A report from Baltimore Brew in Maryland. "The Baltimore field office of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is soon to be permanently closed, along with scores of other HUD field offices across the country. As for the employees losing their jobs, especially the younger ones, their lives and livelihoods are what has been upended. 'One I know just bought her first house. How is she going to pay the mortgage? Another just had a baby,' the source said. 'It’s going to be devastating, personally.'"

Arlington Now in Virginia. "A recent spike upward in the number of price cuts in the Arlington housing market could be connected to local and regional economic anxiety. For the week ending Monday (March 3), 11.1% of Arlington home sellers reduced listing prices. That’s more than double the 5.4% rate of a year before, and comes during what typically is the beginning of the robust spring home-sales season. That figure was among weekly data reported by Bright MLS, the region’s multiple-listing service. The organization’s chief economist is not yet sure whether it’s a trend in the making. 'Typically, between 7% and 8% of active listings would have a price drop in a given week,' Lisa Sturtevant told ARLnow. 'While this week the share is higher in Arlington, we’ll have to wait and see if this is a larger trend in sellers cutting their asking price.'"

"In Northern Virginia, the rates of price-cutting reported March 3 were 6.9% in Alexandria, 7.8% in Fairfax County, 8% in Prince William County and 8.6% in Loudoun County. In Maryland, rates were 7.6% in Prince George’s County and 9.9% in Montgomery County. In the District of Columbia, the rate was 7.5%."

From KOAA. "New numbers from the Pikes Peak Association of Realtors (PPAR) show that there weren't any major shifts in the Colorado Springs housing market from January to February. As of this week, Windy Bailey, the board president for PPAR says people still have time to breathe if they are on the hunt for a home. 'It's still more of a buyer's market because there's not as much competition out there,' Bailey stated. 'I think, as we discussed last month, there's an opportunity to look at a house, look at another house, and take a couple of days to decide between the two of them, without having to worry that they're both going to be under contract.'"

The Canadian Press. "Airlines and travel companies have seen bookings to the United States plummet as Canadians rethink their plans amid anger over the trade war set off by U.S. President Donald Trump as well as a weak loonie. It also coincides with a surge in real estate listings from Canadians down south, particularly in Florida, as the low loonie drives up the cost of living, but helps boost gains on home sales when the proceeds are converted to Canadian dollars. 'It becomes very daunting for snowbirds, and that's why we're going to lose a bunch of them,' said Martin Firestone, president of Toronto-based insurance firm Travel Secure Inc., who noted that hundreds of thousands remain."

"Flight Centre spokeswoman Amra Durakovic agreed that the currency was a key part of the equation. She flew from Toronto to New Jersey's Newark airport in January on a business trip to New York City, hopping in a cab on arrival to get to midtown Manhattan. 'By the time I paid for the tolls, my taxi and tip, it was 135 U.S. dollars for a 15-minute drive. That's around 200 Canadian dollars. Who has that kind of money to spend on an airport transfer one way?' The loonie has hovered around 70 cents US for the past few months."

From Bisnow. "Investors bought 8,220 condo units across the U.S. in the fourth quarter, down 13% year-over-year and the fewest for that time of year since 2012, according to Redfin. The pullback in condo buying was especially pronounced in Florida in the months after two hurricanes ripped through the state and as association fees are expected to rise dramatically in older buildings as a result of recent state legislation. In Orlando, investor condo buys fell 30% in the fourth quarter compared to the same period in 2023, according to Redfin. Investors bought 26.1% fewer units in Tampa and 22.9% fewer units in Miami than they did a year prior."

"At the end of last year, owners had 19,000 active condo listings in South Florida, 86% of which were older units, Bisnow previously reported. That pushed prices down 21% last year, and market watchers project values could fall by as much as 38% in the next few years. 'That inventory just keeps growing every single month in MLS because the people that own those units just want to get out,' ISGWorld CEO Craig Studnicky said in October. 'The problem is that nobody wants to buy them, and if there are a few people that want to buy them, there certainly are no mortgage lenders that want to lend. So, that inventory is almost useless for us at the moment.'"

Market Place. "It happens every time Southern California has a devastating wildfire. The supply of contractors, laborers and construction materials stays the same while demand skyrockets from victims trying to rebuild. The finite resources mean some communities have to wait to rebuild. Another problem in the affected communities is 'underinsurance.' 'If you don’t look at your policy on a regular basis and you’re paying the same amount, you’re vastly underinsured,' said Nora O’Brien of Connect Consulting Services, which is an emergency management and disaster resilience company."

"That can happen when someone buys, say, a $500,000 house that had appreciated into an $800,000 house when it burned down, but they never updated the policy to reflect its new value. 'When something does happen, you’re only going to get a small fraction of the value,' said O’Brien. 'If that gets destroyed, and that’s your only asset, and you don’t have insurance to replace it, there goes your wealth.'"

The Idaho Statesman. "If you drove through Boise’s West End 10 years ago, it looked a little different from today. Those changes, while significant, are only part of the cascade of changes developers proposed for the area. The Idaho Statesman reported in 2016 that investors, developers and planners hoped to see the area flourish in the next decade. But most of that transformation has yet to take root. Dirt lots still disfigure Fairview Avenue and Main Street. Plans for more than 400 apartments could be dead, and plans for at least 300 more are uncertain. Only 136 apartments seem likely to be built soon, and most of those are in one publicly financed building specifically for people who have been chronically homeless. For the near future at least, the West End looks less like a hotspot than a development graveyard."

