A report from Realtor.com. "The official arrival of spring has also ushered in a pop of positive news for housing: A whopping 17.8% more sellers listed their homes in the week ending March 16 compared with last year. 'This is the highest year-over-year growth rate in new listings seen since May of 2021,' says Realtor.com® economic data manager Sabrina Speianu. As buyers mull their bottom line, some sellers are lowering asking prices to lure them in. 'This pace of increasing price reductions has continued into the first few weeks of March,' Speianu points out."

The Palm Beach Post. "A financial cliff may await Florida condo owners at the end of the year, as new regulations may cause association maintenance fees to skyrocket. Roofs and other components of these older buildings, meant to last 20-30 years, have been pushed beyond their lifespan. Senate Bill 4D, enacted during the 2022 session, created new standards for condo buildings over three stories tall. Under SB4D, condo developments over 30 years old — two-thirds of all condos in Florida — must undergo inspections and immediately address critical defects. SB4D also eliminates the ability of COAs to waive reserve contributions, instead requiring that they collect the annual cost needed to repair and replace certain elements by the end of their life span, as determined by a 10-year Structural Integrity Reserve Study (SIRS)."

"The deadline to complete these inspections is Dec. 31, 2024. As inspection results come in, many condo associations and owners will realize the scale of the problem. Many associations may face repair costs in the millions. Even after allocating those costs among all unit owners, many owners in older buildings may not be able to afford the increased maintenance fees and special assessments to make immediate repairs. Condo owners need to understand: they’re going to be on the hook. The state legislature is committing budget and resources to ensuring enforcement; avoidance will not be possible. Their monthly association fees will increase as the building works to replenish deficient reserves. For millions of condo owners in Florida, the next year is going to be filled with painful choices."

The San Francisco Chronicle in California. "San Francisco condominium values are still far below pre-pandemic levels, many large buildings remain half-vacant, and the prospective buyers who might fill them have yet to return. Few segments of the Bay Area’s housing market were hit as hard during the pandemic as San Francisco condos. From February 2020 to February 2024, the city’s single-family home values declined on average from $1.44 million to $1.36 million, about 5.5%, according to Zillow. But over the same four years, San Francisco’s condo values dropped by more than twice that rate, 12.8%, from $1.14 million to $997,000. That was the second-biggest value drop among any city in the San Francisco and San Jose metropolitan areas. Only East Palo Alto had a larger decrease — about 16.6%, from $822,000 to $686,000."

Bisnow on Pennsylvania. "For Philadelphia renters considering a move to a new upscale building, there are options for bargains all along Broad Street. From Tower Place Apartments, at Broad Street and Spring Garden St., down to the 777 South Broad building, both older and newer developments are touting at least one month free and ultra-luxe amenities. A glut of new builds has landlords of the city’s most expensive projects going all out to get people in the door. And with thousands of additional units on the way, the competition could get even more intense. Just 45% of the 7,930 units across the 62 luxury buildings completed in 2023 have been filled. That's likely because so many of them flooded into the market at once."

"'When rates are low and financing is cheap, developers build. Philadelphia is no different from many markets that are in a bit of oversupply,' said Alan Feldman, a lecturer on real estate development at The Wharton School's Zell Lurie Real Estate Center at the University of Pennsylvania. 'A lot of what is still being delivered was planned three to five years ago.'"

The Wall Street Journal. "Student housing has emerged as a hot sector in real estate. But high rents are squeezing students, forcing some to take on more debt, and others to choose windowless rooms in expensive cities like Austin, Texas. A room with no natural light in a four-bedroom apartment there now costs $1,300 a month. Investors like student housing in part because students can borrow to cover the rent. 'Students can take out loans for housing,' said Shangxuan Tan, chief executive of Chicago-based private-equity firm OC Ventures, in an investor presentation viewed by the Journal. The firm buys and sells student-housing properties. 'There is never a bad time to invest in student housing,' he added."

"For two years, biology major Breanna Ellis paid about $1,000 a month for a windowless room in a building called Lark Austin. She graduated with $20,000 in debt in 2021 despite working part time and receiving a scholarship covering tuition. During her senior year, Ellis sought mental-health treatment for a variety of reasons including what she said was the strain of living in a sunless room. She was prescribed antidepressants. The Lark is owned by real-estate firm The Scion Group, one of the biggest student landlords, managing nearly 83,000 beds. The company charges $30 extra a month for a window in a bedroom on top of a $55 monthly amenity fee. 'While this young lady’s circumstance is unfortunate, those units are the most popular and the fastest to lease,' said Scion Group President Rob Bronstein. 'Her peers are voting with their dollars, and they are choosing the least expensive options first.'"

