It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "Gary Ferguson first noticed large cracks along the back wall of his garage in October. Ferguson, a Persian Gulf War veteran, bought the home with his wife and two children in March 2022. Because of the competitive housing market, Ferguson said he felt pressure to waive a home inspection to make his offer more attractive. It’s a decision he’s come to regret. 'It’s going to fall,' Ferguson said from his backyard on Orchard Lane in Danvers. '[A home inspection] might have opened my eyes up a little bit more,' Ferguson said. 'We’re in limbo at this point. We’re afraid we’re going to lose the house.'"

"He’s said he’s contacted 83 licensed insurance companies in Massachusetts and can’t get coverage from any of them. Ferguson said force-place homeowner’s insurance from his mortgage lender is going to cost him between $5,000 and $7,000 a year, which would increase his mortgage by $500 to $600 a month. 'I can’t afford that,' Ferguson said. 'I can’t sustain it.'"

"A real estate investor who bought a dilapidated home in Escambia County through a tax deed sale was 'shocked' when she discovered the county had demolished the house a week after she bought it. Ana Lopes purchased the home in Mayfair at a tax deed auction for $11,200, on behalf of Maison Investment LLC, a small real estate development company based in Texas. She bought it on Dec. 5, 2023, and the house was torn down on Dec. 13. 'I found out there wasn’t a house there when my buyer, a flip company who was buying the house to flip it, went to visit the house to take pictures and inspect it and he arrived there and (there was) no house. I was shocked because I didn’t know it was being demolished,' Lopes said. 'I’m not able to sell the lot,' Lopes explained. 'I had people interested in buying the house, I was interested myself to do the renovation to flip the house if I didn’t find somebody to buy it, but I found one and now I have a lot and an expensive lien.'"

"Las Vegas hotel mogul Steve Wynn has yanked his Central Park South penthouse off the market — after slashing the price from a staggering $90 million to $65 million last year. That latter price is $5 million less than what the casino czar paid for the posh pied-à-terre back in 2012. Wynn’s residence, on the 30th and 31st floors of the Ritz-Carlton New York, Central Park, spans nearly 11,000 square feet."

"Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Trey Lance sold his Morgan Hill home for $2.7 million on Tuesday, Lance’s real estate agent Marquise Murphy confirmed to KRON4. Lance, a former top 49ers draft pick, was traded to the Dallas Cowboys in August. Lance bought the home for $2.95 million in March 2022, before he was set for his first full season as the 49ers’ starting quarterback. He suffered a season-ending injury in Week 2 and never suited up for the 49ers in another regular season game."

"A Toronto home listed for sale multiple times in the same year, and now selling way below its original price demonstrates just how much prices fluctuate in the city's real estate market. The detached home in question, situated just between Brockton Village and Little Italy at 61 Shannon St., was originally listed for a staggering $5,398,880 in January 2023. Since January 2023, the property has been listed and re-listed several times at various price points. In April, the home knocked roughly $400,000 off its price when it was listed for $4,988,800, and saw a further reduction in June when it was listed at $4,589,999. With no takers, the home was eventually re-listed in August for $3,998,800, roughly $1.4 million below its original asking price. On Monday, the home was officially re-listed for a fourth time as a 'power of sale' at $3,599,900 — approximately $1.8 million below what it was originally listed for just a year earlier."

"New-home sales through the end of November (December numbers were not yet available at the time of writing) were down 10 per cent over 2022, which itself was a year when sales fell off a cliff. At the moment, Ottawa is absorbing the supply of new homes at 48 per cent of the five-year average, while supply has jumped an average 47 per cent from 2022, says PMA Ottawa president Cheryl Rice. 'The increase in supply coupled with diminishing demand is expected to continue exerting downward pressure on prices for the beginning of 2024.'"

"Homeowners living in an unfinished housing estate have been left frustrated after the developer went bust. This week the Glasgow Times reported liquidators were appointed to Merchant Homes which had sites in and around the city. Napier Grove, a new-build estate in Linwood, Renfrewshire, where prices started at £171,000 for a two-bedroomed terrace home and £210,000 for a three-bedroom semi-detached villa, is unfinished. Most homes are occupied but residents said solar panels on the homes, a money-saving selling point, have never worked. Homeowners have been left with no one to contact and are wondering if the outstanding work will ever be done. May Whiteman moved into her three-bedroom house in July. She said: 'The roads are not finished and we don’t know if the council will adopt them in the state they are in. I have a problem with the driveway and the solar panels. They have never worked. I feel really sorry for the people who can’t move in because their house isn’t finished.'"

"My girlfriend and I are in our mid-30s. The nature of our jobs means we must be based in or close to London, where we both own our own flats with large mortgages. We're both well-paid, but have little in the way of savings as we used everything we had to get on the property ladder. We want to move in together, but are faced with a problem because both our flats have gone down significantly in value since we bought them. If we sell both our flats now and buy or rent somewhere together, we would make a loss which could wipe out the majority of the equity we put in. If we rent one or both of them out, the rent after taxes will not cover the mortgages so we will be losing money on two potentially depreciating assets. And besides, I'm not sure I want to be a landlord. What should we do?"

"Ed Magnus of This is Money replies: Getting on the property ladder in London is no mean feat these days, with an average home costing £516,000 according to the latest ONS statistics. You must have saved hard to get on the ladder, so I am sorry to hear that both homes now feel more like liabilities than assets. If you bought the properties in London within the last six or seven years, the fact they've both fallen in value is sadly not surprising. I've been encountering increasing numbers of people who have faced a similar dilemma with flats they own in London. Some have decided to hold on and ride it out, either by renting them out or staying put with the hope that prices rise. Others have been forced to sell at a loss."

"Once called the powerhouse of the Chinese economy, the real estate sector accounted for 30% of the country’s GDP but was turned down by the reforms introduced by the Chinese government. Property sellers caught themselves in a vicious cycle of selling properties before project completion to fund ongoing projects. This created a huge bubble, more like a Ponzi scheme, prompting empty apartments and plunging prices. The fallout, thus, resulted in a financial crunch for the highly leveraged property companies. According to S&P, an estimated 2 million homes remain unfinished, and citizens who had paid for a house were unable to move into it. A country where protests are rare has seen angry buyers rage like wildfire towards the property holders."

"'It’s important to recognize that there is a longer-term challenge here, and that is we essentially have too large a construction sector in China, we have too large a real estate sector because underlying demand for apartments is declining,' said Frederic Neumann, HSBC chief Asia economist. 'We have slowing urbanization. We have declining demographics.' Bryan Gorrita, a real estate broker, says the escalating youth unemployment rate, currently hovering around 21%, is further compounding China’s economic woes. 'The government's reluctance to disclose these alarming figures only fuels concerns about the nation's economic trajectory.'"