A report from the Arizona Republic. "Metro Phoenix’s housing market ended 2023 better than 2022, when there was an abrupt slowdown due to rising interest rates. But last year was still a slow one for home sales after the frenzy of 2021. For all of 2023, home sales were down 14% from 2022 and 32.3% lower than 2021’s frenzied pace. Only 2007 and 2008 were slower, and those years were the start of the housing crash and Great Recession. Ibuyers, including Opendoor and Offerpad, and Wall Street-based investors snapped up metro Phoenix homes during 2021 and early 2022, driving up prices. But those investors began losing money when the market started to cool abruptly in mid-2022. Veteran housing analyst Tom Ruff with the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Services’ Information Market said investors' 'lack of logic and restraint in 2021 led to billions of dollars in losses in 2023.'"

The Palm Beach Post in Florida. "Sales of Palm Beach County single-family homes slumped in 2023 as wary buyers faced higher interest rates and rising insurance costs, but a lack of choices also spiked prices to a median of $597,000. Sale prices peaked in June at a record median of $625,000. The number of closed sales last year sagged to 13,868, which was down 8% from 2022, and about a whopping 23% lower than 2020. There were 4,575 existing homes for sale in December in Palm Beach County. That’s up 13% from the same time in 2022. The months supply of inventory was at 4 months, up 25% from December 2022."

"'It was such a strong sellers market for so long and now it’s shifted some,' said Realtor Sabra Kirkpatrick. 'Buyers can negotiate again whereas there were a couple years when they had to pay over the asking price, or the price was the price and that was it.'"

The Easy Reader in California. "Manhattan Beach home sales sharply declined in 2023, dropping from 322 sales in 2022 to 253 last year, while median sale price also dropped from $3.1 to $2.8 million. The decrease in sales, based on sales data reported to the Multiple Listing Service database, continues a precipitous two-year drop from 518 sales in 2022 and represented a 37 percent decline from the average of 393 sales per year since the beginning of the Great Recession in 2008. Last year’s sales were lower than the lowest year of the recession, 2008, in which 316 homes sold."

"Realtor Richard Haynes, who publishes a blog that analyzes the entire South Bay market, found that Manhattan Beach was not alone in seeing declines in overall home sales. His analysis showed that all three Beach Cities and every town on the Palos Verdes Peninsula except one — the gated community of Rolling Hills — experienced sales declines in 2023. While Manhattan Beach’s home sales were down 21.4%, Hermosa Beach’s were down 25.3% and Redondo Beach 14.7%. In PV, Palos Verdes Estates was down 11.7%, Rancho Palos Verdes 22.4%, and Rolling Hills estates 33.6%."

"Haynes likewise found median price declines in most of the cities he analyzed. Manhattan Beach’s 10.7% was the biggest decline, followed by an 8.4% decline in Palos Verdes Estates (from $2.8 million to $2.565,500 million), 4.3 percent in Rancho Palos Verdes ($1.75 million down to $1.675 million), and Redondo Beach down 3.3% (from $1,450,000 million to $1,402,500 million)."

The San Francisco Examiner in California. "Winter has settled upon downtown San Francisco. Office vacancies in The City’s business core started the year at a record 35.6%, according to real-estate firm CBRE. That is roughly equivalent to 22.5 Salesforce Towers — and experts expect the empty space to grow. Connor Kidd, CEO of The Swig Company in San Francisco,, together with SKS Partners, bought the 22-story building at 350 California Street in August for $61.1 million, or $205 per square foot — a remarkable deal given that replacement costs for such buildings can easily exceed $1,000 per square foot, according to an analyst with the real estate company JLL."

"After three straight years of 'negative net absorption,' meaning more space was available for rent at the end of the year than at the beginning, reaching 13.5 million square feet, for a four-year combined total of almost 22.8 million square feet, according to CoStar. By comparison, the total amount from 2008 to 2010 during the Great Recession was just under 5.2 million square feet, and though the total was 9.8 million in 2001 after the dot-com crash, that lasted only one year, CoStar data show."

"Among the hardest-hit areas was San Francisco, which lost $31.3 billion in value, behind Palo Alto-Sunnyvale at $33.9 billion, said the study, conducted by researchers from NYU Stern School of Business, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Columbia Business School. Fitch Ratings, noting that U.S. office availability was at an all-time high, issued a note the same month warning about rising delinquencies in office commercial-mortgage-backed security loans. The agency highlighted San Francisco’s central business district for having recent office-building sale prices 66 percent below a 2020 peak."

"'We expect a lot of office space to be turned into something else, especially because there’s no demand for it, so it’s a very long-term process to turn this around,' said Nigel Hughes, senior director of market analytics at CoStar."

