It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "Looks like all those reports of a luxury slowdown weren’t just speculative after all: The final Olshan Realty report of the year is out, and according to the real estate trackers there, 'the golden years of new condo development' are over. As Curbed New York columnist Jonathan Miller has noted in the past, 'there’s too much development being built at 2014 prices, and that buyer isn’t there.'"

"Most of Edgerton's tobacco warehouses were demolished years ago after the tobacco industry dried up. But in the past five years three of the cream-colored buildings were converted to apartments. All are full. Contrast that with the Orchard Heights subdivision for single-family homes on the city's southern edge. It's 12 years old but only about 20 percent full, developer Don Cosgrove said. 'When we started out, we built maybe 30-some houses in the first few years, but it just went to nothing,' Cosgrove said. 'We thought it would be several years ago to fill the lot … Who knows when it will be filled?'"

"In the Bay Area housing market, supply and demand means not much supply and way too much demand. As a result, the cost of a single-family home has skyrocketed in recent years. Yet there were cracks in the market’s red-hot edifice; the volume of sales was way down from the previous year. New peak prices were recorded in April, May, June and July — and then the 'sluggish' word set in and didn’t go away for the rest of the year. Sales were down. Buyers were digging in their heels. By fall, outside of hotly contested areas, sellers were making price adjustments unseen in a long time."

"A new tax brought in to replace stamp duty is holding down house prices on the west coast, according to a leading estate agent. Will Banham, of Bell Ingram’s Oban office, said the Land and Buildings Transaction Tax has had unusual and unintended consequences for the west coast of Scotland. Mr Banham said: 'This has simply caused downward pressure on prices, with most buyers explicitly discounting their offers by the exact amount of extra tax due. It is very much a buyers’ market, with vendors losing out.'"

"In the Yamuna Expressway authority area, 20 builders have failed to complete their projects and the investments of around 20,000 homebuyers is at stake. Noida, Greater Noida and Yamuna Expressway authorities are to recover a total of around ₹25,000 crore from builders in land dues. Many have turned defaulters, citing a dip in sales of flats. In Noida, the investments of around one lakh buyers are stuck in 50 delayed projects. There are 95 under-construction realty projects in Greater Noida. Around one lakh homebuyers in 80 of these projects are estimated to be impacted."

"Australia’s booming market for purpose-built student accommodation, having caught the attention of some of the world’s largest investors, could be on the precipice of oversupply, with concerns among some of the industry’s largest outfits over the number of new beds in Brisbane. A report produced by commercial realtors JLL shows about 10,000 beds proposed in Brisbane, 'the largest pipeline of beds in the country,' adding to the existing supply of 9325 beds by 2020."

"Iglu, which runs two ­student accommodation facilities in Brisbane, including one that opened months late, said it was 'always a challenge' to fill the properties. 'There are a limited number of students, particularly at the higher price points,' said company’s director Richard Smith. 'Most of the new product is ­targeting a similar student demographic and we are concerned about the depth of the market to support all this new product. In our view Brisbane is the most oversupplied market in Australia ... the student market is about half the size of Sydney and Melbourne yet has the largest development pipeline in Australia.'"

"Prices of completed private condominiums continued to fall in November suggesting recovery is still some way off for resale homes. November's price fall was led by units in the central region, according to flash estimates from the NUS Singapore Residential Price Index. Mr Wong Xian Yang, head of research and consultancy at OrangeTee, said: 'With rents still on a downtrend and the outlook on interest rates remaining unclear, buyers will continue to negotiate hard for lower prices.'"

"In China’s two-speed property market, prescriptions for deflating big-city bubbles are having unintended side-effects in smaller towns. 'China’s property market has complicated, structural problems,' said Wen Bin, a researcher at China Minsheng Banking Corp. in Beijing. 'Bubbles in big cities have much to do with financial leverage, whereas oversupply in third- and fourth-tier cities epitomizes the lukewarm economy.'"

"Curbs are just buying time for policy makers and won’t fundamentally solve the crucial problem of regional imbalances, said Tommy Xie, an economist at OCBC Bank in Singapore. 'They need to push forward the combined reforms as they’ve pledged in the statement,' Xie said. 'But to deflate a bubble while cutting oversupply really isn’t easy.'"

"Real estate prices will eventually collapse in Edmonton and prospective homeowners should consider renting for a few years, says an Alberta investment manager. 'There's lots and lots of issues with the Alberta economy, being a boom-and-bust economy. We're not through the worst part of it yet,' said Hilliard MacBeth, an Edmonton-based portfolio manager."

"He expects some homeowners will be hit harder than others. For example, high-end properties on the outskirts of Calgary have already experienced a sudden drop. 'Home bubbles and bubbles bursting and the explosion in the level of debt in Canadian society are totally tied together,' MacBeth said in an interview with CBC Radio's Edmonton AM. Because the market has been strong for decades, many Edmontonians believe the sector is recession-proof. MacBeth says this optimism is misplaced."

"'One of the big surprises to me is how widespread the belief is that owning a home is a really good thing to do,' he said. 'It goes through all levels of society, all kinds of people. The idea that prices always go up, it's a very false belief, but it's a very widespread belief.'"

"Renting is currently a bargain in Edmonton, MacBeth said. 'If people think of a house as an investment, then everybody should sell their house and live in a rental place or move to a trailer,' MacBeth said. 'But if you think of it as a place to live, and accept that you will be consuming the value of that home over your lifetime, then it's OK. It's a speculator's game, not an investor's game.'"