A report from KTVQ in Montana. "The once-unsure market appears to be stabilizing. Prices are trending downward, which will be a positive for potential buyers. 'We’re very close to what we were in 2022,' said Nicole Morrow, who is a realtor at 2Morrows Real Estate brokered by eXp Realty in the Billings area. 'The housing market is not crashing. If anything it’s very vibrant and it’s very active, especially in Billings.' According to RedFin, the average home sale price in Yellowstone County in November was $360,000, a decline from the summer high of over $400,000. 'The prices aren’t going to fluctuate a ton like in 2020,' said Morrow. 'They’re going to remain about where they’re at. Maybe go down just a little bit.'"

"Monique Harasymczuk and her wife recently bought a house in November in a process that was years in the making. 'The houses that we were looking at last year actually came down quite a bit, so then that is when we decided we might as well,' said Harasymczuk. 'We just decided we needed to just bite the bullet and get ourselves into a house because we were throwing money to the wind with renting.'"

The New York Post. "Joan Rivers’ iconic New York City penthouse, which she staunchly believed was haunted, has been pulled from the market after nearly three years without finding a buyer, The Post has learned. This decision follows a jaw-dropping $3.5 million price cut four months ago, signaling a struggle to entice potential purchasers into this opulent Versailles-inspired penthouse. The abode once owned by the comedic legend until her passing in 2014 was initially sold for $24 million by her estate — a considerable dip from the original $28 million asking price. Its current proprietor, Prince Muhammad bin Fahd of the Saudi royal family, son of the late King Fahd, and former governor of Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, attempted a resale in 2021 at a staggering $38 million."

The San Francisco Examiner in California. "The collective worth of San Francisco homes diminished by $60 billion since the last summer. The typical San Francisco home seller in the last year, who took a loss, sold their home for about $100,000 less than what they paid for it. San Francisco home sellers are four times likelier than the average U.S. home seller to sell at a loss due to significant drops in home prices. A report from Redfin indicates that San Francisco is one of many cities where homeowners are experiencing losses when selling. Detroit, Chicago, New York, and Cleveland were all higher than the national rate of homeowners selling for a loss."

"The slowdown has taken a toll on San Francisco condo owners the most, with the median condo value plummeting by $122,500 compared to last year. Single-family homes in the area haven't fared much better, experiencing a decline of $81,250, marking the highest drop among the 100 largest U.S. cities. Condo prices in 37 cities are causing concern among property owners. Besides San Francisco, Henderson, NV; Oakland, CA; and New York City, NY condos faced daily depreciation of $110, $118, and $219, respectively, since September 2022, accumulating losses totaling $40,000, $43,000, and $80,000 in the mentioned areas."

The Washington Post. "Over the past two decades, more than half of the insurance carriers that participated in the 'takeout' program have gone insolvent, state data shows. Florida’s insurance market is one of the worst in the nation for homeowners, according to data from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) obtained by The Post. Scott and Bonny Jonas, who moved from Wisconsin in 2015 to retire in Venice, are leaving the state altogether after going through Ian, and then the insurance disaster that followed."

"In February, they found out in a single-page letter that their carrier, UPC, had gone insolvent. The now-defunct company had sent them a check for just $2,000 for their storm damage from Hurricane Ian — a tiny fraction of the $145,000 they estimated it would take to fix their house — and then never responded to another call or email. The next month, they got another letter informing them that a new insurance company named Slide had scooped them up. Their policy, and their annual premium jumped from $1,350 to $6,000 for nearly the exact same policy, according to documents viewed by The Post. The couple had been living in a 10-by-11-foot spare bedroom in their torn-apart home for three months and had already shelled out $63,000 to get repairs going. 'We are prisoners in our own home,' Scott said. 'You can’t make any decisions like that; you are locked in, and to me that is wrong.'"

The Globe and Mail. "In a Canadian landscape of high-interest rates and rich house prices, mortgages from private lenders have become a lifeline for many debt-laden homeowners – and a hazard for some. Mark Morris, Toronto-based real estate lawyer with LegalClosing.ca, is seeing a steady stream of new clients struggling with borrowing costs. 'There’s blood everywhere.' People who borrowed against the equity in their homes to gain more spending power no longer have that option if they have stretched their debt levels or the property has fallen in value. 'We have people who are overextending themselves and don’t have the income to match,' says Mr. Morris. 'And they can no longer use their house as an ATM.'"

