A report from KETV Omaha in Nebraska. "With two growing kids and only one bathroom, Andrea and Aaron Boschult are looking to size up. 'Two bedroom, two bath," Andrea Boschult said. 'A little bigger yard and maybe a garage.' 'It doesn't have to be a massive yard,' Aaron Boschult chimed in. They've been looking for about six months and are finding it difficult with a budget of around $250,000. 'You got to go into it like ready to go,' Aaron Boschult said. 'Yes, at or above asking price. This house we were able to offer lower and we got accepted,' Andrea Boschult said."

"But the housing market has changed since then. Realtor Derick Lewin said the Boschult's situation is not uncommon. 'We're coming down from an extreme seller's market more to in the middle. We're starting to see sellers are able to pay some of the buyer's closing costs and that's helping bridge that gap. We need a more balanced market,' Lewin said. For the Boschults, they are even looking at other options if they can't move. 'We've talked about should we just finish our basement and put a bathroom in our basement. Would that be easier,' Andrea Boschult said. 'Maybe even cheaper,' Aaron Boschult said."

The Hollywood Reporter in California. "As interest rates soared and Measure ULA (aka the mansion tax) scared off potential sellers, 2023 became the year of the luxury rental in Los Angeles. 'Interest rates got so high, and then there was so much buyer fatigue,' says Kevin Krakower of Douglas Elliman. 'People just got exhausted, and they decided just to lease.' 'The problem becomes no one's going to treat a house like you would as a landlord,' says The Agency's Zach Goldsmith. 'So, your house can get trashed. There could be damage. People may not want to get out. We have that instance right now where we're doing a sale … and the guy who's leasing won't leave.'"

"Real estate brokers are seeing a new glut of luxury rentals from $20,000 and above, with the many of the highest-end homes sitting empty, waiting to be rented out. 'So many owners of luxury property have decided not to sell because of the mansion tax and maybe they have a good loan, so they have put their properties on the market for lease instead,' says The Oppenheim Group founder and Selling Sunset star Jason Oppenheim. 'So you've got an oversupply of properties available to prospective tenants in the luxury space.'"

The Detroit Free Press in Michigan. "A succession of luxury apartment buildings have opened in the past nine months, greatly expanding options for those with the desire and financial means to live in new amenity-filled buildings with stunning views, impressive addresses and rent prices that might startle longtime Detroiters. Many of the latest buildings have yet to lease up, with developers seemingly holding out for tenants who will pay close to their full asking rent. Some are dangling one-time move-in discounts, rather than adjust their rents to a lower baseline."

"And the market's biggest test still lies ahead. Later next month, a newly constructed 25-story, 496-unit luxury apartment building, The Residences at Water Square, is expected to open at the former Joe Louis Arena site on the downtown riverfront. This giant glass tower will have some of the highest-ever asking rents in Detroit, with one-bedroom, 668-square-foot units on upper floors starting at over $4,000 a month. One of the developers, Hunter Pasteur CEO Randy Wertheimer, was asked at the grand opening whether he thinks Detroit's upscale housing market could be getting oversaturated. 'I hope not,' he said. 'I think we’ll find out in the next six to 12 months.'"

The Real Deal on Tennessee. "Nashville has more than 16,000 vacant apartment units, and that figure could drastically increase in the next couple of years, given that another 18,000 units are in the pipeline, the Nashville Business Journal reported, citing data from CoStar. The multifamily vacancy rate in Nashville is nearing 11 percent. 'Last year saw 7,200 units absorbed. Let’s couple that figure with the arrival of another 9,000 units this year and another 8,000 units in 2025. Even if [absorption] continues at this rate, we’re still not going to get anywhere near being full,' said Michael Cobb, CoStar Group’s Nashville director of market analytics."

Community Impact in Texas. "The Houston office market has grappled with persistent challenges since the COVID-19 pandemic began, as reported in a Jan. 9 office market update from the Greater Houston Partnership. Highlights include a decrease in occupied space, increased availability of office space and the impact of the work-from-home trend. The vacancy rate for newer buildings completed in the past 15 years before the fourth quarter of 2023 averaged 17.3%, while the vacancy rate for older buildings completed before 2008 was 27.2%, according to the GHP report. Older buildings requiring longer commutes have encountered difficulties, contributing to increased vacancy rates in that segment, Winthrop Realty Group Principal Andrew Armour said. The challenges faced by these offices are reflected in negative net absorption and higher availability rates. The oversupply of office space coupled with the absence of rent growth has limited landlords' ability to increase rents, hindering office construction, Armour said. These offices have struggled with negative net absorption and stagnant rent growth since 2014."

CTV News in Canada. "A B.C. senior who has spent more than $3.4 million on the construction of a home on the Sunshine Coast has been granted an injunction against the former co-owners of the property, who have contributed only $115,000 to the project. Maria Sandberg Jones and the two men she bought the property with in May 2020 – Leslie Thomson and Andrew Press – are involved in ongoing claims and counterclaims against each other in B.C. Supreme Court. While the litigation is still ongoing, Justice Anita Chan granted Jones an injunction earlier this month that requires Thomson and Press to vacate the property, which will allow Jones to sell it and recover some of her investment."

