A report from Realtor.com. "The Austin, TX, housing market boomed during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, Ben Brajtbord, 38, and his girlfriend, Emily Sawyer, 34, started house hunting in Austin when the local market was still on fire. The first-time homebuyers figured it wouldn't get any easier to buy a home. They finally had an offer accepted in August 2022. In the 78748 ZIP code where Brajtbord and Sawyer purchased their home, median list prices dropped 20.4% from the maximum price in the second quarter of 2022 to February 2024. 'It's always a bit unnerving that you see that you're not underwater, but [your home] is worth less than you bought it for,' says Brajtbord. 'But Austin is still a desirable location. We still love the house. It's not something that we spend too much time worrying about.'"

The New York Times on Colorado. "Marleen Gamble had already taken out a reverse mortgage on her town house in 2018 to keep up with the steady increase in expenses eating into the Social Security checks that are her only source of income. Then this year, Gamble, a retired X-ray technician, faced a 20% spike in her property tax bill. With no other way to pay it, she began to empty her home of 34 years in the Denver suburb of Littleton, one memento at a time. Her dining room set, sold. Her jewelry, now someone else’s. 'Every knickknack I have, everything I don’t use, I’m selling,' said Gamble, 84, who has asked officials in neighboring Douglas County about applying for subsidized housing. 'What I owe now is $962.62. I think I need to use two credit cards to do it. And I’m going to have to pay interest on those.'"

"Mike DeGuire, a retired school principal who owns a second home in Silverthorne, closer to Denver, also criticizes the bill as misguided and unfair. 'Maybe we’re not thinking the way we should with property taxes,' DeGuire said. 'It’s almost a psychological thing — people are used to getting their refunds, and they’re used to their taxes not being so high, so we’re in a real bind.'"

From WINK News. "Something scary is coming to Southwest Florida this October, and no, it’s not Halloween. Flood insurance is increasing another 25% on October 1, 2024. More than 100,000 homeowners in Lee County and Cape Coral are considering transforming into a bat and flying away! 'I know that being in Florida is an area where elderly people flourish. And now having to leave that dream and go back,' said Susan Lewis. 'I know that I might be cutting my husband’s life short, but financially, we don’t really have a choice.'"

"Susan and Bob Lewis are now looking at places in the bible belt where they’ll once again face harsher winters. But harsh winters are easier to face than the harsher financial free-for-all coming this fall from FEMA. 'I’m beyond disappointed in FEMA. With the limited income that we have and the damage that we had here. We didn’t get one dime from FEMA,' said Susan. 'We didn’t get a dime for food or anything else, so I don’t really feel like they have my back.'"

Dorchester Reporter in Massachusetts. "Faced with a sharp downturn in office property values in Boston, Mayor Wu is trying to cushion the blow of rising tax bills expected for owners of residential property. Among Boston’s residential properties, some of the sharpest increases in value in recent years, with resulting jumps in tax bills, have been at the lower end of the housing market, including much of Dorchester and Mattapan. Veronica Barros, who owns a three-decker in the Bowdoin-Geneva neighborhood with her father, told The Reporter that her tax bills have already been rising, with the property assessed at $1.2 million. 'We’ve gotten a surprise with taxes already this year,' she said. 'When I got that bill, I froze. I got this feeling in the pit of my stomach. You sit down and have to take a breath. It’s hard to swallow and infuriating.We came from Cape Verde and everyone owns their own house here. They bought their houses at a good time. Today, it’s hard for us to all get by.'"

"Another way to ease the tax burden would be to reduce overall revenue to less than the ceiling allowed under Proposition Two-and-a-half. Since the measure was approved in 1980, the city has never collected less than the maximum amount. And Wu said it was 'just not realistic' to solve the budget problem through cuts in spending. 'We would not be able to deliver city services at a basic level that we know our constituents and residents deserve,' she said."

