A report from Boston.com in Massachusetts. “‘With buyers now fewer and farther between than what we saw this spring, it’s a less competitive market and that’s resulted in some softening in prices,’ said Jared Wilk, GBAR president. ‘In today’s market, we’re seeing fewer multiple offer situations, more bids under asking price, and homes taking longer to sell. That’s giving buyers more of an opportunity to negotiate, and sellers have had to become more flexible, with an increasing number having to make price adjustments in order to sell.’”
News & Observer in North Carolina. “On a cloudy morning this July, a sheriff’s deputy pulled up to Edith Neal’s 1959 ranch home, carrying a summons to her doorstep in east Raleigh’s Woodcrest subdivision. She’d officially been served. Raleigh builder Steve Sypher is suing Neal, 61, over her property’s restrictive covenant. In fact, he’s suing most of the neighborhood. Sypher wants to build 12 four-story townhouses across about nine-tenths of an acre at 524 and 528 Barksdale Drive — next door to Neal. The city recently gave the green light. But Sypher faces another hurdle: removing the subdivision’s decades-old covenant, tied to his properties as well as his neighbors’, that restricts the land’s use.”
“‘It’s our responsibility to uphold these covenants,’ said Ann Sun, 47, a designer, who paid $240,000 in 2012 for a three-bedroom ranch home on Barksdale, just a few houses down from Neal. ‘What’s the point of having a middle-class neighborhood with registered covenants if someone’s just going to come in and still do what they want? For a lot of us, it’s our only investment; we’ve got to protect our property values.’”
The Washington Informer. “Nearly four years after the District forced them out of their dwellings, most, if not all, of the owners of condemned condominiums on Talbert Street in Southeast have received mortgage relief, according to a community figure familiar with the situation. These developments happened amid terse negotiations between the Bowser administration and the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America. The mortgage relief negotiations, Rev. Graylan Hagler said, became contentious as the government tried to settle on an amount that wouldn’t have been much help to condominium owners. ‘They had no problem subsidizing loans in the beginning because that benefitted the developer,’ Hagler said. ‘Then it went south. The city turned around and said it wasn’t their responsibility. But they created that.’”
From KVUE. “It has become an all-too-common defect, potentially impacting thousands of pools across Central Texas. The KVUE Defenders first told you about ‘concrete cancer’ in April. Since then, we’ve shown how it has devastated homeowners, triggered hundreds of lawsuits and caused many pool builders and concrete companies to go out of business. And now, it’s impacting the real estate market. ‘There’s a couple of cracks right here,’ said Arjun Okkath, of Round Rock. ‘You know, you can see a frog swimming,’ he laughed. Okkath can laugh a little bit about his situation, but the fact that he’s staring at a huge financial hole hasn’t been much to crack up about. ‘It’s totally unusable right now,’ Okkath said. ‘It’s just upsetting to see this. It’s totally devastating. We got this house just because it had a pool.’ Okkath said he uprooted his family from Boston in 2022 and bought his Round Rock home not knowing the pool has concrete cancer.”
“He said his water bill doubled. He saw the KVUE Defenders’ concrete cancer coverage and learned his pool can’t be fixed and would need to be demolished and rebuilt. ‘That would cost me around $150,000 or more,’ Okkath said. He said the pool was completed in December of 2021, just six months before his family of three moved in. He said the previous owner and their realtor won’t talk to him. Okkath retained a lawyer but said once Hot Crete, one of the now former concrete suppliers for Cody Pools, filed for bankruptcy in April, the lawyer dropped his case.”
CBS Sacramento in California. “For months, Brad Washburn has been trying to get squatters out of his north Sacramento home. The tenant living there stopped paying and Washburn served an eviction notice in July. Fast forward to September, he still hasn’t received a notice or confirmation it’s been processed from the Sacramento Superior Court. ‘We still haven’t heard back from the court. Unfortunately, it sounds like they are really busy, so we don’t know when we’re going to get our house back,’ Washburn said. ‘Just driving into my own neighborhood, I was constantly getting evil stares from people hanging out in the driveway,’ said Robin Smith, who lives down the street from the home. ‘I knew there was a bad element. I talked to Brad and he said he’s been trying to get them out for months.’”
