A report from KSNV in Nevada. "Clark County reports issuing 13 citations in the last week to homeowners operating illegal short-term rental properties in unincorporated Clark County before the Super Bowl. 'Some homeowners are still trying to comply with the law and not rent their houses but some other ones have bills to pay, and they have no other choice, but to try to continue renting their houses,' said Jaqueline Flores, Founder of the Greater Las Vegas Short-Term Rental Association."

KLAS in Nevada. "Las Vegas police are asking residents to stay vigilant for ‘party houses’ in their neighborhoods during Super Bowl weekend. In 2023, there were at least four reports of house party deaths across Las Vegas, which took the lives of at least five people and injured several others. At least three of the people killed were teenagers. In the past, police have indicated that parties at short-term rentals also contribute to the problem among permanent residents. Police also typically receive more calls for service during tourism influxes and large gatherings."

From Market Watch. "When one of his rentals was broken into and taken over by squatters, Atlanta-based real-estate investor Chris Griffith spent nearly six months and $15,000 getting rid of them. Griffith, a consultant who owns five properties in Atlanta, as well as a short-term rental, said he exchanged a flurry of emails with his property-management firm as he tried to understand how the break-in even happened. While squatting is a problem for landlords from Los Angeles to Cleveland to New York City who are dealing with unwanted occupants, the issue appears to be reaching a boiling point in Atlanta."

"The squatter situation in Atlanta isn’t just affecting landlords, but also some people buying and selling homes, Michael Fisher, an associate broker at Ansley Real Estate, told MarketWatch. 'There was one instance where someone was purchasing a home … and in the time between the seller vacating the home and the buyer moving in, somebody took possession of the property,' he added. 'So when the new buyer showed up, somebody’s living in the house.'"

WINK News in Florida. "Two long-delayed construction projects, one of which involves city of Fort Myers funding, have hit another snag, with the two properties dropping from the developer’s ownership to that of his lender. Towles Garden is a proposed 140-home subdivision geared toward workforce housing at the southwest corner of Edison Avenue and Veronica Shoemaker Boulevard in Fort Myers. Prima Luce is a planned two-tower, 220-unit, 22-story condominium complex fronting the Caloosahatchee River off First Street just east of downtown Fort Myers. The lender, Fort Lauderdale-based Fuse Group Investment Companies, took control of both properties from developer Bob MacFarlane, public records show. The warranty deeds in lieu of foreclosure documents were recorded Feb. 6, although they were dated July 2023."

The Star Telegram in Texas. "About a mile north of the Blue Mound Road exit on U.S. 287, past a vape shop, empty fields, and an RV storage lot, a yearslong debate over the future of 80 acres of ranch land is reaching a tense crescendo. Developers hope to convert the bramble and creek of 12650 Willow Springs Road into a 299-unit housing development. Residents of a neighboring subdivision have mobilized to sink the plan, fearing the change would undermine the safety and value of their idyllic enclave. The Fort Worth City Council will adjudicate the case on Tuesday."

"The aches of the city’s growth have been difficult to escape. Pam Durrant described taking 45 minutes to drive eight miles to her job in the Alliance corridor during rush hour. Semi-trucks and sedans jostle for room on narrow, damaged, unlit country roads. Scheduled improvements to U.S. 287 and Avondale-Haslet Road designed to ease the congestion will take at least four years to complete. The fear that an adjacent plot of almost 300 cheaper, smaller homes will sully the value and aesthetic of Spring Ranch properties is also widespread. 'If it gets approved, my value is going to tank,' said Callie Jones, another resident who lives a short golf cart’s drive from Durrant’s home."

Ahwatukee Foothills News in Arizona. "A cautious optimism prevails over the Phoenix Metro housing market as inventory and demand increase. The Cromford Report reported that 71 single-family homes in the Valley are priced at $10 million or more – three times the normal number. Stating the top end of the Valley market 'has been flooded with new listings over the past month,' it said, 'The higher up the price range you go, the more the supply has increased. Some sellers in these up-scale areas are facing stiff competition from other sellers and it would not be surprising if we see significant price cuts among some of these listings.'"

