It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "'Homes in the less-populated areas between [Florida] metros are sitting on the market for weeks, leading sellers to lower prices,' Sasha Dookhoo, a Florida homeowner who purchased her house in 2021 'before the housing frenzy began,' tells Fortune. 'In Florida, I can’t drive anywhere without seeing a new community popping up,' says Dookhoo, who lives in Gainesville, which is about two hours north of Orlando. 'I travel to Orlando often and the number of homes popping up along the way in the most remote areas has been surprising to me.' 'Now is the time to get a deal in the south,' Erin Sykes, chief economist with Nest Seekers International, tells Fortune. 'Our transaction volume has picked up, but most properties are going into contract 10% to 20% below asking price.'"

"More homes are coming on the market in southern Colorado, and prices are starting to fall in some places. The number of closed deals on houses in Pueblo and Fremont counties during April dropped nearly 20 percent and 37 percent respectively from the same time last year. 'Buyers just aren’t out there looking,' Pueblo-area broker David Anderson said in the report. 'For those that are, lenders are seeing more and more who can't qualify with interest rates still in the 7 percent range.' 'The market is giving us mixed signals,' said Colorado Springs-area broker Patrick Muldoon in the report, noting values went up in April 'which might lead you to believe things are great in the Pikes Peak region. But we need to address the elephant in the room. What is selling is upper-end homes. This gives an appearance of price increases despite the 6.6 percent drop in units sold and a 23.5 percent increase in active listings. I believe this is beginning to signal a market shift.'"

"'Sellers know that high mortgage rates mean they should expect negotiations, expect offers to come in under list price, and be ready for some back and forth on things like repairs and closing costs,' said Marsha McMahon-Jones, a Redfin Premier agent in Palm Springs, California. 'Buyers may not be able to get a lower mortgage rate, but they're often getting homes for slightly less than the asking price.'"

"When Sarah bought her first home last year in the Chicago suburbs, she thought she was making a smart investment in her future. But just a year into homeownership, Sarah is filled with regret over her decision to buy — for several different reasons. 'My real estate agent told me not to worry about the high interest rates and that I could always refinance later. The mortgage broker I was working with made everything seem so simple,' she recalled. 'It seemed like the right move … all of my money would be going towards owning something rather than just paying rent every month. As soon as I moved into the house, things started breaking.'"

"'I super regret locking myself into a 30-year mortgage with massive monthly payments at such a young age,' she said. In just the first year, Sarah estimates she has spent over $10,000 more than she budgeted for. This extreme financial burden has led to serious doubts that she made the right choice buying a home. 'Now, I cringe every time I see mortgage rates go up, knowing my friends who are still renting can easily move or downgrade apartments. I’m stuck in this house I can barely afford.'"

"An NPR Planet Money podcast with a segment covering the trial behind the NAR lawsuit included a snippet from a previous interview with Allan Dalton, head of Real Living Real Estate. In the clip, Dalton explains his best practices for keeping a big commission, a technique he learned from one of his top Realtors. The Realtor had a client ask to reduce her commission by $10,000. The technique is profanity-based, Dalton warns, but he decided to bleep out the swear words. 'Here’s the technique,' Dalton says. 'There's no bleeping, bleeping way I'm going to cut my bleeping, bleeping commission. What do you think, I'm a bleeping, bleeping hooker standing outside the Lincoln Tunnel at 3 o'clock in the morning giving bleeping, bleepings to sailors? If you think I'm going to cut my bleeping, bleeping commission, you can take this home and shove it up your bleeping, bleeping, and I know that it will fit.'"

"When retirees Kathy and Pat Button started renovation plans for their Beaches home, they reached out to their neighbours in hopes of avoiding construction conflict. Instead, the amicable relationship has soured. Alex and Tata Shifrin, whose Waverley Road house was separated from the Buttons' by a shared party wall, initially supported the project, which the city approved in 2022-23. But after construction started last fall, the Shifrins say it went beyond what they thought they'd agreed to, jeopardizing their own plans to sell their house and sense of safety — something the Buttons dispute, though the project has failed two city inspections and was hit with a permit violation. 'When you get into a semi, this is the worst-case nightmare that you can imagine,' Alex Shifrin said in an interview."

"The Shifrins filed a statement of claim at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice seeking $200,000 in damages. Tata said she was shocked when she came home one day in October 2023 to find most of her neighbour's house being torn down. 'What we were sold on and what happened are very different things,' Alex said. 'A renovation and an addition became a demolition and excavation.' 'The children were afraid to sleep in their own bedroom because raccoons were tearing squirrels apart,' Tata said. The Shifrins, who separated prior to construction beginning, say they plan to sell."

"The number of apartments for sale in the Northeastern Estonian of Narva has increased exponentially, however demand is low. Real estate agents believe that behind this are worsening quality of life as well as people's exodus from the border city. Vadim Senitšenkov, director of real estate agency Arco Vara's Narva office, noted that a lot of apartments owned by Russian residents have come on the market as well, but believes that the problem isn't too many apartments on the market; it's lack of demand. 'Not many transactions are happening,' Senitšenkov said. 'It's about consumer confidence. People lack confidence, especially here in Narva, about what's going to happen next, both in macroeconomic terms and geopolitically. People are afraid to invest in their future right now – end of story.'"

"The housing market looks set for a winter of discontent with a surplus of listings and a lack of urgency among buyers. Residential property values have largely plateaued across New Zealand in recent months, with sales volumes expected to drop in the coming months. The national average value is now 2.7 percent higher than at the same time last year, but still 12.9 percent ($136,993) below the market's peak in late 2021. Cities are losing momentum with Auckland's three-month rolling average negative for the third straight month. Vendors with unsold properties face a nervous winter and some big decisions. QV operations manager James Wilson said sellers will have to either readjust their price expectations or move to the sidelines. 'There will be some vendors who if they need to sell, will have to realign their sales price,' he said."

"Ivy Zhang figured she had it made. She joined one of China’s biggest property companies in 2016, as the country’s real estate market was taking off. Money was so plentiful that she didn’t have to think about it much. 'The bank account was just a series of numbers,' Zhang says. Everybody wanted what Zhang and her colleagues were selling. Prices never seemed to fall, so condos served the combined functions of wealth storage, insurance and retirement savings. But those heady days didn’t last. Many homebuyers were left waiting on stalled construction, sparking angry protests across the country."

"Zhang, 30, who says she helped sell almost 1 billion yuan ($139 million) worth of apartments for Country Garden, has resorted to peddling health supplements on social media to pay the bills. So far she’s earning nowhere near enough, selling three items a month. It’s a far cry from the days when she earned as much as the equivalent of $83,000 a year. She and her husband have postponed having a baby, and she scours the web for discounted offers, cooks her own meals to avoid takeout and minimizes socializing to cut expenses. 'If you still want to live like before, you’re basically dreaming,' Zhang says. 'If I spent 3,000 yuan in the past, now I’m looking to see if I can cut it down to 2,000. Then I’ll see if I can cut it to a thousand. As long as I can survive.'"

"Charlie Zeng, a former worker at developers including China Vanke Co., who in a good year earned the equivalent of more than $250,000, spent a year looking for work. In his most desperate moment, he volunteered to take a 90% pay cut. After 70 interviews he received a few offers, only to have them all rescinded. Although he eventually found a job, he remains pessimistic about real estate. 'There’s no future in this industry,' Zeng says. 'The sector’s been abandoned.'"