A report from KTLA in California. "If you’re among the thousands of Los Angeles County residents whose homes were damaged or destroyed in the Palisades or Eaton wildfires, there is a grim reality beyond the loss of property alone: your mortgage is still due. KTLA’s David Lazarus spoke with Los Angeles County Tax Assessor Jeff Prang on Monday about the real estate implications of losing a home to a wildfire. It is a mix of good news – and bad. So is a large portion of your property tax. 'We’re going to reduce your assessment and your property taxes,' said Los Angeles County Tax Assessor Jeff Prang. 'Unfortunately, this reduction doesn’t apply to the land.' Lazarus points out that two-thirds of the property’s assessed value is the land itself and not the house. Regarding the mortgage, Lazarus said, unfortunately for fire victims, 'a deal is a deal.' He equates losing a home to a wildfire to having a new car stolen the day after driving it off the lot. 'You’re still on the hook for the financing payments,' said Lazarus. He recommends fire victims contact their mortgage server to work out a deferred payment schedule, which could potentially delay payments for months or even years. 'But ultimately, you will have to pay for that loan,' he said."

ABC 7 in California. "The estimated insured losses from the Los Angeles County wildfires could reach $20 billion, according to J.P. Morgan. The FAIR Plan provides basic fire insurance coverage for high-risk properties when traditional companies will not. Specifically, the coverage caps worries experts, and could have a long-term impact on our housing market. 'There's no question there's going to be a lot of people impacted by this fire where their insurance falls short,' said Amy Bach, with United Policyholders. So, what impact could this have on our housing market? 'With the cap being at $3 million, you're talking about a high percentage of homes in the Bay Area not able to get coverage up to a certain amount -- that's going to drastically change how the market is going to be moving forward,' said Neil Canlas, who owns a real estate company that tracks market trends across the Bay Area. 'People already can't get insured as it is now and you can't get a loan without a policy in California.' Canlas says his company has already seen a hit from the insurance crisis. 'We're losing a percentage of buyers because they can't get policies, or the policies are too high in price,' Canlas said."

From WPTV. "Take-out letters from Citizens Insurance are seemingly everywhere in Florida, and they're not welcome news. One of those letters arrived at Carlos Nunez's home earlier this week. '(The letter said) you need to go to Monarch (Insurance) because that's the option they selected that is less than 20%,' Nunez said. The offer to go to a private insurer now means Nunez's premium is rising from about $6,900 to more than $8,200 per year. 'We are not affluent, we live in Boca (Raton), but we're not that,' he said. 'It's not fair for the consumer. It feels like … extortion. You don't have a choice.'"

From WSB-TV. "A 55-year-old woman will soon be sentenced for her role in a mortgage fraud plot spanning over three years. Kimberly Johnson, 55, of Hampton, Ga., pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to swindle the United States in a mortgage fraud scheme. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Northern District of Georgia, Johnson got involved in a plan, in which homebuyers and mortgage brokers submitted false loan applications to persuade mortgage lenders to fund mortgages. The DA said Johnson’s role in the plan was to alter or forge the documents for the loans, including bank statements, pay stubs and W-2 forms. For over three years officials said the 55-year-old woman helped 450 homebuyers commit mortgage fraud by getting unqualified loans. The fake loan applications were submitted to several mortgage lenders, and some mortgage brokers who worked on getting the loans were also a part of the scheme, according to the DA. The loans totaled $161 million. Many of the loans are insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), resulting in claims being paid for mortgages that have defaulted."

From WTOP News. "Whatever ultimately comes of the new Department of Government Efficiency, headed by Trump’s billionaire advisers Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the potential effects on the Washington D.C.-area housing market could be significant. The federal government employs approximately 283,000 direct workers in the D.C. metro, including 141,000 in the District itself, according to the Office of Personnel Management. Many of those employees are homeowners, and DOGE — at least in early messaging and whether ultimately impractical — aims to drastically reduce the number of government employees in the D.C. area and across the country, moving some agencies out of the nation’s capital. 'I don’t think our region has any idea about what is about to hit it in terms of recommendations from DOGE. I think it is going to be a lot of relocations and a lot of elimination of jobs,' said Corey Burr at TTR Sotheby’s, who has been representing homebuyers and sellers in the D.C. region for 30 years. It may lead others who are unaffected by government jobs to put their properties on the market for fear that something greater might take place. This is something we’ve never seen before.'"

The Dallas Morning News in Texas. "Homebuilders in Dallas-Fort Worth started more than 53,000 homes last year — the second-best in history, according to Residential Strategies. But the market cooled to end the year and new starts slipped in the final quarter as builders battled higher mortgage rates. The stock of finished but unsold homes grew. 'I’m concerned right now that if rates stay around 7%, we’re going to have a chilly spring market,' said Ted Wilson, principal of Residential Strategies. 'Demand is not growing. It may be even shrinking a little bit, but we have all these finished units out there. You got to move that and to create the urgency. You’ve got to discount, incentivize and do all the rate buydowns to get it to move.'"

