A report from 6 South Florida. “It’s been 14 years since Thereza Teixeira purchased her condo in Aventura. In addition to her mortgage, she pays $1,390 in monthly fees. Those monthly fees include $967.70 in maintenance dues and two assessments – one imposed just last year. ‘We still needed more money to bring us up to the 40-year,’ she said. ‘That’s what hit us.’ That assessment was for over $81,000 spread out over 20 years, breaking down to about $338 a month. ‘The financial cost to all of us – it’s amazing,’ she said. ‘Yes, we’re going to have a safer building, but we might not be able to eat for the next 10 years.’”
The Tampa Bay Times. “Florida lawmakers likely won’t take action soon to relieve a brewing condominium crisis that could see thousands of owners priced out of their homes. Across the state, the number of condos and townhomes on the market has shot up 92% since last year, according to the most recent data from Florida Realtors. Meanwhile, sales fell 20%. Across the nation, 82% of homeowners associations don’t set aside enough money for reserves each year, said Matt Kuisle, the southeast region executive director for Reserve Advisors. The company helps associations estimate their reserves and create funding plans. In Florida, a recent Reserve Advisors survey of about 200 associations found that many could be facing sharp increases.”
“Unit owners in the survey were spending about $143 per month toward reserves last year, Kuisle said. This year, their average recommended reserves was about $200 per unit owner to fund mandatory structural repairs — or about $300 per month to reserve for everything. ‘I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and I’ve always heard people say, ‘We don’t have enough money for reserves,’ Kuisle said. But reserves are a ‘necessary evil’ for inevitable repairs and maintenance, he said. ‘The roof doesn’t care if you have reserves. If it has a leak, you have to replace it,’ he said. ‘It’s Father Time and Mother Nature, and they’re undefeated.’”
Market Place on California. “The wildfire risk in Diann Dumas’ neighborhood is very low. And yet it’s making her bills more and more difficult to pay. She lives in Village Green, a park-like condo complex in the middle of the busy, concrete neighborhoods of South Los Angeles. On the dining room table in Dumas’ one-bedroom condo is a small stack of recent homeowners association bills that pay for maintenance, landscaping and insurance. Those bills are the centerpiece of her living room, and, as of this year, the crux of her concerns. ‘I just had no idea what the costs would be,’ Dumas said. She downgraded to the cheapest TV package she could find. She canceled her subscription to the daily Los Angeles Times newspaper. The insurance spike is forcing her into a bleak reality. ‘It’s the first time I started thinking, well, I might not be able to afford to live here,’ she said. ‘I’d have to move. I mean, really move. Somewhere that I don’t want to. My family’s here.’”
The Wall Street Journal on California. “Kenneth Mattson and his business partner Timothy LeFever amassed more than 100 properties in the Sonoma area in recent years, a significant portion of the small, close-knit community. What unfolded next has been described as an ‘unbelievable Ozark-style drama.’ A band of local residents, seizing on small details, concocted a bizarre theory: The real-estate spree was part of a covert plan to infiltrate the liberal area with Christian nationalists. That wild theory was far-fetched and totally unproven. But the local activists uncorked a flood of scrutiny into the business dealings of LeFever Mattson. Their wine-country empire is now collapsing, besieged by lawsuits from angry investors, who are alleging ‘a massive investment fraud.’”
“The Walkers, who invested most of their savings, joined a class-action lawsuit, alleging ‘massive investment fraud’ by Mattson and LeFever. ‘It’s starting to look like my understanding of a Ponzi scheme,’ said Scott Walker, a dentist-turned-investor. ‘The newer investors, their cash is going to the older investors until the house of cards collapses.’ In Sonoma, residents are reeling from the whirlwind. ‘Every community needs a Bernie Madoff,’ said Sonoma Mayor John Gurney. ‘I guess we got ours.’”
Colorado Public Radio. “Denver, Colorado’s biggest population center and a major driver of economic growth, has lost 9,600 jobs during the past year, the data show. It’s the only metropolitan area in the state that’s losing jobs. ‘I don’t think the data suggests that Denver’s imploding. I think that it’s kind of a wait-and-see,’ said Tim Wonhof, a program manager with Colorado’s Labor Market Information Team. ‘It does say a lot about what has happened during the pandemic and how we are coming out of it … Are people seeing Denver as the place to work? A lot of people come in and there’s not many people downtown, and I think that is a factor that we’re certainly dealing with.’”
“It’s useful to look at what kinds of jobs Denver is losing. Construction jobs are way down, a trend that started late last year. That could be due to the end of Denver’s multiyear apartment building boom, Wonhof said. Denver’s lackluster employment statistics have persisted for several months, which implies it’s more than a temporary blip. ‘I’m definitely monitoring Denver. It’ll continue to be a point of interest,’ Wonhoff said. ‘If you look at it compared to pre-pandemic, it’s not really the same place.’”
Fox 10 Phoenix in Arizona. “Blair Ballin has been a real estate agent in the Valley for 25 years. He says if you are looking to buy a home, you now have to sign a contract with an agent before even seeing a listing. The NAR settlement goes into effect on Saturday, August 17. Ballin says first-time home buyers and those with less cash on them will likely be affected the most. ‘And it’s sad because they should be able to not have to come out of pocket more already with everything else: rising insurance costs, housing, inflation of everything, cost of living, it’s sad,’ he said.”
