A report from Barron's. "Plenty of home owners didn’t put out For Sale signs last year as rising mortgage rates shook the housing market. With a brighter outlook now, there are signs that sellers are trickling back. In Seattle, 'it almost feels like someone just turned a switch,' says Compass agent Julian Michael Aguirre. Buyers and sellers are coming off the sidelines, he says. More than 3,550 homes were listed for sale in the Seattle metropolitan area in February, Realtor.com data show, up about 42% from the roughly 2,500 homes listed the same month last year. It isn’t just Seattle: The number of listings new to the market in February were higher than year-ago levels in all but six of the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas, according to Realtor.com data."

Palm Beach Post in Florida. "Palm Beach’s real estate market saw another substantial price cut last week when the price of a new, never-lived-in house at 584 Island Drive dropped by about $5.5 million to $34.5 million. The six-bedroom house on the east side of Everglades Island in the Estate Section was priced at $39.999 million when it was listed for sale in mid-January as construction was drawing to a close. Overall pricing in Palm Beach has been complicated by the effects of the pandemic-fueled real estate boom, which reached its height in early 2022 and sent home values and asking prices into the stratosphere. Many buyers and sellers, agents and brokers agree, are still struggling to come to a meeting point where prices are concerned."

"In all, 18 single family houses and 24 units in the condominium-and-cooperative segment were under contract, while another six potential condo sales are in the 'contingent' phase, the search showed. So no one should be surprised if more properties undergo asking-price reductions in the coming weeks. And those figures don’t include any off-market transactions that may be brewing. One last note: Of those 18 single-family homes under contract in the MLS, 10 have had their asking prices reduced since they were first listed."

The New York Post. "New York’s most expensive one-bedroom apartment has allegedly turned into the city’s priciest money pit — as the new owners of the $6.1 million Fifth Avenue digs have filed a lawsuit claiming the place is riddled with problems, the Post has learned. John Goodman and his wife Diane say they bought the 1032-square-foot condo in December because of the building’s many bougie amenities. But they said the lux pad turned out to be a high-priced mess. 'I paid full asking price. But I didn’t get what I was promised,' owner John Goodman told the Post."

From USA Today. "A labor market that was still soaring a year ago has become less hospitable to job seekers. Companies are warier about hiring amid high interest rates and wages. Workers are vying with more job candidates for fewer openings, forcing them to send in more applications. And a large share of employees are jittery about getting laid off. 'Because the real estate market is so slow now, I need to see the demand before I hire more, expensive staff,' says Scott Ford, president of California Builder Services. Because of high interest rates that have discouraged homebuilding, sales have been flat at the Fresno area company, which sets up homeowner associations for developers, Ford says."

"Molly Dotson, 33, a sales account executive in San Diego, says she applied for about 200 jobs over six months before finding a position. Dotson had worked for a start-up tech company that hired quickly and then over a year, laid people off. She was let go in the third wave in August. 'When I started looking, I was shocked to find not only to find a dearth of actual positions open but just an insanely competitive market,' Dotson says. 'There was a purple-striped unicorn for every' opening, she said, meaning hiring managers said there was a better candidate with specific experience in that particular role. 'No matter how much self-worth and confidence you’ve got, the doubt creeps in after serial rejections.'"

The Express News in Texas. "The trustee for bankrupt San Antonio mortgage lending firm New Opportunities Inc. — accused of being a Ponzi scheme while incurring more than $25 million in losses — has struck a deal to end litigation with its two principals. New Opportunities’ Terry A. Cleveland, a certified public accountant who served as president, and James W. Hale, a lawyer and company vice president, have agreed to pay the bankruptcy estate $704,180 as part of the settlement. In exchange, the trustee has agreed to release all claims against the pair. The deal requires approval from a bankruptcy judge. It’s possible that creditors in the case — 172 people who invested millions in New Opportunities — could object to the settlement, which represents pennies on the dollar for the $31 million in claims they hold."

The Globe and Mail in Canada. "An Ontario real estate developer has unleashed a deluge of litigation against dozens of buyers of preconstruction homes who allegedly defaulted on purchases in a Windsor-area subdivision. Starting in November 2022, Coco Developments Ltd. filed more than two dozen claims related to houses it built at the River Ridge Estates project in Lakeshore, Ont., just east of Windsor. The claims describe preconstruction sales in the late summer and fall of 2021 followed by failures to close and complete transactions in the fall and winter of 2022. According to the court documents, most of the buyers are not local to Windsor, with addresses mainly in the Toronto region."

