• Plans for ‘workforce neighborhood’ include offices and retail
• Project extends revival efforts for New Jersey city’s downtown

Developers of a mixed-use project at the site of a failed baseball stadium in Newark unveiled plans calling for as many as 2,000 rental apartments and 400,000 square feet of office space, part of an effort to revive the downtown of New Jersey’s largest city.

Lotus Equity Group named four architecture firms that will collaborate on the design for the 2.3 million-square-foot (214,000-square-meter) development, which also would have retail stores and open space, according to the preliminary plans. The site of the former Bears & Eagles Riverfront Stadium is within walking distance of trains to Manhattan and campuses of Rutgers University and the New Jersey Institute of Technology…

• Values in northeast borough climb 93% since 2012, Halifax says
• Capital leads increase in values across all areas of U.K.

Move over Kensington and Chelsea. The area of London that’s seen the biggest jump in property values over the past five years has been Waltham Forest.

According to mortgage lender Halifax, prices in the capital’s northeast borough have jumped 93 percent since 2012 when the city hosted the Olympic Games nearby. That outstrips the 57 percent gain across Greater London, where over the previous two decades, values have more than quintupled…

• North American units supply nearly all the carmakers’ profits
• Both companies have cut U.S. auto industry sales forecasts

For General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co., home is where the profits are. That’s a source of heartburn as U.S. auto sales stall.

Ford Chief Financial Officer Bob Shanks put it plainly when explaining his company’s quarterly financial results Wednesday: “Effectively, every dollar we earned in the automotive segment was earned in North America.” It’s a similar story at GM, which reported all but about $200 million of adjusted profit came from the region…

The U.S. housing market is stabilizing near 10-year highs, according to government data Wednesday that showed sales of new homes were slightly less than forecast.

Key Takeaways

Americans, taking advantage of low mortgage rates and confident in a strong job market that’s providing steady wage gains, are still on the hunt for new homes. Prices fell from a year earlier as more moderately priced homes sold in June…

Steady price gains in 20 U.S. cities in May indicate that a tight supply of properties paired with increased demand is boosting home values, according to figures from S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller on Tuesday.

Out-of-town investors are dominating Detroit, Memphis and other distressed housing markets.

Al Beahn was a 22-year-old college grad living in his parent’s basement in the Detroit suburbs when he bought his first investment property in 2009. It cost him $27,000 and he flipped it three months later for a $16,000 profit. Today, his company, Pioneer Homes, has bought and sold 1,000 homes, primarily through a business model he calls the turnkey rental.

A limited number of properties listed for sale remains the biggest hurdle for the market. Lean inventory is pushing up asking prices at a faster pace than worker pay. While job growth is steady and mortgage rates remain attractive, higher prices are making entry difficult for those looking to make their first purchase.

The data are in line with contract signings for U.S. previously owned houses, which unexpectedly fell in May for a third straight month…

U.S. Home Resales Ease as Lean Inventory Drives Prices Higher

Inexperienced, yield-hungry French retail investors are pouring money into real estate funds, pushing up prices for the best European commercial properties to unsustainable levels, according to Fidelity International Ltd.

Inflows into so-called societe civile de placement immobilier, French collective-investment vehicles that purchase properties and other assets across Europe, reached 5.6 billion euros ($6.5 billion) last year, a third higher than in 2015, Fidelity said in a report. Money is pouring into these funds in search of higher returns compared with stocks and bonds and because of their favorable tax treatment.

• Real-estate shares’ premium to wider market at four-year high
• Sector will benefit from expanding economy, BDO Unibank says

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Philippine real-estate stocks will extend a market-beating rally, the country’s biggest money manager is betting, unfazed by the most expensive valuation in four years.

The Philippine Stock Exchange Property Index has climbed 24 percent this year as investors became more sanguine about President Rodrigo Duterte’s pivot to China and his U.S. counterpart’s insular approach to trade, which could hurt outsourcing companies. The measure now commands the highest premium since 2013 over the stock benchmark, which is up 17 percent…

• Values in London fell in May for the second consecutive month
• London market most impacted by Brexit and higher sales taxes

The eight-year bull run for London home values appears to be finally coming to an end.

Values fell 0.5 percent in May from April, according to the LSL Acadata Home Price Index, and will show little or no growth this year, broker Savills Plc forecasts. PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP predicts that price growth will continue to slow in 2018 and 2019 as economic uncertainty and increased stamp duty taxes damp demand.

Residential construction ended the second quarter on a stronger note as groundbreaking on new homes rebounded in June to the fastest annualized pace in four months, Commerce Department data showed Wednesday.

