A report from the Palm Beach Post in Florida. "His gubernatorial campaign comes as some in West Palm Beach have soured on Jeff Greene, the real estate mogul who once seemed ready to lead West Palm Beach out of the Great Recession. In 2011, he embarked on a shopping spree that saw him spend more than $200 million on Palm Beach County real estate, mostly in West Palm Beach and Palm Beach. While he has won city permission to build two splashy towers on Quadrille Boulevard and so-called micro-apartments downtown, he has yet to break ground on those projects. Greene, for his part, has grown less bullish about the prospects for his hefty investment in downtown West Palm Beach. 'It’s not going that great,' he said Friday."

"As for the micro-apartment project, Greene said he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on engineering and design, but he was scared off by a building boom that could add more than 2,000 new apartment units to downtown West Palm Beach. 'We just don’t have the kind of dynamic economy here that has pushed rents up to the point where it makes sense to build new apartments,' Greene said. 'All of these new buildings are putting stress on the market.'"

The Sun Sentinel in Florida. "The stalled Las Olas Ocean Resort near Fort Lauderdale Beach may be close to being sold to a Rhode Island hospitality company after it became the only bidder to make an offer for the property, which is now in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. The bidder, MHF Properties VI LLC, is an affiliate of Magna Hospitality Group of Rhode Island. The company had agreed to put up the initial offer for an auction that was to take place under the supervision of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court."

"But after MHF offered $39.1 million, the auction was called off when no one offered a competing bid. Construction on the 12-story, 136-room resort ground to a halt after 550 Seabreeze Development LLC sought protection from its creditors — namely Bancorp Bank — which filed a foreclosure suit against the owner in January. The bank claimed the developer defaulted on a mortgage, which had an unpaid balance of $36.9 million."

"It remains unclear whether several dozen investors from China will recover anything. Collectively, they contributed $30 million through a U.S.-sponsored foreign investor program that would have yielded immigration visas as a reward for creating jobs at the resort. About a third of them filed a lawsuit in bankruptcy court alleging fraud by Bancorp and four of the developer’s managing members."

The Commercial Observer on New York. "Developer Rutherford Thompson filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Tuesday to prevent the UCC non-judicial foreclosure on his stalled condominium development at One Bennett Park, also known as 29 Overlook Terrace, court documents filed in the U.S Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York show. As previously reported by CO, the foreclosure auction of 100 percent of the ownership entity’s interest in the Hudson Heights property—pledged as collateral for the current debt on the property—was due to take place Wednesday at 11 a.m. at the offices of law firm Kramer Levin, with Ariel Property Advisors overseeing the bidding process. Thompson’s filing was made only a day earlier, 'on an emergency basis.'"

"The 23-story, 114-unit condo building is still under construction despite completion being anticipated years ago. The project has faced 'a host of problems involving lenders, cessation of financing, cessation of construction and changing market conditions,' Thompson’s filing states."

"Thompson claims in the court filing that the debt wasn’t repaid due to an inability to sell the property. After several extension of the loan’s maturity date the lender declared a default and scheduled a UCC foreclosure auction 'despite ongoing efforts by me to procure a buyer or new lender for the property,' Thompson claims."

"The goal of the Chapter 11 filing is to preserve One Bennett Park’s status quo and allow Thompson 'one final opportunity to procure a buyer for the property so as not to forfeit a project that still retains a potentially bright future after ten years of turmoil,' he states in the document."

From The Real Deal on New York. "The oversupply of high-end condos in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens is pulling the luxury market down. A report from Stribling & Associates for the first half of 2018 noted that the high-end condo market logged a nearly 40 percent decrease in transactions, according to Mansion Global. 'This was the first time in the past six years the condo market saw a reduction in sales,' Stribling’s Garrett Derderian wrote in the report."

"The report found the number of sales valued at $5 million or more fell 31 percent in the first six months of the year, according to the brokerage’s numbers. In Manhattan alone, the inventory of condos is slated to hit a recent peak with close to 8,000 units expected to come online in 2019, as The Real Deal reported. Appraisal firm Miller Samuel predicts it would take about 4.5 years to sell the units."

The Business Insider on New York. "Retail rents across Manhattan continued to fall in 2018's second quarter, but leasing activity is picking up as landlords come to terms with the market, according to a report from Cushman & Wakefield. 'We've seen more velocity,' said Steve Soutendijk, a retail broker at the firm. 'There's definitely been a shift in landlords' expectations.'"

"New York City has 16.4 acres of undeveloped land in its central business district — more than other coastal cities including Miami, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., according to an analysis by Commercial Café that ranked 25 cities across the country. That revelation comes despite the massive development boom in the five boroughs that has outpaced every other metropolitan area on the list. Between 2013 and 2017, New York added 30 million square feet of housing and commercial space, more than triple the total for the next city, Dallas, which saw 8.5 million square feet of new properties."