A report from KOAA. "I talked to six families in the Wolf Ranch area, it is one of three Colorado Springs communities where Creekstone Homes builds. The families all have major issues when it comes to communication and getting items fixed on their new builds. 'We did not receive our front door for months and months and months,' as we walked inside Kelly and Glen Rosser’s home, the issues continued. To make matters worse the Rosser’s received a lien over Christmas time because Creekstone failed to pay subcontractors for their work and the family was threatened with foreclosure. Kelly Rosser explains, 'So you can imagine, even though this is not our doing and no fault of our own and we certainly didn’t owe the subcontractor money. They obviously wanted their money and they had a right to that money and Creekstone wasn’t really making any effort to remove the lien from our property until it went into a threat of foreclosure.'"

"The issues the Rosser's have had are echoed by other Creekstone homeowners. Stacey Courtney tells me, 'Well, the trouble started kind of immediately. The communication is pretty much zil. You email somebody, they don’t email you back. You try to call, they don’t answer. The warranty company is just a joke as well.' Courtney and her husband were also threatened with foreclosure after Creekstone failed to pay the concrete company that poured their driveway. Courtney questions, 'Why should we have to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket for a lawyer to fight this lien? It should be all on Creekstone.'"

Boulder Reporting Lab in Colorado. "Victor Lopez, a Gunbarrel resident, thought he had secured an affordable future when he bought his home with a low mortgage rate in 2018. But his home insurance, which started at $1,000 a year, has skyrocketed to $2,500. 'I’m not sure at what point it’s going to plateau,' Lopez said. 'If these increases continue, I’m not going to be able to afford my house anymore.' Lopez tried to find lower rates from other insurance companies, only to discover they were even higher — some nearing $4,000 a year."

"Robyn Wille lives north of Baseline on Cherryvale in unincorporated Boulder County. Her home insurance, with American Family, is now $7,900 — almost $3,000 more than it was a year ago. Wille recently considered buying a home a mile and a half farther east on South Boulder Road. She called her insurance agent to find out what a policy on the new home would cost and was quoted a rate $3,000 less than for her current home, despite the new house being much larger. The extra distance from the flammable Foothills seemed to make a difference in the insurer’s eyes. 'It’s ridiculous,' she said. Her agent also told her that American Family is not writing new policies or renewing policies in mountain communities. 'He said, ‘If you’re halfway thinking about moving into the Foothills, don’t.’"

WRLN in Florida. "This summer, condo sales fell as much as 7% in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. Meanwhile, the number of condos for sale jumped 60% in Miami-Dade, which will likely have an impact on its values. In Broward, median prices have dropped. Sandra Einhorn, the executive director of the Coordinating Council of Broward: These new condo laws and specifically with that development in Pembroke Pines, I think it shows just how widespread this issue is. This isn’t for high rises. We're talking about most of our housing product [which] was built in the ‘50s and ‘60s and '70s. I think that we're going to find the most vulnerable to be the ones that are most impacted, meaning folks that, as they were getting older and they wanted to downsize, [they] decided to move into condos and perhaps they've paid off their condos. So, maybe their overall housing costs have gone down, but their income has also gone down as they've gone into retirement and they're relying on some of their social security and things like that. It now becomes a situation where those that were prudent and thinking, 'okay, I know that in the future, I'm not going to have as much disposable income. Let me decrease my cost of living now,' put in a position where they're stuck between a rock and a hard place. What are they going to do and where are they to go?"

"Tom Hudson, WLRN’s Senior Economics Editor: The hard and fast reality is that the older the condo, the more vulnerable it is to this reckoning, the less financial or fiduciary responsibility that associations have had throughout the course of the past decades, the more vulnerable it is to falling values. Two months ago, a Republican Florida House member told me she was telling people not to buy a condominium in Florida. Now imagine, any Florida politician, regardless of property, telling somebody to hold off on buying a condominium in Florida. That is a remarkable statement and admission about how shaky and uncertain the market is."

The Los Angeles Times. "Without urgent and immediate action, Los Angeles could be trapped in its own version of 'The Twilight Zone.' Will it be a fiery landscape where sizzling sidewalks cause second-degree burns, wildfire smoke blots out the sun, and water flows only sometimes, and mostly not at all? Or will California's penchant for innovation be our salvation, transforming Los Angeles into a place where every drop of water is recycled and every resident has enough shade and cooling to survive? Here's a glimpse at what life could look like if we get it right. When you turn on your faucet in 2035, at least 70% of the water will be sourced locally, and even more by midcentury. Officials cringe when they hear the recycling process called 'toilet-to-tap' because they fear it will turn the public off to a critical source of water. But the future of Los Angeles depends on just that."

"Future Los Angeles will need to look radically different — and closer to its true Mediterranean climate — if it is to survive. That means the grass has to go. When the dog you cloned back in 2037 starts crying for a walk, you reach for the leash on the hook next to your front door. But then you catch a glimpse of an orange-gray sky through the window and think twice. You grab the face mask that hangs on the hook next to the leash — your best defense against the smoke that will be a regular part of L.A. life by the middle of the century. An atmospheric river dumps 14 inches of rain in Venice Beach in 2057. You need to get some groceries for dinner, but your whole neighborhood is mired in 2 feet of standing water from precipitation and king tides. Guess it'll be another night of dinner via drone delivery."

