A report from Patch. "An Upper East Side man who was previously accused of sexual assault at the East Village bar he owned now refuses to leave his apartment after it was foreclosed in 2022, according to a new report in Crain's New York Business. The homeowner, Frank Steo, has not allowed his Upper East Side apartment's buyer access to the apartment and is still living there with his family, according to a lawsuit. According to the lawsuit, the 'Defendants refused to vacate the premises, and [the] plaintiff is unwillingly funding defendants' lifestyle of living for free in a property they do not own, and have no rights to."

Click Orlando in Florida. "A Brevard County couple said they are now in danger of losing their home after a state-approved, clean energy home improvement lender failed to pay an air conditioning contractor. Rick and Cathy Yerkes were approved for a Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) loan by Ygrene Energy Fund in 2022. In September of that year, they signed a contract with a Brevard County company to install a new air conditioning unit. 'They completed the job on a Thursday afternoon,' Rick Yerkes told News 6. 'On Friday, I submitted the paperwork, and on Monday, they sent me a stop work order. I said it’s too late, the work is already completed. They said we’re out of funds, and we will not be paying. There’s a real chance we will lose this house over it. We’re in foreclosure. If we don’t get a loan modification, we will lose the house.'"

From CBS 8. "Recent headlines have talked about the amount of foreclosures in California jumping 50-70% higher than pandemic-era lows. CBS 8’s Heather Myers looked at the foreclosure market in San Diego County and had an opportunity to tour a 15,000 square foot mansion that is currently in foreclosure. The mansion is located in the gated Alvarado Estates Community, near San Diego State University. The trees outside the home are overgrown and there is a giant lock on the front door. The pool is half empty and the water is green. Sandy Hardcastle-Taylor, the listing agent, says the story behind the foreclosure is not being not being made public. The asking price is $4,095,000. CBS 8 conducted a real estate records search and found there are only five homes in foreclosure on the market right now in San Diego County. Attom's records show that in all of 2023, there were 2,029 foreclosure filings in San Diego County."

"We asked realtor Sandy Hardcastle-Taylor if there are any deals out there right now? 'This is a deal, this is a screaming deal,' she said about her listing in Alvardo Estates."

The Mercury News. "The market for hotel purchases has nosedived in both the Bay Area and California, in a sign that investors believe the weakness in the lodging sector has yet to run its course. Some hotels tumbled into foreclosure during 2023 in some instances, while in other cases, hotel property owners simply walked away from making makings and gave the keys to their lenders. Alan Reay, president of Irvine-based Atlas Hospitality Group believes the hotel market in the Bay Area and statewide could become worse before it gets better. 'If interest rates come back down, then we will see sales activity pick up and values will stabilize or move up,' Reay said. 'If interest rates do not decline, we may start to see more distressed sales. That will create downward pressure on values.'"

From KTAR News. "The Westin Tempe faces a potential foreclosure sale after failing to make its loan payments. The lender for the 290-room hotel near Seventh Street and Mill Avenue in downtown Tempe filed a notice of trustee sale earlier this week, according Maricopa County records. Such notices inform borrowers and property owners they are facing a potential foreclosure and auction sale. The notice said that the 18-story hotel, which opened in 2021, will be auctioned off to the highest bidder on April 24 at the Arizona Superior Court building in downtown Phoenix. The construction loan for the Westin Tempe was issued in 2019 by Dallas-based Hall Structured Finance to an entity connected to Las Vegas-based CAI Investments LLC for $86.5 million. Hall’s president, Mike Jaynes, said at the time that the Tempe hotel’s 'premier location in this market.'"

From Bisnow Houston. "Insurance prices are growing faster for multifamily than any other commercial real estate asset class, with national operators reporting a 26% rise in insurance costs on average from 2022 to 2023 and some being hit with 300% and 400% increases. The rise is most acute in catastrophe-prone regions, especially Texas, Florida and Louisiana. But multifamily owners and operators everywhere are feeling the pain of high rates, limitations in coverage, hikes on deductibles and a shrinking private insurance market. 'I have so many investors that have gone into foreclosures,' said Hanin Al Qoreishy, CEO of Houston-based brokerage Legacy Insurance Advisors. 'My business partner owns a mortgage company and has issued so many foreclosures on properties as well. I can say that it’s not going to get better any time soon. It’s probably going to get worse mid-year.'"

From Cottage Life. "If someone had told you in late 2019 that a virus first spotted in China would create unprecedented demand for cottage real estate in Canada, would you have believed them? Because that’s what we saw: a mass exodus north during the pandemic. From 2020 to 2022, cottage prices across the country jumped an eye-popping 39 per cent, with waterfront properties reaching an aggregate price of $736,900, up from $498,111, according to Royal LePage. Andrew Thake, a mortgage broker in Ottawa says the added financial pressure of rising interest rates, inflation, and the cost of cottage maintenance could prompt some first-time buyers to sell—he’s already noticed a few 'For Sale' signs around his cottage in Perth, Ont."