“His attorney, Ashley DeGuzman said the current delay with the court system is costing people money and potentially their homes. ‘We have seen a lot of landlords go into foreclosure because of these types of situations,’ DeGuzman said. ‘From the legal perspective, he is kind of stuck in a bit of a standstill due to the legal process and how slow it is in Sacramento County.’”
The Los Angeles Times in California. “Bruce Breslau has lived in his Chatsworth condo since 2009 and figures that last year he and his partner paid $1,200 in fees to help keep their 290-unit townhouse complex insured in case of fire and other calamities. That was before Breslau’s California West housing development was dropped by Farmers Insurance and the homeowners board had to hunt around the world to replace the Los Angeles insurer, which was providing $92 million worth of coverage for about $350,000 each year, Breslau said. As part of the new deal, homeowners have to pay an extra $4,700 special annual assessment. ‘There are people in this community, when this was announced at the board meeting, who were losing their minds. They were panicking,’ said Breslau, 71, who is still working and thus more able than others to absorb the added costs. ‘Where are you going to come up with that?’”
People on California. “Matthew Perry’s Hollywood Hills home has received a major price cut. The asking price for the spacious three-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bathroom home, which was first listed in May 2024, was reduced from $5,195,000 to $4,700,000, PEOPLE can confirm. Perry, who died in October 2023 at age 54 at his Pacific Palisades residence, about 13 miles west of this property, had purchased the Hollywood Hills home in May 2023 for $5 million.”
The San Joaquin Valley Sun. “Fresno’s Assemi family appears to be in deep financial trouble, according to a new filing in federal court. Court documents filed by Prudential, an Assemi lender, alleged the family has defaulted on over $705 million in loans this year. In a petition alleging breach of contract, Prudential asked a Federal judge to appoint a receiver to manage over 50,000 acres of distressed farmland that are part of the Assemi empire. The claim, which was filed in the Eastern District of California court on Monday, says one of the loans has been in default since February, while the other ones have been in default since June. The Assemi family has allegedly told Prudential that it may stop farming the land, which has pistachio and almond trees, because of operational cash flow issues. That may also lead to the Assemi family letting go of its agricultural workforce. Prudential also gave the Assemi family a $91 million loan for land in Kern and Tulare Counties in January 2020. Major cracks in the Assemi farming empire appeared publicly in February, starting with The Sun’s report that it was looking to sell tens of thousands of acres of farmland.”
The Real Deal New York. “Chris Roach will be stepping down as the CEO of the appraisal firm BBG and will be replaced by the firm’s CFO Bill Britain during a challenging period for the company. The move comes amid a series of leadership changes at the appraisal firm before and after Freddie Mac placed the company ‘under review’ and stopped accepting loans using valuations or appraisals from BBG. Jon DiPietra, a managing director of BBG’s office, was placed on Freddie Mac’s ‘restricted vendor list,’ which is essentially Freddie Mac’s blacklist. DiPietra is no longer with BBG. It is unclear what led Freddie to put BBG under review or put DiPietra on the restricted vendor list. BBG is known as one of the Big Five national commercial real estate services firms and has 4,500 active clients, according to its website.”
“Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have launched a crackdown on brokers, title insurers and investors over inflated financials. Freddie and Fannie have discovered that some of the loans they have acquired from private lenders are fraudulent. Investigations often led by the FHFA and the DOJ have led to a few guilty pleas from investors. The DOJ recently charged the owner of a Lakewood-New Jersey title insurance firm for his alleged role in a multi-million dollar mortgage fraud scheme. Notably, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae temporarily halted dealmaking with the commercial brokerage powerhouse Meridian Capital Group after allegations that some of its brokers had inflated financial information to obtain larger loans.”
