A report from the Review Journal in Nevada. “In the southwest Las Vegas Valley, a one-story house for sale boasts vaulted ceilings, crown molding, and an open floor plan. It’s a ‘gem,’ the listing declares — and amid falling home sales locally and nationally, the price was slashed by $25,000 on Tuesday. It’s not alone. In Henderson, a house fell in price by almost $31,000 on Thursday, and in the northwest valley area, the price of a house was cut twice this week, shedding a total of $110,000, as seen on listing site Zillow.”
“Zillow economist Nicole Bachaud said in an email that sellers are ‘finally being challenged to price their homes competitively’ after a period in which buyers ‘seemed willing to meet almost any asking price, and in many cases bid over list price to beat out other interested buyers.’”
“It’s anyone’s guess where home values will head in the next several months. But as Tim Kelly Kiernan, a branch manager at Realty One Group, told me, there were a ‘crazy number’ of price cuts over the past week in Southern Nevada — 1,447, up from 319 during the same week last year, according to figures he pulled from Las Vegas’ main listing service. ‘You can’t overprice it anymore,’ he said.”
From Inside Nova in Virginia. “Remember the scene in ‘Animal House’ where Kevin Bacon pleads with everyone not to panic – and gets trampled when they panic anyway? Lisa Sturtevant might be able to relate. She’d be Kevin Bacon in this scenario. Sturtevant is chief economist of Bright MLS, which each month details home sales across the region. And while some have begun to wonder if it is, indeed, time to panic over a potentially stalled local real-estate market, she suggests taking a breath and looking at the big picture, good and bad. And there’s some of each.”
“‘In the months to come, expect housing-market activity to be slower than the frenzied pace of last year,’ Sturtevant (who previously served as chief economist for Virginia Realtors) said as May sales figures were reported by Bright MLS on June 14. For much of the past 12 months, declines in year-over-year sales were explained as due to tight inventory limiting options for buyers. That remains the case to a degree, but the feeding-frenzy mentality of many prospective buyers has clearly dissipated.”
“The decliners were Arlington, where the median price declined 6.7 percent to $676,200, and the District of Columbia, off 5.3 percent to $650,000.”
The Colorado Sun. “Don’t panic all ye house hunters, said Matt Leprino, a Realtor and head of real estate brokerage Remingo in Denver. Some of the Fed’s three-quarter point increase was already priced into lenders’ rates, which went above 6% before the Fed announcement. The mortgage rate even declined a smidge a day later. It actually may be easier to buy a house for those shut out in the past two years because they were getting outbid.”
“‘I would say that the conversations are more on the seller side, quite frankly, because as these changes occur, the buyers are more in the driver’s seat,’ said Leprino, who helps sellers set their sales price. ‘Setting the expectation that the house probably won’t sell on day one. You probably won’t get 12 offers. We should not be pricing at market plus 3%.’”
“‘We kind of hit a brick wall last month, quite honestly, with this pricing,’ Leprino said. ‘I mean, if what people can afford went down last month, oh my God it’s really gonna go down this month. So I think you will see an almost immediate stop to price increases. Nobody’s going to be bidding up anymore.’”
From CBS 8 in California. “Even with a housing shortage, experts say that San Diego’s housing market is certainly cooling off. Frank Powell, president elect for the San Diego association of realtors says despite how small of an inventory there is, right now some houses are not moving. ‘We’re starting to see the houses down the market for 25-30 days right on average right now, if you would consider a few months even a month ago you’d have multiple offers on day one,’ said Powell. In San Diego, the average home price is $850,000 and the average salary in San Diego is around $70,000.”
From Cochrane Now in Canada. “According to Nicole Henson of CIR Realty, the market is still very much a seller’s market, but it is not as frenzied as in March and April. Henson says, ‘So interestingly, in January in Cochrane, we started with an average sales price of $464,500, skip to May, and we had an average sales price of $521,000. So, there’s been a big increase as the months have gone by here, but the peak really was in March of 2022. When we saw an average sales price of $520,000, but where we really hit the high in March was the detached average sales price was $654,000 and then in May of this year, we were down to $612,600. But, despite the fact that the prices are slightly down on the detached average, the average overall is, you know, $1000 higher in May of 2022 as opposed to March when we had the most activity.’”
“Mortgage broker Greg Foss with Mortgage Connection says there are a few factors coming down the pipe that may affect the housing market. Foss’ advice, ‘Don’t panic, that’s number one. That’s where a lot of people will think that this interest increase is significant, and it is. Money is money, but when we look at the black and white numbers of how that affects your mortgage payment, it’s not worth panicking about. That’s step number one and then number two is, if you are susceptible to price increases, it may be time to look at maybe taking a variable rate mortgage and locking it into a fixed and seeing if that’s a good option for you.’”
