A report from NBC News. "Despite offering a salary of $167,000, the city of Steamboat Springs can’t find a head of human resources who can afford a place to live in the remote Colorado community. At the Steamboat hospital, doctors willing to pay more than $1 million for a home have been repeatedly outbid by all-cash, out-of-town buyers, and housing costs have caused some positions to go unfilled for more than two years. The local ski resort has been leasing a hotel for its employees to live in as the homes they once rented are increasingly turned into short-term rentals for visitors. 'Houses used to be for employees and hotels for guests. Now houses are for guests and hotels are for employee housing,' said Loryn Duke, director of communications for the Steamboat ski resort."

"In Steamboat, along with other mountain towns and destination communities across the country, a pandemic-fueled real estate boom driven by remote workers, second-home buyers and short-term rental investors has caused home prices to nearly double. Since 2020, single-family home prices have increased about 80% to $1.8 million on average, and all real estate sales, including condos, increased 64% to $1.1 million, according to data compiled by Jon Wade, a local realtor. In Driggs, Idaho, which used to be an affordable-housing refuge for workers in more pricey Jackson Hole, average home prices have also gone up around 80% to $735,000 since the start of the pandemic, according to Zillow. Woodstock, New York, has seen prices increase 78% to more than $600,000 on average. In Gatlinburg, Tennessee, a popular resort community in the Great Smoky Mountains but not one known as a hot housing market, home values have risen more than 80% to an average of $480,000."

The LA Downtown News in California. "A Feb. 13 meeting of the LA County Board of Supervisors (BOS) discussing an ordinance that would severely limit Airbnb in unincorporated areas of the county. Anyone from the public who wished to speak was advised that a one-minute limit would be strictly enforced. At the mic, I said: 'My name is Ellen Snortland. I’m a proud union member. My husband and I are in our 70s. In 2008, foreclosure hit us. We panicked because we were practically unemployable at this age. Then, we learned about Airbnb — it kept us off the streets.' First of all, off to the side of the entrance was coffee and water along with a stack of signs declaring, 'Homes for Residents, Not Tourists! Pass the LA County Registration Ordinance. Better Neighbors LA.' I thought, 'Someone is extremely organized.'"

"There was no corresponding table sponsored by Airbnb to support their hosts. No water, no coffee, no nothin’. That ticked me off. Where were they? Oh right … Airbnb will always profit, even though their hosts must endure taxation and registration fees. Hosts who have made Brian Chesky and his other co-founders very wealthy. A hefty 12 to 14% Airbnb Service Fee has already been deducted from all our bookings. I left the BOS meeting outraged and heartbroken after all five supervisors voted to adopt the ordinance and its absurd amendments. I also left the meeting hungry and thirsty. Was Airbnb there to feed me and slake my thirst? Nope. So stingy!"

San Diego News in California. "In June 2023, Pacific Beach planner Iain Richardson briefed the Pacific Beach Town Council on the number and location of short-term rentals in the community, arguing such rentals are depleting the housing stock and exacerbating the ongoing housing crisis. Nine months later, Richardson gave a similar presentation to PBTC updating the group on the status of the community’s STRs. His conclusion this time around: Unless loopholes in the present STR ordinance are addressed, rentals will continue to increase further shrinking the available housing supply."

"'The number of STR licenses continues to grow in the Tier 3 whole-home category and it’s getting worse,' Richardson contended noting that, in the last six months of 2023, 700 more STR licenses were issued citywide. 'We find 30% to 40% of all the licenses are owned not by people but by corporate entities,' said Richardson, who estimated a third of beach STR rentals are now corporate owned, another third are owned by trusts, and individuals now own only about one-third of the total. Richardson argued this loophole involving “ghost” owners who are not individuals has led to STR hosts who 'have nothing at all to do with the property.' 'Pacific Beach has lost over 4% of its housing to whole-home vacation rentals, and Ocean Beach a massive 6%. This housing would be enough for over 3,000 long-term residents in these two areas alone.'"

A press release. "Good morning, and welcome to the Hilton Grand Vacations' fourth quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Daniel Mathewes; Chief Financial Officer; Hilton Grand Vacations Inc: 'On the legacy HGV side, that's driven by Maui Bay villas, which, as you recall, is a series of low-rise buildings in Maui conversion of Ocean Tower. And also we've started construction on Cohort two, which is an award that's a vertical build.'"