"A less welcome development is that mosquitoes may continue to thrive too. The bloodsuckers have been booming amid more extreme rainfall patterns and may continue to enjoy pools of standing water in the years to come. For too long, Californians believed that the state, with all of its vastness and beauty, could endure our excesses, said Mark Arax, a former L.A. Times journalist and the author of 'The Dreamt Land.' To truly adapt to the future will require a reckoning with our way of life. 'What we're talking about is fundamentally altering the 'California Dream' to respond to something we should have responded to decades ago,' he said. 'Climate change has now given us no choice.'"

The Brooklyn Reader in New York. "Two Brooklyn contractors have been indicted for grand larceny for allegedly defrauding more than $1 million from the Paycheck Protection Program during the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of the alleged scheme, the defendants submitted fraudulent tax returns that grossly inflated the company’s revenues to obtain the funds and then allegedly used those funds – which were restricted to paying employees and other legitimate business expenses – toward purchasing two homes in New Jersey, as well as a luxury BMW sports sedan, according to a press release."

"Shortly after the funds became available, they quickly used the money for personal purchases, including luxury items. The defendants are alleged to have spent a total of $393,670 toward the purchase of two five-bedroom homes, one in Voorhies, New Jersey and the other in Pine Hill, New Jersey and spent another $71,000 as a down payment on a 2021 BMW M5 sports sedan."

Infotel in Canada. "Kelowna realtor Scott Aaltonen says every summer he normally takes at least three groups of out-of-town buyers on real estate tours to check out properties in the $2 million price point. This year he hasn't done a single tour. 'Everybody cancelled and they are just waiting to see if we have another natural disaster… or a new (government) policy to restrict (them),' he said. Aaltonen said since the COVID real estate bubble burst in spring 2022 the market has been on a downward slide. 'I've seen this happen every four to five years, we have a rally of 15% to 25% and everybody seems to think it's going to continue and that buying real estate is a very simple equation, but eventually the economy and the greater marketplace catches up with us,' Aaltonen said."

"Royal LePage Kelowna realtor Joe Ungaro has been in the business for more than 40 years. He points out that in the single-family residential market, which he says is the 'bellwether' of the whole market, sales in August were almost identical to 2023. What has changed is the amount of inventory on the market. 'We had 1,129 (single-family) homes on the market at the end of August a year ago. There are 1,611 today,' he said."

The Globe and Mail. "Tens of thousands of temporary residents who came to Canada as international students might be forced to return to their home countries in the next year – the result of a recent series of immigration policy changes that has left them with no prospect of obtaining permanent residency. Policy experts estimate that between 70,000 and 130,000 international students holding postgraduation work permits (PGWP) will see their visas expiring in 2024 and 2025. Most, they predict, will not receive visa extensions or an invitation to apply for permanent residency because of Ottawa’s shifting approach to immigration."

"'For years, the government framed education not as an end in itself, but as a means to live in the country permanently. Their own slogan was 'Study. Explore. Work. Stay,' noted Parmbir Gill, a Toronto-based labour lawyer and member of the Naujawan Support Network. 'Nobody from India or elsewhere would ever have come to Canada just to pay exorbitant tuition fees to a third-rate private career college in a Brampton strip mall, and then leave. They’ve come here to stay, on the terms set by the government,' he said."

ABC News in Australia. "This year, Four Corners has been investigating the strata industry, after revelations that one of its most high-profile firms has been charging millions of dollars in opaque, often hidden, insurance fees and taking an untold sum in kickbacks from contractors. In a Zoom briefing with strata managers from across NSW late last year, Tony Irvine appeared beside Stephen Brell and joked about the additional profit he was making from Strata Hub. 'I'd like to thank the NSW government for the Strata Hub,' he said, 'because that bought me a brand new ute. So that was good of them.' This prompted laughter among his SCA colleagues, including Mr Brell. Mr Irvine went on: 'And will continue to buy, well, buy someone else a new ute for the next little while.'"

"In Melbourne, Alison Parkes discovered the company responsible for her building — Strata Plan — had been charging the owners corporation for more overdue levy notices than it should. 'People were being charged in a ridiculous fashion,' she said. Worse was her discovery the firm had been systematically charging for phantom debts. 'If there were 10 people who were actually in arrears, hadn't paid their levies on time, they were billing us for 34 notices being sent out,' Ms Parkes said. 'And they're still just helping themselves hand-in-pocket, Strata Plan, writing an invoice, paying themselves, overcharging us, and we can't stop it. It's like a nightmare.'"

From Bloomberg. "Japanese companies are increasingly abandoning an approach to business in China that once seemed immune to politics, a stark shift after years when they were the biggest single investors in their neighbor’s economy. Almost half of Japanese firms in China polled in a recent survey said they won’t spend more or will cut investment this year. Companies listed rising wages, falling prices and geopolitics as the biggest issues they faced. 'We are now past Japan’s peak economic engagement with China,' said Robert Ward, director of geo-economics and strategy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London."

"Komatsu Ltd. is a case in point. The maker of excavators and heavy equipment is selling a lot less in China as the economy slows, construction slumps and competition stiffens. Komatsu’s revenue in China for construction and mining equipment plunged 57% last financial year from a peak in 2019. 'Right now companies are restructuring their business to stop losses,' said Masami Miyashita, general manager of the Japan-China Economic Association in Beijing. 'It’s not the time invest.'"