"According to Mark Morris, a real estate lawyer with Legalclosing.ca, the lawsuits are a sign of a burgeoning issue in the new-build home market where more buyers are unable to find anyone to take over their contracts (known as an assignment sale), some buyers can’t afford to complete the transactions and more developers are turning to litigation to recoup losses. 'This was at first an individual issue, but it’s becoming more systemic,' Mr. Morris said. 'Builders that are facing five or six failed closings are turning to their only recourse, to see if, in fact, there’s any money in ‘them thar hills.’”

"The damages sought in each claim begin with the $40,000 deposit buyers placed for detached homes that ranged in price from $850,000 to $970,000. But the final damages could end up being much higher. 'You don’t just lose your deposit if you walk away from any real estate deal – you can lose everything,' said David Feld, a real estate lawyer with Feld Kalia Professional Corp. According to property records, many of the homes in the claims have been listed for sale but few have been successfully resold."

From Boersen Zeitung. "In the second week of March, four large listed residential property groups from Germany will report on their 2023 financial year. In addition to critical operating figures such as rental income and funds from operations, the focus will be on the performance of the portfolio and debt. After years of ultra-low interest rates, the cost of new financing has shot up. At the same time, the risk aversion of potential lenders has increased. The higher the debt ratio, the more difficult it is to access loans. The bond market, a key source of funding for property companies, has been closed to the vast majority of companies since autumn 2022."

"In the years of low-interest rates, constantly rising portfolio valuations enabled the sector to enjoy an unexpected boom. This is because the vital indicator for lenders is debt in relation to property assets, not the absolute amount of liabilities. The higher valuations, therefore, created more and more room for manoeuvre, which Vonovia, in particular, but also other players, used for numerous acquisitions. Notably, equity also climbed through the retention of book profits. The monopoly game came to an abrupt end with the turnaround in interest rates. What's more, it turned into the opposite. Falling stock values increase the level of debt. As a result, practically all large landlords are trying to sell flats in order to keep their loan-to-value in check and build up a liquidity cushion. In doing so, they want to demonstrate financial freedom of action to the capital market. According to the motto: We are not under pressure."

"The Kiel Institute for the World Economy considers the current price reductions to be 'historically unprecedented.' Never since the expert committees began collecting purchase prices in the 1960s have house prices in Germany fallen so quickly. The discounts for multi-family houses are around 20% over the year. It is, therefore, clear that the significant housing groups will continue to report falling portfolio values as of 31 December 2023. The Swedish landlord Heimstaden, which also owns flats in Germany, has already announced write-downs totalling billions – and lost around 40% of its share price in two days."

From Reuters. "Hong Kong’s property agents expect more big-ticket foreclosures this year as landlords struggle to refinance, and that receivers will speed up sales after the city’s recent measures aimed at bolstering the depressed real estate market. CBRE said on Thursday it had been appointed by the receiver to sell an old four-storey residential building in Kowloon, while another agent, Savills, said it had been appointed by the receiver to sell two connected industrial buildings."

"'We’ll continue to see many foreclosures this year as landlords fail to negotiate new terms with the lenders after years of poor market and high interest rates,' said Churchill Keung, CBRE Hong Kong capital market assistant manager. Hong Kong, one of the most expensive property markets in the world, has seen its housing and commercial property prices plunge more than 20% and 30%, respectively, from their peaks. The residential building that CBRE was appointed to sell was seized by creditors this year. It is valued at HK$42 million ($5.37 million), half of its asking price in 2022 when the original owner, the family of deceased property investor Tang Shing Bor, put it on the market."

Business Insider. "Several years in, China's prolonged real-estate slump has been well documented, but the landscape may be about to deteriorate further as construction enters a deeper correction, Capital Economics said in a note Wednesday. 'A variety of approaches suggest that a sustainable level of residential construction activity is about half of what's underway today, given China's demographics and its need to replace aging housing stock,' strategists wrote, adding that 'property construction still has a long way to fall.' Since peaking in 2022, floor area under construction has slipped by a mere 3%, as shown in the chart below. 'The drag from the unavoidable structural decline in China's property sector has only just begun,' the strategists said."

"Much of the infrastructure investments are financed by local governments that face diminishing returns and other financial headwinds. Capital Economics said demographic challenges including a falling population and stalling urbanization suggest weaker property demand in the years ahead. 'In sum, while property sales and project starts have collapsed, and many developers have been driven into bankruptcy, the full impact of China's property crisis on real economic activity has not yet been felt,' Capital Economics strategists said."