A report from the Miami Herald. "Homebuyers and renters are in luck. Real estate experts predict you can expect better deals in South Florida in 2024. 'There’s that old saying of what goes up, must come down,' said Jack McCabe, owner of the Deerfield Beach-based real estate and economic research firm Jack McCabe Expert Services. 'We’re going to see that this year. A lot of what drove the market will taper off,' he said. 'Yes, people might be coming from across the globe, but will they make up for the domestic, Northeast buyer? No, they won’t. Are we going to see a tapering off of these unrealistic, artificial, inflated prices? Yes, we are. For condos and townhomes, we’ve got a lot of new product coming on the market. As a result, we’re going to see the prices of condos and townhomes coming down.'"

WKRN in Tennessee. "A rollercoaster ride — that’s how experts describe what this past year’s been like in real estate. 'It’s a real time to strike for investors,' said real estate agent Jeff Checko. 'Now is one of those ‘cash is king’ times that you should be absolutely taking advantage of maybe even bulk purchases from builders that are really willing to just get out with their behind.' But what about buyers in 2024? 'So, if I’m a first-time homebuyer, let me say, ‘Let me not get a new car right now. Let me take care of getting this asset, even if it puts me a little uncomfortable in terms of my monthly cash flow and how I feel about it,’ because that situation could very well occur again, and now you’re getting pushed out another couple of years,' Checko explained. As far as the hot parts of town, Checko sees the biggest potential for price spikes in Nashville’s urban core."

The San Francisco Chronicle in California. "The five most expensive unsold homes in San Francisco have one thing in common: Despite their beauty, luxury and history, they’ve lingered on the market and are still for sale as the year ends. The first three quarters of this year were hard on luxury sales, with many real estate agents attributing the depression in high-end real estate to the economic worries of early 2023, as well as the relentless 'doom loop' media coverage aimed at the city. People who have $35 million in the bank typically don’t have to buy a house, and especially not in San Francisco. 'Upper-tier clients in San Francisco are grappling with an existential quandary: Is this really where I want to park $20 million?' said Herman Chan of Sotheby’s International Realty in an email to SFGATE."

The Pueblo Chieftain. "Pueblo's niche affordable home-building business, indieDwell of Colorado, is struggling financially, but there is an effort underway to rebrand the business and provide much-needed jobs for Pueblo residents, especially its second-chance employees. Civil lawsuits against indieDwell are starting to stack up in Pueblo District Court. Whitestone & Co. is 'one of the largest Section 8 landlords in the country' whose properties are 'really affordable homes,' said Gino Cozza, CEO for Whitestone & Co. Cozza supplied the Chieftain with a bank statement indicating Whitestone paid a $627,672 deposit to indieDwell through JP Morgan Chase bank on Nov. 22, 2022. The deposit was for 20 homes."

"Cozza said he would have a conversation with one indieDwell board member who he was supposed to follow up with the next week, only to find out that the board member had left. 'A year came and went and I don't have any homes and they don't have any money,' he said. 'I've been trying for many months to try to avoid getting lawyers involved, but I finally got to that point after the last phone call I had with them. It was clear I was being strung along.'"

The Wall Street Journal. "From 2019 to 2022, a new type of real-estate fund became one of the hottest fundraising juggernauts on Wall Street by giving individual investors the chance to participate in soaring values of apartment buildings, warehouses and other types of commercial property. Last year, those funds, known as nontraded real-estate investment trusts, ran off the rails. As concerns increased about the troubled commercial-property market, fundraising plummeted by the funds’ sponsors, many of them giant investment firms such as Blackstone and Starwood Capital Group."

"Redemptions slowed toward the end of 2023. But outflows are expected to continue to exceed funds raised as 2024 begins, making the business a symbol of one of the worst downturns to hit the commercial-property industry since World War II. 'If this thing doesn’t turn around they’re going to have to keep hitting the asset-sale button,' said Kevin Gannon, Stanger’s chief executive. 'Investors are saying they’re not buying [the funds’ valuations] because they’re not giving them money and they’re redeeming like gangbusters.'"

The Columbus Dispatch. "Many central Ohio business leaders aren't convinced that inflation is going away anytime soon, even as a growing amount of evidence shows otherwise. In fact, they think it could get worse in 2024. The annual Columbus CEO survey of business leaders on economic conditions in central Ohio shows that 59% of them expect inflation to worsen in 2024. Another 4% expect a large increase in inflation. 'The findings from the University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey found exactly the same thing,' said economist Bill LaFayette, owner of economic consulting firm Regionomics, who completed the analysis of the survey for CEO. 'People are thinking inflation will increase.'"

The Globe and Mail in Canada. "After being vilified for its plans to buy $1-billion worth of houses in Ontario to rent them out, Core Development Group Ltd. says it now also wants to build new rental houses from scratch. Core’s founder and chief executive officer, Corey Hawtin says he now sees a chance to build not apartment buildings, but rather single-family homes that are purpose-built for rental, to fill what he characterizes as an unmet need for detached housing in the rental market. The company is under contract on two sites, one in Kingston and one in London."

