It’s Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. “‘I don’t believe it is rebalancing anymore,’ said Tony Fink, a licensed agent in Raleigh. ‘I think is is rebalanced, it has already occurred. It was not possible for us to sustain the growth we have seen.’”
“Homeowners wishing to maximize their profits by selling in 2022 may already have missed the boat, as peak home prices for the year seem to be in the rear-view mirror. ‘If you hear individuals proclaiming the housing-industry sky is falling, smile and move on. This is very much a sellers’-market balance,’ noted the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors. ‘In some housing segments, peak sales activities occurred in early spring, as buyers closed [transactions] in time to keep mortgage rates that had been locked in earlier in the year.’”
“The Rhode Island real estate market has been in hyper-drive for the past three-plus years, but those days may now be officially over. Ben Scungio of Mott & Chace Sotheby’s International said for the first time in years, home sellers are now dropping their asking price. ‘The number that’s interesting to me is 139 price reductions across the board (in just the past seven days),’ said Scungio. He said a year ago, the number might have been one or two. ‘We have a term that we like to throw around here, which is ‘aspirational pricing’ — a number that is a ‘pie in the sky’ number for sellers, and you could do that probably six months ago — just throw a number out there — and you’d probably have a buyer pool of 5 to 10 or 15 to 20 people.’”
“The Texas housing market is starting to cool off. Until recently, buyers competing for a limited supply of homes routinely had to pay more than the asking price and make offers on the spot. Now there are more homes for sale in Texas than at any time since fall 2020. After two years of a red-hot market, many sellers have cut prices to try to lure buyers who are facing higher mortgage rates, bloated home prices and inflation. That’s a sign that buyers are starting to gain an edge, real estate experts told The Texas Tribune.”
“Ashley Jackson, the Austin Board of Realtors president, said a home she has listed for sale in the suburb of Pflugerville might have immediately received multiple offers if it had been on the market earlier in the year. But now it’s surrounded by others for sale, and though it’s had a steady number of showings, she said, no one has made an offer. Jackson said buyers are ‘not competing as hard for a home as in the past few years where we saw perhaps a buyer had to go 10% or 20% over asking [price]. Maybe now they can get a house at asking price or perhaps even under asking price.’”
“Builders in Austin, San Antonio and the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex filed for fewer permits in the first seven months of this year than in the same period last year. But there are ‘more new homes under construction right now than we’ve ever observed,’ said Lawrence Dean, senior vice president at real estate research firm Zonda. More than 88,000 homes were under construction across Austin, San Antonio, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth at the end of June, Dean said.”
“Arizona-based mortgage lender Suburban Mortgage Inc.’s website is down and employees’ emails are disabled, indicating that the company apparently shut down its operations and laid off its employees. According to the former employee, Suburban laid off around 80 employees with no severance payment. The last paycheck was paid on Wednesday, but commissions on closing loans will happen through the end of September. ‘We had employees that had been with us for 33 years. None of the owners will talk to us,’ the former employee said on condition of anonymity.”
“The story in Kona this month is rising inventory, houses in all price points made it to 103 this month, the first time in triple digits since December 2020. Price reductions in houses and condos are becoming more common, as I understand it is on the mainland as well. Buyers are voting with their feet instead of making offers since some of them still believe you have to make at least a full price offer to be considered. That is not true. Sellers are taking offers below asking and they are just now starting to show up in our solds, but I’m sure there are many more in our pending sales with contracts not at full price.”
“The big change this month is houses coming on the market under a million that just a few months ago would have been listed over that benchmark. I have been working with multiple sellers on how to ‘right’ price them from the start, and it’s tough when the solds went into escrow months ago and bear no resemblance to today’s market pricing. What was common just months ago is now passe. No more multiple offers, no more appraisal value waivers, no more inspection contingencies waived… and much more!”