The Review Journal in Nevada. “Real estate commissions have dropped in the Las Vegas Valley, according to Redfin as the industry braces for massive change this weekend. Longtime Las Vegas real estate agent Steve Hawks said the biggest change as a result will be agents’ commissions will no longer be included in the Multiple Listing Service, where the vast majority of homes are listed. ‘Many experts and brokers expect average buyer commission to drop below 2 percent compared to the 2.5 percent that NAR said was the traditional buyer side,’ he said. ‘If a buyer wants to see just one or two homes are they going to pay 2.5 percent or 1.5 percent or offer a flat fee? That remains to be seen, but will a buyer pay $15,000 or more to see and write an offer on one or two homes the buyer is interested in?’”
“‘The outcome will likely lead to more professional, knowledgeable agents like what happened in the mortgage industry in 2010,’ he said. ‘Experienced knowledgeable agents will get the full contracted amount per a buyer-agent agreement. Unprofessional real estate agents who create more problems than they solve will find their commission wiped out sometimes at the last minute.’”
KTRK in Texas. “Realtors are bracing for the biggest shakeup to their business in decades. ‘We’ll see how this goes,’ Tricia Turner with Tricia Turner Properties said. ‘Right now, buyers don’t have extra money. They have to come up with their closing costs and downpayment. To stick another fee on top of that is definitely going to change things. I will tell you, homeowners already are saying, ‘No. I don’t want to pay that buyer agent’s compensation.’”
The Houston Chronicle in Texas. “We previously broke down the basics of the settlement and how it will impact the Houston housing market. Here are answers to common questions. Can homebuyers finance their real estate agent commissions? A buyer cannot finance agent commissions through a mortgage, but a buyer could ask a seller to pay the commission of agents on both sides of the deal and raise the sale price appropriately.”
The Toronto Sun in Canada. “Average asking prices for a single detached and semi-detached home in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) has returned to levels not seen since the pandemic, findings contained in a new housing study reveal. The study, from data tracking firm Bullpen Research & Consulting Inc. indicates that in June of this year, the asking price for either was $1.7 million, a stunning 31 per cent decline from the market peak level of $2.47 million recorded in July 2022. Condominium apartments, meanwhile, have declined 28 per cent from the market high of $1.58 million two years ago to $1.2 million, while new townhouses have declined ‘by 23 per cent from a 2022-high of $1.4 million to $1.08 million in June 2024,’ the study noted.”
“Bullpen founder and CEO Ben Myers said, ‘investors getting excited about projects outside of the GTA, because people were going to move en masse because of working from home. Everyone was trying to predict the trends and pricing went up, which caused more people to buy units. We really got into a bit of a bubble, in new home prices in Q1 2021 to Q2 2022 period and we are seeing an unraveling of that bubble, essentially.’”
“Investors, Myers, said were buying in the new condo market for capital appreciation, but there was no more capital appreciation: ‘And so they stopped buying. We have had developers stuck. Some of them have continued on to construction – they had enough sales, while others had come to market and realized that he could not get the sales and did not have a lot of room to lower pricing.’”
The Windsor Star. “‘The market is frozen right now,’ said Windsor-Essex County Association of Realtors’ president Maggie Chen. ‘Not a lot of movement right now. We’ve had two interest rate cuts by the Bank of Canada, but that’s just not enough to make a difference yet.’ Chen also expressed a growing concern the Windsor area may soon see an increasing number of bank repossessions as mortgage renewals at higher rates potentially add hundreds of dollars to monthly payments. ‘We’re starting to see some bank repossession sales,’ Chen said. ‘Some people just can’t afford their renewals at a much higher interest rate. It’s alarming for me.’”
The New Zealand Herald. “A West Auckland couple believe they ‘can’t seem to get a fair go’ after authorities offered to buy their flood-damaged home for $180,000 less than its council valuation. Ranui residents Tracey and Mike Pilgrim are among families who have been homeless since last year’s Auckland Anniversary storm after floodwaters swamped their Ulrich Drive house. The home’s location was deemed a risk to life in future flooding events and qualified for a Government buy-out. Council valuers subsequently offered the couple $835,000 for their property, well under its $1.02m CV. Tracey is ‘gobsmacked’ by the valuation, saying the couple aren’t being given a reasonable answer about why it is so low. Instead, it’s been a take-it-or-leave-it situation, she said. ‘We have no voice and no power, and we’re just told what to do,’ Pilgrim said.”
“While house prices have dropped since the CVs were done three years ago, Pilgrim says her home’s value shouldn’t have dropped so much. That’s especially the case when she talked to three direct neighbours who she said were offered buyout values only $10,000-to-$30,000 below CV. Yet unlike those homes, the Pilgrim’s property had also been damaged by an earlier flood in August 2021 that took place a month after the CV valuation date. Following the flood, the family’s insurer made a settlement payout, but the bank used it to pay down the property’s mortgage. Working hard at night and at weekends over the next year and a half, the couple renovated their home at their own expense. In total, Pilgrim estimated the couple had spent $250,000 on improvements but these hadn’t been taken into account by council’s buyout offer.”
“The Pilgrims feel the process has added to a nightmare roller-coaster they’ve been on for years. Still stuck in temporary housing, there was ‘little to no joy’ in their day-to-day lives and the council’s offer added to the weight on their shoulders, Pilgrim said.”