"'Supply is mounting rapidly in the more expensive locations and also in some of the cheapest and most distant areas from Central Phoenix,' the Cromford Report said. The Cromford Report’s latest data showed that more homeowners in the Valley are entering the market with an itch to sell. 'Sellers seem to have lost the reticence they developed last year and are delivering plenty of new supply,' the Cromford Report said, noting the 8,278 new listings posted in the last four weeks is the highest total 15 months 'and represents a 16% increase over this time last year.'"

"'The drop in interest rates that started in October is bringing more offers for homes listed for sale,' it added. 'However there are also far more new listings arriving on the market than this time last year, which is stopping the market from heating up too fast. Year to date we have seen 7,467 new listings. This is up more than 22% from 2023 and even up 13% from 2022 and 10% from 2021. Nobody should be complaining about a lack of fresh supply any more, especially in the higher price ranges.'"

The Desert Sun in California. "When Carlos Garcia moved to north Palm Desert a few years ago, the surrounding area was largely empty desert. 'There was nothing else around — I mean, absolutely nothing,' Garcia recalled of first buying a lot at Genesis Palm Desert, a gated neighborhood. Drive around today, and you’ll see signs promoting new developments at almost every turn, clear indications the area's days as empty desert are at an end. North Palm Desert — broadly speaking, the area north of Frank Sinatra Drive and south of Interstate 10 — already has nearly 1,900 homes, and a massive wave of growth is coming."

"Housing is set to more than triple in the area in the coming years, with more than 4,500 units either under construction or approved by the city. Plans for hundreds of additional homes are under review at city hall. City officials estimate Palm Desert will add approximately 10,000 residents once the wide-ranging plans for new housing are completed. That would bring the city’s population over 60,000, nearly three times what it was as recently as 1990. 'If you build it, they will come,' said Mayor Pro Tem Karina Quintanilla. 'We will have some increases in housing before everything is slated for everyone to move in, so it's gradual. The baby has to learn to walk.'"

Go Banking Rates on California. "When Melanie and Becca fell in love with the idea of owning a home in sunny Los Angeles, they pictured an idyllic journey peppered with open houses and fresh paint swatches. But the reality of 2023’s housing market delivered a much bumpier road. After a marathon search, the couple finally snapped up a dated fixer-upper to call their own. But, settling into the long-awaited space, a slew of regrets began creeping in — the harsh tradeoffs made and dreams deferred in the scramble to plant roots before getting priced out entirely."

"In their widened search, Melanie and Becca discovered more options in LA’s artsy Highland Park area. After the tenth so-so listing, Melanie and Becca lucked upon an open house for a 1920s bungalow with good bones. When their bid squeaked by, elation washed over. But so, too, did the stark reality of comprises made. Tearing up worn carpets and knocking down walls would take years of sweat equity and cash neither currently had after depleting savings just to buy in. Rushing to buy before projected rate hikes meant opting for a higher interest 30-year mortgage. And over three decades, that translates to massive sums flushed away unnecessarily. 'This was supposed to be the start of building equity,' Becca said. 'Instead, we put ourselves on a path of just lining the bank’s pockets.'"

"Forking over 50% down left their safety net almost depleted, eliminating funds set aside for renovations. It also forced them to take out a larger mortgage, upping their recurring housing costs. While necessary to compete, the couple now laments acting so drastically without considering long-term impacts. 'We don’t regret buying this house, but we should have thought more about the tradeoffs before throwing so much cash down,' Becca admitted. 'Now we’re house poor until we can rebuild savings.'"

From Bloomberg. "A new batch of overseas assets acquired in a decade-long Chinese expansion spree is starting to hit the market as landlords and developers decide they want cash now to shore up domestic operations and pay off debts – even if that means taking a financial hit. Beijing’s crackdown on excessive borrowing has left few developers unscathed, even those once considered major players. A unit of China Aoyuan Group, for example, which is in the middle of a US$6 billion debt restructuring plan, sold a plot in Toronto at about a 45 per cent discount to the 2021 purchase price late in 2023, according to data provider Altus Group."

