A report from Deseret News. “In December, Salt Lake County’s median single-family home price dropped to $541,900 — 6% lower than the county’s median price in December 2021, according to the Salt Lake Board of Realtors. In May of last year, the county’s single-family median home price was $650,000. Since then, home prices have fallen 17%. Meanwhile, sales in Utah have fallen off a cliff. Sales of all housing types fell to 761 units in Salt Lake County, down 50% compared to 1,508 sales in December 2021, according to the Salt Lake Board of Realtors. In all of 2022, Salt Lake County’s annual sales totaled 13,087, down 26% from 2021. That’s the ‘steepest single-year drop on record, (1997 to the present),’ according to the board.”
From Arizona PBS. “After a seeing prices soar, housing prices are heading down. The Valley’s median home price slipped $1,000 last month to $438,000, according to the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service. Real estate prices in Phoenix are dropping and are expected to dip again next month, according to Senior Real Estate Reporter at the Arizona Republic, Catherine Reagor. The median home price in the Phoenix area is on track to drop to $419,000 in November, based on pending sales. That’s down almost 12% from the $475,000 record hit in May.”
Maui News in Hawaii. “Median sales price for a single family home on Maui in December was at $1.08 million, slightly higher than November’s price of $1.025 million, according to the Realtors Association of Maui. There was only one month last year in which the median sales price did not hit a million dollars, which was in August, when the median sales price for a single family home was at $983,575. In 2022, the highest median sales price was in June at $1.25 million. Last month, the median sales price for condominiums was at $773,500, which was down from the $850,000 median sales price in November.”
From Fortune. “Below is Fortune‘s Q&A with Ali Wolf. ‘Homebuilders now represent over 30% of overall housing inventory. Builders are in the business of building and selling homes. As a result, we’ve seen builders offer both price cuts and incentives to entice consumers. Builders learned quickly that it was a lot better to ‘rip the band aid off’ with home prices, but just adjusting once hard and fast to find the market. As a result, roughly 40% of builders have already lowered home prices between 5 and 15%. Our December builder survey showed that 43% of builders cut prices month-over-month, while 56% left prices flat. For January, our early read is that 56% of builders held prices flat, 32% lowered prices, and 12% increased [home prices]. In some markets we have seen average detached new home list prices come down 20% from peak; in others current pricing is still at peak.”
The Oregonian. “In December, Portland-area home prices did something rare: They fell. The median home price for the metro area in December dropped to $507,000 — just 0.7% lower than the previous December. The last time prices dropped year over year was in January 2019, and before that during the sustained housing crash of 2008 to 2012. Hayley McAuliffe purchased her first home late last year. McAuliffe and her partner, who were renters in Southeast Portland, will close on a small house in the same area later this month.”
“‘The seller started at $389,000 and after three weeks went down to $350,000,’ McAuliffe said. ‘We offered $325,000.’ The home, on the market for a month and a half, was ready for a new owner to move in immediately. McAuliffe said she was surprised that they didn’t have more competition. But their offer was accepted.”
The Gazette Journal in Nevada. “Apartment rents in Reno-Sparks fell toward the end of last year — the second straight quarter that the monthly average rent in the area saw a decrease, according to two separate apartment reports. In addition to adding about 7,200 apartment units over the past five years, Reno-Sparks also has about 3,900 apartment units under construction, which increase local apartment supply by a little over 9%, according to the NVSAA. The flattening in rent growth in Reno is occurring at the same time as a normalizing of the Reno-Sparks housing market. The median sales price for an existing home in Reno-Sparks fell to its lowest point in a year and half in December at just under $520,000. In addition to falling home prices, housing inventory has also jumped significantly.”
KTVU in California. “The median home price in San Francisco fell by 5.1% in December compared to the year before, making it the steepest decline among 53 US cities, according to a real-estate report. That real-estate decline put the median San Francisco home price at $985,929 last month, compared to $1,038,444 a year ago, the RE/MAX study said. Los Angeles saw the second-biggest decline line median home prices last month. LA’s median price slipped 4.7% to $810,000 from $850,000, the study said.”
“The stats from RE/MAX are consistent with a downward trend in Bay Area home prices that was spotted earlier in 2022. San Francisco and Los Angeles were previously identified by Redfin as the two cities that had the biggest exodus of homeowners.”
