A report from Fox 13 Tampa Bay in Florida. "Hurricane victims are still waiting for insurance checks more than six months after the storms, and some like Wayne Thompson say state reforms are not helping as lawmakers hoped. He is disabled with nerve damage to his spine in his legs. Thompson has been living in his damaged home since Hurricane Milton peeled off the roof, collapsed his ceiling and doused his home with torrential rain in October. He tried seeking assistance from FEMA but said he only received a $300 check for groceries. 'I got all my documents, went to FEMA, and FEMA said we can't help you. You have insurance. I'm, like, well, they're not helping me.' In March, his insurance did send a payment for repairs, but Thompson says it was far below the estimates he could find to do the repairs. The payment also went to his mortgage company, which did not release all the funds under the circumstances. 'I just got a phone call from my mortgage company. They had the nerve to ask when am I going to fix the house, so I protect their investment,' he said. 'So, I went to a dealer and sold my car, I sold clothes, shoes. About $16,000 I was about to come up with on my own.' But he still thinks it's nearly $27,000 short. 'I hate to say it's on purpose, but it seems like it was built for the insurance company, not us.'"

Ice Cream Convos on Georgia. "Angela Oakley is all in when it comes to her latest venture—real estate. But on the May 11 episode of 'The Real Housewives of Atlanta,' things got real when the Bravo star revealed just how deep she is financially tied up. While checking in on one of her remodeled homes, Angela shared that she’s flipped several properties. The problem? None have sold yet. 'It’s just that the price that we are positioning them at hasn’t been the most welcoming to the market, because I haven’t sold any of them yet.' Then came the jaw-dropper: 'I’m in debt $2 million, so I am in some deep s**t with these houses.' Angela was hopeful that her latest listing would be the one to finally cash out. But when frenemy Kelli Ferrell came by to see the property, her reaction was…less than encouraging. 'I don’t know, girl. I don’t know if you’re gonna get $3 million for this,' Kelli laughed when Angela revealed the asking price."

The New York Post. "Film director Baz Luhrmann is once again testing the Manhattan luxury market, relisting his Gramercy Park townhouse for $13.99 million — a steep discount from its original $19.99 million asking price in March 2022, The Post has learned. The five-story, 8,500-square-foot residence has cycled on and off the market over the past three years, weathering a series of price cuts. Luhrmann purchased the Anglo-Italianate property in 2017, at 243 E. 17th St., for $13.5 million and spent several years renovating it with his signature theatrical flair."

From Pro Publica. "Ronald Carver was skeptical when his investment adviser first tried to sell him on an 'ugly houses' investment opportunity eight years ago. But once the Texas retiree heard the details, it seemed like a no-lose situation. Carver would lend money to Charles Carrier, owner of Dallas-based C&C Residential Properties, a high-producing franchise in the HomeVestors of America house-flipping chain known for its ubiquitous 'We Buy Ugly Houses' advertisements. Carver started with a $115,000 loan in 2017. And sure enough, the interest payments arrived each month. The deal seemed so good, Carver talked his elderly father into investing, starting with $50,000. As the monthly checks arrived as promised, both men increased their investments. By 2024, Carver estimates they had about $700,000 invested with Carrier. Then, last fall, the checks stopped. The money Carver and his father had invested was gone."

"Carrier is accused of orchestrating a yearslong Ponzi scheme, bilking tens of millions of dollars from scores of investors, according to multiple lawsuits and interviews with people who said they lost money. The financial wreckage is strewn across Texas. As early as 2020, Carrier had begun taking out multiple loans on individual properties — some of which he never owned. In cases reviewed by ProPublica, as many as five notes were recorded against a single property, far exceeding the property’s value. 'It’s incalculable the amount of damage this guy did,' said one investor who lost about $1 million and asked not to be named to avoid embarrassment and not to interfere with a criminal investigation into Carrier’s scheme. 'He’s ruined some lives.'"