"With every transaction, the market gets more clarity about the capitalisation rate – a measure of the return an investor is willing to do a deal at. That data will then be used by appraisers to value other assets, which could trigger wider impairments. As a consequence, landlords may have to inject more money to cure any loan-to-value breaches or risk having the properties seized by lenders. Just this week, distressed developer Guangzhou R&F Properties agreed to sell its stake in a £1.34 billion (S$2.28 billion) property project in London’s Nine Elms district in return for some of its dollar bonds and 10 pence, while an office block in Canary Wharf is selling for 60 per cent less than it was sold for in 2017 after it was seized by lenders from a Chinese investor."

"Earlier in February, a luxury development in the heart of Mayfair, an upscale area in west London, collapsed into administration after defaulting on its loans. It is majority owned by two Chinese investment firms, Citic Capital and Cindat, and the homes will continue to be marketed to potential buyers through the administrators. Farther east in the UK capital, a person with knowledge of the matter sees a housing project planned by distressed Chinese developer Country Garden Holdings drawing bids of less than £100 million."

"A unit of Greenland Holdings, meanwhile, extended a loan for a skyscraper project in east London that technically defaulted in 2023, a filing shows. Sales are picking up outside Europe too, including in Australia. Only a few years ago, ambitious Chinese developers were major players in the local market. Now, most have largely stopped buying and have pivoted instead to offloading projects."

The Telegraph. "We built a myth of a uniquely competent nation during the glory years of Deutschland Inc, when Germany seemed to have found the secret of prosperous modernity, with stable coalitions, and trade unions sitting on company boards in a blissful partnership of Mitbestimmung. The narrative today has swung to the opposite extreme of a broken national model. The three-way coalition is at daggers drawn over everything. The two great Volkspartei of German post-War democracy can no longer hold the centre as the political system splinters, with the pro-Putin, pro-fossil, AfD running at 20pc on the Right and Sahra Wagenknecht’s heady brew of anti-woke and anti-foreigner socialism scrambling the electoral picture on the Left."

"The railways are on strike. Farmers blockaded Frankfurt airport last week. Industrial output has been falling for seven consecutive months, and is now down 14pc since mid-2017 in a longer slump than the Great Depression. There are ever louder warnings that the German car industry may go the way of Coventry in the 1970s. The housing market is undergoing a very unGerman boom and bust cycle, thanks to the European Central Bank’s lurch from extreme monetary creation and negative rates in 2022 to an emergency stop a year later after the economy had already hit a brick wall. Home prices have fallen 12pc from their peak. TAG Immobilien expects them to drop by 30pc."

"It was particularly misleading in the early years of the euro after China’s WTO accession, when Germany became supplier-in-chief of machine tools and capital goods for the industrialisation of Asia, which of course allowed Chinese companies to reverse-engineer everything and copy it. 'At that phase of its development China needed to buy a lot of stuff from Germany but the Chinese are building this stuff for themselves now, more cheaply, and sometimes better,' said Moritz Kraemer, chief economist at LBBW Bank in Stuttgart."

"Germany looked strong because it controlled the machinery of bail-outs, and imposed its debt-collection policies on Greece, Ireland, the Latin bloc, but that weird episode reflected the half-constructed nature of the euro experiment, launched without a lender-of-last-resort or fiscal union. In reality the Wirtschaftswunder was already fading. Germany’s world has crashed all around since then. It lost China, it lost Russia, it lost its fat trade surplus with Britain, and it lost the combustion engine. Its workforce is shrinking by half a million a year and it is now well into the Japanese phase of its demographic crisis."

News.com.au in Australia. "Billionaire property developer Harry Triguboff has warned he’s 'tempted to stop' building apartments in Sydney due to planning delays, as he predicts the government’s efforts to boost supply through rezoning will fail and the housing crisis will only get worse. Developers 'don’t have enough money to buy sites' so governments 'can rezone whatever they like, but there won’t be action. When authorities rezone land, they must ensure that profit can be made,' he said."

"'The basic problem is that they don’t know how to do it, nor do they care. They think they know the answer. That is why we have too many offices and not enough apartments. Authorities must stop being arrogant and must understand the market. If developers come with problems, they must be helped — not told what the law says. Laws have to be changed very often because conditions change. When making rules and deciding on density, profits must be protected.'"

"Mr Triguboff — Australia’s fourth richest person with a net worth of $23.8 billion, according to The Australian Financial Review — outlined the challenges facing developers in Australia who were 'going broke more than anyone else. They can’t all be dumb,' he said."