"Patrick Scholes: 'Okay. And just one last if I could sneak it in your CapEx going into the year, I guess as of January 17 prior to this CapEx for this year, how many years of unsold inventory do you have falling?' Mathewes: 'With Bluegreen, I mean, let me pull that number up. It's multiple years. I mean, we could to put things in perspective when I had mentioned Diamond as being an inventory play to a certain degree center acquisition, we've actually invested with a with a minor exception of some conversion costs, virtually $0 in any Diamond inventory. So Bluegreen brings along with it an incremental year of inventory. So I think when you think about contract sales, we would point you to our results in 2023, add roughly $800 million of contract sales for Bluegreen and that $12 billion-ish in inventory build up. You have to do the math there.'"

WCSC in South Carolina. "Some customers of a Lowcountry contractor say they were blindsided by the company’s bankruptcy leaving their projects and money in limbo. On the Level Construction LLC, a North Charleston-based kitchen and bath remodel company according to LinkedIn, filed for bankruptcy on Jan. 30, after employees were informed the day prior the business was going belly up. Customers say they chose them over others because they thought they were different, but it’s standing out now for all the wrong reasons. 'The guys got my $17,116.42 and I’d like to know where it is,' customer Karen McClarren said. 'They had plenty of time to tell us that they were going to fold. Why didn’t they send my money back?'"

"The owner of the company, Sam Kaufman, also has a motivational podcast called 'Never Stop Building' in which he claimed On The Level was a 'multi-million-dollar' company in September 2023. He also has his own website and book and he shares advice online. However, in a lengthy post on his public Facebook on Wednesday, Sam explained the hardships the company had faced over the past few years. He stated in part 'my businesses started the process of a bankruptcy [two] years prior to the decision actually having to be made… grew too fast and with delayed hard decisions.'"

Fox Business. "Landlords are lowering rent prices thanks to an 'apartment-building boom,' according to Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather. 'Median monthly rent prices hit a high of over $2,000 in 2023, mainly due to high mortgage payments that pushed potential buyers into the rental market instead,' she told Fox News Digital. 'However, prices have since changed due to an apartment-building boom. There are many vacant properties right now, and the supply jump has caused landlords to lower prices.'"

Business in Vancouver in Canada. "MLS sales in the province rose to 6,054 units in January, up 4.5 per cent month-to-month, albeit decelerating from December’s gain. Home prices continued their erratic pattern and remained 2.6 per cent lower than a year ago and nearly nine per cent below 2022’s record high. Greater Vancouver home values increased by 0.6 per cent. In the Fraser Valley, they rose by 2.8 per cent, reversing a dip of equal magnitude observed in December. The average home price in the Kootenays also saw an increase of 1.8 per cent, while prices in the South Okanagan were up 7.9 per cent. However, prices in Chilliwack declined by 7.7 percent in January, erasing gains from the prior month. The Kamloops and Vancouver Island real estate boards saw home prices fall by 5.1 per cent and 4.9 per cent, respectively. Okanagan Mainline recorded a 6.3-per-cent downtick in prices during the month."

"Among the seven metro areas listed in B.C., five of them reported lower housing starts in January. This is not surprising given the size of the provincial decline. Vancouver saw a 55-per-cent decline to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 18,296 starts — the lowest level since February 2023. Victoria only had 2,235 housing starts — its lowest number since May 2023. In a year-over-year comparison, unadjusted housing starts in B.C. fell by 39 per cent, dropping from 3,726 in January 2023 to 2,264 in January 2024."

The Telegraph. "A protracted economic slump across large parts of the world economy is colliding with an ever more egregious credit bubble, one that looks increasingly like the subprime excesses of 2007. This strange contradiction will be resolved one way or the other soon enough. Germany, Britain, and Japan were all in recession over the winter. France escaped by a whisker, but is now introducing austerity cuts. The latest fall in the eurozone’s Economic Sentiment Indicator has smothered hopes of a meaningful recovery over coming months."

"China is still grappling with the fall-out of its enormous property slump. Cities and local authorities that once depended on land sales for 42pc of their income have seen this revenue halve since that bubble burst in 2021. They are in the midst of a public debt crisis that dwarfs the eurozone travails of 2010-2015 in absolute numbers, if not in character. At the same time, credit spreads on junk debt are compressed to levels seen during the wildest phases of pre-Lehman speculation. 'Euphoria is the name of the game,' said Barnaby Martin, credit strategist at Bank of America. 'What are the classic signs of a credit bubble? When discipline goes out of the window and markets buy deteriorating credits because of a feeling of ‘value.’"

