It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "South Florida's once-hot condo market is cooling rapidly, with more units sitting unsold and sellers slashing prices to stay competitive. Condo owners like Michael Leccese are feeling the pressure. His one-bedroom, two-bathroom unit at the Sian on South Ocean Drive has been on the market for over a year and he's dropped the price four times, now listing it at $414,000. 'I'm definitely taking a hit economically to support these types of expenses,' Leccese said. He's been forced to rent the unit while waiting for a buyer, but rent no longer covers his costs. Peter Zalewski, who tracks the condo market on his site Condo Vultures, says owners are being hit by a double whammy: higher maintenance fees and special assessments. 'There's a rise in maintenance fees plus a special assessment,' Zalewski said. 'Once condo prices start to fall, we go into a doom loop, think of a plane that's lost power and is circling. I think that's where we're headed.'"

"In 2015, Steven Zawodni was settling in on his couch inside his North Huron Street home, a bag of Rudy’s hot dogs by his side. 'I was full, and I was drowsy because I worked, and I started dozing off and I woke up to a funny smell, like a campfire smell,' Zawodni said. But it wasn’t a campfire. The fire and water damage destroyed all five properties. In the years since, Zawodni used insurance money to rebuild. His neighbors disappeared, leaving behind gutted units and unpaid tax bills. It’s why he was surprised in September to see the new valuation of his home - $44,000, an increase of 53% from his former $28,700 value. 'I wondered if it was a mistake,' Zawodni said. 'I would never ever be able to possibly sell my house for the value they raised it to.' He has joined thousands of Lucas County residents in wondering, 'What happened?' The increase was even steeper for Tom Jameson of Sylvania. 'I said, ‘you’ve got to be kidding,’ he said about seeing his $79,000 house go up to $135,000 in value – a 71% increase. In Jameson’s case, his taxes rose from $700 a half to $1,300 – a $100 a month addition to his budget. 'I mean, it’s just way out of line. I’ve been retired since 2007.'"

"As the Pacific Palisades fire ripped through Travis Landrum's neighborhood, his first home purchase was filled with family memories that became covered in thick smoke. His home is one of the few that narrowly avoided the flames. Landrum was feeling lucky at the time. Little did he know the nightmare he would walk into. According to his insurer, the California FAIR Plan, smoke damage is only covered if it's a 'direct physical loss,' meaning it's visible to the unaided eye or detectable by smell. 'There's a line item in the policy that says, 'Smoke damage - Here's what we cover!' Then it's immediately, 'We don't cover smoke damage,' said Landrum. So, what did he get instead? 'So basically, all they provide you is a couple hundred dollars for hydroxyl… which is, I don't even know what that is. I've never heard of it,' said Landrum."

"Hydroxyl is a chemical that's supposed to get rid of the smoke smell. But there's a catch - Landrum was only issued an allowance for a technician to clean all the toxins off his property within one hour. Landrum got professional estimates to clean and remove debris as well as take care of fire retardant, mold, soot, ash, and smoke on his property. It would cost him roughly $70,000. Yet, after his deductible, the FAIR Plan adjusters only offered him $625. 'Is that a joke? Like it's not even, I mean it's, it's just offensive,' said Landrum."

"If there’s an afterlife, walking around San Francisco Centre on a recent Thursday afternoon is what I’d imagine being in limbo might feel like. Movie posters advertising the apocalyptic '28 Years Later' sequel cling to the exterior of a Bloomingdale’s taking its last gasp of air. The back-to-back retailer exodus might be the largest wave of closures to hit the downtown mall yet, as it heads for a once-again delayed foreclosure auction in June. An employee standing outside one of the stores, who was granted anonymity, confirmed the dual closures. 'The rent is just too much,' he said, shaking his head. 'They might be looking at Union Square, but you know how it is in San Francisco.' The news follows the 2023 decision by owners Brookfield Properties and Westfield to walk away from their debt, citing 'challenging operating conditions in downtown San Francisco' due to plunging foot traffic after the start of the pandemic."

"Since becoming homeless a decade ago, Hector Aranda Jr. says he has done most of the heavy lifting to find shelter and housing. The lifelong North Hollywood resident said he has sought assistance to get housed from homeless service providers, including the Los Angeles Homeless Services Agency. Yet, the agency’s workers and homeless service providers contracted by LAHSA never seemed to have their act together, Aranda said. 'From what I see, no work ever got done,' he said. In 2020, Will Sens stayed at the LA Grand hotel in downtown LA, one of the bigger Project Roomkey sites sheltering people during the pandemic. He recalled there was a table at the hotel with a sign that read, 'mental health services,' but when he and others would ask about it, Sens said they were told services were only available once a month."

"By the time a therapist would show up, there would not be any notification made, Sens said. 'The person will come and sit there, you know, like a therapist or something, [will] sit there with the person that sits behind the table for two hours and not say anything. You know, people are just walking by the table every day because they know that it’s no good to talk to them anyway.' Sens said that seeing this and other incidents at the hotel angered him as a taxpayer. He was among the thousands of unhoused people who were temporarily sheltered in hotel rooms during the pandemic, and he said he observed a big disconnect between what LA leaders wanted the public to believe, and what he saw at the hotel."

"Ruth, who is unhoused and goes by a pseudonym, said the public and elected leaders tend not to count unhoused people as being among the constituents or taxpayers. 'I think we’re the product,' Ruth said. In the current system, she said it feels like people who are unhoused are treated like objects to fill beds or rooms. 'None of it has to do with us, who we are as people. It’s just about moving us,' Ruth said."