From CBC News in Canada. “Real estate professionals in London, Ont., say they’re seeing an increasing amount of buyers remorse now that the city’s real estate market has started to cool. Some buyers are considering backing out of deals made months ago when the market peaked. Last month, the London St Thomas Association of Realtors said the pace of real estate sales slowed to a level not seen in a decade as a glut of new inventory came onto the market in May. Slowing sales, fewer bidding wars and more inventory have led an eight per cent price decline in the London region within the last three months after the price of the average home peaked in February at $825,221.”
“‘There is definitely an influx of people who are coming to us looking for some assistance to negotiate their way out of a deal they don’t necessarily want to close on,’ said Stephanie Marentette, a lawyer with Cohen Highley LLP in London, who often handles real estate disputes. ‘ In some cases it’s buyer’s remorse,’ she said. ‘In other cases, you have people who were coming in with really strong offers that weren’t supported by the value of the property.’”
“These expectations, combined with pent up demand created a frenzied sellers’ market where buyers who were looking to stand out in a bidding war made snap decisions with huge sums of money that —in some cases, they never actually had. Katherine McIntyre, a mortgage agent with Forest City Funding in London, Ont. said she has clients who bought during peak prices in January, February and March who are now running into problems, such as lower than expected appraisal values from the bank, or a lower than expected price for the home they were selling to afford a new one.”
“McIntyre said much of her job involves finding money and equity to make mortgage approvals happen, but for some of her clients, remorse is a powerful thing. ‘It can be very tempting to try to walk away from the deal you agreed to, a lot of people think that initial deposit they put on the line, whether it be $20,000 or $30,000 is worth losing to walk away from a deal where the house value has dropped,’ she said. ‘That’s not the only cost. Unfortunately, you can face civil litigation.’”
From I AM Expat. “After recent years saw the Dutch housing market become increasingly competitive and inaccessible, new figures published by real estate association NVM indicate that, in the first few months of 2022, the property market in the Netherlands slowed down. ‘There is a lot of uncertainty in the market,’ Makelaarsland director Gijs van Wijgerden told the AD, explaining that the demand for housing continues to outweigh the supply. ‘The great madness is over. But the prices are of course still unbelievably high.’”
From Bernama on Malaysia. “Michael (not his real name) bought a high-rise residential unit in 2017. After the sales and purchase agreement (SPA) was signed, he noticed some ‘unhealthy signs’ in the construction of the housing project where he had booked a unit. Construction stopped for almost a year but was reactivated after buyers complained. Progress of the project was on-off-on-off until 55 percent of the development was completed, Michael said.”
“‘It was a traumatising experience. Most of the buyers had sleepless nights and we were clueless about what to do,’ he said. However, they are still in limbo as the construction has stopped altogether.”
“Siti Hawa (not her real name), another victim of a ‘sick project,’ and her husband bought a unit priced at RM300,000 in an affordable housing project in 2018. According to the SPA, they were supposed to get the keys to their house last month (May 2022). She said there were issues from the start but being new buyers, they were unaware of their rights. ‘The SPA said the project will take 48 months (to complete), instead of 36 months. We did not question this because we did not know the units should be completed in 36 months. This means the developer was given a one-year extension from the start, which was already wrong,’ Siti Hawa said.”
“Sick projects may deteriorate further to become abandoned projects as experienced by Michael who said the Housing and Local Government Ministry is of the view that the project he bought into is ‘on the verge of being abandoned.’ ‘We have a lot of worries about this project, there is no peace at all since the beginning. Besides the sleepless nights, many of the buyers also disagree on what to do,’ he said.”
From Celebrity Networth. “A lot of people have lost A LOT of money in the last few months. And apparently, at least according to his own brother, one of those people who have lost A LOT of money is YouTuber-turned boxer, Jake Paul. To be fair, we don’t know to what extent Logan was exaggerating his brother’s situation for entertainment value. On the other hand, Jake has been a vocal crypto supporter in the past, so it’s a safe bet that a not insignificant portion of his assets are tied up in those types of investments.”
“The revelation came amid a discussion of Jake’s finances in general, like the $40 million he’s reported to have made as a boxer so far, and the almost $5 million he’s saying he’s still owed from his 2021 match with Floyd Mayweather. But according to Logan, that’s all a moot point: “It doesn’t matter, he put it all in crypto! He’s poor!”