Yahoo Finance Canada. “‘One of these biases that investors sometimes have that lead them to make bad decisions is they tend to be overly optimistic about rates falling quickly and significantly, and the housing market returning to boom times again,’ said John Pasalis, president of Toronto-based brokerage Realosophy. ‘They’re looking at what they could have got for the property at the peak,. Even if they still made money compared to when they bought, they perceive that as a loss. And this is what keeps them hanging on and taking on debt to pay more debt. It’s this feeling that they didn’t sell at the peak and they just lost 300 grand. They just don’t want to sell because they’re hopeful prices will rise, but they’re bleeding cash because these numbers don’t work when you’re paying 5 per cent on your mortgage.’”
The Globe and Mail in Canada. “130 Chudleigh Ave., Toronto. Asking price: $1,595,000 (October, 2022). Selling price: $1,915,000 (November, 2022). Previous selling price: $2,206,000 (December, 2021). The owner of this four-bedroom house by Lawrence Park Collegiate Institute acquired it for $2.206-million in 2021, but decided to part with it a year later despite selling into a weaker market. Agent Andre Kutyan sold a three-bedroom house on the same street for $1.82-million two weeks prior in October, so he reckoned this one should start lower at $1.595-million to pull in buyers.”
“Three bidders competed, with one adding $320,000 to the asking price. The seller accepted, despite this being 15 per cent less than what they had paid just a year earlier. ‘But if you looked at what it sold for last year at $2.206-million versus this year, the price is almost down 15 per cent. It’s the perfect example of the exact same property – nothing has changed – and the difference in 12 months,’ said Mr. Kutyan.”
The Telegraph in the UK. “The number of buyers pulling out of property sales and collapsed chains has risen sharply over the past three months. Andrew Oulsnam, of Birmingham estate agents Robert Oulsnam and Company, says: ‘During October to December, we were running at a very high level of fall-throughs. Sales do collapse all the time for a variety of reasons but normally we only suffer about 15pc to 20pc. Whereas during the last three months of last year it was up to 50pc. Chains were just collapsing. If you have one person in a chain of five or six who suddenly couldn’t get their mortgage, the whole chain collapses. And then a lot of people saw all the bad news and decided not to proceed anyway.’”
“‘It felt like someone had pulled the plugs out the wall,’ says Jeremy Leaf, a north London estate agent. ‘It went really dead, we weren’t getting emails, people weren’t coming in, we weren’t getting calls, it was awful. People were pulling out of deals or having to renegotiate.’”
Vietnam Investment Review. “HoREA head Le Hoang Chau stated that the real estate market is challenging. The most critical obstacles to overcome are legal problems and a lack of financial resources. ‘It’s not just small firms, even huge organisations and multinationals have significant financial issues,’ Chau warned. According to the chairman of HoREA, transactions in the real estate market have decreased to the point where it is no longer viable to mobilise funds from clients. Access to financing is problematic not just for enterprises but also for homeowners and investors.”
“In 2020, only 1 per cent of the available housing in Ho Chi Minh City was affordable (at or below $1,280 per square metre). Since 2021, there have been no commercial affordable housing developments. In the meantime, the share of luxury homes climbed steadily. In 2020, high-end housing accounted for 70 per cent of the market share, which rose to 80 per cent between 2021 and 2022.”
“‘Many firms have made attempts to reorganise and restructure their investments,’ said Chau while discussing remedies. ‘We requested a price reduction on homes. It is better to sell at a loss and determine how much property you still have than to have a false expectation of profit and then drown and lose all your assets because you can’t sell.’”
From Seven News. “Property values have continued to trend downwards across many Australian capital cities, with Sydney and Canberra experiencing the steepest declines. Sydney market values had fallen by almost 13 per cent from a peak in January 2022, Corelogic research head Eliza Owen said. House values in Surry Hills, less than 3km from Sydney CBD, recorded the biggest annual decline of 25 per cent, according to Corelogic. That was followed by similar declines in Taren Point in southern Sydney and Bayview on the Northern Beaches. Unit prices in the beachside suburb of Bondi fell by 20 per cent, while similar trends were reported in the suburbs of Paddington, Newport and Bronte.”
“In Victoria, the suburb of Sunshine, 12km from Melbourne, has the most improved affordability, according to Domain, after a 28 per cent drop in house values to an average $424,900. It was followed by the Sydney suburbs of Little Bay, Cremorne, and Marsfield. Other areas including Paddington, Toorak and Eastwood experienced an annual price fall of up to 18 per cent.”