It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "Real estate agents and mortgage lenders who spoke to The Post said that underwriters in the Sunshine State are forcing would-be buyers to look for cheaper dwellings. Meanwhile, existing HOA fees for condo owners have doubled in the past year. 'Every day I get up and think, ‘Well, do I start packing?' 72-year-old Ellen Fincher of Vero Beach told WPTV-TV. Fincher, who has owned the $360,000 three-bedroom, 2,800-square-foot home for 10 years, told the station that her $13,000 annual premium has increased to the point where she can no longer afford to pay. 'I can’t, not when you’re on a fixed income,' Fincher said."

"Residents are now out of an 80 unit condominium complex at 1121 Albion Street in Denver after the building was ordered vacated. 'I was all freaked out at first because you know we didn't really know what was going on,' said resident and condominium owner Phil Boden. The building has been without running water for most of the past two weeks since Denver's record setting cold snap. Boden, who served on a prior HOA board for the Americana Condominiums says they contracted a plumber to line pipes, but work was only partially completed. 'They just ran off with our money,' he said about the overall situation."

"Merritt Burnham thought he broke the cycle of paycheck-to-paycheck living when he bought his one-bedroom Summit County condominium in 2020. When he moved to Summit from Boulder in 2019, he lived for a year at his parents’ house in Frisco while he saved for a downpayment on a home. But homeownership didn’t bring the stability he’d hoped for. 'It’s gotten crippling,' Burnham said. 'I didn’t even realize HOA fees could go up to $900 for a one-bedroom.' After years of owning a second home in Keystone, Dave Miller is looking to sell. His two-bed, two-bathroom condo has sat on the market since October and already came down $50,000 in price, from $765,000 to $715,000. That puts the condo well below the average price for a multifamily unit, which was $953,000 in 2023. 'We are having a hard time getting anybody interested in it because they keep coming back to the high HOA fees,' Miller said."

"Glen Jasmer is a widower and a reluctant landlord. Glen’s late wife owned the home when the two got married. After renting it in 2020 it’s become a legal nightmare. The only view he gets of the place is peeking over the fence, which currently resembles a garbage dump. 'They don’t pay their garbage bill, which is mandatory in the city of Puyallup.' At one point the water was cut off. Now, Neighbors complain of vermin. Through all of this, he’s been attempting to evict his tenants. He claims his total losses are nearing 50 thousand dollars. He says it’s unfair that tenants were represented by a free lawyer and that he - and all taxpayers - pay for this. After more than three years and all the damage, the court ruled for Glen to regain control of his home. Seeing the extensive damage brought Glen to tears. 'I Just want to get it over with, and I never want to come back. This is the last time I want to be here.'"

"House prices are falling across Texas, according to recent data, with the former pandemic boomtown of Austin reporting the most dramatic plunges in the entire state. Journalist Lance Lambert, who curates his own house price tracker for the Resi Club, shared on X. According to his tracker, Austin recorded the biggest house price drop year-over-year of the list, with a 7.2 percent decrease between December 2022 and December 2023 and a 20.1 percent plunge since its 2022 peak. What these cities have in common, especially Austin and San Antonio, is that they used to be among the most overheated markets in the country. Austin and San Antonio experienced the highest home-price appreciation in recent years during the pandemic. This correction appears to still be ongoing. The average Austin home value was $527,205 as of December 31, down 8.2 percent compared to a year before, according to Zillow. Prices have been dropping consistently since reaching a peak of $630,308 in June 2022."

"Humboldt County is on the verge of passing a formal ordinance regulating short-term rentals such as Airbnbs and Vrbos in unincorporated parts of the county, though the final decision was delayed for a month. Second District Supervisor Michelle Bushnell asked if there could be exceptions to the cap. Her district does not face the same housing crunch present in the rest of the county given its historic reliance on cannabis cultivation, an industry currently in a tailspin due to several factors such as statewide overproduction. In 2023’s third financial quarter, Garberville, in Bushnell’s district, saw some of the highest foreclosure rates in the country. 'If we don’t offer options, and people get into a really sticky situation with their mortgages, they’re going to do it anyways,' Bushnell said."

"Taggers have graffitied what appears to be more than 25 stories of a downtown Los Angeles skyscraper that’s been sitting dormant for several years. Construction on Oceanwide Plaza, a $1 billion mixed-use retail and luxury apartments project with three towering unfinished structures, stalled in January 2019 after the Beijing-based developer lacked the funds to complete it, the Los Angeles Times reported. One witness, Daron Burgundy, said the taggers had been blasting the building with spray paint for the last three nights. 'I could see people up on the balcony were tagging and everything,' Burgundy, who is a street photographer, told KTLA’s John Fenoglio. 'Last night there was a crew on one of the floors and people were coming out and getting detained by LAPD and getting cited and released. People were still in there tagging while the cops were down here.'"

"Nearly four years after work on what was envisioned as a project adding two signature towers to San Francisco’s skyline came to a full stop, some of the legal issues hanging over the notoriously stalled Oceanwide Center development at First and Mission streets appear to be headed toward a resolution. The former general contractors on the planned 2 million-square-foot project at 50 First St. — a joint venture between Swinerton and Webcor Builders — are seeking a judicial foreclosure and sale of the property. The unfinished project on a 1.2-acre site across the street from Salesforce Tower today is nothing but a gaping hole in the ground. Construction on the two-tower project — which was entitled for more than 1 million square feet of office space, a hotel and hundreds of new condos prior to the pandemic — was previously valued at $1.6 billion. The project never even made it out of the ground. Oceanwide halted construction on the smaller tower in the fall of 2019, at the time citing 'local market changes and economic uncertainties.'"

