A report from NBC News. “‘It’s gonna be tough, layoffs are a common occurrence right now. We’ve had a frenzy and it’s come to a screeching halt,’ said Linda McCoy, who runs a mortgage business in Mobile, Alabama. ‘It’s going to be tough for those people that got in the business in the last two years that don’t have a following already. I feel sorry for those people in a way because it looked like the best thing that ever happened to you.’”
“Myiesha Lacy, who has worked in the real estate finance industry for 20 years and was recently laid off from her job at Sprout Mortgage when it went out of business, said the recent boom and bust in her industry is reminiscent of the housing crash that began in 2007. ‘Business was great, it was just how it was before in 2006, that’s how busy it got. But now it just came to almost a screeching halt,’ Lacy said. ‘Beginning of the year, I started seeing those signs, and it was like, oh god, here it comes again.’”
Yahoo Finance. “‘June is when many builders will tell you they have seen an inflection in the housing market,’ Deepa Raghavan, senior equity analyst at Wells Fargo Securities, told Yahoo Finance. ‘Their metrics started going down from June. What we will tell you is July and August, those metrics actually took a turn for the worse. In talking to people on the field, it feels like cancellation rates have spiked tremendously.’”
The Sun Sentinel. “The median sale price of homes in South Florida started to soften this summer, another sign that the market is rebalancing after a year of frenzied growth. ‘The craziness we saw in 2021 when supply was obliterated and just at all time record lows, we knew that kind of market was not going to sustain itself,’ said Bonnie Heatzig, executive director of luxury sales at Douglas Elliman.”
“In Palm Beach County, the median sale price for August was $565,000, a decrease from July’s median sale price of $600,000. It was similar in Broward County, where the median sale price of a single-family home was $562,500, a decrease from the previous month sale price of $600,000. In Miami-Dade County, the median sale price for a home was $551,250, a decrease from the median sale price in July of $570,000.”
“‘We are seeing prices soften,’ said Whitney Dutton, with the Dutton Group in Fort Lauderdale. ‘We are seeing sellers make adjustments down to new appraisals and we are seeing negotiations on appraisals. As you are looking for homes and the values tick down one sale at a time, that changes the appraisal on the next contract, and little by little each property starts coming in lower. We are having properties fall out of contract due to buyers not being able to get financing because their pre-approvals were done a year ago.’”
“Active listings rose 63.1% in Palm Beach County when compared to the year before, while they rose 46.7% in Broward County. In Miami-Dade County, they rose 26%. ‘There’s just so much more supply, so the buyers have a lot more choice. And when they have more choice they are slower to make an offer, so we’re seeing homes sitting on the market a little bit longer,’ said Patty Da Silva, broker with Green Realty Properties in Cooper City. ‘They’re taking more time to make an offer and they are being more diligent in their process.’”
The Marin Independent Journal in California. “The median price of a detached home in Marin County dipped to $1.7 million last month as the market heads into an autumn of economic uncertainty. The figure is a decline from $1.8 million in July and no change from the prior August, according to the county assessor’s office. Sales fell from 277 in August 2021 to 192 last month, a decline of 44%. Scott Woods, a real estate agent for Compass, said the market is ‘definitely adjusting. ‘Sellers, if they’re smart, are having to adjust their expectations and price closer to where they’re going to sell,’ said Woods, who has been an agent for 14 years. ‘The values are still hanging in there, but activity is dropping. Things are sitting on the market for a while.’”
“Marin’s median price has increased 42% in just five years, rising from $1.2 million in August 2017. It broke through the $2 million threshold in April and May this year before drifting back down. ‘There’s no reason to believe that we’re going to see the same or similar contraction we did in 2006 to 2009,’ said Robert Eyler, chief economist for Marin Economic Forum. ‘We should not expect a 35-40% decline that we saw in the Great Recession.’”
The San Francisco Chronicle in California. “Uncertainty continues to plague the Bay Area real estate market in the midst of another federal interest rate hike and an ongoing stock market slump. ‘We’re obviously going through some sort of market correction,’ said Compass chief market analyst Patrick Carlisle. ‘… It may be the market will slow down and adjust, but there’s no economic indications now that there will be anything like the crash we saw in 2008.’”
The Arizona Daily Sun. “Tad Moore has been a realtor in northern Arizona for the past 16 years and has lived in the city his whole life. The market is ‘volatile,’ he said in a late-June interview, ‘especially over the past couple of months.’ He said it shifted toward a more balanced market over the summer, though there’s still competition for houses priced under $500,000 or over $900,000. ‘But everything in the middle is just kind of squeezed, I think, because of interest rates,’ he said.”
“Pre-pandemic, Flagstaff’s housing market was still booming, Moore said. The city had been hit by the national recession in 2008, but not as hard as other areas, and had mostly returned to normal by 2011 or 2012. After that, it continued to appreciate through the start of 2020. ‘Things were on a nice trajectory. It wasn’t as crazy as it was, but it was sort of more normalized,’ Moore said of Flagstaff’s pre-pandemic market.”
