A report from CNBC. “Diana Olick: Mortgage rates moved higher again last week, pushing buyers back to the sidelines just as the spring housing market is supposed to be heating up. Applications to refinance a home loan fell 6% for the week and were 74% lower year over year. Lower rates to start the year caused a brief surge in homebuying, but mortgage demand from homebuyers would seem to indicate a very slow spring is ahead. Correction: Lower rates to start the year caused a brief surge in homebuying, but mortgage demand from homebuyers would seem to indicate a very slow spring is ahead. An earlier version misstated the timing.”
Axios on Michigan. “Home sale prices in metro Detroit are continuing their downward trajectory from the second half of last year into 2023.Our region’s median home sales price was $150,500 in January, down nearly 8% from last year and 7% from December, according to an analysis of Redfin data.”
WFAE on North Carolina. “So here’s a rarity in recent years. Home sale prices are falling in some counties around Charlotte. And that’s causing some real estate agents to get creative in order to finalize deals.We turn now to Tony Mecia of the Charlotte Ledger Business Newsletter: ‘Here in the Charlotte region, we’ve become accustomed to having housing prices just go up, up, up, as though it’s unending and it’s always going to be that way. But if you look at the numbers from the local Realtor association, they show that in some Charlotte area counties that year-over-year, the median sales prices of houses is dropping. In Lincoln County in January, the median sales prices were down 6% from a year earlier. And in Cleveland County, they were down 9%. And in each of those counties, it was the third straight month of year-over-year declines.”
The Salt Lake Tribune in Utah. “Home sales along the Wasatch Front have fallen further this year. After peaking at about $650,000 in May, the median single-family home price in Utah’s most populous county reached $533,500 in January, down 9% from a year before. Other prices have started to drop significantly as well, according to new data.”
Community Impact on Texas. “For the month of January, the median home price in Southwest Austin was $537,450, down from $587,100 in January 2022. Southwest Austin is not alone with this downward trend, as median home prices throughout Austin decreased 6.3% to $450,000 in January 2023. This is the largest drop since July 2011, according to the ABoR report. While prices are dropping, inventory is going up in the area, according to the report.”
The San Francisco Chronicle in California. “Laid-off workers may need to sell their properties, either to relocate or because they can’t afford their homes. If this happens, it increases the supply of for-sale homes, which pushes down prices. Some workers may even sell their homes at a discount, which can further depress values in an area. ‘In markets where these mass layoffs happen, it’s not surprising to see home values drop,’ says David Bitton, a real estate investor and co-founder of property management platform DoorLoop. ‘In fact, Silicon Valley home prices have already dropped by at least 7% as of the fourth quarter of 2022.’”
The Orange County Register. “California home prices are falling faster off their peaks than elsewhere in the nation. San Diego: Down 1.3% for the month and 11.1% off May 2022’s peak – the No. 3 drop – but up 44% over three years. This isn’t just a California price drop as all 20 U.S. cities had one-month declines for the fifth consecutive month. The Case-Shiller composite’s recent universal drops are a rarity. Before this slump, all 20 cities had suffered one-month drops just 13 times since 2000. All but one of those across-the-board drops came in two, six-month streaks amid the Great Recession, with 20-city dips ending in February 2008 and February 2009.”
“Seattle: Down 1.8% for the month and 15.1% off May 2022’s peak – the No. 2 drop – but up 38% over three years. Phoenix: Down 1.9% for the month and 9.4% off June 2022’s peak – the No. 4 drop – but up 56% over three years. Las Vegas: Down 1.8% for the month and 8.8% off July 2022’s peak – the No. 5 drop – but up 40% over three years. Denver: Down 1.3% for the month and 8.7% off May 2022’s peak – the No. 6 drop – but up 36% over three years. Portland: Down 1.9% for the month and 7.9% off May 2022’s peak – the No. 8 drop – but up 31% over three years. Dallas: Down 1.1% for the month and 7.6% off June 2022’s peak – the No. 9 drop – but up 47% over three years. Boston: Down 0.9% for the month and 5.5% off June 2022’s peak – the No. 10 drop – but up 33% over three years. Minneapolis: Down 1.2% for the month and 4.7% off June 2022’s peak – the No. 11 drop – but up 26% over three years. Detroit: Down 1.1% for the month and 4.3% off June 2022’s peak – the No. 12 drop – but up 31% over three years. Washington: Down 0.4% for the month and 4.3% off May 2022’s peak – the No. 13 drop – but up 27% over three years. Charlotte: Down 1% for the month and 4.1% off July 2022’s peak – the No. 14 drop – but up 50% over three years. Tampa: Down 0.9% for the month and 4% off July 2022’s peak – the No. 15 drop – but up 63% over three years.”