"The tax bill is due for office towers in Boston, and with vacancy rates up and values down, many of the companies that own them are poised to ask the city for a break. There’s growing worry that the expected drop in overall office values could be something of a ticking time bomb for the years ahead. 'Many office owners are facing existential risks,' said Owen Thomas, CEO of Boston Properties, one of the city’s largest office landlords. 'Many institutional owners want to diversify away from the office asset class.'"

"Experts discussed the impacts of remote work on commercial and office real estate in a CLE panel 'How Doomed is the Loop?' hosted by the Center for New York City Law on January 25th. According to the aforementioned paper, the decrease in revenue not only affects owners of commercial buildings but also local governments who rely heavily on property taxes from commercial buildings. Thus, the rise in work from home policies may lead to a lower quality of life for urban residents, a worsened business climate, and population loss. 'Outward migration is starting to slow but it’s still above pre-pandemic levels and involves the top 40 percent of income makers. For every two people to leave, one person moves in, and this is a concern when thinking about keeping New York City’s economy growing,' said Sean Campion, Director of Housing and Economic Development Studies at the Citizens Budget Commission. With real property and personal income taxes being the two main contributors to the City’s budget, the ‘urban doom loop’ may have even larger effects than once originally thought."

"Faltering pre-construction condo sales and a record high inventory of unsold suites across the Greater Toronto Area could spell doom for Ontario's planned housing boom, a new data study shows. 'We're moving in the opposite direction from where we should be going,' said Shaun Hildebrand, president of Urbanation, a real estate consulting. Total unsold new condo inventory increased 41 per cent year over year to 22,477 units. Hildebrand said this level of condo glut has never been seen in the Toronto market."

"Also concerning, he added, is the number of pre-construction projects that simply aren't selling. In the final quarter of last year, a 31 per cent share of pre-construction projects in the GTA sold fewer than 30 per cent of their units. Developers typically need to sell 70 per cent of suites to start construction. This drop in pre-construction sales is expected to continue through 2024, Hildebrand said. 'When you're relying on private investors to drive sales activity to proceed with construction, there's not a lot you can do when interest is at 22-year high,' he said. Investors can also expect to see condo developers dangle more incentives, including better-priced units, reduced deposit amounts, better quality materials and rent guarantees."

"From one of Canada’s tallest condo towers to bare tracts of land, residential development projects across the country are increasingly being pushed into receivership. 'A year ago it was maybe a call a month, a call every two months, and now it's a call a week,' said Mike Czestochowski, vice-chair with CBRE’s land services group. 'These projects that are under construction, they've seen such a rise in prices that they just, they run out of money,' said Lauren White, executive vice-president of the firm's land services group."

"That was the case in Kitchener, Ont., where creditors filed for receivership against the owners of the Elevate Condominiums project, planned as four towers. By the time the filing was made in October, construction crews had already walked off the site, leaving it 80 per cent done but not weather sealed. A December report found that the owners had a mere $300 in the bank when the receiver order went through, and owe over $100 million. Other projects aren’t getting that far. Creditors on a planned 55-story condo tower in downtown Vancouver filed for receivership in mid-January, including BMO, which is seeking repayment of more than $82 million in loans."

"Some projects run into trouble even after construction is largely complete. Duca Financial Services Credit Union Ltd. filed an application on Jan. 19 against a Mizrahi Inc. condo project at 128 Hazelton Ave. in Toronto, seeking repayment of its $16-million loan. While the largest developers can generally still secure funding, smaller ones are finding it hard to get more money as the second-tier lenders they often rely on become more cautious, said Czestochowski. 'So as debt comes due, it's a little bit more difficult.' Ontario has seen the bulk of receiverships in recent months, but over the past year, the process has been applied to everything from a historic bank building in Saint John, N.B., to a fire-plagued apartment in Winnipeg."

"Liverpool property and hotel developer Lawrence Kenwright has been declared bankrupt along with his wife, Katie. The news came via the government's individual insolvency register, which confirmed that the married couple - well known as the owners of the Signature Living brand of hotels and apartments - each received bankruptcy orders at the Liverpool County Court on January 30. Autumn 2019 saw investors’ complaints really begin to stack up, and the ECHO began to receive more and more messages from investors worried they would never see returns on huge sums of money paid into Signature schemes. One man who had invested £300,000 told the ECHO he would be 'finished' if it was not returned - and that he had not even told his wife about the situation. Another woman said she had invested £77,000 - but had not received a penny back."

"On Monday, news.com.au reported that Victorian construction firm Langdon Building Pty Ltd had gone into external administration, stopping all work for six weeks and plunging its 115 residential projects into uncertainty. James*, a former employee, who is still in touch with his ex-colleagues, said that Langdon Building staff had 'been told they can either be made redundant or hold out for the next six weeks' with no pay. Simon Bevan, 47, is anxious about what Langdon Building’s descent into administration means for his nearly-completed home. 'It’s shattering,' he said. 'Now we’re in limbo and we don’t know for how long.'"

"The dad estimates that his $407,000 build is 98 per cent complete, but frustratingly, he can’t move in and now all work is being paused for the next six weeks at least. Mr Bevan, his partner and their three kids were planning to move into their new forever home in mid December, but this was then pushed back to February 12. 'Financially it’s draining. Our rent is going up an extra $30 a week,' Mr Bevan added. 'It’s pretty much a full mortgage and full rent.'"