A report from Business Insider. "Nowadays, the Zestimate is arguably the most popular — and polarizing — number in real estate. Many industry insiders, however, regard the number as a starting point at best and dangerously misguided at worst. Real-estate agents recount arguments with sellers who reject their pricing advice, choosing instead to take the Zestimate as the word of God. One meme likens its disciples to adults who still believe in Santa. Zillow itself lost hundreds of millions of dollars during the pandemic when it relied on its algorithm to buy homes at what turned out to be inflated prices, part of an ill-fated attempt to flip homes at scale."

"In Austin, for instance, a little more than 94% of on-market homes end up selling for within 10% of the last Zestimate before the deal goes through. But Zillow also keeps a second Zestimate humming in the background, one that never sees the light of day. This version doesn't factor in the list price — it's carrying on as if the house never went up for sale at all. Instead, it's used to calculate the 'off-market' error rate. When the house sells, the difference between the final price and this shadow algorithm reveals an error rate that's much less satisfactory: In Austin, only about 66% of these 'off-market Zestimates' come within 10% of the actual sale price. In Atlanta, it's 65%; Chicago, 58%; Nashville, 63%; Seattle, 69%. At today's median home price of $420,000, a 10% error would mean a difference of more than $40,000."

The Washington Post. "When prospective home buyers come up empty-handed, seeing a 'sold' sign on an ideal home that never showed up during their search rubs salt into the wound. What’s frustrating to so many is these nonpublic sales, often known as off-market listings, shortcut the transparency that’s meant to inform the buying and selling process: Every home that’s listed by a real estate agent and marketed to the public is supposed to be visible through one of the hundreds of databases known as Multiple Listing Services (MLS). Now, an internal battle is heating up between real estate brokerages over off-market listings — just as the dust is starting to settle on commission rule changes triggered by lawsuits against brokerages and the National Association of Realtors (NAR)."

"At stake is an NAR rule enacted in 2019, known as the 'Clear Cooperation Policy' (CCP), that requires agents to list a property on their MLS within one business day after marketing it to the public. Under an off-market listing (also known more pejoratively as a pocket listing), an agent markets the property before putting it on the MLS — using back channels to expedite the deal between private parties. This tactic is allowed under the CCP as long as the homes are marketed privately among agents within a brokerage or individually to specific potential buyers."

"Now, a brokerage giant, Compass, wants to repeal this rule altogether — in effect, opening a bigger window for off-market listings — because it allegedly forces the release of too much information that hurts sellers. 'Using MLS data … real estate websites have built their business models at the expense of homeowners by showing negative insights on their listings, such as days on market, price drops and home value estimates,' said Robert Reffkin, CEO of Compass. 'The CCP removes a seller’s right to choose how to market their home to meet their individual needs.'"

From WUSF. "A deadline for Florida condominium inspections is quickly approaching. Tara Stone, CEO of Stone Building Solutions, a building engineering firm based in St. Petersburg, said what they’re seeing is years, and sometimes decades, of maintenance being neglected, leading to failed inspections and higher costs for condo owners. 'That lack of maintenance isn't because that people don't necessarily want to do the repairs. It's always that there's not the money in the bank to do repairs.' Stone said condo owner mentality has trended toward concerns about granite in the kitchen or how close they were to the pool, and not the reserves."

"Republican Sen. Jennifer Bradley is from north central Florida and a leading lawmaker on condo reforms. Bradey said despite complaints from condo owners, the vast majority of increases over the last several years has been due to rising insurance premiums. 'Insurance premiums for condo associations have doubled since 2022 and these systems exist together. If you are not able to keep your building in good physical health, you're not going to be insurable. The private market saw Surfside collapse. They witnessed the horror with everyone else, insurance companies, and banks, and so if you don't make sure your building is repaired and that you have money available to make those repairs, it will be exceedingly difficult, regardless of what the legislature does, to be insurable or to get loans to make those needed repairs in your building.'"

Capital & Main in California. "As Los Angeles prepares to host tens of thousands of visitors for the 2028 Summer Olympics, city officials are moving to stop property owners from illegally listing their homes as vacation rentals and devouring L.A.’s already strained housing supply. The L.A. Housing Department now estimates that 7,500, or about 60% of the city’s short-term rentals in multi-unit buildings, are illegal, according to a memo sent by the Housing Department’s interim general manager, Tricia Keane, to the City Council. Councilmember Nithya Raman, who chairs the council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee. She said very few violators were receiving citations and fines 'because of how broken the process is.'"