The Globe and Mail. “The federal government just announced what it is calling the ‘boldest mortgage reforms in decades to unlock home ownership for more Canadians.’ Unfortunately, there are good reasons to be skeptical that the proposed measures will help anyone buy a first home. The government is implementing two new measures: increasing the $1-million price cap for insured mortgages to $1.5-million and expanding the eligibility for 30-year amortizations to all first-time homebuyers and all buyers of new builds. The message, ‘Don’t worry, millennials, you can buy a home, you’ll just have a lot more debt for a lot longer,’ isn’t the winning policy the government seems to think it is. Providing more paths to finance million-dollar homes is simply failing to address the core issues of limited supply and out-of-control prices.”
“Counterproductive housing policies are also not without precedent. The First Home Savings Account, which offers an attractive, tax-advantaged way to save for a down payment, is another example of a solution destined to simply drive demand.”
The Independent in the UK. “The sight of a London tower block going up in flames last month brought into sharp focus the danger that 75-year-old Mike Daine is still living in. Mr Daine’s building in Cheshire was assessed as having flammable cladding in 2019 but remedial works are yet to start. ‘When Dagenham went up, it just brought it all home to us again,’ he explained. Neera Soni, 68, lives in King Edwards Wharf in Birmingham, and is also waiting for remedial work to start on her building. The huge hike in building insurance has also been a big problem – with the cost to insure the building going from £58,000 a year to £483,000. Rob Burberry, 50, has managed to move out of his flat in Eastgate House in Woking after the block was found to have unsafe rendering and insulation. Mr Burberry said: ‘These families had saved up, they were first-time buyers, and now they find themselves in emergency accommodation. It causes a lot of mental ill health because people are in despair.’”
The Cyprus Mail. “The Cyprus Borrowers Association (Syprodat) this week expressed ‘disappointment, discouragement, and a sense of failure’ among trapped buyers, who are effectively paying off the debts of property developers from whom they purchased their homes. Trapped buyers, despite fulfilling their financial obligations and paying the full purchase price for their properties, have not received full ownership due to delays in obtaining title deeds. Without these deeds, buyers remain vulnerable, as developers’ unresolved loan obligations could result in the foreclosure of the properties in question.”
“According to the association, ‘many buyers have already fully repaid their loans but remain burdened by the developers’ financial obligations.’ In a statement, Syprodat highlighted that for reasons it ‘cannot fully ascertain but can suspect,’ banks ‘have turned a blind eye’ to the loan agreements they should have enforced with developers. The association said that rather than ensuring developers used the funds received from property buyers to pay off loans taken for constructing buildings, banks have allowed developers to use the money for other purposes. Syprodat further questioned whether the current situation, where approximately 10,000 buyers find themselves in dire straits, could have been avoided if the banks had not been complicit in the developers’ deceit.”
ABC News in Australia. “Rebecca Boehm was excited to finally be purchasing her first home, an apartment for her and her teenage sons to share close to Perth’s CBD. But the dream quickly gave way to disappointing reality when the primary school teacher began receiving a host of mysterious strata bills from Cosmic Realty, the company that runs the small group of four apartments in Bentley. Ms Boehm’s apartment has no shared garden or lawn, yet she’s been invoiced for gardening work. Hundreds of dollars in charges for mysterious ‘miscellaneous’ levies have been added to her $400 quarterly strata bills, including $287 for ‘miscellaneous jan levy’ and $625 for ‘miscellaneous spec levy.’”
“And when Ms Boehm tried to contact Cosmic Realty to get her meter box opened in order for some essential work to be done, they did not return her calls. Ms Boehm said Cosmic had failed to explain why the extra strata charges had been added or when annual general meetings would be held, and had also failed to fix a hole in her driveway. ‘You hear the horror stories from people [about strata] and sort of hope it doesn’t happen to you, but unfortunately it has,’ she said. ‘My strata manager has made me feel extremely stressed, extremely anxious. It’s been a really difficult time financially. I’m quite worried because I never know what bills I’m going to get, how much I’m going to have to pay.’”
“Ms Boehm is not alone. Australian Apartment Advocacy CEO Samantha Reece said the behaviour Ms Boehm described was widespread in Western Australia, where about 25 per cent of people live in strata title housing. ‘We’re receiving countless calls on a daily basis from people who have been taken advantage of by their [strata] manager,’ she said. ‘Or the developer or the builder, and we could give you examples galore.’”