A report from the Daily Breeze in California. "How is the housing market doing? The answer depends on whom you ask, says Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors. 'Some people will say it is terrible,' he told real estate writers at a recent conference. '(Others) will say this is one of the greatest things that has ever happened. So, we have a really strange real estate market where home prices are at a record high, (and) homeowners are smiling. (But) if you ask people who are in the industry — Realtors, mortgage lenders — they're saying, 'This is one of the worst housing downturns that I've ever seen.'"

"Los Angeles/Orange County home shoppers lost $320,500 in buying power when mortgage rates more than doubled in 2022, said Zillow Chief Economist Skylar Olsen. Inland Empire shoppers lost $194,700 in buying power when rates went up. San Francisco shoppers lost $394,000 in buying power. That compares with a buying power loss of $120,100 in the nation as a whole. 'Typical homes are no longer affordable to a middle-income household in the U.S.,' Olsen said."

The American Statesman in Texas. "As builders struggle to move inventory in the face of higher interest rates, a rising supply of newly constructed homes is dimming the outlook for the rest of the year, according to the latest monthly report from Ben Caballero's HomesUSA.com, which tracks the new-home market in Texas, including the five-county Austin region. New-home sales in the Austin area were the lowest of Texas’ four largest metros, Caballero said. 'Moreover, active listings of new homes are up nearly 9% year-over-year in May as Austin builders struggle to move inventory in the face of higher interest rates,' Caballero said."

From Summit Daily. "Summit County’s market-rate housing inventory continues to grow — yet it hasn’t been enough to make a dent in stubbornly high prices. Between January and June of this year, the number of new home listings in the county was 365, a 46% increase from that same time in 2023, according to the Colorado Association of Realtors. Final sale figures continue to come in lower than a home’s initial listing price, which experts say could be an indication that buyers have more options and, in turn, more negotiating power. 'When I see our sales numbers are down, and our prices are up, I really go back to, ‘What’s selling?' said Summit County Realtor Dana Cottrell. 'And what is selling is our $1 million and over properties.'"

"Of the 693 current total listings in Summit County, 37% are for homes below $1 million. Of the total sales in June, 40 transactions were for homes over $1 million while 38 were for homes priced under $1 million, Cottrell said. In June, home sellers received 96.8% of their listing price, down from 98.8% the year prior. While not enough to affect market prices, the small dip could point to more ability for buyers to bargain. For much of 2021 and 2022, the sale price figure 'never dropped below 100% of listing, because the market was so fast moving,' said Summit County Realtor Dishon Lutz. 'Now, we’re starting to see that not everything that gets listed the consumer is willing to pay."'

From Moneywise. "Homeowners in the Villas of Carillon townhome community of Feather Sound, Florida are trying to wrap their heads around a request from their homeowners association board for a $60,000 special assessment. At a special meeting, the owners arrived in hordes to convince the board to hold off on making a decision. 'You need to get together, this problem is not going away,' resident Robert Regan said. 'And condos, they need to have 100% reserves.' And then, in an email after the vote on June 21, the entire board announced it had resigned — effective immediately. The HOA board said that insurance companies would no longer insure the complex in a few years if it didn’t have the necessary reserves to pay for new roofs."

"But Patricia Staebler, a certified reserve specialist based in Sarasota, notes that a project’s time-equivalent cost should already be banked ahead of the renovation if the association wanted to avoid any special assessments. Staebler says these reserve studies should help the board plan for the next fiscal year as well as subsequent years, building in an annual increase over a 30-year period. And while it’s unnecessary for the reserves to be 'fully funded' — it is crucial that these yearly assessments are met with the appropriate full funding. 'There is a difference between being 100% funded and funding your reserve requirements for the upcoming fiscal year 100%,' she says. 'I've been doing this for 15 years. In my entire reserve specialist career, I have not seen an association which is 100% funded.'"

Bisnow New York. "The long-running saga over Brooklyn’s Pacific Park project could be entering a new chapter. The Related Cos. has entered talks to take over the embattled 22-acre development from Greenland USA after the affiliate of Chinese state-backed Greenland Group defaulted on its loans last year, The Real Deal reported. Pacific Park, the development that was hatched as part of the deal to build the Barclays Center arena, is supposed to include 15 commercial and residential buildings over railyards between the neighborhoods of Prospect Heights, Boerum Hill, Park Slope, Fort Greene and Clinton Hill."

"Just nine of the towers have been delivered to date. Last year, Greenland defaulted on $350M of loans from EB-5 lenders the U.S. Immigration Fund and Fortress Investment Group covering the six remaining development sites. The lenders moved to force a foreclosure auction last year, but it was postponed, and negotiations over the publicly owned, privately controlled land are happening behind closed doors."

The Commercial Observer. "While 'foreclosure' is generally bad news for businesses, for those who work in commercial real estate foreclosures it’s good — and the news has been especially good of late. 'Foreclosures are definitely up — there’s an absolute ton right now,' said foreclosure auctioneer Matthew D. Mannion, principal at Mannion Auctions. 'This is the busiest we’ve been since before COVID.'"

Castanet in Canada. "The Interior real estate market continued to cool in June, a month that is usually red hot. There were 1,330 residential sales last month in the Association of Interior Realtors region, which was down more than 12% from May and more than 21% from June 2023. Meanwhile, benchmark prices fell in every housing category in the Central and North Okanagan. 'Much like the weather, real estate sales activity in June was not the typical seasonal activity that we have seen in recent years that tends to increase as the warmer climate arrives,' AIR president Kaytee Sharun said in a press release. 'Well-priced properties are primed to move at a faster pace. It is important for buyers and sellers to take what you could call a balanced approach, which considers and factors in current market conditions, when navigating the real estate market.'"