"As with the budding trees and the mallard ducks skimming onto the Jordan River in front of his hovel, here was another sign of seasons changing for Johnny Bravo. That’s the name the 47-year-old homeless man gave, roused from inside his trash-strewn encampment on the edge of a spit of land in Salt Lake City known as 'The Thumb.' A crew of Salt Lake County health workers had just arrived to canvas the area in prelude to a joint city-county site cleanup days later. The detritus sloped down the bank in spots and laced into gray-silted junk in the riverbed. 'Ninety percent of my crap comes out of a dumpster,' Johnny Bravo told a visitor, boasting of his camping ingenuity. 'Maybe they can help me clear out some of this garbage.'"

"Next morning, he scavenged over the bald mud bank where his hut stood looking for tools as he rebuilt. 'They took my house again,' Johnny Bravo groused. 'Kick a man while he’s down.'"

"A recent court judgment against a company controlled by Toronto-area real estate developer Sam Mizrahi over a $12.9-million loan made against an Ottawa condominium project includes allegations of secret loans not initially disclosed to other lenders. His name has been splashed across the business pages for his role in the insolvency and receivership of The One, a luxury condo project which has been under construction at Bloor and Yonge streets in Toronto since 2015. When completed, the building will be one of the tallest residential buildings in the country. Under Mr. Mizrahi, the project ran out of cash, owing $1.7-billion to its lenders."

"According to the ruling, the loan was structured in this way to keep the debt a secret from other lenders who just days before had lent $92-million to build the luxury condominium project known as The Residences in Ottawa. 'Nine times out of 10, in the last 20 years, what would have happened is the debt would have been refinanced and nobody would have been worse off,' said Steven L. Graff, a lawyer with Aird and Berlis LLP’s restructuring and insolvency group. It’s only now that so many projects are failing that some of these agreements are coming to light and ending up in court. 'Some people get away with stuff for a long time and as a result they begin to believe that’s actually the way the world works; that they can always get themselves out of a problem,' he said."

"Mr. Graff said real estate insolvencies are growing and now take up close to 75 per cent of his practice. He said such side deals or undisclosed loans may have become an almost normal way of doing business in previous years, when real estate projects were adding enough equity that extra debts could be paid out without endangering repayment of registered loans."

"Israel's housing market is sliding into recession with Tel Aviv leading in sales of new apartments but also having the biggest supply of new homes. In general, the supply of unsold new apartments reached about 78,000 new apartments in January, which is equivalent to 18 months of construction, continuing to break records, despite the difficult situation for real estate developers, who start new projects even before they manage to sell the apartments in their previous projects. The large supply of apartments is not only in big cities. Smaller cities also have a very large supply of apartments, relative to the size of the local market: in Beer Yaakov there are 2,460 unsold apartments, in Lod 2,250, in Kiryat Ono 1,460 apartments and in Ra'anana 1,440. This is an unusual situation, especially as some of these towns had high levels of demand until recently."

"They stood for years as haunted relics of forgotten wealth – opulent homes left to the ravages of time. And now some of Australia’s most mysterious abandoned mansions are finding new life. A compound of two sprawling Chinese-style mansions in the Perth suburb of Banjup served as one of Australia’s most intriguing abandoned mansion sites before selling late last year for about $4 million. Works on the ghostly 4.48 hectare site known as the Confucius Mansion were started in 2014 and were halted in 2017 before the property could be fully completed. The 80-room compound was never occupied and the buildings were left unfinished after the billionaire owner returned to China for family reasons."

"Images from 2024 showed weeds growing across the once grand courtyards, giant empty rooms and a neglected green pond. It is understood the original owner lavished over $1 million on a rose garden at the site, which has died. Statues originally intended for the site were also reported to be stolen. An abandoned mansion for sale in Melbourne suburb Cockatoo, described by the agent as 'perfect' for filming a zombie apocalypse film, has a guide of $1.1 million to $1.2 million. The once-stately, four-level mansion has become infamous among locals for its deteriorated condition. It was originally built for a couple from Eastern Europe who lived on the site for years but never finished the build. The couple later sold the brown mansion. A subsequent owner had intended to transform the site into a farm, but their plans never came to reality and the home has sat largely empty in recent years."

"Beijing is censoring references on China's internet to the skyscraper that collapsed in Bangkok, as the Chinese company involved in the project faces mounting scrutiny in Thailand. The partially constructed tower, set to be the Thai government's State Audit Office, was the only high-rise building to completely crumble in Bangkok last Friday, after a magnitude-7.7 earthquake nearly 1,000 kilometres away in Myanmar shook the Thai capital. News of the building collapse has been censored on the internet in China, and searches for related keywords like 'Bangkok' and 'tower' on Chinese social media returned limited results."

"Reports on the building collapse from Chinese state media outlet Xinhua, which spread to other Chinese news outlets, have also vanished. China Railway Number 10 deleted all posts about the construction from its WeChat account. University of Toronto Chinese politics professor Lynette Ong said the news was likely being censored in China to limit discussions that might be 'embarrassing' to the state-owned construction company. 'Available information indicates that the Chinese-built building was the only one that collapsed in the neighbourhood of tall buildings,' said Professor Ong. 'This has raised suspicion that construction might be shoddy, mirroring the 'tofu' construction in China, many of which collapsed during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake,' she said, adding investigations were yet to establish if poor construction played a role in the collapse."