A report from WTOP. "Fewer homes for sale gets the blame for the recent slowdown in housing sales, but not every real estate expert believes the slowdown in sales is just because of low inventory. 'I don’t think it’s the inventory. That’s the easy whipping boy in this housing market,' said Daren Blomquist, senior vice president at RealtyTrac. 'We’ve seen increasing sales in the midst of low inventory over the last four years. I think the culprit here is the high prices. This housing recovery has become a victim of its own success,' he said."

"RealtyTrac notes that the weakest purchase origination volumes right now are in the super hot markets that are the highest priced across the country. And something else has slowed dramatically. Refinancing activity is down, despite those low mortgage rates. 'We’ve picked the bone completely in terms of refi, and there are really no scraps left in terms of people who haven’t refi’d. And people who have refi’d are at a low enough rate, where even a little bit lower rate isn’t going to make a difference. We have ridden that train as far as it can go,' Blomquist said."

"What is on the rise is originations of home equity lines of credit, or HELOCs, as existing homeowners tap into the equity rising home values create. HELOC originations were up 5 percent in the second quarter from a year ago, the 17th consecutive quarter with an annual increase."

DS News on Louisiana. "Louisiana may be on the verge of a large housing crunch due to not just the recent flooding causing disruption to thousands of homeowners but also the economic situation in large metro areas in the state according to a recent report from Fannie Mae. The report states that in particular, New Orleans, while having escaped most of the flooding, is seeing an economic slowdown that is impacting their housing market."

"'The backsliding economic situation in metro New Orleans is disappointing,' says Kim Betancourt, director of economics for Fannie Mae’s Multifamily Economics and Market Research (MRG) group. 'New Orleans’ short-lived economic recovery is over, and the metro area is on the verge of slipping into a recession.'"

The Modesto Bee in California. "Plywood covers the windows on both stories, the doors and the garage. Trash piles continue to grow in the backyard. Paperwork stapled to the garage door of the bank-owned property details the numerous code violations and orders it to make repairs. Indeed, this house on Phoenix Avenue in Modesto’s La Loma Neighborhood certainly stands out along a street lined with otherwise well-maintained homes, most about 30 years old and all but that one well-kept. Like so many others throughout Modesto, the place is vacant except for when squatters break in. It’s a frequent target of metal thieves."

"It’s just one problem home in a city that has scores of them, with another added to the list each week on average as neighbors or other residents complain. Some are bank-owned, some by local owners and others by out-of-towners. Either way, the homes are eyesores, unsafe, unsanitary and need to be dealt with."

"Bert Lippert, whose job with the city’s building department is to deal with these blighted properties, is working more than two dozen active cases now and those don’t include what the four code-enforcement officers and supervisor in the city’s Neighborhood Preservation Unit handle in getting properties cleaned up, graffiti removed and other issues."

"'They’ve handled 4,800 cases (in 2016) and that was before 'Go Modesto,' Lippert said, referring to the city’s new mobile app for reporting blight and checking the status of progress toward addressing a specific property. The city has dealt with below-code homes ever since it developed building codes. But the economic downturn that began in 2007 and led to foreclosures and abandonments literally opened the door for trespassers, vagrants, vandals and others to move into the vacant places and trash them."

"'That is when we started seeing more squatters,' he said."

KOLN in Nebraska. "There are plenty of options for UNL students who plan to live off-campus after their freshmen year. It seems like every year, a new student apartment complex pops up in Lincoln, in fact some in the industry fear there are too many. Jerry Shoecraft, manager at 50/50 apartments, said now there are too many student apartment complexes. 'Now that the market is getting over saturated, I think it is becoming a problem for investors and operations that are existing,' said Shoecraft."

"But new apartments aimed at student housing keep popping up, and Shoecraft said the companies are going to start losing a lot of money when they can't fill the rooms. 'Based on the analysis and surveys that we have done and participated in, a lot of the new student housing operations are barely 50, 60 percent occupied,' said Shoecraft."

"Meredith Burroughs, a UNL student, who now chooses to live 15 minutes from campus, said there are a lot of options for housing, but she believes there is another reason these companies are losing money. 'They are not filling up because they are so expensive and a lot of us are paying our own rent, so we don't want to pay 700 dollars a month just to live close to campus,' said Burroughs."