"At his law office, Mr. Morris also sees problems arise after parents, grandparents and other family members have co-signed a loan. If the primary borrower can’t keep up the payments, the co-signer is responsible for paying off the debt. Huge numbers of people who have purchased a home or refinanced in the past few years have had family involved, he says. In the past, parents often helped their adult kids with a modest down payment. Now those down payments may be $200,000 or more and the parents are also signing on the mortgage. 'There are generations who have roped themselves in,' he says."

CTV News in Canada. "Two new houses in southwest Edmonton were destroyed in a pair of suspected arsons early Friday morning. Edmonton Fire Rescue Services (EFRS) was called around 2:15 a.m. to two separate house fires along Esaiw Place near the Uplands. According to neighbours, one of the houses was still under construction and one the other was recently finished and ready for sale. Sunil Salaria has been living on Esaiw Place since August. He said he was woken up around 2:30 a.m. by the sounds of sirens. 'It's hard to forget what I saw in the morning,' he said. 'It was pretty stressful.'"

"Salaria said he saw a fire burning in the finished home down the street, and when he went outside to get a better look, he noticed the house under construction next to him also had smoke coming out. Both the houses were destroyed. Officials have not said if any other homes were damaged by the fires. Home surveillance footage shared with CTV News Edmonton shows a white car driving by one of the homes around 1:45 a.m. Shortly after, the video appears to show at least two men lighting a fire and running away. The cause of the fires is still not known, but police did confirm that both are being investigated as arson. 'Being in a new neighbourhood, you never ever imagine it's going to be like that,' Salaria said."

Voice of America. "A growing number of home buyers in China have seen their dream of moving into new homes dashed in the past year after a slew of bankrupt developers left behind millions of unfinished pre-sold properties. Many of the buyers could do nothing but vent their anger and frustration on Chinese social media platforms such as Douyin, known internationally as TikTok, over what they called 'rotting apartments' that represented their lifetime savings. Police are cracking down on protests. Among countless victims, a Douyin user from the Henan province in north-central China with the name, 'The happy life in my rotting apartment,' posted a short video clip on December 1 showing a local project where construction was halted. 'It’s been a year, but my apartment remains unfinished. … I hope the construction of the building can be restarted soon so that I can move into my future home,' he said in the video."

"A victim in the Hunan province city of Changsha, identified only as Ms. Chen in a local TV news report, said in late 2022 that her family could barely make ends meet after paying the monthly mortgage of $700 (5,000 yuan). 'If my unfinished property keeps rotting, I personally won’t have the courage to go on living,' said Chen."

South China Morning Post. "After searching for about two years, Lucas Huang, 28, a Shanghai-based banking industry worker, bought a foreclosed home as his first property in the city's Pudong district. Huang was happy to pay 3.6 million yuan (US$500,000) for the 100-square-metre house in December, as this was much cheaper than the average 5 million yuan price tag for a property of the same size in a nearby neighbourhood. 'It is a good buy, I don't intend to resell it,' Huang said. 'Buying a foreclosed home is more cost-effective, especially as it is much cheaper than a new home or regular second-hand home.'"

"Foreclosed homes - properties that have been recalled by lenders and resold to the public after their owners failed to repay loans - usually sell for below market value. Discounts on a foreclosed property can be as large as 20 per cent to 30 per cent on occasion, according to market data. The lifting of the mainland's zero-Covid rules earlier this year triggered a surge in the supply of such properties after delayed lawsuits during the three years of the pandemic caused a backlog."

"Nationwide, almost a quarter of a million foreclosed properties were put up for sale in November, twice the amount in October and up 177.35 per cent from same period last year, according to the Hanhai Data Research Institute, a Beijing-based firm that focuses on such properties. As the supply has soared, the prices have been plunging. In tier-one cities like Beijing, the average selling price of a foreclosed home was 52,600 yuan per square metre in November, down 3.13 per cent compared with the previous month and 10.39 per cent from a year ago. The discounts were as much as 16.24 per cent versus regular (non-foreclosed) lived-in homes, which went for 62,800 yuan per sq m on average, Hanhai's data showed."

"In Shanghai, the prices have come down a lot in the last couple of years. Huang recalled that the prices of some foreclosed homes were equal to or even higher than second-hand homes late in 2021. Investors have seen a contraction in their returns as China's housing market has stuttered, according to Ma Hengheng, a professional working in the foreclosed property market. 'Investors dare not buy now,' said Ma. 'The whole transaction period is longer in a slowing market. One possibility is they may find market prices are lower next year after buying this year … and the costs may be higher than what they can earn. I used to buy foreclosed homes as a way of profit-taking, which earned me several hundred thousand yuan every time. But now I'm afraid of purchasing them [as an investment], because you never know if home prices will continue to fall. Reselling will be harder.'"