A report from NBC News. “By the time many homeowners realize they need flood insurance, it’s too late. And for tens of thousands in North Carolina and across the Southeast, it’s too late. Only about 2% of residences in the 100 counties hit hardest by Hurricane Helene-related power outages were protected by flood insurance, according to an NBC News analysis. ‘The horror stories I hear are the people whose houses were flooded out. [They] don’t have an NFIP policy, don’t have a Neptune policy, and their homeowners insurance will not cover the risk of flooding,’ said Trevor Burgess, the CEO of Neptune Flood, who lives in St. Petersburg, Florida. ‘These people are just left with a complete loss.’”
WPTV in Florida. “Lake Clarke Gardens condominium residents reached out to WPTV worried that expensive condominium assessment fees may be too much for them to afford. ‘It’s a dream to live here. It’s very nice, very quiet but lately, we’re all really worried about the situation,’ resident Arturo Duharte said. Located near Lake Worth Beach, the community is for seniors age 55 and older, many of who are on a fixed income. Duharte said his fees have nearly doubled as his condo complies with state assessment deadlines. ‘How will that impact you?’ asked WPTV reporter Joel Lopez. ‘I can’t pay that, I have to leave, [live on] the streets, sleep in the car,’ Duharte said. ‘I don’t know what I’ll do.’”
The Los Angeles Times in California. “After weeks of residents begging for outside help with landslide damage in the Palos Verdes Peninsula, some assistance is finally on the way. The city will distribute up to $10,000 to families most directly affected by the land movement and the shutoffs, estimated to be about 280 homes in Rancho Palos Verdes. Many residents, though, have said they are facing costs closer to $100,000 from the last few weeks’ events, which left them scrambling to fortify homes’ foundations, switch to off-grid solar energy and convert natural gas lines to propane. ‘These residents are going through hell and, up until now, they have shouldered the financial burden of this landslide entirely on their own,’ Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn said in a statement. ‘$10,000 may not be enough to cover the costs of what these homeowners are facing, but I think it is important to get them this help.’”
“‘The county of Los Angeles is the only [one] that has helped us at all,’ Councilmember David Bradley said Tuesday night. ‘The city cannot continue to fund everything because we will be broke.’ In the absence of outside help, city officials are trying to find ways to respond to the growing emergency despite mounting expenses — ideally, before the rainy season. Rain and runoff are known to exacerbate and accelerate the land movement, as groundwater drives the geologic shifting. ‘We just need to stop the darn thing from moving,’ Mayor John Cruikshank said. ‘This is a nightmare.’”
The New York Post on California. “A San Francisco Bay Area influencer has warned that buying a house in the woods, however beautiful it may be, is a complete headache to maintain. Laureise Livingston and her husband bought their charming 100-year-old home two years ago. It was a dream come true—until they realized their roommates were rodents and beetles that were infesting the house. ‘Just a PSA about buying a house in a wooded area: Just don’t,’ Livingston says in a video. She detailed those issues in the video: ‘Rodents, bugs, and beetles’ have not only been a problem, they’ve been ‘eating us alive financially.’”
“‘We finally finish the rats, we’re finally done with the rats, and we say, ‘ahh no more issues,’ and then boom, Terminix gives us a call,’ she says. ‘So they come on over, and the good news is: no termites,’ Livingston says. ‘You have wood-boring beetles. My fiancé and I never heard of them. So, we asked, ‘What’s a wood-boring beetle?’ They say, ‘Well, they’re basically just as bad as termites. They bite through the wood and lay little larvae in the wood. And then the eggs hatch. And then, those little eggies that are no longer little eggies anymore, then go and bite into the wood until the wood is all f—ed up in your house. So we said, ‘That doesn’t sound like a good thing. How do we fix it?’ The two decided to get the home treated for $4,500.”
From Bisnow. “Pension fund Bayerische Versorgungskammer, after being named as a defendant in a lawsuit against developer Michael Shvo, is under fire in the Bavarian State Parliament for its real estate investments. BVK, Germany’s largest pension fund, has been one of the top German investors in American real estate over the past few years as part of a push in global investment that began in 2015. By 2021, more than half of BVK’s real estate investments were outside of Germany, while the fund continued to emphasize ‘a need for growth in the real estate portfolio in the USA,’ it wrote in its 2021 annual report.”
“That growth has included investments in projects developed by Shvo and backed by Deutsche Finance, which manages investments for several German funds. BVK put pensioners’ money into Shvo projects like the Coca-Cola Building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco. BVK’s funds are also invested in other Shvo projects, including a luxury condo redevelopment of The Raleigh in Miami Beach. ‘According to media reports, the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior’s supreme authority Versorgungskammer (BVK) invested high three-digit million amounts directly or indirectly in luxury real estate in the USA, which was developed by a convicted tax evader,’ Bavarian Parliament officials said in a letter obtained by Bisnow and translated into English. ‘High losses are looming, forcing those responsible at BVK to explain themselves.’”
“German banks have also raised red flags over their exposure to U.S. real estate. In the first quarter, Aareal Bank announced it would cut or restructure about $550M of loans with exposure to the overseas market. Deutsche Bank is similarly looking to sell $1B in U.S. CRE loans. Deutsche Pfandbriefbank said it is planning for additional losses due to ‘the greatest real estate crisis since the financial crisis.’”
