A report from KTNV in Nevada. "Homes were selling left and right in the valley as recently as 2021, when the Las Vegas Realtors trade group reported a record 50,000 sales. However, it was very different in 2023. Last year, less than 30,000 homes were sold here. Chris Perron, a loan officer for Guild Mortgage in Henderson, said he's noticed more open houses lately around the valley. 'I see more open houses for [Saturday] than I've seen in years,' Perron said."

From Alabama.com. "Things are starting to look up for Jefferson County homebuyers this year, according to a recent market report. 'My buyer purchased a home with some deferred maintenance and strong pet smells,' local real estate agent Chris Prichard. wrote in an email. 'There was nobody clamoring to purchase it, but it was perfect for my buyers, who paid $1,500 above list price but also got the seller to do over $10,000 in repairs and pay $7,000 toward closing costs. This was on an under $150,000 house. So those were pretty significant seller concessions.' The couple was also able to save on closing costs despite paying above asking price, Prichard said. 'Due to the way we structured the offer, my buyers ended up putting nothing down and actually got a $500 check written to them at closing (how’s that for no closing costs?),' she wrote."

The New York Post. "Home prices along Florida’s southwest coast have plummeted as excess inventory soars due to the ongoing insurance crisis that has gripped the Sunshine State. Realtors said that the soaring cost of home insurance has scared off would-be snowbirds from buying properties in the popular corridor between Sarasota and Naples. Marlissa Gervasoni, president of the Royal Palm Coast Realtor Association, told Bloomberg that in Fort Myers, 'we’re seeing anywhere from a 50%-to-100% increase in spending [on insurance costs] depending on the age of the home.' Gervasoni said that local residents are eager to sell due to the inability to afford homeowners insurance, but the pool of potential buyers has shrunk for the same reason."

"The number of active listings for single-family homes in the Punta Gorda-Port Charlotte-North Port area more than doubled in the past year, rising to 1,900 as of last November from 789 in December of 2022, according to data cited by Bloomberg News. In the Cape Coral-Fort Myers area, the number of listings jumped from 3,900 in December of 2022 to 6,200 a year later. The excess inventory has led to falling prices as homeowners have struggled to sell their properties. In the fourth quarter of 2023, prices in Punta Gorda, which is 100 miles south of Tampa, home prices fell 5.5% year-over-year. Home prices in Naples fell by nearly 6% year-over-year in the fourth quarter, according to data from the National Association of Realtors. In the Cape Coral-Fort Myers area, home prices dropped 3.5%."

WFTV in Florida. "New data from the Orlando Regional Realtor Association shows home prices dropped at the beginning of 2024. New home listings in the market rose 46.3% from Dec. 2023 to Jan. 2024, with 3,524 new homes on the market in January. According to the Orlando Regional Realtor Association, there was a record inventory for January with 8,217 homes. The median home price for the new year is about $360,000; this is the third month in a row when the median price fell. The ORRA said the median price has dropped by $17,000 since Oct. 2023. According to the association, January marks the eighth month in a row that home sales have fallen."

The Star Telegram. "Fort Worth home prices dipped to their lowest levels in almost three years in January, a symptom of flagging demand. The Greater Fort Worth Association of Realtors’ January 2024 housing report, published this week in conjunction with Texas A&M and Texas Realtors, found that median housing prices in the city slipped 1.6% year-over-year to $315,000, the cheapest since the fall of 2021. 'The homes that are available are staying on the market a little longer than usual,' the report noted."

From Market Place. "In the office of Extra Space Storage — the chain with the green signs — in Timonium, Maryland, Tasha Brown was buying boxes and inquiring about storage for an unexpected move. Her landlord had stopped paying the mortgage and lost the property to foreclosure. After renting the place for six years, Brown had just a few weeks to find new housing. 'Very unfortunate, but I have to get boxes to pack up my stuff and my children,' she said."

The News Tribune in Washington. "Point Ruston's lawsuits and financial woes now include legal action from condominium associations representing residents at the site. On Jan. 25, five condominium associations representing building residents at Point Ruston filed a petition in Pierce County Superior Court against the Point Ruston Owners Association. The condo associations are seeking a custodial receiver to take over the governance, finances and management of PROA, citing, among other issues, conflicts of interest, a lack of accountability and escalating assessments to cover environmental expenses, marketing and the site's legal bills. Online marketing indicates more than 400 total condo units are located in the buildings."

