cut.'"

"Rental inflation has since slowed to less than 10pc, but Londoners alone spent £32bn on rent this year. And as a result, landlords have become the bogeymen of modern times. The same is the case for Derek Tyson, a 53-year-old landlord in Fife where the Scottish Government has capped rent rises in existing tenancies to 3pc. He said: 'My mortgage is £400. The rent is £600. But the tax I pay on that £600 pushes me into a loss.' Mr Tyson says he will have to evict at least two of his tenants – one of which is on benefits – because the properties have become loss-making investment. 'I can’t wake up every day and keep losing money.'"

"Residential property prices in Germany continued their fall, dropping 10.2% in the third quarter from a year earlier, a further grim sign for the nation's real-estate sector, data on Friday showed. It was the fourth consecutive quarter of declines and the biggest since Germany's statistics office began keeping records in the year 2000. The decline for single and two-family homes in major cities was especially pronounced in the third quarter, dropping 12.7%, while apartment prices fell 9.1%. The drop comes amid the biggest property crisis in decades in Germany, Europe's largest economy. 'Until 2022, there was a speculative price bubble in Germany, one of the biggest in the last 50 years,' said Konstantin Kholodilin from the macroeconomics department of the German Institute for Economic Research. 'Prices have been falling ever since. The bubble has burst.'"

"The director of a failed building company has not been contactable for months, all while the liquidator claims she pocketed $861,000 of the business’s funds prior to its collapse. News.com.au can reveal that in May, Sydney-based Workspace One Pty Ltd went into liquidation with liabilities of $845,000. Jackson*, a trade creditor owed $120,000, was furious when he learnt the extent of the company’s financial affairs. Losing '$120,000 hurts like hell,' he told news.com.au. 'I was looking at retiring in the next few years, now I’ve got to work a lot harder' for more years to come."