A report from the Wall Street Journal on California. “The property Jordan Mazer bought in December is the classic Venice beach house in more ways than one. Another thing that makes his property emblematic of the neighborhood: He paid $213,000 less than the buyer in 2018, and $450,000 less than the buyer in 2016. There were 43.2% more single-family homes on the market in 2020 than there were the year prior. ‘I’m sure a lot of it is the homeless situation, but it is probably also the overpriced listing situation,’ said CJ Cole, an agent with The Agency who has specialized in Venice for over 30 years.”
The Los Angeles Times in California. “The number of Californians leaving the Bay Area has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly from San Francisco, according to a new study. ‘There is a trend in most urban areas, but it’s most pronounced in San Francisco,’ said Evan White, executive director of the California Policy Lab at UC Berkeley. ‘With people leaving, we’ve seen rents going down pretty dramatically.’”
From The Broadsheet on New York. “A range of reports indicates that the Downtown real estate market has imploded in the wake of the recession brought on by the pandemic coronavirus. Perhaps the most radical undoing, however, was on the residential front. ‘According to our research, an estimated 40 percent of the local population left amid the pandemic,’ the Downtown Alliance notes.”
“Condominium and cooperative apartment owners resisted downward pressure on prices, if they could, by refusing to sell at all—with the number of units turning over down by 42 percent from 2019 and 75 percent from 2015. For those who had to sell, properties closed at distressed prices, with the median cost for owner-occupied dwellings falling to $1.6 million in the third quarter of 2020, down 21 percent from the third quarter.”
The Real Deal on New York. “Michael Stern sold his duplex at Walker Tower for less than he’d hoped. The 4,748-square-foot unit sold for $21 million, 24 percent less the $27.8 million it was initially listed for in June 2019. But Stern is still making off with a tidy profit. Not all units at Walker Tower have fared as well upon resale. The building’s condo board recently tried to stop the U.S. Department of Justice’s ‘low ball’ sale of a penthouse, which the DoJ was selling after seizing the property due to its connections to stolen funds from Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund, 1MDB.”
“The board was unsuccessful and the penthouse sold for $18.25 million, well below the $50.9 million paid by previous owner Khadem Al Qubaisi, an Abu Dhabi businessman and alleged co-conspirator in the 1MDB scandal. The unit had been on and off the market since 2017. But a 24 percent discount isn’t unusual in Manhattan’s entrenched buyers’ market.”
“Extell Development, responding to a condo sale at One57 that closed in December at 32 percent under ask, attributed the substantial discounts in recent months to the pandemic. ‘Almost all Covid-era transactions have been at exceptional prices for the buyer,’ said a spokesperson at the time.”
From Downtown Bellevue in Washington. “Bellevue and Redmond were ranked as the second most expensive cities to rent in the metro area, costing $1,820 for a single bedroom. Bellevue experienced a drastic 16.9% decline in rent which was cited as the largest year-over-year drop within the 19 cities.”
From Boston.com in Massachusetts. “For the second month in a row, the median rental price for a one-bedroom apartment in Everett fell sharply, dropping 29.2 percent from February 2020 to February 2021, according to Zumper. Other communities also saw a big year-over-year drop: Waltham (-20.9 percent), Cambridge (-19.8), Brookline (-16.8), Revere (-14.5), and Boston (-18).”
From Narcity in Canada. “City living in 400 square feet is going out of style fast, according to a new report on Toronto’s rent prices by Rentals.ca. The report indicates that the average rent for smaller units in the city is down almost 23% year over year and it’s believed that prices will drop even more from here.”
From 3 AW on Australia. “Neil Mitchell says Melbourne is ‘in deep trouble’ and the CBD urgently needs caps on office worker limits to be lifted. ‘I think the city feels really sad at the moment, it’s partly COVID, it’s partly just rundown,’ the 3AW Mornings host said. ‘It’s feeling grubby and dirty and underused and a bit threatening. A lot of it is businesses closed, empty shops because they’ve been crippled by COVID. Hopefully we can get through that.’”
“Mitchell called for the lifting of office worker restrictions, which are ‘killing the city’ to be prioritised. ‘Melbourne is in deep trouble,’ he said. ‘We need people back into the city as soon as its safe, for the sake of the city … for the sake of the cafes and restaurants, for the sake of Melbourne’s soul.’”
“A Melbourne businessman, who has run several successful businesses in the CBD in the past 30 years, agrees. Peter Butterss says he was accosted aggressively ‘a dozen times’ at the intersection of Elizabeth and Flinders streets. ‘It is threatening, and once I got through that mess I had to step over human waste to get into Little Collins Street,’ he told Neil Mitchell. ‘There are many parts of the city where it’s like this. I wouldn’t go into town after dark anymore.’”