"If Core follows through on its plans to build single-family rentals, it would be benefiting from a downturn in new home building. Some developers have had to postpone or even sell projects because they have been unable to handle higher borrowing and construction costs. 'The low-rise developers are not able to sell those homes. So we think there’s an opportunity to bring that sort of scale, scale up the business in that market,' Mr. Hawtin said."

Glasgow Live in Scotland. "Residents of a new build estate in Glasgow feel they have been left 'abandoned' by homebuilders as many of the promised features remain unfinished. Lochwood Gardens estate, in Easterhouse, welcomed its first residents back in 2020. Merchant Homes started work in the area in April 2019 after plans were greenlit by Glasgow City Council. Samantha Deakin and her young family were one of the first to move into development in July 2020. Since her first day on Lochwood Gardens, the 33-year-old has looked out onto an unfinished car park which becomes overgrown with weeds in the summer."

"She told Glasgow Live: 'When we moved in it was all rubble, they told us not to worry and it would be sorted within a month. Three and a half years later it is still not fully finished. We keep getting promised that the work will start as soon as possible but we have been left with an eyesore this was supposed to be stones and landscaped. It is still all rubble and weeds. Driving in here is depressing. I thought this was my dream home to raise my kids in but it has been a nightmare.'"

"Another resident, who moved to Lochwood Gardens in December 2021, says she felt a lack of security in her own home. On a few occasions, she has had to phone emergency services after seeing vandals break in to properties still under construction. The concerned homeowner said: 'There were vandals coming into the unfinished homes. They put up emergency numbers but they turned around and said to phone the emergency services because they aren't there to secure the site. It caused me real issues with my mental health. Living on this estate is depressing. A lot of these house were over £200,000 which is a lot of money for this area. I'm from Easterhouse and I wanted to stay here but I was sold a nightmare. Nothing has been done properly. I worked hard to get this house but I regret buying here.'"

The Times-Age in New Zealand. "In light of recent coverage by the Times-Age over Mt Munro property buyers claiming they were misled about a wind farm development close to their houses, two other parties who recently bought in the area claim they are in the same boat. Chris Davies and her husband Dave Berry moved from Waikato to Eketāhuna in 2021 because they wanted somewhere quiet. Davies said they made the offer in December 2020, offered the vendors 'top dollar,' and had finalised the sale by January."

"They moved onto the site permanently later that year, and Davies said that at the end of 2022, they had a new property shipped to the site from Waikato. 'We love the serenity of the place, and we love the views,' Davies said. 'We positioned the new house with the bedroom facing those ridges. If the wind farm goes ahead, we’ll be staring directly at it. If we’d known all of this beforehand, we wouldn’t have gone offering the money.'"

"She said they had reached out to the agent who sold them the property, who had told them he had no knowledge of the wind farm at the time of purchase. 'The question is, who’s responsibility is it?' Davies asked. 'You put your trust in your real estate agent, and how do you know what questions to ask if you don’t know what’s going on?'"

"Another resident [who wanted to stay anonymous] bought his land in September last year and said there was no mention of wind farms from the agent verbally or in writing. Now armed with the knowledge that Meridian’s proposed wind farm for Mt Munro has been in the pipeline for years, he said he feels misled. 'When I viewed it, it was peaceful. Looking out from anywhere on the property was just green hills and no interruptions,' he said. 'But now there could be a honky tonk windmill in my face, which is a big letdown. It feels like there’s been deceit from the agents. I’m starting to regret the purchase."

From Barron's. "Liu Jianguo, a 47-year-old teacher in the second-tier city of Guiyang, considers himself lucky. He lives in a sliver of China where the property market isn’t withering. 'I have friends in the big cities,' he said. 'They are aware they’re in a bad place for buying or selling real estate.' New home prices in China’s 70 big cities fell for a sixth month and values in the secondary market declined the most in nine years. China’s priciest housing markets, Beijing and Shanghai, relaxed homebuying policies to boost the market."

"'However one slices the data, the existing excess supply in the market is likely to take at least another four years to unwind, absent a meaningful pickup in demand,' Oxford Economics lead economist Louise Loo said in a recent report. 'Increasing supply coming from secondary market transactions—as households, worried about depleting profits from price declines, sell their second or third homes—is an additional drag to this process,' she said, adding that 'developers’ inventory is far too large for households to absorb quickly.'"

"The sector’s struggles are hitting investors, homeowners, and the offshore bond market. The epic bear run for Chinese property stocks is nearing a 14-year low. Taken together, China’s overall GDP growth is likely to slow to 4% in 2024 and 2025, Moody’s analysts said in a report this month. 'To offset the diminished role of the property sector over the medium term, substantial and coordinated reforms will be needed for consumption and higher value-added production to drive growth,' it said."

"But that solution too has its problems. An estimated 70% of China’s household assets are parked in property. Convincing people to spend and revive the economy when their core savings are being wiped away is a hard sell. 'I’m too old to go investing elsewhere,' said recent Beijing retiree Liu Ming. 'But I’m telling my daughter: ‘Don’t put all your eggs in property.'"