A report from Bankrate.com on California. "In the California real estate market the 'b' word is on the minds of many: bubble. One place where home sales were legendary for their risky offers, stripped of contingencies to woo sellers with full dance cards, is Silicon Valley. Inventory is fattening and sales are slowing. 'At our peak, in my area, if you listed a home you could count on get 15 to 20 offers. We’re still in a market where we’re getting multiple offers, but things are changing,' says Robert Whitelaw, broker/owner of Whitelaw & Sons Real Estate Services in Morgan Hill, California."

"'One, not just anything will get multiple offers. If you have a crappy house, the odds are it’s going to take you longer to sell. And that wasn’t always the case. You could sell absolute crap really quickly. The other part of it is you’re getting less offers, maybe four or five,' he said. 'I got an email from a builder recently. It was the oddest email, it read: ‘Now affordable housing at the low $1.3 millions.’ The construction folks seemed to have played out their hand when it comes to high-end construction. The really sad thing is that, in the really high-priced homes, the folks that bought them are likely going to have to sell for less than they paid for them.'"

The Kingman Daily Miner in Arizona. "Home sales have slowed across the nation after a busy spring, and higher prices in certain markets are giving buyers cold feet as they fret about another housing bubble. Doug Angle, founder of Angle Homes, said he’s seen a slowdown in sales over the last couple of months. 'We’re still selling homes, but not as much as the spring,' Angle said. 'You’ve got to keep an eye on it. It kind of makes you nervous. You don’t know if it’s peaked or not.'"

"Angle is actively building in eight housing subdivisions around Kingman with homes starting at $152,000 for a three-bedroom, two-bath home in Cerbat Vistas and ranging up to $575,000 for a four-bedroom, 3½-bath home on two acres at Copper Wind. 'Many of the buyers are from California, about half of them,' Angle said. 'We hope things will keep growing in the next two years, but in the last 45 days, we are starting to see a slowdown in sales both locally and nationally.'"

"Homes are sitting on the market a little longer and buyers are negotiating a little harder for deals, he added. Some builders may give them a $5,000 discount, but then recent buyers get upset because they didn’t have the same opportunity, Angle mentioned."

"Angle said sales are slowing in higher-priced markets such as Denver, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles as buyers think twice about taking on a substantial mortgage. 'Prices have been going up the last three to four years. At some point, people say that’s too high, they’re not interested in buying,' Angle said. 'It’s going to reach that point. You’re going to have a correction. They’re starting to see that in expensive markets.'"

From Builder Online. "Clearly, although new-home builders in many markets continue to drive sales growth and can expect to record year-on-year increases in sales volume, revenue, and profits, the interest rate wild card is at least showing signs of raining on our builders' parade. Ivy Zelman and her team at Zelman & Associates call out a statistically important inflection point in the latest issue of The Z Report, a recap of second quarter 2018 earnings among 14 public home builders who booked revenue of $20 billion on 51,500 closings--about 37% of high volume builders sales in the nation."

"They note that the Zelman home builder basket had a great quarter from a business operating margin and profitability standpoint, but appear to have reached a pivotal moment in terms of the sustainability of their sales volumes and margins. The report takes particular note of new order growth of 6% across the 14 companies analyzed, a 500-basis point quarter-to-quarter decrease in sales volume growth from the first quarter of 2018."

"'To put this quarter's 500 basis point deceleration in order growth into perspective, over the last 28 years spanning 113 quarters, order growth has decelerated at least 500 basis points in 32 other quarters, or 28% of the time. In 69% of these instances, order growth decelerated further in the subsequent quarter, by an average of 1,000 basis points. In other words, periods of large deceleration in order growth more times than not are followed by additional periods of weakness.'"

From the Coloradoan. "A decade ago, L&L Acoustical averaged about 60 jobs a month. Today, the drywall company completes 35 to 40 jobs, not because the work is shriveling up — quite the opposite. There's enough work to do 60 to 70 jobs in Fort Collins' robust housing climate, co-owner Gery Lockman said. 'The cost of building these homes are through the roof,' Lockman said. 'Materials and labor are going up, but they can't keep going up because we won't have any work. No one's going to be able to afford the houses.'"

"While the labor shortage continues, the appraiser shortage has eased. John Mayea, who has been appraising property in Northern Colorado since 1984, said there was a shortage right up until interest rates started to rise. 'In those 30 years, the whole real estate business has tapped into capital unimaginable in the '80s.'"

"When he started in the business, there were fewer appraisers than today and less work. 'People didn't use their houses as piggy banks back in the day,' Mayea said. 'There was not the whole volume of lending and borrowing, refinances and seconds.'"

"Appraisers were stretched beyond the breaking point during the height of the refinancing boom, when interest rates were at record lows. 'There will always be a shortage when there's a refi boom, but you can't build an industry based on peak demand.'"

"Ron Harding got 20 to 40 appraisal requests per day during the refinancing boom. He could only accept one or two. Instead of a shortage, he calls it 'an overabundance of work that no one was prepared for. It couldn't last and it didn't last,' he said. 'Nowadays, that's gone. There are plenty of appraisers,' he said."

"Realtors and lenders know to call for an appraisal immediately once a home is under contract to ensure there is no delay in closing the purchase, Realtor Ben Blonder of Fort Collins said."