A report from the Post Dispatch in Missouri. "A surge in home values across St. Louis County this year has sent tax bills soaring, and nowhere more than among small homes in lower-income neighborhoods. From aging brick homes in Wellston to bungalows in Lemay, the appraised values of many small, single-family homes have jumped by double-digit percentages. Everyone agrees home sales have risen markedly across the county in recent years. And, again, the biggest boost came in North County, where the average price jumped 90% since 2020 to almost $78,000 in 2022 in 63133. 'It is a huge problem,' said Christy Kramlich, a Maplewood-based real estate agent who frequently represents first-time homebuyers. 'People were paying just stupid amounts for houses, even the modest-priced homes.'"

"Pearl Hughes, 82, pays nearly 10% on her home in Wellston, tax records show, or almost $1,300. 'It was just a shock, and I mean that for real, to see how much my real estate taxes had went up,' said Hughes, a retired bus driver. 'Everything is going up,' except for my Social Security check.'"

The Record Chronicle in Texas. "Average prices in Denton County slid for a fourth consecutive month. The average price of a Denton County home was $68,000 (11%) lower than the bubble peak of last spring. Homebuilders continue to capitalize on those supply constraints by making deals to find buyers. The November closing data shows incentives by some of the larger builders ranging from $20,000 to $40,000, accounting for both the incentives to buyers and the commission bonuses to selling agents. Many existing home sellers have pulled their homes from the market when faced with the challenge of competing against builders."

From Newsweek. "Many areas across California, one of the most expensive markets in the entire country, have experienced steeper price drops than the rest of the United States since the beginning of the nationwide cooling trend which began in late summer 2022. A home in Palm Springs, which was sold in March for $1,400,000 and put back on the market some two months later for roughly the same amount, is now going for only $635,000—a price cut of $765,000. In cities like San Francisco, one of the most overvalued urban areas in the country, home prices have dropped by over 10 percent since reaching a peak in 2022."

The Mercury News in California. "A big office complex in Oakland has flopped into a loan default, a financing setback that provides fresh evidence of the economic maladies that still afflict the Bay Area office market in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. The Landing, a two-building office center on Hegenberger Road, one of the gateways to the city’s airport, is in default on its mortgage, according to documents filed on Dec. 13 with the Alameda County Recorder’s Office. A growing number of Bay Area office buildings have become delinquent on their loans or have even suffered foreclosures of the mortgage and seizure by the lenders."

"Walnut Creek-based Vertical Ventures, one of the Bay Area’s savvy real estate investment and development firms, defaulted on the loan, which it obtained in 2019. Vertical Ventures paid about $40.6 million for the property in 2019. Vertical Ventures bought the building at a 'major discount' compared to the prior purchase price."

The Miami Herald in Florida. "Developer Rishi Kapoor cultivated an image of impressive wealth even as his dream of a real estate empire crumbled around him. Although his completed projects were few, Kapoor talked of becoming the United States’ first trillion-dollar developer, won the trust of wealthy investors and lured politicians into his orbit. But behind that image of success and access, Kapoor’s emergent empire was in free fall. As Location Ventures’ chief executive, Kapoor shifted money from one project to another as bills came due, including funds provided by lenders, investors and condo buyers, according to claims in lawsuits and court records. His company and its development entities overpaid for land, borrowed millions from private lenders at high interest rates and failed to meet construction costs, according to records, investors and lenders."

"His luxury condo tower near downtown Coral Gables, a monument to his jump from small-time developer to emerging star, was over budget and behind schedule. Investors were demanding he return millions sunk into a half-dozen or so upscale residential projects around South Florida. And the top financial executive at Kapoor’s development firm had confronted him about troubling business practices, including the $10,000 payments to Miami’s mayor for what he described as 'unknown services.' Even Location Ventures’ 299 Alhambra Cir. office is on the scrap heap, with a collection of furniture, computers and other office equipment to be auctioned off at a value of only $41,000 to help the company pay bills, according to an auctioneer’s report. 'Politicians are always looking for someone to pick up the tab — it’s a very transactional thing,' Dario Moreno, a Florida International University associate professor told the Herald. 'And where we see this a lot is in Miami’s biggest industry, real estate.'"

