A report from Business Observer. "Laws require that all Florida condos more than 30 years old and taller than three stories undergo milestone inspections by Dec. 31, 2024. If we cling to the current infeasible time line and approach, the consequences will be plummeting values for condos, huge spikes in maintenance fees, many people fleeing those units, few buyers to buy them and possible massive problems with empty and abandoned condo buildings. Condo prices in Sarasota have been fairly stable over the past few years, but statewide the impact is appreciable with many units recently dropping $150,000 or more in value. As one condo market expert told the Business Observer: 'You know, if you’ve got folks who can’t afford to live in the place they’ve got to go and find somewhere else. And as we are already hearing, in the current economic environment, buying is not an option and renting as well. What do you do if you’ve lost your original purchase — that two-bedroom, two-bathroom condo that was affordable five years ago for $300,000? What are you doing now if you’ve got to sell it at a $100,000 hit, and you’re barely breaking even? It’s a quandary for a lot of the fixed income folks in our state.'"

The Center Square. "According to new reports from the California government, while wages and the costs of services and wages are rising, the costs of goods are finally going down. The state-funded, non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office said in its housing report that it’s nearly twice as expensive to buy a two-bedroom home as it is to rent, a gap not seen 'since the housing bubble in the mid-2000s.' In San Mateo County, renting costs 41% of buying a similar home; renting a bottom-tier home costs $8,027, while renting a similar home costs $3,348. In San Francisco and Orange County, renting costs half of buying, while in Sacramento renting is 69%."

KRON in California. "A newly-available rental home in downtown San Jose sums up how extreme the Bay Area housing market can be. 'Harry Potter cubby' is listed for rent on Craigslist and still available as of Monday. In exchange for living in a 3-foot by 10-foot cubby, the tenant must pay $250 in monthly rent and be willing to do some household chores, according to the Craigslist ad. The living nook is located under a staircase and has just enough space to fit a cot. The cubby dweller will have access to the apartment’s kitchen, internet, bathroom, TV, and Xbox. Utilities are included in the $250 base rent. The ad states, 'Must not have a criminal record, any addictions, or pets. No guests, ever … sorry bout that, but seriously, who’d want to come visit this place?'"

NBC Bay Area in California. "A White House replica in the Bay Area is now off the market. Known as 'The Western White House,' the home in Hillsborough recently sold for $23 million. The sellers initially asked for just under $39 million."

From Reuters. "Tiesha Blackwell, 24, voted for Joe Biden in 2020 but says she is casting her ballot for Republican former President Donald Trump this year, and high food and housing prices are a chief reason. Blackwell, who lives southwest of Detroit in the battleground state of Michigan, says she has a better job now, but her rent has since doubled after she was forced to move, and her grocery and utility bills have soared. 'I'm not worse off than I was four years ago,' Blackwell said on the sidelines of a rally featuring Trump's running mate JD Vance in Detroit this month. 'But compared to then, things are really, really high out here. I went from paying $575 to now I pay $1,100 just for rent. I remember ground chuck was $2.99 a pound. Now it's $4.99. Everything is higher.'"

The Denver Post in Colorado. "The Pew Charitable Trusts and the architectural firm Gensler have a proposition for Denver renters struggling to find a place to live that won’t bust their budgets. Would they take a studio apartment in a renovated skyscraper for $850 a month, under half the going market rent, with the catch being that they would have to share bathroom and kitchen space and likely skip a parking spot? Pew and Gensler are proposing a co-living, aka dormitory approach, as the answer to two problems — creating more affordable housing units and saving Denver’s aging skyscrapers, many of which face economic obsolescence. Office-to-residential conversions have been a hot topic the past couple of years, especially after the shift to remote work during the pandemic left many of the city’s signature office buildings half-empty and in default on loans. But initial optimism has turned to pessimism over conversion costs and engineering challenges."

From Bisnow. "A relatively new type of bond once considered even safer than U.S. Treasurys is the latest victim of the nation's distressed office market. The bonds, called single asset, single borrower bonds, or SASB bonds, are different from traditional CMBS because they are attached to just one property instead of a collection of mortgages. SASB bonds were considered supremely safe bets, and credit-rating agencies initially rated many of them AAA. But the pandemic exposed the risks of these types of investments, and those effects are becoming clearer now. A Bloomberg analysis of 150 SASB bonds connected to a U.S. office property found that creditors, in many cases, are likely to get only a fraction of their original investment back, and in some instances, 'the losses will likely reach all the way up to buyers of the AAA portions of the debt,' Bloomberg reported."

"'There will be deals that are horrific, where the AAAs may not be paid off in full and there’s basically no bid for the asset,' TPG Angelo Gordon Head of Structured Credit and Specialty Finance TJ Durkin told Bloomberg. 'The investment community thought the real estate would never become obsolete. It ended up being wrong.' Many SASB bonds were tied to well-located high-rise office buildings, the kind of property that was considered a safe bet before the pandemic but is not so stable in a hybrid-work world. SASB bonds have been tied to 1407 Broadway in New York, the Gas Company Tower in Los Angeles and Chicago’s Aon Center, among others, Bloomberg reported."

