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Many Investors Now Panicking Under Financial Strain

A report from the Ballina Advocate in Australia. "Australia is facing a 'debt crisis' - and the property market and our entire economy are at risk as a result. That's according to the sobering 60 Minutes segment Bricks and Slaughter which aired last night, revealing the country's property downturn...
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Increased Supply With Larger-Than-Usual Discounts

A report from the Naples Herald in Florida. "The Naples housing market continues to show strength after closed property sales increased by 5 percent and inventory rose 2 percent in August, according to the Naples Area Board of Realtors. 'I’m really encouraged by activity in the lower end of the...
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You Probably Should Have Sold Last Summer

A report from the Dallas Morning News in Texas. "The slowdown in Dallas-Fort Worth's housing market may be worse than at first glance. Sales of preowned single-family homes dropped 1 percent annually in August in all of North Texas, according to the latest numbers from the Real Estate Center at...
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More Disappointed Sellers Are Offering Discounts

A report from the Marin Independent Journal in California. "When Sean Cook put his family’s San Jose home up for sale for more than $3 million this summer, he assumed it would fly off the shelf in a week or two. A similar house in his neighborhood took just three days to sell for $3.3 million in...
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The Question Of How Well The Learning Stuck

A weekend topic starting with the News Tribune. "We don’t use the word 'panic' these days to describe widespread economic calamity. We use 'great' — as in Great Depression, Great Recession — or 'crisis.' Panic has been relegated to history books that hardly anyone pays attention to. That the term...
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My House Got Stolen In The Housing Bubble

A report from the Bakersfield Californian. "Ten-and-a-half years ago, sorting through the day's mail, I would often marvel at the number of let-me-sell-your-home postcards from real estate agents. We were surely half-millionaires on paper, I remember thinking, because our nothing-special suburban...
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Has The Hottest New Neighborhood Suddenly Gone Ice Cold?

A weekend topic starting with the Mountain View Voice in California. "Bay Area housing advocates were thrilled last year when Mountain View leaders pledged to go hard on residential growth, transforming the corporate office park of North Bayshore into a dense urban neighborhood with 9,850 homes....
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It Is Very Much A Confidence Game

It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "The price of a tech mogul's Los Altos Hills compound is now listed for about $38 million less than the original asking price, Socket Site has discovered. In Silicon Valley, where real estate is scarce and high-paying jobs abundant, homes famously...
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There Seems To Be Surprise After Surprise

A report from the Denver Post in Colorado. "Developers in metro Denver are churning out so many luxury apartments it is depressing rents in the priciest neighborhoods, forcing landlords to provide more concessions and shrinking the premium tenants pay to live downtown. But is it a bubble ready to...
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The Boom Days Over And The Distress Days Coming

A report from the Miami Herald in Florida. "One of Miami’s highest-profile real estate brokerages is engaged in an ugly split, with accusations of substance abuse, mismanagement and runaway expenditures. For 25 years, International Sales Group — ISG — has been known as the sales wizards behind...
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Sellers Are Slashing Prices After Growing Anxious

A report from Bloomberg on China. "Chinese property developers are offering free luxury cars and hefty discounts to lure buyers as lending curbs and funding constraints squeeze their finances. China Merchants Shekou Industrial Zone Holdings Co is giving away a BMW Series 3 or X1 to buyers of a...
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A Little More Motivated Than Normal

A report from Bloomberg on New York. "Manhattan apartment vacancies dropped in August to the lowest level in more than four years as landlords, facing the end of peak leasing season, focused on filling empty units before the slower winter months arrive. Taken together with a decline in rents and an...
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Price Reduction Is A Market-Warranted Reset

A report from Bloomberg. "Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledged that policy makers made two critical errors fighting the financial crisis a decade ago: They failed to see it coming with such force then underestimated how much economic damage it would cause later. 'Nobody saw how...
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The Whirlwind Of A Credit Squeeze In A Falling Market

A report from the Georgia Straight in Canada. "The latest numbers from the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver show that in August, the benchmark sale price for a single-family home in Point Grey was down 14.6 percent from a year ago. For detached properties in MacKenzie Heights, the annual drop...
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Consumed By People Who Are Not Here

A report from Next City on Massachusetts. "A large percentage of Boston’s luxury condos are going to LLCs and trusts rather than owner-occupants according to a new study, which claims that the city’s high-end building boom isn’t doing much to address the local housing shortage. Researchers from the...
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A Hit To Their Bank Account

A report from the New York Times. "If not for the financial crisis, it’s entirely possible that American TV viewers would never have heard of shiplap or considered Waco, Tex., a cool place to visit. Chip and Joanna Gaines, the hosts of HGTV’s hit show 'Fixer Upper,' popularized farmhouse chic as...
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The Blunders Of Quantitative Easing

A report from CNBC TV 18 in India. "Every second investment report on India sees housing as the most promising sector and yet we see defaults, slowdown in launches and declining sales dominating the industry. On the surface, the problem is, 'Home prices are not affordable.' But a more economically...
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Price Cuts And Long List-To-Sell Times

A report from KIRO 7 in Washington. "Buyers and sellers in the Seattle area are feeling the triumph and pain of a cooling real estate market in Western Washington. Numbers released by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service show the number of homes on the market in the area is up 11 percent to...
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A Sign Sellers Have Had To Adjust Price Expectations

A report from the Spokesman Review in Washington. "After climbing steadily for most of the year, homes sale prices in Spokane County appear to be leveling off. The average price for homes with sales closing in August was $260,800 – nearly unchanged from $259,300 in July, and down from a peak of...
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