"In December, The News Tribune reported that AURC III was one of two major lender-investors seeking to recoup tens of millions of dollars in unpaid loans among various LLCs tied to the Point Ruston development via foreclosure and sales of properties. AURC III represents a group of foreign investors through the American United EB-5 Regional Center of Portland, Oregon. Maria Lee, media representative for the city, told The News Tribune in response to questions that Tacoma brought the lawsuit for delinquencies in the 2022 and 2023 LID payments. If Point Ruston LLC does not answer the lawsuit, 'the city will ask the court for a default order and issue an order of sale for the two parcels,' she told The News Tribune. 'If they do answer, then Tacoma will file a motion for summary judgment to foreclose.'"

The Hollywood Reporter in California. "It's the 30-story elephant on the Los Angeles skyline - and seemingly no one, including Mayor Karen Bass, has decided what to do about it. The Oceanwide Plaza luxury development has stood next to Crypto.com Arena vacant and half-finished since 2019, when its Chinese developer, having already spent $1.1 billion on it, ran out of money. In December, three L.A. taggers broke into the highest of Oceanwide's three towers and spray-painted their names across its floor-to-ceiling windows. The daring stunt served as a bat signal to the rest of L.A.'s graffiti community. The question now is what will become of the towers. Should they be demolished? Should the city seize them, complete them, and turn them into public housing? Or will they stand for decades as 'ghost towers,' the kinds that loom over economically ravaged cities as a constant reminder of what could have been?"

"One problem: Oceanwide is now bankrupt, part of a massive real estate market crash in China valued in the hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars that also took down Evergrande, the country's largest real estate developer. Rick Caruso, 65, the billionaire developer, blames the Oceanwide situation on 'a lot of bad policies' that have been going on for years: 'I expressed this to Mayor Garcetti many, many times: L.A. is overly dependent on money coming in from China. The housing markets in downtown, especially around South Park, was mostly Chinese money. To have one of the great cities in the world dependent on one source of development dollars is really bad. That's not the way great cities are built.'"

Boston 25 News in Massachusetts. "The persistent popularity of remote work and high interest rates have combined to form an 'economic act of God' that puts Boston at risk of losing a chunk of its tax base by the end of the decade, according to a new report. Warning about the prospect of a 'permanently diminished city,' think tank analysts said a sharp and steady drop in the value of office buildings could soon punch a hole in commercial property taxes, which make up a large share of the revenue that Boston uses to fund education, law enforcement, parks and other services. The Boston Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank that launched late last year, and the Center for State Policy Analysis at Tufts University did not mince words in its assessment of the financial risks that the state’s capital and largest city faces."

"'The annual gap over this window is not constant but slowly expanding as the new reality of commercial real estate trickles through the appraisal process and into the tax system,' wrote Evan Horowitz, the executive director of cSPA and the report’s author. 'The end result is a new normal where the city collects $400 million to $500 million less each year than the long-term trend implies, amounting to an annual reduction of roughly 10 percent of total revenues.'"

Business Insider. "New York City-based developer Vornado Realty Trust is considering using a plot of land near Madison Square Garden and the Empire State Building to house a 150-foot tall billboard, among other options. The project is called 'The Penn Platform' and was previously reserved for a 56-floor office tower. But the commercial real-estate sector is in serious trouble, and now, Vornado is rethinking that plan. Steven Roth, the CEO of Vornado, did not mince words when it comes to the current state of the commercial real estate market. 'We have a CBD office apocalypse involving the work from home threat and the total blacklisting of office in the capital markets,' Roth said in an earnings call on February 13."

9 News in Colorado. "With more employees working from a home office, commercial properties are in need of turning offices into homes. State Rep. Alex Valdez, D-Denver, has proposed HB-24-1125, which would set aside up to $5 million a year starting in 2026 for companies to receive tax credits to convert commercial space into residential. 'This particular zip code is one of the most affected zip codes as far as vacancy is concerned,' Valdez said from an office building overlooking downtown Denver. 'If we don’t do it, and we don’t advocate for change of use and a reuse of an existing building, we’re going to end up with a lot of vacant buildings in our downtowns that have no use,' said Melissa Rummel, vice president of development for Nichols Partnerships."