Key Takeaways

The pickup in construction last month reflected more starts of single-family homes as well as apartment and other multifamily dwellings. The gain in June starts ended a three-month slide that indicates residential building will do little for second-quarter economic growth.

Sentiment among American homebuilders deteriorated to an eight-month low in July on concerns about higher material costs, according to data Tuesday from the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo.

Rental listings generally don’t include tenant complaints or fire code violations. Rentlogic is changing all that.

The for-rent advertisement on East 75th Street in Manhattan, just a half-block from Central Park, boasts natural light, a marble bathroom, and a granite kitchen. It sounds lovely, a gem of the Upper East Side—perhaps even “triple mint,” as some real estate ads breathlessly proclaim.

It better be, given that the price for the apartment is $4,095 a month.

What the listing doesn’t mention is that the building has a long history of tenant complaints and city-issued violations. Issues over the years have included mold, cockroaches, and fire safety. That information is accessible on public databases, but it can be difficult to dig up for the uninitiated…

• Second-quarter sales of homes being built rise by 30%
• Total number of unsold homes under construction reaches record

London home starts rose to the highest in 18 months even as the number of unsold properties under construction climbed amid uncertainty surrounding Brexit.

Construction began on 6,962 units during the second quarter, according to a report by Molior London seen by Bloomberg News. That’s 42 percent higher than a year earlier and the most since the fourth quarter of 2015. A spokesman for Molior declined to comment…

London New Home Starts Surge 42% as Builders Ignore Brexit Woes

• Three-month average down 14.2% after flood of new listings
• Bank of Canada rate hike expected to further cool market

Canada’s hottest housing market is definitely cooling down.

Total home sales in Greater Toronto dropped to 5,977 in June, the lowest level since 2010 and down 15.1 percent from the month prior, data from the Canadian Real Estate Association show. Average prices are down 14.2 percent since March — the fastest 3-month decline in the history of the data back to 1988 — while the ratio of sales to new listings sits at its lowest level since 2009…

• A squeeze on wages and inflation is holding back buyers
• Consumer confidence fell most in more than two years in 2Q

U.K. house prices are “virtually at a standstill” as consumers contend with a squeeze on living standards, Rightmove Plc said.

Asking prices rose by 0.1 percent in July from the previous month, the property website said on Monday. The average asking price climbed to 316,421 pounds ($412,000), a “relatively subdued” 2.8 percent increase from a year earlier. The annual rate of price gains was almost 8 percent in May last year…

U.K. House Prices ‘Virtually at Standstill’

• City’s residents rent units to store non-essential belongings
• Blackstone entered market in 2015, buying MiniCo Self-Storage

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People often complain about Hong Kong’s notoriously tiny apartments, but for investors like Blackstone Group LP, opportunity can be found in small places.

Welcome to the world of self storage.

The majority of Hong Kong’s 7.4 million residents live in cramped homes with limited space for clothes, shoes, books, sports gear and other items. So there’s a desire to find somewhere else to store non-essential belongings…

China’s second-richest man is going asset-lite, offloading some of his real estate holdings. Perhaps you should too.

Sunac China Holdings Ltd. agreed Monday to buy hotels, land and projects from Dalian Wanda Group Co., the sprawling conglomerate controlled by billionaire Wang Jianlin.

In an interview with Caixin, Wang said he wants to position Wanda so that its brand name and management expertise is leased out to other commercial property investors, not unlike what Donald Trump has done with his real-estate empire. Wanda plans to use proceeds from the record $9.3 billion sale to deleverage, and should be able to pay back most of its bank loans by the end of the year…

James R. Williams thought he had found a great deal on a home. The monthly fee on the three-story fixer-upper in Cincinnati was cheaper than the rent on his last home. And the payments would go toward the $40,000 he needed to own the place.

But Mr. Williams will almost certainly never own the house. Instead, he was left with a grandson with lead poisoning from peeling paint in the 98-year-old home and he says around $10,000 in critical repairs to the plumbing system.

• Prices grow 2.6% from a year ago, slowest pace since May 2013
• Rising inflation, tax changes continue to weigh on demand

U.K. house prices grew at their slowest pace in four years in June, adding to signs that the property market is cooling.

Prices grew 2.6 percent compared with a year earlier, lender Halifax said in a report on Friday. On a quarterly basis, they slipped 0.1 percent, and they declined 1 percent from a month earlier…

U.K. House Prices Increase at Slowest Pace in Four Years

• Mayfair property had been held by Subrata Roy’s Sahara India
• Ashkenazy also recently bought stake in NYC’s Plaza hotel

Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp., the U.S. real estate investor that recently bought a stake in New York’s Plaza Hotel, said that it acquired the Grosvenor House hotel in London, helping resolve an imbroglio that kept ownership of the famed properties in limbo for three years.

