A report from Reuters. "U.S. apartment vacancy rate was unchanged at 4.4 percent in the third quarter from the second, while rent growth decelerated in a period that generally sees the strongest increase, real estate research firm Reis Inc said. 'Developers had enjoyed healthy rent growth and significant pre-leasing just a few short years ago when the housing market was struggling to gain footing. But since then developers have been overbuilding in some markets as demand has ebbed somewhat,' Reis economist Barbara Denham said in a statement."

The Wall Street Journal. "Apartment rents declined in some of the country's priciest cities during the third quarter, a dramatic reversal that could signal the end of a six-year boom for the U.S. rental market. 'San Francisco and New York are leading the way in the downturn,' said Ken Rosen, chairman of the Fisher Center of Real Estate and Urban Economics at the University of California at Berkeley. 'People are going to be surprised that this is happening but they shouldn't be. It's been too far, too fast.'"

"The same downtown areas that drove the boom are now the deepest pockets of weakness. 'You're going to see red right in the middle of every market. That's the one place where supply and demand are out of balance,' said Jay Denton, senior vice president of analytics for Axiometrics."

"In San Jose, buildings such as the Ascent, which opened in September 2015 with one-bedroom units starting around $ 2,500, are now offering new tenants two months of free rent. Eugene Korsunsky, president of Intempus Realty, a San Jose real-estate brokerage firm that manages apartments and single-family homes for landlords, said for the past couple of years apartments sat on the market for about a week. Now it can take him nearly a month to find a tenant, he said. 'We've actually had to drop the rent on some properties, which I don't think I've ever done in my career,' he said."

"'We're late year-six, early year-seven of the recovery,' said Greg Willett, chief economist at RealPage, a property management company. 'That's about time for a recession by historical standards.'"

The Detroit Free Press in Michigan. "So many new housing developments are coming to greater downtown Detroit that it’s easy to lose track. Last week alone, four fresh projects with potentially 600-700 units took big steps toward becoming reality. Those four projects come on top of the 1,000 or so units already under construction around central Detroit and perhaps at least 1,000 more units in various stages of the planning pipeline."

"I asked Arthur Jemison, director of Detroit’s Housing & Revitalization office, about how many potential renters and buyers really want to move downtown. 'I don’t think I’m worried about overbuilding yet but I think about that a lot,' Jemison told me, suggesting that we may be another 500 or so units away from satisfying current market demand. If that’s true, then some of the planned projects may not fill up as fast as their developers hope."

"I’m not suggesting we’re approaching the saturation point in downtown Detroit’s housing market. But downtown right now is bringing on new housing like sailors first coming ashore. Sooner or later, the free-wheeling fun cools off. We just don’t know if that will happen tomorrow or five years from now."

The Wichita Eagle in Kansas. "Wichita apartment rental rates, already among the lowest in American cities, fell slightly over the past year, according to the Apartment List website. The median rent is $520 for a one-bedroom and $640 for a two-bedroom unit, down 1.5 percent from a year ago. Wichita has seen a flurry of apartment development in the past two years, with hundreds of new units, which tends to mean lower rents for a time."

Bloomberg on New York. "There are a lot more apartments available for purchase these days in Manhattan. And fewer people are buying. Sales of previously owned condominiums and co-ops fell 20 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier as potential buyers grew cautious amid more choices, according to a report Tuesday from appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate. There were 5,290 resale apartments on the market at the end of September, 53 percent more than the number available in late 2013, the lowest point for listings."

"Many sellers have yet to accept that they can no longer name any price, and the disconnect between their expectations and what buyers are willing to pay is contributing to the drop in overall sales, said Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel. 'We’re clearly seeing a slowdown,' Miller said. 'This era of aspirational pricing is coming to an end. Buyers get the message first.'"

The New York Times. "Financing commercial property has been local banks’ bread-and-butter business for years, but a postcrisis push for loan growth prompted regulatory warnings about lax lending standards, and small banks are now shying away from the market. A shakeout in commercial real estate is under way as some banks unwind or sell off the loans that are under regulators’ microscopes, and bankers say they are wary of making new loans."

"Joseph J. Lebel III, chief lending officer of OceanFirst Bank in Toms River, N.J., has reviewed some of the commercial loans that other banks have put up for sale recently but decided not to buy any because they have weak loan terms and other features that point to aggressive underwriting."