A report from ABC News. "A slice of paradise in Montana is suffering economic disruption. Seeley Lake’s problem lies in its lack of a centralized sewer system. The Missoula County community’s reluctance to come up with a plan to replace its septic system means no affordable housing can be built for working people. That lack of accommodation means Seeley Lake’s biggest employer -- Pyramid Mountain Lumber -- can’t attract enough workers to continue, and is closing the family-owned business which has been operating for 75 years. Pyramid isn’t the only local business affected by the worker shortage. Rovero’s Hardware is 'running on a skeleton crew' as its busiest season approaches, general manager Kyle Marx noted. 'No affordable housing here,' he said. 'Rentals have diminished since COVID hit, and everybody came up here, bought every rental darn near that was available and turned them into vacation rentals or moved up here themselves.'"

Hawaii Real Estate Dreams. "Vacation rentals are under fire in every Hawaii county and a recent report on their economic impact is just mind-blowing. For historical purposes, I bought my first condo in 2001 with a 7% interest rate. The difference is it was a $100,000 condo with a monthly fee around $150. Let’s call it $900 a month with property taxes. If I factor in inflation for 23 years, that is roughly $1,600. I was making big money at $50,000 a year and 40% of my income went to 'shelter' costs."

"Now, condos are in the mid-500’s or higher and the fees are now $756, because the insurance costs have skyrocketed. So as an illustration, a $550,000 loan on a 2/2 condo is $3,600 a month, fee of $756, that is $4,300 before property taxes. You can rent the same condo for around $3,000 a month probably. Lots of pros and cons to owning and I’m usually in the 'buy' column but I don’t see how it makes sense for most now."

The San Francisco Chronicle in California. "It wasn’t until about 1960 that San Francisco housing costs diverged from the rest of the country. By 1990, San Francisco’s for-sale homes were priced at roughly 3.7 times what they were a century before, adjusted for inflation. Among prices in major U.S. cities overall, prices were just 1.5 times their 1890 levels. The gap grew even wider over time. At the peak of the housing bubble in 2006, for-sale homes in San Francisco cost 5.6 times what they did in 1890, compared to 2.5 nationally. San Diego saw an even bigger surge, with its 2006 for-sale home prices about 16.7 times their 1890 levels, the biggest increase among the cities with enough data for that period. Like San Francisco, most of that growth occurred during the early 2000s."

"As the cost of for-sale housing rose, buying a home became not only about finding a place to live, but also about acquiring an investment that could fund an owner’s retirement or pay for their children’s college tuition."

Go Banking Rates on California. "The Bay Area has long attracted residents; however, the housing market seems to be struggling. For one, large department stores are leaving the area. In addition, sellers are having trouble closing deals at the listing price, with a 2-bedroom condo selling for $675,000 in April 2024 after being bought for $1.25 million in 2019. 'This tech hotspot (San Francisco) has been thriving,' says Yosef Adde, founder of I BUY Los Angeles. 'I have a feeling a reality check is on the way. With remote work becoming more common, many people are leaving due to the city’s costs. It’s like witnessing a gold rush. The median home price has already dropped by 8.2% compared to last year. I believe this decline will continue.'"

The Miami Herald in Florida. "Take a walk down a block of Coconut Avenue and hear the ghostly silence. No children playing, no dogs barking, no neighbors grilling hamburgers. A dozen immaculate townhouses remain uninhabited three years after most were sold or double sold, triple sold and, in one case, quadruple sold to buyers duped by developer Doug Cox into believing they were weeks away from closing on their dream homes. In a recent settlement of fraud accusations against Cox, 32 parties who are owed $34 million by the self-styled 'King of Coconut Grove' have agreed to sign quitclaim deeds, relinquish any liens on the properties and surrender their goal of ownership. They might recover 40 to 50 percent of the money they gave Cox if the 3,000- to 4,000-square-foot townhouses sell at their listed prices of $2.6 to $3.5 million."

"'We lost, and the wrong people won,' said Kevin Ware, a Chicago transplant who expected to move into 2992 Coconut Ave. with his family in 2021 after putting down a $433,750 deposit on the $1.7 million townhouse. 'Everyone always says Miami is a dirty, dishonest, double-dealing place. Now I’ve experienced it first hand,' Ware said. 'I love Miami, and I’m not leaving, but, holy crap, the corruption is unbelievable.'"

"'Development in Miami is a magnet for crazy people, and private equity lenders are poisoning the landscape, yet the law favors them over homebuyers who want a piece of the American dream,' said Alexandra Cardoso, an early buyer who placed a $155,000 deposit on her Coconut Avenue townhouse in 2018. 'It’s been an incredible waste of time and money,' Cardoso said. 'When the receiver was appointed and said he could secure the COs in six weeks, we were optimistic Doug would be forced to finish inspections, our contracts would be honored and we’d finally get our houses. We were even willing to negotiate a higher price for them. But the receiver wanted to wait and put them on the market. More than a year has passed. Buyers are steering clear of those houses now because they don’t have COs and the market is soft. They’ll be lucky to get anything close to what they’re asking.'"

From Fast Company. "The U.S. mortgage market is experiencing one of the biggest downturns in history. Layoffs and mergers continue to mount in the mortgage industry, and mortgage purchase applications have been hovering around multi-decade lows since 2022. Some would-be sellers can’t afford to sell and buy something else at current rates, while others simply refuse to trade their 2% or 3% mortgage rates for rates of 6% or 7%. Thus fewer mortgages are being issued. John Downs, a mortgage advisor in the Washington, D.C. area, tweeted a few months ago explaining why this is such a unique mortgage downturn: 'Economy good = people buy houses. Economy bad = people refinance houses. We [loan officers] win every time. Just not this time.'"