Collingwood Today in Canada. "Home sales in this part of Ontario continue to decline, prompting an area real estate agent to suggest homebuyers might be in hibernation. 'Overall home sales continue to decline as we head into the end of the year, as buyers have moved to the sidelines and appear to be bunkering down for the winter,' said Matthew Lidbetter, president of the Lakelands Association of Realtors. 'Our market is very well supplied at the moment, with inventories trending about on par with their long-term averages, so there are some attractive deals out there waiting for buyers who decide to step back in.'"

"The MLS home price index shows a composite benchmark price of about $690,800 in November for a home in the Lakelands region. The median price for non-waterfront homes sold in all of 2023 so far was $676,250, or about 11 per cent lower than for the first 11 months of 2022. Collingwood is within the western portion of the Lakelands region, along with The Blue Mountains, Clearview, Grey Highlands, Meaford, and Wasaga Beach, where 86 homes sold last month, for a median price of $649,950. In November 2022, 100 homes sold in the western part of the region, contributing to a $750,000 median price."

From Bloomberg. "In an ominous sign for Sweden’s battered real estate sector, Stockholm-based landlord Oscar Properties Holding AB had assets seized by a creditor, showing how patience is running thin as a financial crunch intensifies. Swedish property firms need to refinance or repay about $12 billion of bonds and hybrid debt in 2024, providing a fresh test for the epicenter of Europe’s real estate crisis. To cover 1.6 billion Swedish kronor ($157 million) in unpaid loans from Oscar Properties, DNB Bank ASA, Norway’s biggest lender, took control of a portfolio worth 3 billion Swedish kronor and is seeking to sell."

"Like numerous other landlords in the largest Nordic economy, Oscar Properties — which manages warehouses, retail space and housing — stumbled when the cheap-money era ended. Loaded with debt and bond markets all but closed off, financing was hard to come by and tepid demand for real estate made selling assets a stretch. 'The transaction market froze,' said Carl Janglin, Oscar Properties’ chief executive officer. 'We couldn’t sell off properties to reduce debt quickly enough.'"

From Market Place. "Germany — once seen as the bedrock of fiscal rectitude — is finding itself on the other side of the ledger. It’s facing a budget crisis amid rising energy costs, urgent calls for immigration reform and more pressing issues. So what is Europe’s largest economy to do? Marketplace’s David Brancaccio checked in with Stephan Richter, publisher and editor-in-chief of The Globalist. Richter: 'The problems really started back in 2005, with the famous and now infamous Angela Merkel, who basically did nothing for 15 years in government other than to preserve her own power and stay popular by not taking any tough decisions. And that really has led to a major problem for Germany, because all these problems kept building up. So things are really not good. And Germany mostly lives off the fumes of its past reputation.'"

"'The problem really has been and continues to be that there has been a large consensus to do social spending in Germany and not any infrastructure or other investment — no investment in education, no investment in housing. And it is the opposite of what — I used to live in the United States — what we always think about Germany: that it’s a country that’s planning ahead, that’s using its resources wisely and is trying to make sure that everything works smoothly, and schools and everything are in good shape. And none of the above anymore.'"

News.com.au in Australia. "A Queensland family has issued a warning about their ordeal with a local builder who they claim left their site abandoned and with expensive defects. Miriam Rojas and her husband Malcolm Hancock signed a $300,000 contract with Brisbane-based 5Rivers Engineering, a business operated under a sole trader licence by Karan Bhalla, at the start of 2021. They thought it would be a simple case of creating their dream home in the inner city suburb of Windsor but instead they have experienced lengthy delays and they also had an incident where unidentified thieves stole windows which were about to be installed."

"'Our site is abandoned,' Ms Rojas, 47, told news.com.au. 'We are having a terrible time, financially we are struggling.' An independent building report found their build would require 'significant demolition' due to issues with its base and deemed it would be 'uneconomical' to fix. As the site languished while the family-of-four figured out what to do, Ms Rojas says someone stole the house’s windows, putting their financial situation under further strain."

"When the builder, Mr Bhalla, received the couple’s legal letter informing him they were ending the contract, they say they received an angry response. He called their letter 'nonsense' and 'rubbish' and then accused them of never paying him – though they had made progress payments by this point totalling $120,000. 'I did my utmost to get the house completed and the market did not work,' Mr Bhalla told them in a text message exchange. 'U don’t even want to payment (sic) the peanuts I asked for.' He later texted 'I did everything to make things work with no income from you for over 6 months. Find anyone who would do that.'"