“Pretty much overnight the landscape changed when interest rates went up dramatically in May. Now the properties in escrow stayed for the most part and when they close, they aren’t really comparable to the current market since conditions have changed so dramatically. When a property comes out now, it comes out lower than originally planned when the seller started the journey a few months ago. It gets 10 or so showings and maybe no offers… drop the price, go through the multiple showings again and cross your fingers you get an offer… “
“There has been a surge in the number of buyers pulling out of their deals to purchase homes, but Ontario industry insiders say home sellers may be in for a long wait if they hope to collect on the deposits made to secure the sale. At issue is a little-understood set of rules and practices at the real estate brokerage level that can deadlock the release of a deposit if a transaction fails. Lawyers who deal with disputes over failed real estate sales say requests for advice and counsel are the highest they’ve been in years.”
“‘I’ve had clients call me: ‘I can’t sleep at night I’m going to get a divorce, I can’t do this,’ said David Feld, lawyer with Feld Kalia Professional Corp. Mr. Feld describes a hypothetical client who agreed to pay $1.7-million for a house in March, only to find out 90 days later that their lender’s appraisal of the property says it’s only worth $1.5-million, leaving them $200,000 short on the purchase price. To make matters worse, sometimes a buyer in that position also had to sell their own home for a lower price than they’d hoped, cutting perhaps another $100,000 off their purchase budget. The result is a buyer scrambling to find $300,000 in cash to close a deal they may not be able to afford anymore.’So I beg for a release.’”
“Bosley Real Estate Ltd. broker David Fleming has simple advice for anyone contemplating breaking an agreement of purchase and sale: don’t do it. ‘In a nutshell it’s going to ruin your life … and I’m not exaggerating, there’d be a massive financial penalty and they would live and breathe litigation for the next two or three years,’ said Mr. Fleming, who has had to counsel many people – some clients some not – in recent months. Nevertheless, there are those he says firmly believe it’s only fair that they walk away from a legally binding contract without penalty.”
“‘It’s amazing we have to remind people the real estate market is a market and prices do fluctuate,’ he said. ‘People should be settling in these cases … but I’ve seen the way the wheel’s turn in their mind: I think there’s very few people who are going to say ‘Yeah I did that … it’s on me.’”
“Interest rate hikes have well and truly had their impact on the cost of houses – with property prices dropping in almost every Australian region and in every single capital city bar Darwin. The data showed the median Australian dwelling price rose to just over $900,000 in 2021, up from just over $700,000 in 2020. That $200,000 jump in value in a single year was the same amount as the period from 2012 to 2020 combined where the median price rose from $500,000 to $700,000.”
“Sydney values fell the most over the month, down 2.3 per cent to a median value of $1.3million, with consecutive monthly drops since April knocking $114,000 off the median price, or $927 a day.”
“More than 4,800 Chinese companies listed in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing have now released their earnings for the first half of the year. It was a bloodbath. As many as 53% posted a decline in net profit, according to data from two major financial information services in the country. ‘We’ve already seen the impact,” said Alicia García Herrero, chief economist for Asia Pacific at Natixis, a French investment bank. Prices of oil and other energy commodities have retreated and semiconductor factories have started to see decelerating orders, she added.”
“‘The key reasons are mobility restrictions and a huge drop in sentiment associated with the demise of the real estate market,’ said García-Herrero.”
“With Hong Kong’s once red-hot housing market seeing signs of a slump, agents are apparently being forced to find ‘novel’ ways to promote their properties. Such as starring in advertisements while lying in a bathtub wearing just a towel. That’s what Sammi Chan, a senior account manager of Ricacorp Properties, did to get the eyeballs of aspiring homeowners and potential investors.”
“In the advertisement, which has now been taken down, Chan appears to be clad in nothing but a pink towel while sitting in the huge bathtub of a unit of the Upper Riverbank apartment building in Kai Tak. ‘Don’t worry, I saw this beautiful bathtub in the master bathroom and thought I would not be doing it justice if I didn’t take a bath here,’ she said in the ad.”
“The video has since gone viral on the internet, with many netizens questioning the marketing tactic. ‘Is she selling the property or herself?’ asked one internet user. ‘Poor thing, the homeowner became so poor after buying the unit that she has no money to buy clothes and has to sleep in the bathtub,’ another netizen joked.”