A report from the Herald Tribune. "Throughout much of Florida, including nearby markets such as Tampa and Orlando, standing months of inventory remain comparable to national levels and are moving in tandem. However, in Sarasota and Naples, we are witnessing something far different, which implies we have turned a corner. In both cities, the number of homes currently on the market has increased approximately 60% since January 2023 and between 300% to 500% over January 2022. For sellers, it is a dose of reality: it is no longer 2021 and the aspiration of obtaining more for one’s home than the neighbor who sold last year is increasingly unrealistic. In fact, we are witnessing far more price reductions early in the listing period to align more rapidly with true market values."

The Palm Beach Post in Florida. "The Broward, Palm Beaches and St. Lucie Realtors group found the months supply of inventory of single-family homes in January to be 4.2 months, which is 23.5% higher than in January 2023 and nearly the same as January 2020. Mae Ferguson, senior global real estate advisor at Sotheby’s International Realty in Palm Beach, said some homes in price ranges between about $2.5 million and $7 million aren’t moving unless they have unique qualities or have been completely renovated. Still, Ferguson said 'people are out looking, finally.' 'They are starting to realize that we were in a bit of a unicorn situation before with those super low interest rates,' Ferguson said."

The New York Post. "A once high-flying Florida builder is behind bars for allegedly bilking 'Below Deck' star Sandy Yawn and more than a dozen others by failing to finish their upscale homes in a brazen $15 million swindle, officials said. Spencer Calvert, 51, was taken into custody Thursday afternoon at his $3.3 million gated Jacksonville mansion and charged with several larceny and fraud raps. The news thrilled Yawn, who said she paid $1.6 million for her home in Nocatee that was left half completed and unlivable before Calvert suddenly went dark. Others who contracted with Calvert told The Post they had been left insolvent after paying for their projects upfront and having little to show for the purchase years later. One couple paid more than $1 million for their plot of land and a deposit on their dream home — but Calvert still hadn’t filed construction permits a year later."

"A tour of the area earlier this month revealed plot after plot of untouched and half-finished projects, with the parcels sitting completely dormant. Contractors have also been scrambling after Pineapple’s collapse, telling homeowners that they completed hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of work for Calvert and were never paid. Officials said contractors have been hitting homeowners with liens for the unpaid work done on their properties, compounding their misery."

The Real Deal on New York. "Title insurers Riverside Abstract and Madison Title are facing a bigger problem with Fannie Mae than they have let on, according to a memo from the agency obtained by The Real Deal. 'Until further notice, we will not accept delivery of any mortgage loan closed using Madison or Riverside in any capacity,' Fannie Mae deputy general counsel Jeff Goodman wrote to lenders. The reason, he wrote, is that New Jersey-based Riverside and Madison participated in real estate closings orchestrated by Boruch Drillman that were deemed fraudulent by the Department of Justice. A recent press release about Drillman that named Riverside and Madison detailed a sweeping fraud scheme by the real estate investor in which he bought properties, then used bogus documents to show he paid more than the actual price. With those documents, he allegedly obtained larger loans from lenders than they would have otherwise made."

The Review Journal. "A second federal class-action 'copycat' lawsuit that has the potential to drastically change the residential real estate industry has been filed in Nevada. Multiple real estate agents interviewed by the Las Vegas Review-Journal said Department of Justice officials were in Las Vegas on numerous occasions issuing subpoenas and interviewing brokers prior to the COVID-19 pandemic related to commissions charged by brokerages. A Las Vegas real estate agent, who has worked in the industry for decades and is one of the top-selling brokers in the valley spoke to the Review-Journal under the condition of anonymity, and said these lawsuits have the entire industry in a state of panic. The agent said the Department of Justice appears to be rekindling a federal case around the same issue that was paused due to the pandemic, which could further compound the issue brought forth by the wave of lawsuits."

"The agent said if real estate brokers are decoupled from NAR’s commission structure due to legal ramifications by either continuous class-action lawsuit rulings, a multi-jurisdictional ruling, or a federal case, as much as 80 percent of the industry nationwide may find themselves out of the job. 'This is the end of the real estate empire,' the agent said. 'Or to put it more accurately, this is the end of the evil real estate empire.'"

Bisnow on Massachusetts. "A series of sales have made clear downtown Boston's property values are falling, and a new report found it suffered the largest price decrease in the world last year. Property prices in Boston's central business district in the fourth quarter were down 30.4% year-over-year, according to MSCI's RCA CPPI Global Index report. Central Chicago saw an 11.7% decrease, Central D.C. saw a 14.7% decrease, Manhattan saw a 2.5% decrease and San Francisco saw a 24% decrease. In Q4, Boston saw its lowest level of office leasing activity for the year with a 47.5% decrease from 2022 and a 17% office vacancy rate. A 38K SF building on West Street sold for a 74% discount in October, an office building near TD Garden sold for a 40% discount in January to Rhino Capital Advisors LLC and Synergy Investments acquired One Liberty Square for $45M, representing a 17% discount."