The Union Tribune in California. "Victims of domestic violence. Human trafficking survivors. Formerly homeless residents. More than 460 households in the city of San Diego — amounting to well over 1,000 children and adults — are set to lose the rental aid they receive from the federal government by as soon as next summer, local officials said this week at a public hearing. The commission currently helps cover rent for around 17,000 households through a variety of programs, all of which are federally funded. Five years ago, each family got an average of $876 a month. By this year, the total had shot up to more than $1,400. Even the Biden administration wasn’t fully covering San Diego’s tab, leaving the commission to dip into its reserves. Natalie Raschke, a mother of four who has spoken publicly about becoming homeless during the pandemic, told council members that her family relied on a voucher. 'Some people still aren’t back from COVID,' she said through tears during the public comment period."

The Globe and Mail in Canada. "In a first amid what real estate experts say is a Vancouver-area condo market meltdown, a long-established development company has terminated its presales efforts for a major project and returned purchasers’ deposits. Karen West, vice-president for marketing and sales with Boffo Developments Ltd., said the company launched the first of what is meant to be a four-tower, 1,200-unit development last July. Only 44 units of the 318 in the first tower sold between July and December and then sales just dropped off completely in the new year, so the company reluctantly decided to pause the project, return deposits with interest, and wait for better conditions, said Ms. West."

"'It’s like this cascading waterfall of bad news,' said Ryan Berlin, chief intelligence officer at Rennie Marketing, one of Greater Vancouver’s major presale marketing companies. Rennie laid of 25 per cent of its staff late last week and Mr. Berlin said many people are not expecting the market to start functioning anywhere near normal for two years. In metropolitan Vancouver, there are currently 2,500 condo units completed and unsold and that number could climb to 3,700 by the end of the year, said Mr. Berlin. One problem many buyers are having is that their units are being assessed at less than what they paid for them, which means banks are reducing the amount they will lend and buyers are having to make up the difference with additional cash of their own, said Mr. Berlin."

"Some are simply walking away from very large initial deposits. That is prompting some pushback from developers. In Toronto, developers have initiated more than a hundred lawsuits in efforts to get their full purchase price from presale buyers. According to statistics available in Toronto, there were 23,918 in the pipeline or completed in the first quarter of 2025 for the Toronto-Hamilton area. Of those, about 1,900 were completed and ready to be moved into. It’s expected that number will rise to 2,400 by the end of the year. Prices have declined 10 per cent to $1,524 a square foot compared to the peak in 2022, according to Bullpen Research and Consulting. Vancouver prices have also come down. Nothing in downtown Vancouver, currently the most expensive part of the region, can get more than $1,800 a square foot, said Mr. Berlin. At the pre-COVID peak, developers were sometimes asking up to $3,000 a square foot for luxury condos downtown."

Norran in Sweden. "The crisis and subsequent bankruptcy of battery manufacturer Northvolt, in Skellefteå is severely impacting the city’s housing market. When the first round of lay-offs was announced, we saw an increase in terminated rental contracts. Then there was another spike following the bankruptcy in March, says Anna Ersson, head of customer relations and marketing at Skebo. It’s a stark contrast to just a few years ago, when Northvolt’s arrival and expansion helped overheat the housing market and triggered a wave of planned new developments. It’s in newly built housing that Skebo is seeing the most pronounced effects. Those who moved to Skellefteå to work at Northvolt were primarily given apartments in new developments. And that’s also where we’re seeing the most terminations and the highest number of vacancies, says Ersson. 'It’s definitely a slower market right now. Bidding wars are almost non-existent. We track the difference between asking price and final sale price, and over the past four weeks, bids in Skellefteå have dropped by an average of –1.6 percent,' writes Karin Grundeus from SBAB’s property site Booli in an email."

From Vietnam.net. "In the first quarter of 2025, the low-rise housing market in Hanoi saw a clear downward trend in prices of villas, rowhouses, and shophouses. According to Savills, primary villa and rowhouse prices fell 14 percent, averaging VND282 million per sq m and VND239 million per sq m, respectively, while shophouses dropped 12 percent to VND278 million per sq m. The quarterly decline in primary villa and rowhouse prices in Hanoi, according to Do Thu Hang from Savills Hanoi, is due to new project launches in suburban areas offering lower prices compared to previous projects.