It’s Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. “Glenn Kelman — Redfin’s Chief Executive Officer: ‘Our fourth quarter net income, a loss of $27 million, was better than we projected in our last earnings call. Based on anecdotes from the Redfin employees making offers, the price range of competitors’ bids is narrower. When we lost a bid last summer, we sometimes lost by $50,000. But now when we lose, it’s more likely to be like $5,000.’”
“The prices for the property that has sold has skyrocketed in the last couple of years, Jim Hickey with Engel & Völkers Real Estate in Jackson Hole, told Cowboy State Daily. ‘We sold single family homes, or single family homes on some acreage, and then literally six months later, or not even a quarter later, similar property might come up … $100,000 or more in price,’ Hickey said. ‘Sometimes they sold, sometimes it didn’t, but the prices were just moving up at a rate I can’t even explain.’”
“There have been a few instances of ‘buyer remorse’ that these agents have witnessed in the last year from buyers from outside Wyoming who purchased properties without having experienced a Wyoming winter. ‘I’ve talked to one of my Bozeman partners,’ said Mike Fraley, a realtor who primarily sells ranch property in the Buffalo/Sheridan region. ‘He said they’re starting to see some of these guys that came out in the COVID crunch and wanted some room, and now they’re out here and are like, ‘Huh, not quite the amenities and the weather I was thinking.’”
“Cristiano Ronaldo recently unloaded his Trump Tower condo in Manhattan for $7.18 million, a whopping $11.32 million less than he paid in 2015. ‘He definitely paid way too much. So that answers part of the question as to what the loss is,’ says one luxury real estate specialist, Dolly Lenz.”
“Singer Alicia Keys and producer Swizz Beatz Dean, are in contract to sell their 5-acre gated estate in Englewood, NJ. But the hitmakers are taking a major hit on the sale. The property which they bought in two separate transactions for a $12.1 million sum nearly a decade ago was last asking $9.9 million. We hear it is in contract for even less.”
“California home prices continued to decelerate as a shift in the mix of sales toward less expensive homes and seasonal slowdown continued. The statewide median price declined to $765,580 in January, down 3.9 percent from December’s $796,580. ‘The buoyant housing market continues in 2022 as buyers returned from the holiday season to take advantage of the still favorable lending environment before interest rates climb further,’ said C.A.R. President Otto Catrina. ‘With prices leveling off, housing supply showing a slight improvement and competition easing during the off season, buyers who missed the opportunity to buy were eager to get back to the market at the start of the new year.’”
“A housing developer behind prominent schemes in Manchester city centre has collapsed, with the loss of about 40 jobs. Mulbury Homes had been in business since 2010. Headquartered in Lymm, the developer had been ‘struggling with trading and cash flow issues brought by the pandemic, planning delays and rising costs,’ a Kroll statement said. ‘We had a strong pipeline of projects and we were hopeful for the future. We have been working tirelessly to keep the business going but the current conditions left us with no option but to call in administrators. We would like to thank our staff, clients, supply chain and partners for their support to Mulbury Homes in the last 12 years.’”
“The home once shared by the late RTE broadcaster Gerry Ryan and his ex-wife Morah has gone on the market again for €1.595 million. The cost marks a huge €405,000 reduction on the initial asking price for the Dublin 3 property. Morah Ryan put the home, located on the illustrious Castle Avenue in Clontarf, back on the market this week after it was de-listed last year. The stunning five-bed house had initially gone on sale in 2020 for a cool €2 million.”
“The national median selling price dropped to $880,000 in January down by $20,000 compared to December’s $900,000 median. It was the second month in a row it had dropped from its November peak of $920,143. Auckland bore the brunt of the price fall, where the median selling price dropped by $80,000 from $1.28 million in December to $1.20 million in January.”
“Westpac acting chief economist Michael Gordon says the screws have been tightening on the housing market in recent months. ‘Most importantly in our view, fixed-term mortgage rates have risen sharply since September, in anticipation of the OCR hikes the Reserve Bank will deliver over the next couple of years. We’ve long been predicting a turn to moderate house price declines as mortgage rates rise from their lows. The timing of that turn has always been up in the air, and it now looks to be coming sooner than we had assumed.’”
“When China Evergrande Group, the world’s most indebted developer, missed an interest payment in September it thrust the Asian high-yield market into a tailspin. ‘The concept of too big to fail obviously has been proven wrong,’ says Daniel Kim, managing director, head of high-yield capital markets and the commercial bank debt origination team at HSBC. ‘It’s had a very negative contagion effect for the whole sector. For some of these companies being impacted, a lot of it is purely just liquidity issues.’”
“As HSBC’s Kim says, ‘it’s somewhat of a cleansing. Some names shouldn’t have been tapping the bond market for the amounts they were.’”