The Commercial Observer. "Another office bites the dust, proverbially speaking. TPG Angelo Gordon and Ocean West Capital Partners have sold a nine-story office building in Orange County, Calif., for $31 million, or $146 per square foot, property records show. That’s 42.5 percent less than the $54 million it traded for in April 2019. Ocean West recently completed a $2.5 million renovation on the property, according to its website. There are no office projects currently under construction in Orange County, according to CBRE’s fourth-quarter market report. Other than the COVID-constrained 2020, last year was the only time in more than a decade that Orange County saw negative annual office absorption at 1.7 million square feet."

Insauga in Canada. "While no one would argue that homes in the GTA are cheap (the average home price in the region currently sits at $1,026,703), it does appear that some stylish and upgraded homes in in-demand cities such as Mississauga, Brampton and Ajax are selling for significantly less than their listing price. Homes in Markham and Toronto also made the list. 1447 Santa Rosa Crt. – Mississauga: This East Credit house sold for $2,000,000 after being listed for $2,299,999, meaning it sold for close to $300,000 under asking. 50 Sunset Blvd. – Brampton: This Brampton West home sold for $1,060,000 after being listed for $1,150,000, meaning it sold for about $100,000 less than its asking price."

The Wirral Globe in the UK. "Neighbourson a quiet residential road have slammed a pallet company for turning it into 'an industrial area.' In 2023, Chris Reynolds Pallets set up a new site on which has reportedly been a commercial yard for nearly 100 years. The site had previously been operated by William Dodd Builders who went into liquidation in August 2023. Plans had been approved on the site in September 2020 to build 14 homes but never went ahead. David Wilde, who has been getting people to sign a petition, said the situation was frustrating, adding: 'It looks like an industrial area. I look out of the garden and all you can see is pallets everywhere. It’s a mess, it’s a disgrace. Now we are thinking of downsizing but no one is going to buy my house looking at that mess over the road.'"

South China Morning Post. "Chinese investors who have borrowed from the bank to buy a house abroad are facing a double-whammy as they contend with an economic slowdown at home and surging interest rates across the globe that are hampering their ability to pay for their purchases, according to analysts. In a growing number of cases they are having to sell their overseas property, unable to free up the funds to service the higher mortgage repayments. These dynamics seem to be playing out for a number of Chinese home owners in Australia, where the central bank has hiked interest rates on 13 occasions since 2022."

"In the popular Sydney suburb of Bondi, known for its famous beach, one Beijing resident had bought a two-bedroom apartment for A$1.3 million (US$848,000) in 2015, according to Peter Li, general manager of Plus Agency, a property company with more than A$200 million in annual sales. They were recently forced to sell - at a significant loss when the costs of renovation work are factored in. 'So they bought the property and took out a mortgage, but the property was off-plan and they [later] discovered some defects, and then Covid happened,' Li said. 'They wanted to rent out the property but they needed to fix it first. They started to do that, but in 2023 they realised they had ran out of cash to fund the project.'"

"After their Australian bank account ran dry early last year, the bank set them a deadline to sell the property by this month. 'The purchase price plus the cost [of repairs] meant that they needed A$1.7 million to A$1.8 million [to break even],' Li said. Just last week, they agreed to let go of the property for A$1.4 million."

From AFP. "The Chinese government had big plans for its real estate—so how did it end up with hoards of abandoned mansions across the country? Take the State Guest Mansions, a development envisioned as the palatial homes for the upper crust of society. Now their only residents are hurdles of cattle and the occasional adventure explorers meandering like ghosts around the arched verandas and stone façades of hundreds of abandoned villas. Located around the hills of Shenyang (about 400 miles northeast of Beijing), the development was originally planned by Greenland Group, a Shanghai-based real estate developer, and broke ground in 2010. But as AFP reports, within two years the project had come to grinding halt, leaving the half-formed skeletons of imitative royalty in its wake. Today the crumbling estates are still abandoned, left in an eerie series of rows appearing like an architectural cornfield."

"The irony of this formation will only grow more apparent as the seasons begin to turn, as local farmers have begun plowing the land between villas for future crops. Would-be garages of the abandoned mansions are now repurposed as storage for hay bails, and modest two-rail fences corral herds of cows between properties. In what would have been the sales center, a model of the completed 260-villa neighborhood still sits. 'These (homes) would have sold for millions—but the rich haven’t even bought one of them,' a farmer named Guo told AFP."

"The State Guest Mansions are just a number of deserted developments scattered around China, an occurrence that speaks to a growing real estate crisis in the country. Nearby is an abandoned high-rise complex, which Jonathan Cheng, a reporter for the the Wall Street Journal, visited recently and documented in a video on the paper’s website. 'This is just another of the residential property developments in Shenyang that have frozen in their tracks,' Cheng says, pointing at a collection of dozens of roughly 15-story buildings. With concrete frames and nonexistent windows, the buildings look like empty oversized brutalist doll houses, waiting for someone to come sprinkle life into their interiors. But like a toy cast aside long after a child grows up, it’s unlikely that the project will get picked up again."