"At a committee hearing in early December, the proposals faced opposition from several property owners, who urged the committee not to impose stricter rules. 'I have become absolutely reliant on Airbnb to make ends meet,' said Joni Day, a freelance TV producer."

CBS Colorado. "Aurora police detained 14 suspects early Tuesday morning after officers responded to a report of a home invasion with weapons. This happened at The Edge at Lowry apartments, the same apartment complex where a viral video surfaced earlier this year showing suspects terrorizing residents with weapons. That video prompted President-elect Donald Trump to target the city in his deportation plan during a campaign stop earlier this fall. Just before 2:30 a.m., officers responded to a report of an armed home invasion involving a stabbing and kidnapping at an apartment in the 1200 block of Dallas Street."

"'The victims were held against their will, they were bound, both the male and the female, they were pistol-whipped, they were beaten, they were victimized, they were terrorized,' said Aurora Police Chief Todd Chamberlain during a news conference on Tuesday morning. During the time they were held, Chamberlain said the suspects went to the victims' apartment and 'burglarized and took over that apartment… taking items of value that belonged to the victims.' Police said the victims were held for several hours until they convinced the suspects to release them, promising to not call authorities. 'We are not going to rest until we verify that every individual involved is in custody,' said Chamberlain. 'Based on the actions that I saw, based on how this event unfolded this is 100% gang activity.'"

New York Daily News. "Groups on the frontlines of New York City’s street homelessness crisis fear they’ll be forced to lay off dozens of staffers next month due to a $4 million funding cut included in this year’s city government budget, the Daily News has learned. 'This isn’t a place where we’re requesting a cut, but where we’re working with [the mayor’s budget office] to address funding needs on a year-by-year basis,' Wasow Park, who oversees the Department of Homeless Services, testified at the hearing after Manhattan Councilwoman Gale Brewer questioned why the funding is about to run out. 'We need the $8 million back,' Brewer told Wasow Park. 'We do not need it cut. We are losing people who would be keeping those off the streets.'"

"Mayor Eric Adams has focused in particular on breaking up street encampments, an issue he touched on during a town hall event on the Upper West Side on Monday night. 'We had encampments everywhere,' he said at the event, referring to when he took office in January 2022. 'We made an agreement that we were going to take all the encampments down and put people into care. We were beat up. We were beat up. People said, ‘No, people have a right to sleep on the street with no shoes at 13-degree weather and yell and scream and walk the street.’ I said, ‘Like hell they do.’ That’s what it took.'"

From Bisnow. "A New Jersey real estate investor was sentenced to five years in prison this week for his role in a mortgage fraud scheme involving Freddie Mac. Aron Puretz was sentenced to the maximum possible sentence and ordered to pay $22M in restitution after he pleaded guilty to a $55M fraud scheme that included forged financial statements and purchase contracts. While leading Apex Equity Group, Puretz and his co-conspirators misled lenders about at least three properties from 2016 to 2022."

"Puretz pleaded guilty to presenting inflated purchase and sales documents to Freddie Mac to secure a mortgage that exceeded a property’s true purchase price in 2017. Two years later, Puretz purchased the Big Country Chateau apartments in Little Rock, Arkansas, but hid his role in the deal from Freddie Mac because the lender would not approve loans for his properties. By 2020 the fraud had gotten larger, with Puretz and his co-conspirators acquiring the Troy Technology Park outside Detroit for $43M before presenting lenders with fake documents putting the sale price at $70M. The Troy Technology Park case also led to the conviction of Puretz’s son and Boruch Drillman on one count of wire fraud each, according to The Real Deal, which first reported the sentencing. Drillman, an investor also facing scrutiny for a deal in Chicago, pleaded guilty last December."

"The sentencing this week comes as the federally backed lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are tightening standards and working to root out fraud from their books. Fannie Mae acknowledged for the first time in its third-quarter statements that it was investigating multiple lenders for potential mortgage fraud."