"'Ms. Jones can no longer afford to live in the home once it is complete,' Chan's decision reads. 'She needs to sell it, before she defaults on the RBC construction loan. She has been advised by a realtor that to list it now.' Chan found it's possible that Jones will not be able to recover her full investment in the property even if she's able to sell it. 'There is evidence that the plaintiff has already suffered monetary damages that cannot be cured,' the decision reads. 'The defendants obtained an appraisal for the property in October 2023 which put the appraised value at $2.85 million. The evidence is the plaintiff has put in approximately $3.47 million.'"

"'If the injunction is not granted, the plaintiff continues to suffer from the stress and anxiety of the mounting costs, and when she is no longer able to make the monthly payments on the RBC construction loan, the property will be foreclosed,' the decision reads. 'The plaintiff will receive less from any foreclosure sale. If the plaintiff is eventually successful on this action, based on the evidence, she will not be able to collect any damages from the defendants.'"

Eastern Daily Press. "The number of property millionaires plummeted in East Anglia last year, amid higher mortgage costs and tougher housing market conditions. By the end of 2023, there were almost 10,000 fewer homes valued at £1m or more than the previous year, bringing the total number of properties in this price bracket to 62,812. The 13pc reduction comes following a bumper few years for the local housing market. In 2020, more million pound homes were sold in Norfolk than any other county in the UK, due to a sudden surge in demand for countryside properties during the pandemic."

"Lucian Cook, head of residential research at Savills said: 'The race for space and dash to the countryside from mid-2020 drove a sharp increase in the number of £1 million homes outside of London and other urban settings. However, increased mortgage costs and a rebalancing of demand back to city living have meant about 30% of those whose homes crossed the £1 million threshold, have, for the time being at least, become aspiring million pound homeowners once again.'"

Domain News in Australia. "Interest rate rises have taken the heat out of the NSW regional property market, pushing house prices lower in a string of once-rising towns. Lismore, which continues to feel the impact of unprecedented floods, recorded the largest fall in prices again. House prices in the regional local government area dropped 19.2 per cent to a median $493,000, from $610,000 in December 2022. That was followed by Yass Valley (down 12.3 per cent), Murray River (down 10.7 per cent) and Armidale (down 9.6 per cent). More popular coastal areas of Ballina, Mid-Coast and Byron Shire all recorded less than 10 per cent declines."

"KPMG’s director of planning and infrastructure economics Terry Rawnsley said regional NSW was now in a boom and bust cycle – especially in sought after lifestyle locations. 'The 20 per cent drop we’ve seen in the last two years is more of an adjustment of where it would have been without COVID taking place.'"

The Telegraph. "Chinese equities have been a 'value trap' for an eternity. The Shanghai Composite index has halved since 2007 even in nominal terms. Xi Jinping’s erratic political assaults on China’s wealth producers have been calamitous. Debt-deflation has done the rest. The market has decoupled drastically from US, Japanese, and European equities. A study by Capital Economics found that all the key indicators of economic deformity are as bad today as they were 15 years ago, and must be tackled in far less auspicious circumstances: the debt ratio has doubled to 300pc of GDP; the world is less willing to tolerate predatory Chinese mercantilism; the demographic dividend has been spent. The workforce contracted by 6.6m in 2023, and will shed 7.9m on average each year through to 2030."

"Investment was 43pc of GDP in 2023, higher than it was when Wen Jiabao deemed it a dangerous addiction. No major country in modern history has been close to this. It is a formula for grotesque over-capacity. Real estate and construction are still taking 46pc of the pie, just as they did in 2007. Cement output per capita remains three times higher than in most societies. The incremental capital output rate (ICOR), measuring how much investment is needed to generate each extra unit of GDP, was two in the 1990s, three in the early 2000s, and is now nine. Government credit policy has lost all traction."

"Some of us have been arguing for a decade that China mania was a naive extrapolation of untenable past growth rates, and that the country would not displace the US as the world’s economic superpower by mid-century as long as the Party clung to Leninist control and allocation of credit. The failure is now beyond doubt."

South China Morning Post. "China's capital market, valued at US$13 trillion at its peak in December 2021, has withered by one third since then. Stocks listed in Shanghai, the largest of three mainland bourses, lost US$1.45 trillion of their value since the peak. Blossoms Shanghai, Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai's hit about the heady opportunities and possibilities during the early 1990s in China's financial hub, has captured the collective nostalgia of an entire nation, in more ways than one. Set in 1992, Blossoms tells the story of A Bao, who struck it rich by punting on the earliest stocks listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, highlighted by a concoction of buying craze, wild price swings and insider trading subplots."

"China was minting dollar billionaires like the fictional A Bao in Blossoms Shanghai at the rate of almost one every day in 2020, before everything came crashing down. 'It is all tears and sorrow now, when people like me look back at the stock market,' said Lu Shunxi, a stock punter since trading first began in Shanghai in November 1990. 'The birth of China's stock market gave an opportunity to novice investors who were drawn to a casino-like market to gamble and prosper.'"

"'Trading shares has become my biggest mistake in life since I keep losing money over the past two decades,' said Li Yan, an employee with a state-owned media company in Shanghai. 'I have had to deposit more money into my brokerage account to try to overturn the losses. But the attempts have all resulted in more nightmares.' Li is not alone. Even veterans and hedge fund stars have been brought to their knees in China's market slump for misreading the tea leaves."