"Vacant housing inventory continued to increase. By the end of the year, there were 11,264 finished, vacant homes in D-FW — up more than 10% from the previous quarter. The supply of vacant, developed lots in D-FW grew by just over 5,000 in the final quarter, ending the year at 106,059. This represents a balanced 23.9-month supply. 'During the 2021-2022 period of construction cost uncertainty, many builders adopted a 100% speculative building strategy,' Wilson said in the report. 'While this approach proved effective initially, it became less sustainable by late summer 2024 when housing demand began to weaken.'"

KUSA in Colorado. "A judge has granted the city of Aurora's request to fast track the closure of CBZ Management's property, The Edge at Lowry Apartments, where two people were kidnapped in December. On Thursday, the city filed a petition for injunctive relief and emergency closure of the Aurora apartment complex, due to ongoing crime and safety concerns. A judge on Friday granted that emergency order, saying that the 'properties present an imminent threat to public safety and welfare if allowed to remain open.' Aurora Police Chief Todd Chamberlain wrote the complex has become 'an epicenter for unmitigated violent crimes and property crimes perpetuated by a criminal element that has exerted control and fear over others residing at this apartment complex.'"

"Chamberlain, who advocated for an emergency closure, also wrote the apartment complex has reached a 'breaking point.' He said without intervention, he believes criminal behavior will continue to flourish and make living conditions untenable for law-abiding residents in the neighborhood. 'To those people that are actually in that apartment complex, this might be a hard pill to swallow,' Chamberlain told the press Monday. 'You might think 'this is the only home I've known since I've come to the United States,' but I want them to know that there is a better place to live than on Dallas Street.'"

The Globe and Mail in Canada. "289 Alexander St., No. 824, Vancouver. Asking price: $788,000 (Sept. 1). Previous asking price: $838,000 (March 11). Selling price: $768,777 (Sept. 14). Days on the market: 187. The original owner, who paid $178,400 in 1999, decided it was time to sell. It was originally listed with an asking price of $838,000 but after five months there were no offers. The owner and listing agent Ian Watt decided to relist it at $788,000. It sold quickly, at $19,223 under the revised asking price, to a buyer who’d viewed the property two months earlier. 'Like everybody, [the buyer] was waiting for the right price,' says listing agent: Ian Watt. 'He loved it, but it wasn’t in the price bracket that he wanted to spend. Buyers want to know [a property] is priced for today’s market. Obviously, it wasn’t for everyone, because of the neighbourhood,' said Mr. Watt, referring to nearby homelessness problems in Gastown and the downtown eastside."

BBC in the UK. "There are dark stains on the outer walls of Dean Carpenter's new-build home and when it rains, he says, sheets of water cascade down the brickwork. Since buying his Bellway property in Bedfordshire a year ago, he has found patches of damp or discoloured tiles, accretions of moss and mould growing in the loft space. Dean is one of many homeowners on two Bellway estates claiming to have endured lengthy battles with leaking roofs - and time is running out on their structural warranties. Dean, 41, paid £375,000 for his home which was built in 2015. Since then, Bellway has blocked Dean's emails and threatened legal action if he continues posting critical remarks on Facebook. 'I feel totally fobbed off by Bellway,' he says. 'The roof needs replacing, it needs re-battening, re-tiling and re-relaying correctly.'"

"Eight people on the Willow Green estate shared their concerns about stained walls, mould, or crumbling mortar in the eaves. One of them, Robert Altman, 44, says he and his neighbours in Florence Close, a 10-home development built by Bellway in 2017, are in a similar situation. They say they are the guinea pigs of a new, flat-roofed design, which has resulted in years of damp or mould on the walls of their bedrooms and bathrooms. 'And the worst of it is, they didn't fix the problem,' Robert says. 'The specialists who came in to certify the work said there were still dangerous levels of moisture in our lofts. It's just misery after misery and we've been left in the cold - we're spending time on this when we have young families, we all have jobs, and if we want to sell our houses, then we're not going to be able to.'"

South China Morning Post. "Homebuyers from mainland China will continue to be a driving force in Hong Kong's residential property market in 2025, after funnelling a record amount of cash into deals last year to take advantage of tax breaks and other incentives, analysts said. They were involved in 11,638 primary and secondary property transactions in 2024, an increase of 90 per cent from a year earlier, according to Centaline Property Agency. 'The scrapping of property curbs, coupled with property prices dropping by more than 20 per cent from the peak, and the government's introduction of a series of policies to 'snatch talent' and optimise immigration, have further boosted the desire of mainlanders to purchase properties in Hong Kong,' said Louis Chan Wing-kit, CEO of Centaline Property Agency."

"The city's lived-in home prices fell 6.6 per cent year on year in the first 11 months of last year, taking the cumulative slide to 27 per cent from the market's peak in September 2021, according to government data."