Terms of the purchase, announced on Friday, weren’t disclosed. The Grosvenor House acquisition “reflects a continued aggressive focus” on buying an additional 2 billion euros ($2.3 billion) of “global iconic assets” over the next two years, New York-based Ashkenazy said in a statement…

• Price of Israeli housing is still rising, but more slowly
• Social protests made housing costs a hot political issue

Housing prices in Israel have been rising for so long that many residents don’t remember what it’s like when they fall. They may be about to find out.

Signs are growing that Israel’s housing boom is sputtering, with fewer investors snapping up homes as mortgage rates rise. That hasn’t yet dented home values but it has slowed appreciation, suggesting that a 10-year trend that weighed heavily on homebuyers and policymakers may be reversing course…

• Factory builder uses deals to expand into on-site construction
• Buffett also benefits from housing recovery with bricks, paint

Clayton Homes, the unit at Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. that assembles houses in factories for delivery to lots, bought Colorado’s Oakwood Homes to expand a push in site-built construction.

The deal includes about 18,000 lots controlled by the developer, Clayton said Thursday in a statement that didn’t disclose terms. That’s the largest figure in deals disclosed by the homebuilder, which added 1,200 in a Missouri transaction and fewer than 4,000 through a Tennessee agreement last year…

Buffett Extends His Bet on Housing

• Guocoland’s Cheng sees change in sentiment since last year
• Price gap narrows between high-end, mass-market homes: Cheng

Singapore’s luxury home prices, which have been the worst hit by the government’s property curbs in recent years, are finally showing signs of a recovery, according to developer Guocoland Ltd.

High-end home sales in the city-state had been on an upswing even before the government in March eased some of its cooling measures in place since 2009, according to Cheng Hsing Yao, group managing director at Guocoland. The changes in March may have added more fuel to the buying sentiment, he said…

• German insurer will contribute Manhattan office tower to deal
• Columbia brings two California properties to joint venture

Allianz SE, Europe’s biggest insurer, is partnering with Columbia Property Trust Inc. to create a $1.26 billion joint venture for U.S. real estate.

The German insurer contributed an office tower at 114 Fifth Ave. in Manhattan that’s valued at $220 million to the partnership, Allianz’s real estate unit said in a statement Thursday. Columbia added University Circle, a $540 million office complex in Palo Alto, California, and 333 Market St., an office tower in San Francisco’s financial district valued at $500 million…

• Luxury sellers cut prices 10% on average, the most since 2010
• ‘Sellers definitely got it’ in second quarter, broker says

Manhattan homebuyers found deals they couldn’t refuse in the second quarter, driving up sales of previously owned properties by the most in more than two years.

Purchases of resale homes jumped 16 percent from a year earlier to 2,597, according to a report Thursday by appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate. Buyer interest was fueled by average price cuts of 6.1 percent across all property types. The last time the average discount was larger was the third quarter of 2012, when it was 7.2 percent.

• Home sales in Canada’s biggest city drop 37% from year earlier
• Toronto real estate board lowers forecast for sales, prices

Toronto’s housing market is losing steam.

A series of government measures and the prospect of higher interest rates boosted listings and sparked the biggest sales decline in more than eight years last month, the Toronto Real Estate Board reported Thursday. Average home prices rose just 6.3 percent to C$793,915 ($612,000), the smallest annual increase since January 2015.

• Moody’s warns Illinois’s rating could still be cut to junk
• State bonds rallied as lawmakers moved to end record impasse

Illinois ended a record-long impasse as lawmakers overrode Republican Governor Bruce Rauner’s veto to increase taxes and enact a $36 billion budget, prodded by warnings from credit-rating companies that the state’s bonds could be cut to junk if it failed to act.

• Prices plunge 3.1% in Oslo in June as sellers rush to unload
• Houses out for sale increased by 17% from a year earlier

One of the world’s hottest housing markets is now cooling fast, sparking concern that a bubble is bursting after the rapid price increases over the past years.

Average nationwide house prices fell seasonally adjusted 0.7 percent in June, declining for a second month, Real Estate Norway, Eiendomsverdi and Finn.no said Wednesday in Oslo. Annual nationwide gains slowed to 6.3 percent from 8.3 percent in May and to 11.5 percent from 16.5 percent in Oslo. In the month, prices in the capital plunged 3.1 percent…

• Ontario releases data on foreign buyers after imposing tax
• Estimates are in line with other real estate surveys

The Ontario government said overseas buyers accounted for just 4.7 percent of home purchases in the Toronto area over a recent one-month period. The new data is in line with other surveys, signaling that foreigners haven’t been major drivers of real estate prices in one of Canada’s most expensive markets.