The Canadian Press. "New home sales in the Greater Toronto Area remained sluggish last month, but a new report suggests that the market is now primed for buyers following four consecutive interest rate cuts. The Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) released its findings on Monday, reporting 591 new home sales in September, which marks a 69 per cent decrease year-over-year. Of those sales, 344 were for single-family homes, including detached, linked, semi-detached houses and townhouses, down 41 per cent from last September. There were 247 condominium units sold during the same period, down 81 per cent from 2023. 'We now have a market that is highly primed with elevated inventories, falling prices and a further 50 basis point rate cut. All that is needed is for buyers to jump off the sidelines,' said Edward Jegg, research manager with Altus Group."

"The total new home remaining inventory has increased slightly compared to the previous month to nearly 22,000 units, including nearly 17,500 condo units and close to 4,500 single-family dwellings. 'This represents a combined inventory level of 13.8 months, based on average sales for the last 12 months. This remains a high months of inventory level (based on sales), however the actual number of units maintains the trend seen since autumn 2023 of actual inventory levels near or just above the 20,000-unit mark,' the report noted, adding that those figures indicate a 'stagnated market' of slow sales and few housing starts. The report noted that amid the glut of new homes, benchmark prices for all new homes decreased slightly last month."

The Globe and Mail in Canada. "225 Kinniburgh Cove, Chestermere, Alta. Asking price: $1,399,900 (June 2024). Previous asking prices: $1,449,000 (May, 2024); $1,499,000 (April, 2024). Selling price: $1,340,000 (July, 2024). This five-bedroom house 25 kilometres east of Calgary was packed with upscale appointments except for the one that mattered most to buyers: an enclosed, second kitchen for cooking aromatic dishes. 'People said they wanted a spice kitchen, and the layout of the property made it difficult to put in a spice kitchen, so that was our biggest challenge,' said agent Ben Archibald. 'In Eastern cultures, it’s very common, but I’ve never seen someone use it as a deal-breaker.'"

"Mr. Archibald managed to get an offer early on, but was disappointed when it went nowhere. He ordered new photographs and reduced the asking price twice over the summer. One tentative buyer spent weeks negotiating a deal, only to be outmanoeuvred by another buyer with an offer more appealing to the seller. 'There were a number of properties that came on around the time we listed, and nobody was selling,' Mr. Archibald said."

The Helsinki Times. "Recent data from Statistics Finland indicates a notable increase in housing sales, suggesting a potential revival in Finland’s housing market. However, property prices have yet to follow suit, according to Veera Holappa, Senior Economist at Pellervo Economic Research (PTT). In September, prices for older apartments dropped by 1.2% nationwide compared to last year and 0.6% from the previous month. Turku and Tampere saw the largest year-on-year price declines, with drops of 5.0% and 4.4%, respectively. While prices in the Helsinki metropolitan area fell by 2.2% from the previous year, they rose by 1% from August."

"'The increase in transaction volumes is a positive sign, but prices are still showing volatility,' said Holappa. 'The large cities that previously seemed to stabilize are now seeing some pullback. We’re in a period where prices are zigzagging from month to month. Sellers may be more willing to negotiate, which could be helping to drive the increase in sales.'"

Newsroom New Zealand. "At some point the lower interest rates will be a catalyst for house prices to push upwards again but when that will be is hard to predict. Inventory (number of houses for sale) levels are still historically high. 'The total stock is still almost 30 percent up on last year,' says Sarah Wood, CEO of realestate.co.nz. Wood says stock levels are reducing but the overhang is likely to persist until investors return to the market. 'After low levels of new listings in 2023, we’ve seen an influx over the last few months. New listings increased in September, rising 18.7 percent year-on-year, but more on par with what we would deem to be a ‘normal year’. This is the highest level of September new listings in three years, and it adds to the total number of houses on the market. There are now over 30,000 houses listed for sale – the highest they’ve been in a decade during the month of September.'"

"Wood says the struggling economy and uncertainty around employment continue to be a major factor in the high inventory levels. 'We’ve also observed an increase in stock around places that are holiday home destinations. At the peak there were no listings in Pauanui (Coromandel peninsula) and now there are pages of them on our site.'"

Star Weekly in Australia. "An inner-west real estate agent has warned the local rental market could be headed for a 'deeper and darker' phase with an increasing number of landlords looking to sell up. Chief executive of Yarraville based Bond Estate Agents, Lee Marks, said the amount of rental providers looking to get out of the market had spiked in the past month. 'What we’ve noticed recently is that a lot of rental providers are starting to feel the pain financially,' said Mr Marks. 'People want out.'"

"He said the combined effect of interest rates, land tax and the cost of maintaining rental properties had finally become intolerable for many landlords. 'If you look at it from a financial perspective, for a million dollar loan at 6 per cent you’re looking at 6000 bucks per month in repayments and rentals at that level would only return at maximum, $3000 at that level so therefore the owners are out of pocket $3000 plus extra costs,' Mr Marks said. 'How is this sustainable?'"

"Mr Marks said the amount of landlords leaving the market had led to an oversupply in properties, evidence which was backed up by the Real Estate Institute of Victoria’s latest quarterly data which showed house prices declining across much of Hobsons Bay and Maribyrnong."