It’s Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. “‘Our housing market is showing signs of stabilizing,’ says Dave Walsh, the 2021 president of the California Association of Realtors. Walsh says we now have a median selling price in Santa Clara County of $1,625,000—down slightly from the $1,750,000 peak we saw in July.”
“Home sales typically slow this time of year, and they have in the D.C. metro. Online home searches by potential buyers have slowed, and showings by real estate agents are down 6.5% from a year ago. All of that points to what could now be buyer fatigue. ‘Even though inventories have declined, prices are rising but sales are a little weaker. It’s as if buyers are saying to themselves, ‘You know, at these higher prices, let me think a little more carefully, and look a little more thoughtfully. I don’t have to feel pressure to buy the first thing I see,’ said Elliot Eisenberg, a real estate economist with Bright MLS.”
“Central Texas realtors called the summer an ‘abnormal’ period for housing. Some buyers are looking to take advantage of a less-crowded market after being hit with multiple rejections over the summer. ‘I think we’ve kind of gotten to that point where we’re seeing buyer fatigue,’ said realtor Roman Novian. ‘Where people are just saying, you know, we’re going to go rent for a while and then we’ll revisit buying later on.’”
“A sprawling four-bedroom estate that’s been featured in papers and magazines across the country had a $1,000,000 price drop this week. Hortulus Farms, built in 1795 to include a four-bedroom stone farmhouse, a pond, an all-weather porch, two barns, and an extravagant garden now has a price tag of $4,200,000.”
“The sellers of a historic Winnetka mansion have slashed its asking price by nearly $2 million since first listing the home for sale this summer. The property was last sold for $3.2 million in 2004 to a corporate entity controlled by Reza Toulabi. In 2019, First Midwest Bank filed a foreclosure lawsuit against the property owners. That suit was dismissed in December 2019. Then, in December 2020, the LLC through which Toulabi bought the property was dissolved involuntarily. In June, the property was listed for sale with an asking price of $5.45 million. That was reduced last week for the fourth time to just under $3.5 million. Its annual property tax bill is about $56,000.”
“Thirty-one senior living borrowers have missed a payment on their municipal bond debt for the first time in 2021, representing about $1.6 billion of muni bonds in default and tying the record number of senior housing defaults set last year. More ‘spectacular failures’ are almost certain to occur in the sector, Shankh Mitra, CEO of Welltower, said on the real estate investment trust’s most recent quarterly earnings call.”
“Buyers looking to negotiate their new home can try to take advantage of a seasonal dip in asking prices, new figures have revealed. Rightmove said the average asking prices of homes newly listed for sale fell by £2,044 in the past month. ‘Sellers who come to market this close to the distractions of Christmas often have a pressing reason to sell, so naturally price more attractively to grab the attention of prospective buyers who may be otherwise occupied,’ said Tim Bannister, Rightmove’s director of property data.”
“Hussein Mohamed knew he had hit the jackpot when investors started buying expanses of land in Kitengela and Kiserian, Kajiado County. His ten-acre piece of land was a heaven-sent investment, after all. It was in 2016 when he first decided to sell the land, aiming to smile all the way to the bank. Five years down the line, the smile remains just a pipe dream. Any signs of the big smile were extinguished by a market that has constantly shown an unwillingness to match his price and take the land.”
“‘Sometimes I feel I may be forced to reduce the price I intend to sell the piece of land at, to a value way below market rate. This does not sit well with me,’ he says. ‘It has been difficult finding someone interested in buying land. I have had to revise the price downs, time and again.”
“For two years, Cynthia, also a landowner in Kitengela, has tried to sell her land with little success. Like Hussein, she no longer likes to talk about it. It is an open wound. She knows she will sell it way below her target price unless a miracle happens. And miracles are not common in this age. Hussein and Cynthia are not the only two landowners suffering. Meanwhile, Hussein and Cynthia hope to find a panacea to their problems. Next time, they promise, they will look before they leap into another horrible deal, with the glittery promises of real estate clearly anything but gold.”
“After years of expansion in Hong Kong, cash-strapped Chinese developers are reducing their presence in one of the world’s most expensive property markets, allowing firms in the financial hub to scoop up some of their assets at distressed prices. There’s more to come – Aoyuan Group, which this week extended the redemption date of onshore asset-backed securities, is trying to offload more Hong Kong properties to raise capital, two sources with knowledge of the matter said.”
“The deal is expected to be sold at less than what Aoyuan paid for it, the sources added. This will follow a deal in mid-November, when Aoyuan sold some assets in a residential development in the Mid-Levels to a Hong Kong investor at a loss of HK$177 million. Once deep-pocketed Chinese developers had moved aggressively into Hong Kong, outbidding their cross-border rivals for prime sites in the city. ‘It’s a reversal of the trend,’ said Reeves Yan, CBRE head of capital markets in Hong Kong. ‘Chinese developers with liquidity crunch are now selling, and it is expected that there will be more selling in the next few months (in Hong Kong).’”
“Wild swings in Chinese real estate stocks and bonds are keeping investors on edge — these news headlines could cause troubles in the sector to spill into the rest of the economy, says S&P Global Ratings. Rather than companies making announcements during the worst of the sell-off earlier this month, Jennifer James, portfolio manager at Janus Henderson Investors said she often learned about how they were doing through news reports, days or weeks later. These include meetings with the government. ‘I’m not quite certain the regulators and authorities understand the damage this does to the offshore market, because a lot of investors won’t return,’ said James.”
“For investors left in the dark, the ensuing anxiety meant they’d rather sell than stay invested. ‘The problem is when you have a market impact that has gone far beyond what anyone would have reasonably expected at the beginning of October, you have to start asking, ‘What is the macro impact?’ Jim Veneau, head of fixed income, Asia at AXA Investment Managers, told CNBC.”