"'Right now, you might pay a few thousand dollars more in interest with higher rates, but you’re not paying extra tens of thousands of dollars by competing with a dozen other people for the same cottage like you were during the pandemic,' he says. 'Buyers have more strength right now.' 'I did a lot of my own social media and marketing, and I was still able to pay a significant amount of our mortgage this year,' says Sarah Etherden, who rents out her cottage on Kennisis Lake near Haliburton, Ont., which she bought in September 2021. 'Many people I know barely got any bookings. You can’t just throw a property up on Airbnb anymore and expect bookings to come in,” she says. “I think there’s a lot more competition in the market as people try to offset their mortgage rates. I also cut my prices, which a lot of owners were not willing to do.'"

"'If people took a shorter-than-five year mortgage, they’re coming out of their contract in 2024,' says Christopher Alexander, the president of Re/Max Canada. 'If they’re on a fixed-rate home equity line of credit, which is a good chunk of the market, it’s highly likely that interest rates will push them into selling because the short-term rental market fell out this summer.'"

City AM in the UK. "A 12-storey tower in Canary Wharf has reportedly been sold for 60 per cent less than its 2017 purchase price. 5 Churchill Place was placed into receivership by a syndicate of lenders last year and its Chinese owners Cheung Kei Group, put the building on the market. The building was bought for close to £300m by the Asian property developer back in 2017. However, a report in React News said Menomadin Group, the business owned by Israeli entrepreneur Haim Taib, has agreed to buy the building for £110m. The deal marks one of the largest distressed commercial property sales in London so far and could be a sign of things to come for the east London business district. 5 Churchill Place is just one of three buildings in the region likely to be sold."

From Reuters. "SBB said on Tuesday that one of its creditors had started legal proceedings against the Swedish property group for its failure to repay a bond. The holdings of the bondholder represent about 46 million euros ($49.43 million), SBB said, adding that it may take around 18 months to reach a judgement. U.S. hedge fund Fir Tree Partners had told Reuters in November that it was accelerating its notes and starting proceedings against SBB for recovery of the debt. The group is at the epicentre of a property crash that threatens to engulf the Swedish economy, having racked up vast debt by buying public property, including social housing, government offices, schools and hospitals."

This Is Money. "The moribund German economy suffered a fresh setback amid warnings there is ‘no end in sight’ to the crisis gripping its construction industry. In a bleak update, S&P Global said the index of activity among German builders tumbled to 36.3 last month, well below the 50 cut-off between growth and decline. The data provider said it was ‘again one of the lowest’ readings ever recorded and implied ‘a sharp rate of contraction in overall building activity’. Cyrus de la Rubia, chief economist at Hamburg Commercial Bank, which compiled the report with S&P, said: ‘Just when you think it cannot get any worse, it can. The German construction sector is extending and deepening its downturn with no near end in sight.’"

News.com.au in Australia. "A building company that undertook more than $10 million worth of construction work in the past year has collapsed. News.com.au can reveal that DC Living Pty Ltd, trading under the names Living Homes VIC and Living Homes QLD, went into administration last week. The builder was headquartered in Brisbane and it’s unclear if anyone in Victoria has also been impacted. Signs such as 'pay up ya flog' have been scrawled across at least one building site that news.com.au knows of. Ashton Close, a tradie who has been left $26,775 out of pocket over the debacle, said 'it’s a disgrace.' 'They’ve dragged the chain on paying us, they’ve said they need an extra couple of weeks,' Mr Close told news.com.au. 'Before Christmas we were just getting the run-around. They’ve stung us about $26,000, it hurts, it definitely hurts.'"

The Globe and Mail. "In December, new home prices fell by the highest amount in almost a decade, while overall investment in the property sector was down 9.6 per cent last year. Many households store their wealth in property, and fears Evergrande would not be able to complete promised developments have sparked protests in some parts of the country. Stock market investors are not much better off. In the past three years, more than $8-trillion has been wiped off the value of Chinese and Hong Kong stocks."

"Nanjing resident Ray Zhang said she had bought into bullish narratives around the Chinese stock market and an expected rebound following the lifting of pandemic controls, plumbing much of her savings into domestic equities. 'New Year is just around the corner and I don’t know how I will tell my family about the losses,' the 27-year-old told The Globe and Mail. 'My stocks are going down all the time, I feel like someone is stealing my money every day.'"

"'China’s economic policy-making process appears broken, or at the very least impaired,' Logan Wright, a U.S.-based analyst with the Rhodium Group, wrote last week. 'As China confronts its most significant crisis of market confidence, there is only official silence, along with the tedium of multipronged proposals for initiatives that are never completed. Instead, economic policy-making is starting to resemble the period of zero COVID, complete with denials, unrealistic messaging and then finally a mad scramble to adjust to reality.'"