A report from Fox Business. "The share of mortgages with a rate below 6% has fallen to 88.5% from a record high of 92.8% in mid-2022, indicating that some homeowners have given up their lower rate to move, according to Redfin. 'Sellers have started coming out of the woodwork because that's typical for January and because mortgage rates have dropped,' David Palmer, a Redfin Premier real estate agent in Seattle said. 'They're also coming to terms with the fact that rates aren't going back down to 3% any time soon, which makes it easier to pull the trigger on selling.'"

Yahoo Finance. "Over the past two years as the Fed raised rates, many builders leaned heavily on mortgage rate buydowns, where they cover a portion of the interest rate — usually a percentage point or two — that buyers pay on a loan for a specified period of time. One builder has hinted it will pull back from concessions like mortgage rate buydowns and instead sweeten the deal for buyers through other means. KB Home will 'reduce those incentives [and] take it to price' in the first and second quarters of this year, COO Robert McGibney said on the company's fourth quarter earnings call with analysts."

The Jacksonville Daily Record in Florida. "Two of the biggest Downtown property developments on the Northbank have fizzled due to increased costs of construction and difficulties obtaining large-project financing, according to the chief executive of the Downtown Investment Authority. In an interview with the Jacksonville Daily Record, DIA CEO Lori Boyer said the city-owned sites of the proposed American Lions tower and Hardwick at Ford on Bay may be put back up for disposition – offered up for new redevelopment proposals, in other words. Boyer said both developers ran into the same problem after their redevelopment agreements were finalized. '(The projects) didn’t pencil with the increased costs from what they had agreed to,' she said. 'They couldn’t deliver on it when costs went up.'"

"A major project on the Southbank, the Miami-based Related Group’s 24-story residential tower, also ran into problems with increased costs to the tune of $30 million more for construction than the developers initially anticipated. Boyer said the DIA and Related are discussing a new agreement, which she hopes to present to the DIA board in March. Meanwhile, Boyer said residential developers are still having trouble securing loans. Council approved a $1.5 million historic preservation grant for the Ambassador/CNB project in January 2019. Today, the bank building remains standing and the Ambassador and Independent Life buildings are largely unfinished, surrounded by construction fencing. Boyer said the situation was unfortunate. 'They’re probably not any more of an eyesore than they were before they started them, but they’re also not any better,' she said."

The San Francisco Chronicle in California. "In Los Angeles in the late 1990s and early 2000s, no place was cooler or more thrilling than Melrose Avenue. From roughly the late 1970s through the early 2000s, the mile-long stretch between La Brea and Fairfax was beloved by tourists and locals alike. While Melrose still bears flashes of this original irreverent spirit, the difference now is the crowds are gone — and so are many of the eccentric businesses that made it a destination to begin with. If you walk or drive down Melrose, you’ll notice that dozens of once-full storefronts now sit vacant and boarded up. Mainstays that temporarily closed years ago still have no return date in sight. And newer places have a habit of turning over or going out of business in mere weeks. The reality is that residents and business owners alike are feeling the sting of Melrose’s ongoing decline."

"Residents and business owners cite 2020 as an inflection point for Melrose. After some restaurants and retailers gingerly reopened after the first lockdown, Melrose saw lootings in late May of that year. 'Though most [Black Lives Matter] protesters assembled peaceably throughout the day, nighttime brought a level of destruction not seen in Los Angeles since the 1992 riots sparked after the police officers’ acquittal in the beating of Rodney King,' the Los Angeles Times reported."

"Dom DeLuca, the owner of skate shop Brooklyn Projects says that businesses on Melrose, many of them small and minority-owned, were left to their own devices in the summer of 2020. Some opted not to return. 'The city didn’t go, ‘OK, let’s give the money to Melrose so we can rebeautify, so we can clean up, fix the broken glass.’ And a lot of the stores went: ‘F—k it. We’re not going to do it,’ DeLuca says. “All these places that were staples closed, and now nothing is taking its place. It’s like a ghost town.'"

The Stranger in Washington. "I have written about the unfinished towers in the Denny Triangle in the past. Their future is, according to most reports, still unknown. Construction still appears slow, if it's moving at all; images I took of the development in August of 2022 cannot be distinguished from those I took last week. According to Canada's Globe and Mail, Westbank, the Vancouver, BC-based developer, has faced an 'onslaught of litigation… due to unpaid bills.' That's about as much as we know—or as much as we are allowed to know."

