A report from NBC 2. "The big boom of 2020 is over. In fact, Zillow predicts the Florida Housing Market will slow down in the coming years. Sharyn Olander's waterfront home in Old Bridge Village in North Fort Myers is on the market. She tried to sell it last year right after the Hurricane but eventually gave up. This time around, she thought she would have better luck. However, she's had no bites since December. 'Since then, we've dropped it like 3 or 4 times and now we're looking at 303. And there's not much lower we can go in order to buy a new house,' said Olander. 'When you put it on the market, you get really excited. You're looking forward to getting out of a new place and into a new chapter. When no one comes, then you get really depressed and down.'"

"Sam Yaffey is a long-time realtor based in Cape Coral. She says the market is kind of a mixed bag right now, and there's a couple reasons for that. One of them is that we have so many homes for sale in Southwest Florida. 'We've got a little bit of a hangover with the Hurricane. With people having to repair their homes before they could sell them and a whole bunch of things like that. So, we have a sudden increase in inventory once everybody suddenly got their houses fixed,' said Yaffey."

The News Press. "Although there is no formal appeal process for Lee County to follow on FEMA's recent decision to slash the county's and four municipalities' ratings to the lowest possible rung on its floodplain management scale, effectively cutting residents' National Flood Insurance Plan discount from 25% down to nothing, county commissioners decided Tuesday they would pursue one anyways. Commissioner Cecil Pendergrass said when he spoke with colleagues in D.C., 'Their attitude is 'if you’re gong to live in Florida, you pay the price. It’s revenge politics,' he said."

NBC Montana. "The Gallatin Association of Realtors announced prices dropped for single-family residences and condos and townhouses in February. Median sales prices for single-family residences dropped by 6% from January to $895,000. Median prices for condos and townhouses dropped 7% to an average of $527,500. Median sales prices for condos and townhouses in February decreased -7.0% to fall to $527,500."

LA Daily News in California. "April 1 marked the one-year anniversary of Measure ULA taking effect in the city of Los Angeles, and by any measure, the misleadingly named 'mansion tax' is a disaster. The luxury home market in Los Angeles saw a sharp decline in the number of sales during Measure ULA’s first year. Many owners rushed to sell before the tax took effect, but even so, the steep drop of nearly 70% in the 12 months since the tax took effect may have taken city officials by surprise. Only 125 homes priced over $5 million sold in L.A. since April 1, 2023, compared to 416 in the previous 12-month period. As of March 8, according to the city controller’s office, Measure ULA has brought in just $173.6 million, about a quarter of what the city had estimated."

Capital and Main on California. "Not everyone made it to the top floors of Oceanwide Plaza - the abandoned billion-dollar development of luxury high-rises in downtown Los Angeles - but the graffiti artist called SEK was determined to get there. That was in early February, when local graffiti artists first began hitting the construction site's three towers after becoming newly aware that the property was mostly unguarded. In that first week, the buildings would be smothered in paint, as taggers left their names and acronyms in elaborate shapes and colors. 'The city obviously didn't care,' he added of the construction site frozen in place. 'They would've done something about it a long time ago if it was really a concern. … The building was already ugly to begin with. We just added a little color to it.'"

"Some see the marking of the buildings as a symbolic act of reclaiming territory from an overextended development project that had become a monumental eyesore in the heart of downtown. After five years, the business and political classes had done little to resolve the problem of empty towers looming over a neighborhood in desperate need of affordable housing. 'I love it, man. I wish I could buy that building and just have it,' said photographer Estevan Oriol, famous for his vibrant pictures and films on hip-hop and Chicano culture. 'If you go downstairs on the street level, there's all kinds of people in tents, pissing and shitting all over the streets, and the rats. Why aren't they putting the money into that, helping those people?'"

WOAI in Texas. "With the rapid growth in San Antonio, new apartment complexes are being built and the San Antonio Apartment Association said that could mean lower rent rates. 'I think we’ve all seen a lot of new apartments getting built. I feel every single highway or road that I’m on, I feel like I see a new apartment complex going up,' said Alan Gonzales, Executive Director of Business Development for Galaxy Builders. 'If you overbuild and you build too many projects, those units have to be absorbed, right?'"

The Real Deal on Texas. "As he copes with a rash of defaults and mounting foreclosures, Alan Stalcup now faces his first investor lawsuit. The head of multifamily syndicator GVA was hit with litigation claiming he lied to his limited partner on a San Antonio deal about how he financed the project. Limited partner Overwatch, a private Fort Worth-based REIT and frequent Stalcup investor, alleges the syndicator’s 'fraud, fraudulent inducement and fraud by omission' led to the foreclosure of the so-called Solara apartment complex last month and wiped out Overwatch’s equity. The REIT claims it suffered a $7 million loss. Stalcup failed to notify Overwatch of the second loan, according to the complaint. 'Overwatch would not have invested in Solara had it known,' the suit reads."