The Globe and Mail. "Britain sank into recession this week. So did Japan, with its decline so bad that it lost its spot as the world’s No. 3 economy. It is increasingly apparent that the world economy is showing some of the chronic weakness we associate with long COVID. It appears the pandemic left some deep wounds in the economy – something few economists saw coming."

"On the contrary, back in the early months of the pandemic, some of them were growing breathless with excitement that when the lockdowns were lifted, a new Roaring Twenties would erupt. Central banks were pumping trillions of dollars into the financial system and governments were handing their citizens trillions more in support. But that didn’t happen. A repeat of the 1920s was never on the cards, since the world had changed so much in the intervening century. Instead, we got a big bump in 2022 followed by a reversion to the mean last year, the average for the decade. Even more surprising is that the mean seems to have fallen. If the world economy is back on track, it’s apparently a slower track."

"Last month the World Bank released its updated report on Global Economic Prospects. It drew a gloomy picture of slowing growth, marking what it calls a 'wretched milestone' – a world economy that is expected to grow at its slowest rate in three decades. The mistake made by those who imagined we’d come roaring back to life was to assume the post-COVID economy would resemble the pre-COVID one, just with more money sloshing around. But the pandemic brought changes to global labour markets and supply chains whose impact has been inflationary, particularly in the aging societies of the West."

"With Western governments having added an average of a quarter of GDP to their debts, most now are hesitant to borrow more to invest in fixing the problems they had let fester before the pandemic, whether a it’s lack of housing, decaying infrastructure or struggling health care systems. Moreover, a lot of the money pumped by central banks into the financial system ended up fuelling asset bubbles, from corporate bonds to crypto and real estate. These bubbles have now become obstacles to growth."

From Essa News. "A key decision by Chinese authorities in recent weeks was the official declaration of bankruptcy for Evergrande, a titan in the real estate market. The Hong Kong court announced the judgment, confirming what other players in the Chinese market had feared. 'After nearly three years of struggle, bids, inquiries, and speculation, it has become evident that the 'too big to fail' principle does not apply in contemporary China' - highlights Professor Bogdan Góralczyk."

"The professor elaborates that the construction industry constitutes one-third of China's GDP, which isn't particularly good news. 'Excessive construction has occurred, as numerous new apartment buildings, even entire settlements, were instantaneously dubbed 'bearded' because they were either barely or not occupied at all, leaving wind to whistle through the vacant structures' - explains the author of the analysis.
He also points out the reasons behind China's construction gigantism. Following the 2008 crisis, China allocated $610 billion (4 trillion yuan) towards investments. 'Ghost towns sprouted, like the architecturally intriguing Ordos (Kangbashi), a city classified as an urban prefecture in China, in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The city was fully equipped with infrastructure, yet no one resided there permanently.'"

"'Local officials and individual developers swiftly became wealthy as fortunes increased, while regular citizens, especially the young, had increasingly tougher hurdles to overcome in order to secure a new apartment. Granted, there was a vast supply, but the prices were also grotesquely high,' writes the article's author, pointing out that renting an apartment in Beijing or Shanghai is more costly today than in New York."

"'Over the past few years, it became clear that a company managing 1,300 developments across 280 cities simply couldn't collapse without potential social unrest from those who had invested in the company's real estate projects. So why did the Chinese authorities ultimately allow Evergrande to fail? - The financial burden of lockdowns laid bare the enormity of the bubble that had formed within the local real estate market during prosperous years - the article's author reports."

"'In December 2023, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange decided to extend its shareholding for another year, and what lies beyond that period remains uncertain. […] Although the court's judgment was delivered in Hong Kong, mainland authorities will not permit the effects of the bankruptcy to impact the company's customers. The only outstanding question concerns how and who will assume control and management of the bankrupt estate? No one knows as yet, due to the unprecedented scale of the situation' - writes Prof. Góralczyk."