"St. Louis developer Subtext applied in 2022 to build a seven-story, 272-unit apartment building on the Fairview Avenue site. The city fully approved the project, called Local Boise Fairview, and the company planned to start construction on the building in spring 2023 and wrap up by summer 2025. But a poor market led Subtext to scrap the plans and put half of the site up for sale, according to Karl Maier, the listing agent at Platinum Idaho Real Estate at Silvercreek Realty Group. A property flier from Colliers still lists the 1-acre property for $6.8 million."

"Two somewhat-triangular shaped properties just north of Interstate 84, the West End’s southern border, were among those cued up for redevelopment. But construction never began. According to prior Statesman reporting, the developer, Atlanta’s Greenstone Properties, tried to sell the property for $5.1 million in 2021 after plans for the baseball stadium fell through. 'The owner would just like to sell it,' Boise developer Jay Story told the Statesman then. “That would include the land and the entitlements, including the schematic designs, and somebody would have to build the project.' The property is no longer listed for sale. Ada County property records show that a Greenstone business, HBCBP, still owns it. The building permit has expired."

The Globe and Mail. "Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation has moved to block investors from trying to bundle together single-family home purchases in order to access cheaper commercial mortgages. CMHC had previously allowed the bundling as a way of encouraging the building of rental housing. 'Why does it matter if the building is connected or not? No one thought CMHC would change the rules immediately,' said Tawfiq Abdulsamad, who along with two partners last year put down a 10 per cent deposit on a $1.8-million deal to buy three new-build detached homes with separate basement apartments, a total of six rental units, in Edmonton from Sterling Homes, a branch of Alberta-based Qualico Homes."

"The plan was to get a commercial mortgage that would cover 95 per cent of the purchase and amortize over 50 years. That kind of loan is only available in Canada when it’s insured by the MLI Select program, which lenders and buyers have to apply for within six months of closing the transaction. But much to Mr. Abdulsamad’s surprise, when he filled out his CMHC application in November, 2024, he was rejected. 'It’s not feasible … then I have to put 20 per cent down, otherwise I have to get a loan or private lending, as you know they charge crazy interest rates,' said Mr. Abdulsamad, who said he would never have purchased the properties if the only mortgage options had been traditional residential financing."

"Mr. Abdulsamad’s application getting denied was one of the first warnings for Meta Realty CEO Jake Steinman – who pairs a lot of real estate investor clients with MLI Select-eligible projects – that something was changing inside the CMHC. He has heard from lenders dealing with the change in direction from the CMHC and estimates there is as much as $50-million in deposits already paid for and more than half a billion dollars in new-build housing that may not be able to find financing anywhere close to the MLI Select terms. 'I feel terrible for the buyers: no one ever thought CMHC was going to pull the rug,' he said. His concern now is trying to reassure investors that other categories of rental housing won’t face a similar sudden ineligibility from the MLI Select program. 'How do you keep investing in a program when you know tomorrow they could screw you over?'"

From News.com.au. "Melbourne’s population is booming. It was true when I wrote that seven years ago and it continues to be true today. In percentage terms, it is growing faster than any other capital city. By 2034, Melbourne’s population will jump from 5.2 million to a staggering 6.5 million. Fifty minutes north of the city, in what was once the sleepy suburb of Donnybrook, enormous housing estates are turning old farm land into mega-cities that will dwarf the Melbourne CBD. More than 30,000 homes have already been built there but plans for one estate show that it will be almost three times larger than the city. But ask anybody who lives there and they will tell you the great Australian dream comes with one huge caveat — there is only one road in and one road out."

"At peak hour, both morning and afternoon, the single lane Donnybrook Road takes drivers 40 minutes to travel a stretch of 2.5km to the entrance of the Hume Highway for access to the city. On one side of the road, as cars crawl along bumper-to-bumper. On the other side of the road, identical homes are being erected as far as you can see. The lack of planning infrastructure here has created a dystopian city that one expert called 'the worst designed in the world.' News.com.au visited Donnybrook and the estates of Cloverton, Donnybrae, Olivine and Peppercorn Hill. Locals all said the same thing about the suburban sprawl — there are too many homes and not enough roads. 'People here have paid their $700,000 for a house and there’s no infrastructure,' Olivine resident John told news.com.au. 'We didn’t even have a supermarket when we moved here.' Another resident, who did not wish to be named, said people have to leave before first light just to get to work on time. 'It is the most frustrating part about living here,' she said. 'Everybody is going to the same place, but the traffic is a nightmare.'"

"Victorian Liberal MP and Member for the Northern Metropolitan Region, Evan Mulholland, called Donnybrook Road 'the worst game of lemmings you’ve ever seen.' 'It is misery. It is just awful for these residents. Tens of thousands of homes have been built on the side of a single lane farm track that was never meant to cope,' he told news.com.au. 'Their quality of life is diminished because they’re spending 2.5 hours a day in the car — that takes a real toll and a lot of people have sold up and got out.'"