“Flagstaff’s 10-year housing plans states that, since 2011, the median sales price of house in the city for has risen 119%, in which time the Area Median Income (AMI) only increased 16%. A 2019 Daily Sun article noted a new high in median sales prices in the first half of that year — $416,000, which is about $200,000 less than the median price of $620,000 reported this June by the Northern Arizona Association of Realtors. NAAR data (Moore is the association’s current president) has the median sales price at $664,500 in May 2022, down from a peak of $681,208 in April (it had been rising since the start of 2022).”
The Denton Record Chronicle in Texas. “Nominal Denton home prices remained near record highs with the median home price at $410,000. If you look behind the curtain, Denton home prices are still falling. Median price per square foot peaked in May, and it has continued to fall. The median price of a Denton County home fell for the third consecutive month, sliding to $460,000 in August. The average price of a Denton County home has fallen roughly $43,000 from the peak in May. The first 10 days of September show another big drop in average home prices. Average percent of list for homes in the area dropped to 98.6% in August. The crazy bidding wars for homes are now history.”
“A recent survey from John Burns Consulting showed the cancellation rate for Texas home builders at 31% in August. Some prospective buyers have started to question the value of getting less home for more money. For those who missed the Great Recession and the last housing bust, one of the easiest ways to lose money in real estate is paying too much for a new home. This is particularly true in North Texas, where land is plentiful and prices were grossly distorted during the pandemic.”
“Few institutions do failing upward as well as the Federal Reserve. It’s rather frustrating to see the Federal Reserve turn the housing market into a yo-yo. For nearly two years solid, the Fed fanned the flames of inflation, pouring $120 billion per month into the financial system to ignite asset prices. Home prices and rents responded accordingly, ramping to record highs.”
“It should come as no surprise that the Federal Reserve found time to add 50 additional ‘other officers’ to the ranks of overemployed public relations staff earning an average of $261,000 per year. The Fed’s 2021 Annual Report shows there are now 1,833 placeholders banking double six figures at the Fed. They are just part of the 20,000-plus bloated Fed system staff devouring over $2.5 billion per year in compensation. Monetizing debt and facilitating wealth and income inequality pay pretty well.”
“In the real economy, people’s lives get crushed. Families are priced out of the housing market, and thousands more go homeless and hungry. Thousands of mortgage and real estate workers have already lost their jobs this year. Thousands more will become unemployed as the Fed’s quantitative tightening exercise works to stabilize the serial mismanagement of the U.S. financial system.”
The Globe and Mail in Canada. “3 Market St., No. 637, Toronto. Asking price: $1,325,000 (August, 2022). Selling price: $1,295,000 (August, 2022). ‘We weren’t expecting 20 to 30 showings, but the right people were coming by to take a look,’ said agent Christopher Bibby. ‘We priced it in a way we had a negotiation buffer built in, and given all the dynamics of the market … with rate hikes and all the things going on in the world, now is not time to overthink the process and get greedy.’”
From Blog TO in Canada. “In the GTA as a whole, prices have fallen 11 per cent since February – a trend that 46 Teddington Park Avenue has been part of. Back in September 2021, this five bedroom, nine bathroom luxury home was listed for $15,880,000. It sat on the market for a year, slowly dropping its price from almost $16 million to $14,980,000. And then in Sepetember 2022 it was relisted for just $12,995,000. Not that nearly $13 million is a steal for a house, but that’s almost a $3 million price-drop in one year. You could buy another entire house and then some for that discount. And this home is still likely to go for well below listing price.”
From Extra in Ireland. “The property ‘frenzy’ is over and the Dublin housing market is cooling off as the rising cost of living diverts people’s savings. A fortnight ago, another property report found that house prices have finally topped their Celtic Tiger record – 15 years after they peaked, in April 2007. The average price is now €342,915, up almost €3,000 from the previous highest point. The report found that landlords are continuing to flee the market, as the cost of keeping property has become too high.”
“DNG chief executive Keith Lowe said this exodus is putting more pressure on those seeking rental accommodation. ‘Our analysis shows that outside Dublin, almost 30% of all houses currently advertised for sale throughout our nationwide network are former buy-to-let properties, while in Dublin the figure is 23%. This is putting further pressure on the rental sector,’ said Mr Lowe. He also said the stabilisation in prices is, in part, because of an increase in supply in the second-hand market, with 25% more resale properties available to buy now in Dublin compared to a year ago.”
“One west Dublin-based estate agent, who asked not to be named, said: ‘A huge number of landlords are fleeing the market. It’s just not worth it anymore. They are very heavily taxed and there is a tremendous amount of red tape and they have to pay for the upkeep of the rental property. Many feel that a bad tenant cannot be removed and it’s just not worth the hassle.’”
“The property agent said a softening in property prices is ‘probably welcome’ as it is bringing market stability. ‘Nobody wants to see the Celtic Tiger boom and bust returning. Everyone wants a stable market,’ he added.”