Non-residents bought about 860 properties between April 24 to May 26 in the so-called greater golden horseshoe region of Ontario which includes Toronto, Hamilton and Peterborough, the province said in a statement Tuesday…

San Francisco real estate is deep into a tech driven mania.  Home prices in the Bay Area are comically out of reach for most families and people are getting squeezed out like ketchup in a disposable packet.  What seemed like a new peak was once again surpassed.  The housing market is running on massive fumes and delusions run rampant.  The justifications for current prices run abound.  Yet the truth of it all is that we are deep into a manic phase of the market.  The current median price for a home in San Francisco is now $1.5 million.  This is for your standard crap shackflavored box.  People are still buying even though volume has trended lower but just look at the current price range.  A lot of this is being fueled by wildly high tech valuations and people believing that prices will never adjust.  In other words, a bubble…

• 0.3% in 2nd quarter, preliminary data shows
• Residential values have fallen 12% from September 2013 peak

Singapore home prices fell in the quarter ended June, extending the drop in property values to a record 15th quarter as most measures to cool the market remain in place despite a slight easing in March.

An index tracking private residential prices fell 0.3 percent in the three months ended June 30 from the previous quarter, according to preliminary data from the Urban Redevelopment Authority released Monday. The almost four-year decline in prices is the longest since the data was first published in 1975…

I love getting tips from Uber drivers especially when it comes to buying real estate.  We are now back at that level where real estate can do no wrong, the house humpers are confusing luck with investment acumen, and of course the sheep dive in head first at the most frothy time.  It is clear that we are in a mania and hot money is flowing everywhere.  Credit card offers are soaring and lending is booming across all areas: credit cards, auto loans, student debt, and housing.  With housing, we are now seeing one of our favorite past-time events in treating a home like an ATM.  Home equity withdrawals are now moving up in a direction that is not exactly positive if you believe in actually keeping your equity locked in instead of cementing your belief in the bubble and adding more debt.  You do need to pay those loans back by the way which many tend to forget.  Home equity withdrawals are simply one of the final steps in the delusional mania.

• Sales halved in first two weeks of June, listings rose 22%
• Slowdown puts Toronto more in line with other big cities

Here’s more evidence that one of the world’s hottest housing markets is cooling down.

Home sales in Toronto fell by half to 2,999 in the first two weeks of June from the same period a year earlier, according to preliminary data from the Toronto Real Estate Board obtained by Bloomberg News. The average price for all property types rose 6.7 percent to C$808,847 ($608,888), easing from a 17 percent gain last June. And listings surged 22 percent.

• Vice chairman notes prices rising in several countries
• Financial system stronger and bad lending curtailed, he says

Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer said a long period of low interest rates may have contributed to “high and rising” home prices in several countries, cautioning against forgetting the lessons of the 2007-09 housing crisis.

“There is more to be done, and much improvement to be preserved and built on,” Fischer said, speaking at an event in Amsterdam on Tuesday that was closed to the press. “The world as we know it cannot afford another pair of crises of the magnitude of the Great Recession and the Global Financial Crisis.”

• Impact of higher rates on consumer debt worries policy makers
• Canadian finance ministers also discuss Home Capital’s woes

Housing was top of mind when Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz spoke with the nation’s finance ministers this week, amid signals interest rates could rise and add pressure to household budgets.

Federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau hosted provincial counterparts for closed-door meetings Monday in Ottawa, hearing from Poloz and Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn Wilkins. Topics included housing and marijuana taxation, with ministers saying afterward the central bankers outlined the broad risks of an elevated housing market…

• ANZ, Commonwealth, National Australia, Westpac cut to Aa3
• High household debt, low wage growth signs of increased risk

Moody’s Investors Service cut the long-term credit rating of Australia’s four biggest banks, saying surging home prices, rising household debt and sluggish wage growth pose a threat to the lenders.

Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd., Commonwealth Bank of Australia, National Australia Bank Ltd. and Westpac Banking Corp. were all downgraded to Aa3 from Aa2, Moody’s said in a statement released Monday. The ratings outlook for all four lenders is stable, Moody’s said…

Moody’s Cuts Ratings on Australia’s Banks on Housing Concern

• Home prices in major cities have accelerated since end of 2012
• Gauge of real estate stocks is worst performer this year

Analysts love them, investors loathe them. Three out of the seven Indonesian stocks which have unanimous buy recommendations from analysts are residential developers and all of them have fallen by at least 18 percent this year.

Predictions that lower interest rates in Indonesia and last month’s decision by Standard & Poor’s to raise its sovereign rating to investment grade would benefit the country’s property developers, along with banks, have been undercut as soaring prices deterred home buyers.