From Bloomberg. "Next to Berlin’s airport south of the German capital lies one of the few properties that Cevdet Caner and Guenther Walcher have been fighting to keep after losing much of their real estate empire. Known as Project Walter, the development was acquired with financing from Corestate Capital Holding SA, a real estate lender in which Walcher was a top shareholder. Corestate arranged the debt for the purchase, using money from a fund that one of its subsidiaries advised — even though the fund was contending with redemptions."

"Almost three years on, Project Walter lies silent, the future of the hotel and offices that Aggregate Holdings — the investment vehicle of Caner and Walcher — wants to build uncertain after it defaulted on the debt. The fund that helped finance the deal was frozen, leaving investors unable to access their money. Other clients who had separate accounts with Corestate have moved their money to competitors. Creditors have taken control of the firm to try and recoup their money."

"With Corestate on the ropes, its role — and that of other private credit firms — at the nexus of a German real estate boom turned bust is becoming clearer. Corestate financed some of the wilder bets on German property and vividly exemplifies the web of entangled interests that has left the country’s development industry in a particularly sorry state. Using mountains of cheap money, it helped thinly-capitalized developers build vast real estate empires, benefiting from negative interest rates that sent investors on a desperate search for yield."

"Footing the bill for that borrowing binge are the pension funds, insurers and wealthy clients that Corestate had attracted with its track record of double-digit returns. 'We’re now seeing the consequences of how low rates and easy money made it too easy for buyers to inflate values and create conflicts without investors being aware,' said Nicholas Ryder, a professor in financial crime at Cardiff University. The system worked as long as interest rates were low and valuations went up. Roiled by the decline of two major real estate empires — Adler Group and Signa Holding — Europe’s largest economy has become an emblem of the excesses fueled by investors drunk on cheap money, and of the hangover they’re now facing as interest rates rise and values tumble."

7 News in Australia. "An alleged serial fraudster accused of swindling dozens of Queenslanders out of $450,000 has been charged. Tradesman Hong Thanh Dang Tran, 44, is accused of taking the huge sum from 35 alleged victims and leaving before the work was complete. He is currently in custody, also facing an impersonation charge and accusations he rented tools from Bunnings and never returned them. Authorities believe there could be more alleged victims who are yet to come forward. Umair Rizvi also contacted Dang Tran on Facebook and allegedly transferred him $16,500 to transform his Forest Lake garage into an additional living space."

"'He started some work, ripped up the tiles, removed the walls, make it like partitions… but he never finished it,' Rizvi told 7NEWS. He says he has not heard from Dang Tran Tran since. A third victim alleges he handed over $15,000 before the builder switched his phone off and was gone."

South China Morning Post. "The illegal schemes are rampant on recruitment sites and social media platforms, such as Xiaohongshu, according to a report by Chinese media outlet Sina Tech in February. The scammers disguise themselves as employment consulting companies and post details about well-paid job openings, sometimes with state-owned enterprises. When young jobseekers applied to the companies they found out they would be charged for 'services.' For example, a post with a big private firm could cost the jobseeker 10,000 yuan (US$1,400), while one at a state-owned company could be as much as 200,000 yuan. If a post at a state-owned company came with bian zhi, the fee could reach more than 450,000 yuan (US$63,300)."

"Bian zhi means a stable career with generous perks including a housing subsidy, a good retirement pension, minimal work, and most importantly, very little risk of becoming unemployed. The attractiveness of such job posts is understandable as China's young navigate increasing competition for work amid the economic downturn and high youth unemployment. The unemployment rate for young people aged 16 to 24, excluding students, was 14.9 per cent in December 2023. The data was released after China's Bureau of Statistics had suspended the publication of it for five months. On June 2023, the most recent data before the suspension, the figure was 21.3 per cent."

"The company in Jilin advertised the job's monthly salary as 5,000 yuan to 8,000 yuan (US$1,125), slightly above its capital city's average. The company told jobseekers it could help them bypass the first round, which was a written examination, and promised they would go directly to the second round, which was an interview and would easily pass it. However, the contract they asked jobseekers to sign revealed it was a scam. It required them to pay the entire fee 48 hours before the interview, with the disclaimer that it 'does not make any promise as to the results of the interviews.' Beijing Jingsh Law Firm's lawyer, Meng Bo, told Sina Tech that the contract is invalid because it has violated the law, and the companies have committed the crime of fraud by claiming to sell jobs."