The Wall Street Journal. "East of Los Angeles in California’s secluded desert, the Joshua Tree area was the state’s hottest real-estate market during the pandemic. Now higher interest rates, a bloated short-term rental market and the return to pre-Covid normalcy have brought the market back down to earth. According to the Zillow Home Value Index, the typical home value in the community of Joshua Tree was $217,007 in July 2020. That figure rose to $467,348 in July 2022, and by February 2024 had fallen to $385,941. Values in nearby communities saw similar trajectories: In Twentynine Palms, the typical home value has dropped 12.2% from its pandemic high, and in Yucca Valley it has fallen 6.5%, according to the index."

"'During the pandemic, we saw the biggest real-estate boom in recent history and some home values jumped to unsustainable highs,' said Bryan Wynwood, a real-estate agent who works in the Joshua Tree area. And last year for the first time since 2008, banks started reaching out to Wynwood to list homes that buyers had defaulted on. 'I’ve sold five foreclosed homes in the last six months or so,' he said. 'One was a short-term rental and another was remodeled specifically to sell to short-term rental investors, but they couldn’t find a buyer and let it go into foreclosure instead.' As of early April, roughly 40% of the 199 homes on the market in Joshua Tree had price reductions, Wynwood said. Another one of Wynwood’s clients bought a house in Joshua Tree in early 2022 for $450,000, then spent around $130,000 to remodel it, he said, only to sell it this past February for $430,000."

Silicon Valley in California. "The decision by two tenants to exit downtown San Jose might worsen the maladies that already afflict the economy of the city's urban core. PwC, a professional services titan, and its recently purchased tech company, Surfaceink, are poised to leave downtown after PwC signed a lease for a big chunk of space in a new office building at Santana Row in West San Jose. As further evidence of a feeble real estate market in downtown San Jose, within the last four months, two large office properties were sold at a big loss compared with their prior sales. In December 2023, an office tower at 303 Almaden Blvd. was bought for slightly under $23.8 million — which was 70% below the price paid for the high-rise at the time of its prior sale in 2017 for $80.2 million. In February 2024, a two-tower office complex at North Market Street and West St. John Street was bought for $34.2 million — a nosedive of 77% compared with the $141.4 million paid in 2019 for the high-rises."

Bisnow New York. "Wells Fargo is poised to take over a six-story Herald Square building owned by one of New York’s most prominent retail landlords. A partnership of Jeff Sutton’s Wharton Properties has failed to make its mortgage payments at 11 W. 34th St., prompting the bank to initiate foreclosure proceedings, according to court records first reported by Crain’s New York Business. Wharton told its lender it wouldn't be able to pay off the loan at maturity, triggering 'optional default,' according to Wells Fargo's foreclosure complaint. The foreclosure shows that even the most successful investors aren't immune from distress caused by maturing loans in a high-interest-rate environment."

From Barron's. "As bond yields turned higher in the first quarter and the trend continued in the first sessions in April, Bank of America’s unrealized losses on a key portion of its bond portfolio have likely surpassed $100 billion. At the end of 2023, the bank was sitting on $98 billion of paper losses on a $595 billion portfolio of bonds, mostly U.S. agency mortgage securities, that were classified as held to maturity for accounting purposes. That means the bank doesn’t plan to sell these assets before they mature, which leaves these losses only on paper, or, in other words, unrealized. Barron’s estimates the bank’s unrealized losses on this bond portfolio have extended to about $110 billion as of March 31, by far the largest for any company in the banking industry. The portfolio is down about 13% from its peak of $683 billion in the third quarter of 2021."

The Globe and Mail in Canada. "For many buyers of preconstruction real estate, extravagant launch parties in downtown Toronto or bus tours to charming villages in rural Ontario are a distant memory. Some are home buyers who struggle to line up the financing they need, while others are investors who are reluctant to take ownership of a property only to sell it at a significant loss. In Toronto, Andre Kutyan, broker with Harvey Kalles Real Estate, says new condo buildings are nearing completion in neighbourhoods from Jarvis and Carlton streets in the core to Lawrence Avenue and Avenue Road in North York. 'People like this are losing their shirts,' says Mr. Kutyan. 'They try to play real estate mogul when they really shouldn’t.'"