Asbury Park Press in New Jersey. "The developer of two Toms River downtown apartment towers will be declared in default Monday, April 1, because they have not yet acquired all the permits necessary to build the 281-apartment project, Mayor Daniel Rodrick said. Capodagli Property Co. has not yet broken ground on the pair of six-story towers slated to be built at Main and Water streets, at the site of the old Red Carpet Inn. 'Capodagli is going to be declared in default,' Rodrick said. 'They will have 30 days to cure, and if they don't, we're pulling out.'"

The New York Post. "Brooklyn’s tallest building is struggling to pay its skyscraping loans. Michael Stern, the developer of 9 DeKalb Avenue’s 93-story The Brooklyn Tower, has defaulted on a $240 million mezzanine loan and now faces foreclosure, the Real Deal has reported. A UCC foreclosure auction has been scheduled for Jun. 10 by Silverstein Capital Partners, which issued the loan in 2019, according to marketing materials. In addition to now having a reputation for financial trouble, the looming metallic supertall has also become known for its 'evil vibes.' A video producer who lives across the street previously told The Post that the building looks like 'the headquarters of an evil corporation in a superhero movie.'"

Bisnow on Massachusetts. "Greater Boston delivered a record amount of industrial space last year, punctuated by a massive five-story Amazon warehouse that completed in the fourth quarter. But now, the pandemic-era boom has begun to evaporate. The region had 1.2M SF in the industrial construction pipeline at the start of the year, 80% lower than one year earlier, according to Newmark's latest market report, which says much of that new construction hasn't been leased. 'We've got also a wide range of other spec products that are either sitting vacant that we finished last year or are close to wrapping up completion and aren't leased,' said Jason Grant, president at Arco New England."

CBC News in Canada. "Dozens of Brampton landlords who say the city's rental licensing pilot will penalize compliant landlords protested outside city hall on Wednesday, asking council to scrap the two- year pilot. Protesters shouted, 'No to RRL,' after the city announced it will relaunch the contentious residential rental licensing pilot, aimed at curbing illegal lodging, as March 28 or as late as April 19. Landlord Azad Goyat was among those protesting. Goyat rents out his basement to four people and his first floor to six people, and says he is one of the compliant landlords. He says instead of providing support with delays in landlord-tenant disputes, the city has decided to fine 'helpless landlords' with fines for problem tenants. Due to delays at the Landlord and Tenant Board, landlords like Goyat say complaints haven't been heard and some fear they will be penalized if they enroll in the program. 'Landlords are totally helpless,' he said."

Estonia Public Broadcasting. "The real estate market has started bouncing back from various crises, said Martin Vahter, executive manager of 1Partner Kinnisvara. Vahter explained that in stable times, about 2,000 to 2,500 new apartments were built in Tallinn annually. During the construction boom of 2021, over 4,000 apartments were built. When the Euribor rate began to rise sharply in the summer of 2022, the number of new apartments dropped to 1,200. In 2023, fewer than 1,000 new apartments were built in Tallinn. 'The real estate market is very sensitive to interest rates, and when the Euribor was at zero for ten consecutive years and then sharply rose to four, with the final interest rate reaching 5-6 percent, it drastically slowed down the purchasing of new developments,' Vahter told 'Terevisioon."

"Vahter said that investors have disappeared from the real estate sector. 'In Tallinn, the annual rental income compared to the purchase price is about 4 percent, and the loan interest is 7 percent. Naturally, money flows out of real estate into better asset classes. It has not yet started to return, and those investors have disappeared,' he added."

Business Insider. "Japan's long-comatose economy is finally showing proof of life. After a catastrophic real-estate implosion in the early 1990s, the country's economy spent the next three decades shrinking. Like Japan in the 1990s, China is now staring down a property-market collapse. Real estate once accounted for 20% to 30% of the country's GDP, and all aspects of China's economy — local governments, households, the banking system — depend on money from the property market to survive. After decades of overbuilding and speculation, this massive debt pile is coming due."

"This is what we now recognize as a 'balance-sheet recession,' a term the Nomura economist Richard Koo coined in 1997 to describe Japan's economic sluggishness as society paid down debt from its property-market collapse. Now, Koo says, Chinese academics and policymakers are flocking to Japan to glean some kind of wisdom from the country's experience. 'I tell them there's a big difference between Japan 30 years ago and China now. When we got into this balance-sheet recession, no one knew what kind of disease we contracted,' Koo told me. 'We were all lost for a long time.'"

"'The Chinese are talking about it every day, they understand what kind of disease they contracted,' Koo said. 'Whether that translates into a speedy, sufficient, and sustained stimulus, we haven't got there yet.'"