"But what we can see, day in and day out, are the cranes sitting on top of the unfinished towers like stuffed birds. What might breathe life into them again? And how long can the city wait for construction to resume? This question brings me to Oceanwide Plaza in Los Angeles, an unfinished billion-dollar project that died in 2019 and is now known by the whole world as the Graffiti Towers. The scale of Oceanwide Plaza's capital collapse is such that the city of Los Angeles, a city with a GDP of $1.5 trillion (which is on par with Brazil), is now stuck with buildings it can't afford to demolish."

"There is another reason why the buildings can't be repurposed from billionaire urbanism to what LA and Seattle and other cities lack, the social spirit. The damage caused by incompletion and inactivity (a finished building is, after all, about constant maintenance) is so considerable it would 'take up to a year of repairs just to get to the point where construction could resume.' And that year would cost a pretty penny."

The Globe and Mail in Canada. "438 King St., W., No. 1105, Toronto. Asking price: $859,990 (late October, 2023). Previous asking price: $919,990 (early October, 2023); $969,990 (August, 2023). Selling price: $830,000 (December, 2023). Previous selling price: $840,000 (July, 2020). This two-bedroom corner unit was listed at an asking price of $969,990 shortly after another unit in the building, similar but with less favourable views, finishes and outdoor space, sold for about $900,000. A lack of buyers willing to view the unit led the sellers to drop the price to $919,990. This piqued the interest of one visitor, who nonetheless waited for six weeks – and another price reduction, this time to $859,990 – to begin negotiations. A final purchase price of $830,000 was accepted."

"'It goes to show, there wasn’t a lot of urgency on the market, even though we dropped the price from when they saw it originally,' agent Robin Pope said. '[Even though] it was a great price, the buyer was still expecting a discount.' The sale price was $10,000 less than the owners paid for the unit in 2020."

The National on the UK. "Early on a Thursday evening, a birthday party is taking place high up in the Leadenhall Building in the City of London. Otherwise known as The Cheesegrater because of its distinctive wedge shape, the Leadenhall is one of the biggest buildings in the financial district. Opened in 2014, it has 48 floors, providing almost 85,000 square metres of office space. It’s spectacular, granted. But it is also tinged. All around us – despite the landmark architecture – is emptiness. The giant Leadenhall Building seems devoid of people, apart from the security guards below."

"As we gaze across at the other towers, we can see into those that are brightly lit. Only a handful of folks are at their desks and even they seem to be packing up to head off. The point is, it’s not late, barely 6.30pm. In days gone by, at this time on a Thursday, these offices would still be heaving. Bankers, lawyers, accountants, insurers – they would be hunched over their screens or locked in meetings. But that was pre-pandemic, pre-work from home. Up here, it’s obvious: London is not working, not like it used to."

"What we can see, don’t forget, is prime commercial real estate. At the bottom are the secondary streets and the lesser blocks. Sure enough, later, on the way home, our taxi passes doors with heavy chains across them, litter on the front steps, windows that could do with a clean, and rooms that have not been fully occupied for years. Down here, there is a marked air of abandonment and decay. If landlords want to recoup their outlay, they will have to aim these new apartments at the top end. Is the demand really there? London and the other cities are already awash with luxury residential towers and conversions. No, what we saw at the Cheesegrater was proof of a growing crisis. It’s also something of an elephant in the room."

"This year will see some $929 billion of outstanding US commercial real estate mortgages due to mature. Most commercial real estate mortgages are interest-only – so the principle has still to be repaid or the loan has to be refinanced. The fear is of defaults on those loans. If they reach 10 per cent, the National Bureau for Economic Research estimates that 231 US banks will see the market value of their assets fall below the value of their customer deposits. A contributor to the study, Columbia Business School professor Tomasz Piskorski, claimed: 'Because of high interest rates, there are dozens to hundreds of banks that are at the brink of solvency. So, this additional commercial real estate distress puts them into the group of banks that potentially are susceptible to runs by depositors.'"

"On both sides of the Atlantic, unless people return to a five-day working week, unless offices fill up again – and there is precious little sign of any serious change, despite the best efforts of some employers to persuade staff back to their desks – shakedown, possibly meltdown, awaits."

ABC News in Australia. "Apartment owners who bought into the uninhabitable Mascot Towers in Sydney are on the brink of securing a multi-million-dollar payout from the New South Wales government, almost five years after their ordeal began. Residents of the complex in Sydney's inner-south are millions of dollars out of pocket, after cracks were discovered in the building's basement in 2019. The 10-storey building remains empty, while owners' assets are now worth a fraction of the price. The deal would allow apartment owners to finally move on, but they will still incur major losses."

"Unit owner Rachel Williams said owners had been 'forced into a corner' in accepting the deal, with no prospect of a better resolution. 'There is no win here,' she said. One owner contacted by the ABC, who stands to lose up to $2 million, said they were glad the ordeal would be over."