The Globe and Mail in Canada. “Some shafts of light have started to break through the air of gloom that has been hanging over Toronto’s condo segment in recent months. Languishing condo units have been finding buyers, says Christopher Bibby, broker with Re/Max Hallmark Bibby Group Realty, but the action is inconsistent. In some cases, a unit will sit for 60, 90 or 120 days, then suddenly sell with more than one offer. ‘On others we’re still not even getting showings,’ he says. Mr. Bibby says one cohort of buyers is testing the water in the condo segment with lowball bids. ‘The buyers are trying – let’s see how desperate they are,’ he says. ‘I think they assume everyone needs to sell or why else would they be on the market?’”
“In other instances, the sellers have bought another property and they need to sell a condo unit in order to close the deal. ‘If you need it sold in 30 days and you have no backup plan, you absolutely have to take what people are willing to give you,’ says Mr. Bibby. Luke Dalinda, real estate agent with Royal LePage Real Estate Services, is urging sellers to hold firm to their prices. The buyers Mr. Dalinda sees circulating these days are looking for usable layouts, he says. ‘Smaller ‘shoebox’ condos, on the other hand, will continue to struggle due to their unusable layouts, cheap finishes and shoddy construction,’ he says.”
CTV News in Canada. “Customers paid for tiny homes but are dealing with huge headaches after a Calgary company told them they are going out of business. ‘It’s been a really stressful situation,’ Amanda Webb said. Webb paid $166,000 to builder ZeroSquared for a tiny home, which was supposed to be ready in 60 days. That was a year ago and it’s still not done. Now, the seven-year-old company says it’s closing shop and giving customers a week to pick up their unfinished homes. ‘They got my $166,000 right from the start and I believe they might have used that for other builds before mine and, you know, it’s frustrating,’ Webb said.”
“Lianne Haberman of Ontario is grateful for the help but is scrambling to salvage her investment. ‘$200,000-plus without a home and now having to get more money to either finish the home or sell as-is is a terrible position to be in,’ she said. Both Haberman and Webb say rent and storage costs have stacked up since both were supposed to be living in their homes months ago. ‘I mean, it’s been super stressful being in this situation of not having somewhere to live and having to pay rent because I’m already having to pay for this house. They received the entire amount on purchase,’ Webb said. Both homeowners say they got financing to pay the entire amount before the homes were built and are warning others not to do the same.”
Daily Mail Australia. “An Aussie building company has gone into liquidation after racking up almost $1.5million in debt- leaving customers in the lurch waiting for faulty builds to be rectified. Melbourne-based company Argyle Building Services was placed into administration on August 23 owing $1,474,932 to 55 creditors. At the time of its collapse, Argyle had been building a major project in Williamstown which consisted of eight townhouses, a commercial shop and an apartment. Argyle director, Sam Salloum, blamed ‘numerous unpaid invoices’ from developers who similarly became insolvent for his company’s collapse. Mr Salloum claimed that developers ‘simply refused to pay’ the debts which exceeded $2million. ‘In a nutshell, whatever could’ve gone wrong, did go wrong,’ he told the Herald Sun.”
News.com.au in Australia. “One Queensland tradie is airing out his industry’s laundry in a confessional series online and has uncovered some unbelievable acts. Kyle Romaior, 31, is a fully licensed electrician who has worked in the industry for years and has heard many stories on sites. Two months ago, the 31-year-old created an anonymous confession box on a construction site to see what tradies submitted. It was a success, and now, tradies can anonymously submit the wildest things they’ve done or seen at work online, and the results are staggering. One tradie admitted that after a client refused to let him use the bathroom, he retaliated by saving his poo and incorporating it in the renovation. ‘I double-bagged it. Threw it in the wall with the insulation and sheeted over it,’ he confessed.”
“Horrifyingly, a renderer admitted that when he was working on a site where there was no bathroom for miles, he defecated into a bucket and then mixed his poo with concrete and used it to finish off the walls. ‘I got on with the job, and now every time I drive past that house, I think they have literal sh*t built into their walls,’ he revealed.”
The Washington Post. “China’s legions of casual traders are stoked — and a little scared — to see what happens next in the country’s massive stock market rally. China’s equity markets are notoriously fickle, in part because they are dominated by casual retail investors, who account for about two-thirds of trading activity. Many of these traders have watched their savings shrink dramatically during the downturn, and they are already growing nervous that the recent uptick won’t last. Eric Lin, who was recently laid off from a real-estate-consulting job in Beijing, took advantage of the recent rally — which he called a ‘water buffalo’ market — by selling all his Shanghai and Shenzhen shares to pay off his mortgage.”
“‘When I saw the big rise, I sold the next day, fearing that it would fall immediately,’ the 36-year-old said. ‘I don’t have any faith in the Chinese stock market … Whether it is the housing market or the stock market, problems still exist, and I’m still pessimistic about the short- and medium-term outlook.’”
“The huge volumes of trading — around $369 billion in shares bought and sold on Monday — has drawn comparisons to an even bigger rally in 2015, when valuations hit their highest level on record. Then, similarly frenzied trading, stoked in part by Chinese state media, ended soon afterward with a rout that wiped out a third of the Shanghai market’s value in a month. So far, evidence of a deeper turnaround is mixed. The number of trips taken over the holiday is expected to reach 1.94 billion, only 0.7 percent above 2023, according to official data. But extreme budgeting remains common among travelers. On Xiaohongshu, China’s answer to Instagram, users compete in money-saving challenges, such as aiming to spend no more than $70 dollars on food for October.”