From Baptist News. "The Georgia Baptist Mission Board, once the largest Southern Baptist state convention east of the Mississippi River, has sold its headquarters building for half its original $42.3 million cost. The state convention announced the sale on Jan. 4 without disclosing the 50% loss of equity. The sale coincides with the downsizing of the ministry that began in 2019 and has resulted in nearly 75% reduction of staff and scaled-back ministries. The building, which housed nearly 300 staff at its 2006 dedication, only housed about 30 a year ago. The one-two punch of a failed massive expansion of the property across the street and the national COVID shutdown collapsed the demand for the office real estate market."

The Globe and Mail in Canada. "Patrick Rocca, Toronto-based broker with Bosley Real Estate, says some shrewd buyers submitted offers towards the end of the fall market, when prices had weakened and pessimism pervaded the market. 'The prices were off – there’s no doubt about it.' According to Mr. Rocca, some buyers gauged that December might turn out to be the market’s low point before a possible rally if interest rates drop. Meanwhile, homeowners who needed to sell softened their stance after holding firm in the fall as many properties languished. 'Sellers in November thought they were still in April,' he says."

"Mr. Rocca says the fall was a nerve-wracking time as deals fell apart. Some buyers failed to lock down the financing they needed to close the purchase, or last-minute appraisals came in below the sale price. Lenders have become much more stringent, he adds. He advises listing agents to avoid dealing with flimsy offers. They should also ensure that buyers attach a hefty deposit so they won’t be tempted to walk away from a deal. While agreements of purchase and sale are legally binding documents, Mr. Rocca says buyers who get cold feet may look for an escape. 'If there’s an out, a buyer can find it.'"

The Telegraph. "From bankrupt to billionaire to bankrupt again, all in the space of seven years. Robert Bull, the bungalow tycoon nicknamed 'Bob the Builder,' is being chased by creditors just nine months after being crowned as one of Britain’s richest men with an estimated fortune of £1.9bn. Now, his holiday park empire is being broken up bit by bit, as those who lent Bull money seek to reclaim more than £725m in debts. Last week, 35 of Bull’s bungalow sites – owned by Royale Life, one of his many corporate entities – were vacuumed up by rival property developer, Ambassador Regency Group."

"While the sale may have ended months of uncertainty for affected residents, there is no doubt that more deals will be needed to settle debts. Bull was declared bankrupt by a county court in Southampton last month. Creditors and residents of Bull’s properties alike now face a nervous wait to find out their fate. As ballooning debts have toppled Bull’s empire, homeowners have been left without basic services. The drastic drop in wealth has raised questions among people close to the administration, some of whom are asking where all the money went."

"'He managed to convince a lot of lenders, and serious ones at that, to provide funds to support him,' says a City source. 'Some of his businesses were operationally positive, it’s not as if they were burning cash. This then begs the question, where did the cash go? It is not as if lenders have called in debts for no good reason.'"

South China Morning Post. "The Chinese developer boom that kicked off in the Australian and New Zealand housing markets a decade ago has ended. But, unlike other foreign developers before them, their time has closed with a slow fizzle rather than a stampede exit. Amid a property crisis in China triggered by Beijing's policies to curb risky borrowing, softer demand for flats in the region, and challenging business conditions such as rising construction costs, many Chinese developers have scaled back operations or closed shop. The way these developers ended their time in the Australasian markets has been largely driven by their ownership and how much their funders have been affected by China's property crisis."

"State-owned developers like Greenland Group and China Poly Group have been actively closing down their Australian operations as their parent companies claw back capital. Subsidiaries of publicly-listed Chinese developers such as Country Garden, China Aoyuan and Chiwayland have also relinquished their interests as some of them struggle with debt repayment in the face of poor sales and weak cash flow. Chinese developers have been compared to the rush of Japanese investors on the Gold Coast in Australia in the 1980s, who left abruptly when the Japanese economy's asset bubble burst. State-owned developers such as Greenland and Poly are among those which have made the clearest 'exits' from the Australian market as they actively sell landholdings and downsize."

From AFP. "China's economy last year grew at one of its slowest rates in more than three decades, official figures showed Wednesday, as it was battered by a crippling property crisis, sluggish consumption and global turmoil. Financial woes at major firms such as Evergrande and Country Garden are now fuelling buyer mistrust against a backdrop of unfinished housing developments and falling prices. Property was for years seen by many Chinese as a safe place to park savings, but price drops have hit their wallets hard and Beijing's support measures for the sector have so far had little effect."

"'What China saw last year was possibly the most disappointing post-Covid recovery imaginable,' Shehzad Qazi, managing director of China Beige Book, a consultancy firm that tracks the Chinese economy, told AFP. 'The economy limped to calendar's end,' he said."