The Wall Street Journal. "Globally, homes are now less affordable than they were in the run-up to the 2008 housing crisis, according to research published by the International Monetary Fund. Ireland, after years of anemic construction, now has the European Union’s most expensive housing, according to a broad measure of rent, maintenance costs and utilities by Eurostat, the European Union statistics agency. Average rent in Dublin doubled over the past decade, while the median home price rose 75%, government statistics show. Some of the sharpest rental increases have occurred in central and Eastern Europe. In Hungary and Lithuania, rent grew more than 60% from 2015 to 2023, according to Eurostat. And in each of those countries, home prices more than doubled over that period. The tiny Baltic nation of Estonia posted the sharpest increases in both rents and home prices of any European country over the 10 years through 2022, according to Eurostat."

"In the 50 years through 2021, the countries with the sharpest rise in home prices around the world have been New Zealand, the U.K., Canada, Australia and Ireland, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In Vancouver, British Columbia, the median home price of $1.1 million was 17 times the median household income as of this spring, up from 10 in the early 2000s. British Columbia’s population grew 19% over a 10-year period ending in 2023. In Sydney, Australia, where rising construction costs have prompted developers to put many projects on hold, home prices have climbed from nine times the average income in 2019 to 12 times in early 2024."

Yahoo Finance on the UK. "From energy efficiency to wellness spaces, here’s what you need to have on your radar if you’re house-hunting over the next 12 months. The reason for the popularity of houses is two-fold. Firstly, much of the new building, especially in cities, is blocks of flats and apartments so there’s a glut of supply compared to houses. 'The market is saturated with new apartment developments, which can make their resale value relatively weaker,' says from Vincent Dennington at John D Wood."

Euro Weekly. "Spain’s housing situation with squatters seems to be getting out of hand. A desperate homeowner in La Coruña has been plunged into financial turmoil after a squatter refused to leave her home unless she’s paid €10,000 – claiming she needs it for a deposit on her next flat. Pilar, a Spanish pensioner, has been fighting for five long years to reclaim her property from the Moroccan woman who stopped paying rent almost immediately after moving in. But just when you thought things couldn’t get worse – the squatter, or okupa as they’re known in Spain, slapped Pilar with the outrageous ultimatum: cough up ten grand, or forget about getting the keys back."

"As if being locked out of her own home wasn’t bad enough, the 70-something has now had a chunk of her pension frozen over unpaid water bills racked up by the very person squatting in her house. 'I’ve never been in debt in my life,' Pilar said tearfully. 'I always paid my way, but now they’re taking money from my pension over bills that aren’t even mine.'"

From Domain News. "Over the years, our hit TV shows have entertained and educated us, as well as audiences around the world, about the much-revered Australian lifestyle. But how realistic would some of the characters and their living arrangements be in today’s high-priced, high-interest-rate and housing crisis era? Drama teacher Mr Greg Gregson, aka Mr G, of Summer Heights High may have got experimental and crazy in the classroom but in reality, he would have never been able to hand in his letter of resignation and tell the school principal, Margaret, 'there’s some flowers from my dead dog, why don’t you stick those up your fat arse.'"

"On the current average Sydney drama teacher salary of around $100,000 – $110,000, a unit today in Sydney’s inner west suburb of Summer Hill would cost him around $902,000. That’s a steep price to repay on a single wage. In reality, Mr G couldn’t afford to quit. When ditzy hairdresser Marilyn Chambers reappeared in Home and Away’s Summer Bay after a break of nine years, she must have won lotto in the interim. For on her salary – and the fact she seems to spend so little time actually at work – how else could she have afforded a place to live in a little bougie seaside suburb that so closely resembles Sydney’s Palm Beach?"

"After all, property there has a median price of $2.55 million, according to Domain research, while a hairdresser who worked full-time would earn $60,000 to $80,000, according to figures from seek.com.au; absolutely nothing like enough. 'Watching the show, I don’t know how she has the money to pay for groceries, let alone buy a place there, or pay rent,' says Australian TV and film pop culture specialist Andrew Mercado. Then there’s original Blue Heelers star senior constable Maggie Doyle who, on a humble police officer’s salary of $95,000 could still seem to afford a home in Melbourne’s south-west Williamstown, with a median price of $1,545,000. That does seem to cast a new light on her character."