A report from the High Point Enterprise in North Carolina. “While many real estate markets are still booming, some are seeing a recent slowdown in home sales. Insurify named Greensboro-High Point as No. 3 on the list of the nation’s top cooling housing markets, with a drop of 11.76% in the median listing price from 2020 to 2021. No. 1 on the list was Milwaukee at a 17.38% drop. No. 2 was the Winston-Salem area at a 12.36% drop.”
“‘I think things are staying on the market longer because people are making a better decision for themselves,’ said High Point Regional Association of Realtors President Pam Webb. ‘You’ve got a lot of buyers who are very cautious about making offers because they’ve made offers on so many things and their hopes have been deflated by not getting something under contract.’”
From KOLO in Nevada. “According to Realtor.com, In October 2021, the median listing home price in the Truckee Meadows was $560K, trending up 67.2% year-over-year. With median home prices hitting the peak of June of this year, Kayla Dalton with Dickson Realty says we should see stabilization. ‘We’re kind of seeing it level off and the market essentially soften,’ added Dalton. ‘We’re seeing that buyer demand exit a little bit. It’s still very high but we’ve given inventory a chance to catch up a little bit.’”
“So her advice if you’re planning on house hunting? Focus on what interest rates instead of the sale price. ‘That’s going to affect their buying power far more than prices,’ said Dalton. ‘Even if prices come down $50-100,000, if interest rates jump one percent in the next year, their monthly payment is going to be exactly the same.’”
The Pensacola News Journal in Florida. “October data from the Pensacola Association of Realtors shows that the competition should ease a little as inventory slowly climbs higher, something agent Kathy Batterton thinks can be, in part, attributed to those new homebuilders catching back up on their schedules and listing thei homes. Realtors like Batterton are optimistic the next few months will see a leveling off where sellers are no longer inundated with hasty offers within hours of listing a home and buyers aren’t offering cash over the listing price as an added incentive.”
“‘I think we’re already seeing a bit of a leveling, I don’t think there will be a bubble but I’m already seeing a cooling off of the market,’ she said. ‘People aren’t being insane, they’re not throwing money at offers like they were in the spring.’”
The Modesto Bee in California. “As inventory and interest rates increase in Modesto, the local housing market is softening for the first time since the pandemic hit. Now, some home prices are decreasing, and the market is mellowing. But as Daniel Del Real, a broker associate with PMZ Real Estate, warns, those decreases aren’t affecting median home prices. ‘It’s sellers’ expectations,’ he said. ‘Sellers’ expectations are being pulled back.’”
“Sellers are seeing the sale prices of other houses on the market, and have begun to lower their own asking prices as a result, or are accepting lower offers from buyers. Del Real said it feels like ‘price softening,’ rather than ‘price dropping,’ as the median home prices remain stable. There hasn’t been much change in the median prices since April, Del Real said, when the median sale price in Modesto hit $405,000. Since then, prices have increased slightly, with the October median sale price at $430,000, according to data from TrendGraphix.”
“Rather, prices are softening during sales themselves, as sellers accept offers below the asking price, and buyers are no longer frantically competing to outbid one another. Median sales prices are a lagging indicator of market trends, Del Real said, and eventually will catch up to the sales being made. As prices are dipping, inventory is increasing locally. In March and April, respectively, there were 114 and 118 homes on the market in Modesto. That number rose steadily over the next few months, with 167 homes for sale in June and 208 in July. October saw 204 local listings.”
“As the economy continues to recover and interest rates are climbing again, ‘people’s affordability dropped down,’ Del Real said. ‘That’s causing the softening and people are slowing themselves down,’ he added. ‘They’re waiting for the price to adjust to the terms, (and) it takes sellers a couple of months to figure that out.’”
From Dirt. “Having lost millions on the sale of a couple of previous homes, singer Pharrell does not seem to have the Midas touch when it comes to his real estate portfolio. Should he sell any of the properties currently bulking up his property portfolio, including the ultra-modern place atop Laurel Canyon, history is not on Mr. Williams side when it comes to turning a profit. In 2015 he lost more than $3 million when he sold a Miami penthouse for $9.35 million, and just last year he took a $1.6-million gut punch to his pocketbook when he shed a contemporary hilltop mansion in Beverly Hills, near the top of Coldwater Canyon, that he’d purchased about 2.5 years earlier for $15.6.”
From News.com.au in Australia. “Sydney property prices have risen at the slowest rate in nearly a year after a flood of new property listings and affordability pressures helped cool the once booming market. Eased social restrictions in early October had the added effect of releasing the gates on a flood of new property listings, which took pressure off buyers to bid up prices. CoreLogic research director Tim Lawless said market conditions no longer resembled those seen earlier this year.”
“‘Virtually every factor that has driven housing values higher has lost some potency over recent months,’ he said. ‘Fixed mortgage rates are rising, higher listings are taking some urgency away from buyers, affordability has become a more substantial barrier to entry and credit is less available. The rise in listings and softening of key vendor metrics implies the housing market may be moving through peak selling conditions.’”
From Bloomberg. “China’s struggling real-estate firms had another miserable month in November as a slump in home sales deepened. The country’s builders are facing $12 billion in trust payments coming due in December, posing a major challenge for an industry whose liquidity squeeze has spooked global markets. Private-sector developers are selling the fewest bonds domestically in nearly five years, adding to the risk of additional defaults.”
“The firms have already this year defaulted on more than $10 billion of these high-yielding, short-term products, which had been deemed to be a legitimate, safe and predictable place to park money for mainly wealthy Chinese and institutions. That comes on top of at least $10.9 billion of potential losses in other wealth products at developers, including China Evergrande Group, which has angered employees and tens of thousand people across China.”
From Armstrong Economics. “Reliable sources have confirmed that Klaus Schwab and even attendees have been getting such threats of violence and death that he has postponed Davos in January for the first time, claiming it is due to the pandemic, which is not true. Schwab is, at last, starting to realize that there is a price to his academic theories. There has been an avalanche in Switzerland but it is death threats rather than snow. This sweeping wave of anger is erupting worldwide, and there is no way that security measures can be enacted to protect world leaders.”
“Even the Swiss news outlet Südostschweiz has also reported about the violent threats. Both employees, as well as attendees, have also been targeted personally. Schwab is going to discover that there is a huge price to pay for his bizarre ideas that you can destroy the world economy in 2 to 3 years and build it all back better, GREEN, in the blink of an eye.”
“Just looking at the USA. Ironically, the very states that voted Democrat will be the ones that are hit the most. The Northeast consumes 86% of all the heating oil market. California has banned all new buildings that use natural gas, forcing them to power by electricity when the grid will not support it. It is absolutely impossible to convert 82 million single-family homes to electricity. This is where their academic theories fall apart.”
“I seriously question a career at the World Economic Forum as being viable in the years ahead. Employees will have to live in a bunker underground and never leave. Working for Schwab may be a highly dangerous career post-2021. World leaders who will be a great risk even attending these events, and Schwab just may see that 2021 was 34 years since his first real Davos event. This may have been the peak in Davos as of 2021.”