"Listings continue to increase, which also helps to explain the cooling market. The Central Okanagan had the largest increase of active listings when compared to June 2023, as they were up 48.3%. Sharun said there is a reason for that. 'It is interesting to see most of the regions with the highest inventory increases are in areas where income-producing properties may be affected by government policies such as the short-term rental ban,' she said."

Interest New Zealand. "In an ASB Household Outlook publication for July, ASB senior economist Mark Smith says the hope is that households are now basing their future decisions 'on a more realistic outlook' for household incomes, house prices and borrowing costs. He said many of the current difficulties that have been faced by NZ households are 'a hangover of the consumer spending and housing market binge' that occurred from late 2020 to early 2022 which artificially inflated the sector. 'The music had to stop sometime, and we are now in the midst of the post Covid-19 adjustment. Higher interest rates provided the circuit-breaker and have sharply cooled housing market momentum, house prices and household spending. In inflation adjusted terms, house prices are more than 20% below their late 2021 peak. Household saving buffers have been progressively run down as households struggle to stay afloat. The household sector has gone into hibernation. The housing market is in the doldrums. Consumers remain extremely cautious and are unwilling to extend themselves financially.'"

"He said while the household sector and the housing market were recovering from 'the Covid-19 related excesses,' there is still 'some short-term pain ahead.' 'We expect the household sector to stay in hibernation for the remainder of the year, with household sector activity and the housing market on ice. The NZ unemployment rate could hit 6% by mid-2025,' Smith said. 'A number of households who have bought at the peak may now be flirting with negative equity.'"

South China Morning Post. "Sales of distressed commercial real estate in Hong Kong jumped in the first half of the year, accounting for about three quarters of the volume, with the coming months likely to see an unusually high number of such transactions, according to CBRE. Distressed sales typically account for less than 10 per cent of commercial property transactions in the city, but with interest rates climbing to a 23-year high in a span of 16 months since March 2022, investors have found it increasingly difficult to service debt, the property consultancy said."

"In May, a 5,171 sq ft mansion, 10B at Black's Link on The Peak, linked to Hui Ka-yan, the founder of the liquidated China Evergrande Group, was sold by creditors to a privately owned company for HK$448 million, 44 per cent less than the HK$800 million that appraisers had estimated the property to be worth. The property, which was mortgaged to banks and owned through a company, was classified as commercial real estate. 'In the second half, there will be something like 50 per cent of [distressed sales] because interest rates are still at a high level and a rate cut is unlikely to happen earlier than September,' said Reeves Yan, executive director and head of capital markets at CBRE Hong Kong. Many existing asset owners are facing tremendous pressure from the high interest costs of around 6 per cent, while the return on property assets is about 3.5 per cent, he added."

The Sydney Morning Herald. "It was supposed to be a magnificent village of pastel cottages trimmed with golden awnings, one of more than a dozen 'fairyland' theme parks to be built across China by the country’s second-biggest developer, Evergrande. These days, the abandoned ruins of the Evergrande Cultural Tourism City in Guiyang, the capital of the Guizhou province, one of the country’s poorest regions, stand as a mausoleum to the bankrupted property giant’s rapacious ambitions and a symbol of the sickness plaguing the real estate market and broader Chinese economy."

"Weeds have climbed through the nooks and crevices of the now dilapidated cottage village. In the background, looms a post-apocalyptic visage: the steel carcass of the sprawling 100 billion yuan ($20.5 billion) project that was to feature a hotel, an international convention centre and shopping mall. Also unfinished are the skeletons of the real estate towers that were to house thousands of residents on the edge of fairyland."

"Within a few years, 50-year-old Qiu Shaoyun’s income from a labouring job as a decorator, which relies on a healthy housing market, has plummeted. These days he and his wife, a cleaner, struggle to bring in 10,000 yuan ($2000) a month. 'I can only earn half as much as I did before the pandemic. When houses are not built any more, there are no more work opportunities for decoration, right?' he says. ‘In the past, we could afford dining at restaurants but now we even hesitate to order a bowl of meat-less noodles Many people in rural areas are not having children any more. Why? Because they don’t want to bring burden to themselves, and to next generations.'"

"For those caught in the ebbing tide of China’s economic miracle, each day is a grind. Mr Wei, 52, who owns a smelly bean curd stand in Huaguoyuan, lives in a 90 square-metre flat with seven of his family members, including his four grandchildren. Even with the collapse in property prices, he doesn’t have enough money to buy a bigger home. 'Each year is worse than the previous one. I have no confidence in my future income,' he says."

"For Zhang Xiaogang, 40, a father-of-two who resorted to working as a taxi driver after he was forced to close his Sichuan restaurant during the pandemic, the dream of purchasing a home has evaporated as he struggles to make ends meet. 'I feel like I’m drifting along now. Every living person knows the economy is bad. For example, I could make 300 yuan a day before pandemic but now I’m making less than a third of that,' he says. As for Evergrande’s abandoned fairytale wonderland in Guiyang, a proposal by architecture student Fan Yunheng to turn the sprawling ruins into a cemetery won top prize at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, China’s most prestigious art academy. A moribund result for the broken real estate dream that has become a nightmare for so many in China."