The New York Post. "A former Rite Aid in Queens has been transformed into a nightmare out of 'Mad Max,' overrun by booze-swilling hobos, zonked-out junkies and migrants who have transformed the forlorn spot into their own dystopian social club. The mostly middle-aged derelicts laid claim to the 25,058-square-foot Astoria plot seven months ago, neighbors say — planting Mexican, American and Puerto Rican flags atop the vacant building’s roof and furnishing it with sofas, tables, chairs and foam mattresses. They’ve since turned the site into a blight, dangling bizarre items from the roof’s edges. The Post watched as a man seated on a soiled blue couch behind the building appeared to sell drugs. Another urinated out in the open as two teenaged couples walked by, while a third, heavily tattooed man stripped to his boxer shorts and bathed himself with a half-filled five-gallon water bottle. 'These guys are out here, drinking liquor in the open,' a disgusted neighbor said. 'We pay a lot of taxes living here. You don’t see this s–t in the suburbs.'"

The Toronto Sun in Canada. "For Riz Dhanji, founder and president of RAD Marketing, a firm that specializes in sales and marketing for pre-construction developments, there is only one word to describe the state of today’s housing market in the GTA: Grim. Aside from a surplus of inventory caused by people selling units because they have to, there are, he says, a 'flood of condominiums coming on the market.'"

Blog TO in Canada. "A well-supplied GTA real estate market throughout the spring and early summer meant that many prospective buyers had more negotiating power on prices. As a result, many properties — including this brand-new Oakville townhouse — were sold well below their listing prices. The four-bedroom, four-bathroom home was originally sold in September 2023 for just over $1.5 million. Less than a year later in May 2024, the home was re-listed for $1.35 million, but owners failed to finalize a sale. Finally, the home was listed for $1.19 million in June, and eventually sold under its listing price for $1.185 million in July — representing a massive loss of $316,000 when compared to its price just a year earlier. Plenty of other GTA properties have sold well below their listing prices this year, including a three-bedroom home in Toronto's Silverthorn neighbourhood which sold in June at a loss of $207,500, and a Mississauga condo which sold at a $125,000 loss after 10 failed to attempts to sell."

The Telegraph in the UK. "When Philip Conway, 56, helped his mother move into a £465,000 retirement home six years ago it seemed like a sensible decision. The flat in Wokingham was close to family, and based in a friendly retirement complex with services such as gardening and maintenance covered by a £5,000 annual charge. Early last year Mr Conway and his siblings decided it was the right time to put the property on the market when his mother, now 93, went into full-time care. At first they listed it for £500,000, but have now had to cut the price to below what it was bought for in 2018."

"When David Easey’s father died in 2018 after two weeks in a care home he was keen to sell his old McCarthy Stone retirement apartment to avoid having to pay the maintenance fees. Bought in 2011 for £220,000, the property moved Mr Easey’s father closer to the family in Worthing. However when it came to sell the property, estate agents said it had been overvalued when it was bought and was now worth a maximum of £190,000. The property sold for £150,000, a £70,000 loss on the purchase price and a cut of that was taken by the management company as a contingency fee. Mr Easey said: 'I can appreciate for some people losing that money is a really big deal. You expect to realise the same amount of money when you sell it and it is a nasty surprise when that doesn’t happen.'"

Radio New Zealand. "A surge in houses being listed for sale continues - and in some cases, it is because people are selling before they are forced to, some real estate market participants say. The Real Estate Institute noted 'high interest rates' as a reason for properties coming on to the market when it released its June data. The number of new listings was up 25.5 percent, year-on-year, even as sales decreased by roughly the same percentage. Whangārei real estate salesperson Brooke Gibson said interest rate stress was 'so real' for sellers, particularly those who bought homes at 'extravagant' prices when interest rates were low, or who borrowed against their homes during that period."

"'People were buying properties at outrageous prices and now they're having to take a major hit on the price. They're also in a position where they have to sell because they can't afford the payments based on the fact interest rates have gone from 2 percent to 9 percent in some cases and their house prices might have dropped 20 percent. It's a really tricky situation.' She said she had had several clients who had said if she was not able to sell the house, it would be turned into a forced sale. 'I've had a [person] saying 'Brooke is going to sell it or the bank is'… it's something I've seen numerous times.'"

The Wall Street Journal. "As Western companies quake at the latest onslaught of cheap Chinese goods, a similar drama is playing out in China, where manufacturers are struggling as Beijing boosts industrial capacity without stimulating new demand. Consider Jiangsu Lopal Tech, a company that supplies lithium iron phosphate to make batteries. The company lost $169 million in 2023, wiping out nearly three years of profit, according to its most recent annual statement. It blamed the red ink on overcapacity in China’s lithium iron phosphate market and a slowdown in demand from domestic battery makers."

"A similarly plaintive song is heard throughout China’s corporate landscape. Rampant overcapacity combined with weak consumer demand is pushing many Chinese companies to the brink, forcing them to slash prices and crushing profits. With the property bubble that powered growth for years deflating, Beijing has been funneling investment into manufacturing, yet taking few significant steps to boost consumption that would soak up the resulting supply—mainly because Chinese leader Xi Jinping sees U.S.-style consumption as wasteful and contrary to his goal of making China an industrial and technological powerhouse."

"The ruling party reiterated that agenda at its twice-in-a-decade conclave this past week. To combat the property slowdown, Beijing will accelerate development of 'emerging and future industries,' such as electric vehicles and solar, a senior official said in a Friday press briefing. 'An investment-led growth model can only go so far because ultimately there has to be demand somewhere,' said Logan Wright, a partner at Rhodium Group who leads the firm’s China markets research. 'There will be a reckoning within China.'"