The Washington Post. "The percentage of voters in D.C.'s closest Maryland suburbs who say crime is the state’s biggest problem has risen sharply, from 7 percent in 2019 to 30 percent today, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll. Crime is now first in Prince George’s, as it is in neighboring Montgomery County, where in 2019 climate change topped the list and crime was seventh at 3 percent. The issues have essentially swapped places for Montgomery voters. Their views on crime mirror those across Maryland. 'When we first came to Montgomery County, crime was not so bad. Now you have carjackings in broad daylight,' said Rene Molina, a 50-year-old operating room nurse who lives in the Calverton area."

CTV News in Canada. "A group of landlords are calling on the province to speed up the eviction process when tenants don’t pay rent, saying months of backlogs at the Landlord and Tenant Board is costing thousands. 'We are seeing homeowners and landlords lose their properties. We are seeing them go into significant debt just to hold on to their houses,' said Ottawa property manager, Varun Sriskanda. 'It’s the small guys that are getting obliterated. It’s the small ones that are going bankrupt, not the big operators, so the issues at the LTB have a dramatic impact,' said Toronto-area landlord, Chris Seepe. Seepe estimates he loses between $15,000 and $30,000 a year in unpaid rent and recently started a petition calling on the Ontario government to implement automatic evictions."

From Reuters. "Swedish real estate group SBB said on Sunday it would buy back debt at a discount of 60% compared with the debt's original value, in an attempt to calm investors' nerves as it scrambles to tackle a multi-billion debt pile. The property group said it would pay 162.7 million euros ($176 million) to buy back 407.7 million euros' worth of debt. The buyback will trim the struggling property company's debts, which amounted to some 62 billion Swedish crowns ($5.9 billion) at the end of last year. High debt levels, interest rate hikes and a wilting economy have hit many European property companies, with the sector in Sweden among the worst affected."

From Bloomberg. "When Eric Li lost his job after his family-office employer relocated away from Hong Kong, he knew he would be facing a tough job market. He had no idea how hard it would be. Seventeen months on, Li is still searching. The bills are piling up – nearly HK$60,000 (S$10,360) a month for rent and HK$1 million annually for his kids’ education. The worst part though is the fear, and gradual acceptance, that this is not even rock bottom. 'I thought that China’s upward trajectory and the tighter ties between domestic and global financial markets was a norm – now I realise it might have been just a blip,' said Li, who has also worked at Citigroup. 'That is a scary thought.'"

"Nowhere is that pain more pronounced than in Hong Kong, the centre of such deal brokering. The damage is underscored by the barrage of layoffs by Wall Street firms, the retreat of global capital into the world’s second-largest economy, and the city’s diminishing role as an international financial centre. After looking at former colleagues who have been out of a job for more than a year, Henry, a debt banker working for a Chinese brokerage in Hong Kong, said even if his pay gets cut by 30 to 40 per cent he would accept it. 'I’m worried I’m gonna get fired any day,' he said. 'All our revenue drivers are paralysed.'"

From Yicai Global. "Embattled Chinese developer China Evergrande Group has filed documents to a court in the United States to withdraw its bankruptcy protection application. Evergrande and its subsidiaries Scenery Journey and Tianji Holding are not expected to proceed with their previously planned offshore debt restructuring scheme, so they applied to withdraw their applications for Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection on March 22, the Shenzhen-based parent company said in a filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange yesterday."

"Hengda, its founder Xu Jiayin, and other senior executives have been penalized for falsifying revenues by CNY560 billion (USD78 billion) in the two years preceding the builder’s default. In 2019 and 2020, Hengda inflated its annual revenues by about CNY214 billion and CNY350.2 billion, respectively, net profits by CNY40.7 billion and CNY51.3 billion (USD5.7 billion and USD7.1 billion), and costs by CNY173.3 billion and CNY298.9 billion, according to the results of an investigation by the China Securities Regulatory Commission. The falsified revenue and profit in 2019 accounted for about 50 percent and over 63 percent, respectively, of Hengda’s totals that year, per the CSRC, while the figures were nearly 79 percent and 87 percent in 2020."