"Leah Zlatkin, mortgage broker with Mortgage Outlet, says investors who buy condos with the intention of selling in the assignment market typically ensure that a clause in the contract allows them to do so. Many exit before the building is complete. She’s seeing an influx of buyers who intended to live in the unit but now find the appraised value is coming up short. 'The real risk is in trying to close,' she says. 'The unexpected has come up – and that is that your property is not worth what you paid for it.'"

"At the market’s peak, Faisal Susiwala, broker at Re/Max Twin City Faisal Susiwala Realty says, high demand from buyers and little inventory in Cambridge, Guelph and Kitchener-Waterloo prompted people to expand their search. Agents from Brampton, Mississauga and Milton led the bus tours to such small towns as Ayr, New Hamburg, Baden and Woodstock. Investors in bucolic Perth County were told that they would be able to make money by selling the properties or renting them out. There was no scope to ever be able to do that, Mr. Susiwala says, because the rural area has no industry and therefore few workers looking for homes. 'There are no buyers. There are no renters.'"

The Irish Independent. "House buyers have been left in limbo two years after paying deposits as their developer enters Receivership. A director of the building company Alder Homes has said he no longer plans to develop new homes as the system has 'become too tied up in bureaucracy.' Eugene Finn told Irish Independent's Amy Molloy that the housing crisis will worsen as 'there are many issues bubbling under the surface in the construction sector.'"

"'The most disappointing part is not being able to finish those houses for these people that I had personal contact with for the last two years,' Mr Finn said. 'It’s a very disappointing situation and the most frustrating. It’s the buyers who are suffering.' While dozens of houses were built in Cluain Dara, 15 properties are unfinished and buyers are now left in limbo about whether they will get to move into their new homes. Some paid deposits for their houses nearly two years ago."

From ABC News. "Alyssa Luc and her partner Xuan Tri Mai are among many Australians who wish they hadn't rushed into building a home. It was the end of 2020 when the couple purchased a block of land in Catherine Field, a growth area suburb south-west of Sydney. Their block cost about $500,000, and they spent another $700,000 to enter a contract with what they thought was a reputable volume builder. The couple moved into their new home in July 2023 and, just days in, Ms Luc says they started finding alleged defects, starting with a blockage in their toilet. 'Think about the economy … think about the builders at the moment. I mean, they [people] can see that so many builders [have] collapsed in the past few years. They should know now that the industry is vulnerable.'"

"IT worker Patrick Quintal says his life has been destroyed by buying into one of Toplace's troubled developments – Vicinity Apartments in Canterbury, in Sydney's inner south-west. When asked if people should buy off-the-plan or newly-built apartments, he says: 'Don't. Just don't do it, you are playing Russian roulette with your life basically. In fact, I think you might actually have better odds playing Russian roulette than this. It is crazy how poorly the government is ensuring people can actually safely buy property. You're expected to be a lawyer, the building engineer, all of that on top of your nine-to-five job. It's draining.'"

"Mr Quintal purchased a unit with his wife in May 2021 for $685,000 but now may be up for hundreds of thousands of dollars more to fix serious defects. Within months of moving in Mr Quintal had an engineer do an expert report, which he says described the entire building as a 'death trap.' 'It's not really safe,' Mr Quintal says. 'The building as it stands, could not support any kind of movement that was similar to a seismic activity. [It could mean] catastrophic failure … resulting in the building basically collapsing.' With 276 units, that means owners like Mr Quintal are looking at a cost of at least $180,000 each, but possibly more as construction costs remain elevated and time drags on. At the same time, he says quarterly strata levies have jumped from $900 a month to about $4,000. 'For me, the financials are quite, quite dire,' Mr Quintal says."