A report from the Wall Street Journal on New York. “The urgent inquiries for office space from companies aiming to do business with Amazon have long ceased. The near-constant flurry of calls from would-be investors in commercial buildings and condominiums has eased. Asking rents for office space dipped 7.5% to $40.65 a square foot in the third quarter, the third straight quarter of decreases, according to Cushman.”
“‘Prices have come down because there is a lot of space on the market,’ said Neil Dolgin co-president at the real-estate firm Kalmon Dolgin Affiliates Inc. ‘There is more supply than demand.’”
From Real Estate Weekly on New York. “Aleksandra Scepanovic, managing director of Ideal Properties Group: America’s macro political stage, strongly shaded by the news of the trade war with China, impacts New York City’s softening housing market both directly and indirectly. Directly, by further diminishing the interest of Chinese real estate investors in their once so loved spurious offspring. Indirectly, the impact is reflected in the Chinese investors adding their properties to the city’s queue of inventory awaiting to be sold. The absence of Chinese investors is most intensely impacting the city’s luxury sales market, decelerating the trading pace. And of course, as a consequence of extended days the properties spend on the market, their price points are also negatively affected.”
From Forbes on California. “Drum roll for the most expensive ZIP code in the Los Angeles area which is number 10 on ApartmentGuide’s list. No, it’s not even in Beverly Hills. Head south and west to Marina Del Rey in the 90292 zone. Even at the current price of $3,170 per month for a one-bedroom that’s down over 15% from a year ago when that number was $3,745. Over the last several years, there’s been a number of large luxury ‘apartment homes’ as developers call them being built in the Marina. So, signs of a possible glut on the market? It certainly appears so.”
From Salon on California. “For three decades, the Santa Clara Valley has been subject to one of the highest increases in housing prices in human history. Yet most curiously, some of the biggest dips in median home prices are in Santa Clara County. In many of the subregions there, housing prices dropped 10 to 15 percent in a year span. In a housing market where a 3-bedroom single family home is often in the million-dollar-plus range, that means some homes dropped in price more than $100,000.”
“Patrick Kallerman, a Research Director at the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, pointed out to Salon that while the Chronicle’s report may be slightly exaggerated because the estimates are based on Zillow data — rather than median sale price — much of the Bay Area is certainly experiencing a slump home prices. ‘We have seen some softening in prices in Mountain View — that 7 percent decrease is real,’ Kallerman said.”
The Chicago Tribune in Illinois. “Chicago Bulls executive vice president of basketball operations John Paxson and his wife, on Nov. 15 sold their five-bedroom, 5,199-square-foot house in Lake Bluff for $725,000 — which was 33 percent lower than their original asking price in December 2018.”
“The Paxsons first had listed the house in December for just under $1.08 million They then cut their asking price to just under $1 million in May and then to $979,000 at the end of May. They took another $100,000 off their asking price in June, reduced it further to $829,000 in July and made their final price cut in August, to $799,000. Records show that the Paxsons paid $650,000 in 1991 for the house.”
The Springfield News Leader on Missouri. “Over the years, hundreds of people have submitted complaints accusing landlords of leaving vacant buildings open to vagrants, not keeping on top of problem tenants, allowing trash to pile up and lawns to get overgrown. Some have gone before City Council, imploring leaders to intervene.”
“In 2018, the city received 682 complaints about dangerous buildings, 2,207 complaints about trash and 2,038 complaints about weeds and overgrowth. Several were about 417 Rentals properties, which were part of the more than 500-property portfolio owned by local landlord Chris Gatley. Banks have foreclosed on many of those homes and are slowly auctioning them off after a federal judge dismissed Gatley’s second attempt at bankruptcy earlier this year.”
“‘It’s an investment, and the people who own them are benefiting from it, but most of them are absent. Then they’re shocked when their house is falling in, but they haven’t been there in two, three years. Of course it’s falling in,’ said Amy Blansit, a co-founder of the Drew Lewis Foundation, which works to help families in the city’s northwest side. ‘We have a lot of people who don’t know how to be landlords who are buying up houses and seeing it as a profit. They see the money and the potential in what a house is going to be without really understanding the work it takes.’”