The Housing Bubble Blog

The Wall Street Journal reports on China. "Shenyang, a provincial capital in China’s northeastern rustbelt, has at times seemed desperate to do something about its glut of housing. In March, the city floated the idea that college graduates be permitted to buy apartments without making a down...

A report from WTOP. "Fewer homes for sale gets the blame for the recent slowdown in housing sales, but not every real estate expert believes the slowdown in sales is just because of low inventory. 'I don’t think it’s the inventory. That’s the easy whipping boy in this housing market,' said Daren...

The Abbotsford News reports from Canada. "The Abbotsford housing market continued to moderate in August, with sales of single-family houses down sharply from previous months. Just 116 houses traded hands in August, down 32.2 per cent from July and less than half the number of sales from May,...

The Star Tribune reports from Minnesota. "Several years into an apartment construction boom, it’s still a landlord’s market across the Twin Cities metro. Rents are on the rise across the region despite the appearance of rental concessions in some parts of the metro that are showing signs of at...

A report from Reuters UK. "UK housebuilder Berkeley Group Holdings Plc has halted construction at a 20 million-pound luxury housing project in London, it said on Friday. Berkeley Group declined to say why it stopped construction last month at the Barnes Village scheme in southwest London, where...

An editorial from the News and Observer in North Carolina. "The question had the best of intentions. A Chapel Hill Town Council member asked, 'How can the council know if the market for apartments is saturated?' The short answer is 'you probably can’t.' A better answer is 'you certainly shouldn’t...

A report from CBC News in Canada. "There is no denying a wave of fear and loathing has hit Vancouver's ebullient market in the wake of the provincial government's tax on foreign buyers. Data collected by realtor Rob Chipman shows that not only sales but average prices seemed to be falling. The real...

A weekend topic from the REIC, starting with Yahoo Finance. "Wealth generates wealth, especially now, in an economy that has been rewarding people who own stocks and other financial assets a lot more than people whose income comes primarily from working. And new research shows that wealth...

It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "Rental housing website Zumper announced that Seattle has fallen off its list of the country’s ten most expensive renter markets. Tanguy Le Louarn, head of digital marketing at Zumper, says that’s explained in part by luxury apartments in Seattle...

The National Post reports from Canada. "Less than a month after the B.C. government imposed a 15-per-cent tax on foreign buyers of residential real estate, sellers of a handful of multi-million mansions have slashed their asking price, in one case by millions. The slashing of the asking price on...

The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports from Georgia. "Atlanta’s home prices rose 5.8 percent during the past year, slightly better than average gains across the country, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller House Price Index. The pace of price increases has been slowing. The stock of homes for sale...

News OK reports from Oklahoma. "Renters are feeling the heat of Oklahoma City's hot apartment market. Vacancy is generally stable, with even temporary softness from new construction around Quail Springs Mall and in Moore being absorbed into metro-area stats about as soon as new units are being...

A report from Bloomberg on Canada. "Canadians may finally be getting skittish about real estate. The share of survey respondents who expect a decline in local housing prices jumped by 8.5 percentage points, the most since weekly polling began three years ago for the Bloomberg Nanos Canadian...

A report from CNBC. " A decade ago, the U.S. housing market swelled to a bubble of epic proportions. When the bubble burst, millions lost their homes and their savings. Home prices dropped for six years, finally hitting bottom in 2012; today, home prices are about 1 percent shy of that 2006 bubble...

A report from Florida Today. "The median sale price for an existing home in Brevard County hit a high point for the year in July, coming in at $196,000. That's 22 percent higher than it was the same time a year ago and more than 3 percent jump from June's median price of $189,925 Is there anything...

WFAA reports from Texas. "This summer, we have been exploring the extraordinary things happening in North Texas real estate. But the 'hottest market ever' doesn’t just apply to owning. Rents -- and new rental developments -- are rising fast, too. We visited a 400+ unit project being erected in...

A report from the Jackson Hole News & Guide. "In an unprecedented move for the Federal Reserve Bank, a group of 10 high-ranking officials met with more than 120 activists Thursday evening at Jackson Lake Lodge, providing inspiration to local organizers. The normally tight-lipped Fed fielded...

Two unrelated items for weekend reading, starting with MarketWatch. "It says a lot about human nature that the scientist responsible for the law of gravity was sucked into an investment that for a time defied gravity. Throughout history, people — especially those at the top rung of society — have...

The Gothamist reports from New York. "Activists often argue that Airbnb is driving up New York City rents by allowing fly-by-night hoteliers to illegally rent out whole apartments year-round, thus taking much-needed housing off the market. The data news site FiveThirtyEight commissioned data from...

It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "If you’ve been shopping for a home in Boston or its suburbs in the past few years, you probably know how this story ends: cars lining the block and a hundred people at the open house. A dozen offers rushed to the listing agent, many of them above...