KTVU in California. “Alameda County’s eviction ban was under debate Tuesday at the board of supervisors meeting with rental housing providers calling for an end to the moratorium. For hours, rental property owners shared their stories of frustration and opposition to the ongoing emergency ordinance that they say has ruined their livelihoods. ‘I’m only owed $15,000, but I’m going to lose my house as a result of the moratorium,’ said Oakland property owner Hannah Kirk, a single mom.”
“Gov. Gavin Newsom marked the end of the coronavirus state of emergency Tuesday. As written, Alameda County’s moratorium is supposed to end 60 days later. ‘End it now,’ Emeryville property owner Deborah Johnson said. ‘Enough is enough. We’re all going to be homeless soon.’”
Bisnow New York. “Another would-be buyer of the HSBC Tower has failed to close on the deal after it could not secure acquisition financing, making it the latest casualty in the tough capital markets environment. It is the second time in two years a deal to sell the 30-story building, which has long served as HSBC’s U.S. headquarters, has fallen apart. For the last 12 months, deals have been stalled and in some cases called off, brokers say, as a sense of uncertainty has spread across the market.”
“‘There’s a real distinction between a hotel deal and an office deal right now,’ KKR Managing Director for Real Estate Paul Fine said a Bisnow event. ‘I don’t know that any of us have ever seen an asset class become effectively un-investable overnight.’”
The Ottawa Citizen in Canada. “Rising interest rates, stingy banks, a buyers’ market and an imminent overhaul of Ontario’s house sale regulations have Ottawa’s Unreserved putting a hold on its house auction sales. Launched in July 2021 during the peak of the heated pandemic housing market, Unreserved sought to shake up the real estate industry by taking advantage of an exemption to the usual closed bidding process that was traditionally only used for bankruptcy auctions. A year ago, founder and CEO Ryan O’Connor forecast Unreserved would have 160 employees by the end of 2022 and boasted he was ‘building the future of real estate.’ That prediction didn’t foresee the sharp downturn in the housing market in which January sale prices were 30 per cent lower than a year before.”
“Some homes sold for $100,000 or more over asking price, as frenetic buyers outbid competitors without any idea of what others were offering. ‘When the bids were over it was, ‘Congratulations. You are now essentially the biggest loser,’ O’Connor said.”
The Sydney Morning Herald in Australia. “More than 1500 NSW home owners have lodged objections to property valuations conducted months ago that do not account for recent price falls and could inflate land tax bills and council rates. Some owners believe the valuations, taken from July 1 last year, are too high, given home values in some neighbourhoods have plunged by as much as 20 per cent. Sydney’s median house value has dropped 12.3 per cent to a median $1.2 million from June last year to January, CoreLogic data shows. Unit values fell 7.8 per cent to a median of about $769,000 in that time.”
“Some of the biggest falls in value were on the northern beaches, such as a 20.6 per cent drop in the Manly statistical region and a 17 per cent fall in the Pittwater region. Real Estate Institute of NSW chief executive Tim McKibbin has spoken to home owners who are concerned about the rise in valuations. McKibbin said investors were already selling, and some were looking to invest elsewhere as the cost of land tax rises. ‘The valuations that have been made are certainly going to be higher than they were and, as a consequence, subject to council and government making an allowance for the increase in the land value, they will be paying more in rates too,’ he said.