A report from the News Press in Florida. “The Bonita Springs and Estero markets are still seeing price reductions each month, and area appraisers also report that current pricing is correlating with current appraisals for those properties accurately priced. For sellers, accurately pricing your home to market value is still a critical element in receiving qualified offers right now. ‘Buyers who are currently in the market are very savvy and know the difference between an overpriced home versus a property that is priced to market value,’ stated Jerry Murphy, Managing Broker, Downing-Frye Realty, Bonita Springs.”
From KOLO in Nevada. “Agent Ginger Marphis says for the first time this year one of her listings is not under contract two weeks after it was first published. She listed the single-family two story home at 3151 Myles Drive in Sparks September 16 for $435,000. The listing attracted two agent views and six client views in the first 20 minutes and 15 days later it attracted 126 agent views, 81 client views, 21 showings, but remains without a committed buyer offering a contract to buy. ‘We’re seeing a slowdown. We’re seeing more price reductions,’ Marphis said.”
From WCNC in North Carolina. “Fresh off a blazing-hot housing market this summer, and just before the market slows down for the holidays, realtors say October might prove to be an opportune time for buyers who’ve stayed on the sidelines. ‘Go for it. Don’t be afraid to negotiate,’ David Kennedy, president of Canopy Realtor Association, said.”
From Coeur d’ Alene Press in Idaho. “On the local front, agents reported to The Press some decrease in bidding wars for individual properties, though most market value-priced homes continue to move quickly. Also, some of those way, way overpriced homes on the market (there are always more than a few) have slashed prices in order to lure buyers. In other words, a slightly less insane real estate market means you can find your ‘sweet spot’ property. No need to settle, especially when you’re still spending your life savings/borrowing a chestful of money.”
The Philadelphia Business Journal in Pennsylvania. “Greater Philadelphia’s residential market may be shifting once again. Now it faces more changes as desperation wanes, heightened demand tempers and new inventory is added. ‘It seems that the frenetic nature of the market, where anything goes — it was borderline desperation on the buyer’s side — that really has kind of subsided generally,’ said Lynne Kelleher, a Realtor with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Fox & Roach. It’s all thanks to increased inventory and buyer fatigue. Part of the reason behind that decline was the increase in Bucks County’s inventory during the summer. There were 2,231 new listings added to the market in August.”
“Buyers also became fed up with ‘greedy sellers,’ Kelleher said. ‘Unfortunately, a lot of times sellers are the last to realize that the market has started to shift. So they still think that you can come on at another 5% higher than the last sale. And that’s not necessarily the case anymore.’”
The Calgary Sun in Canada. “New homes starts over the last year have reached levels of activity not seen since the 1970s, a new report shows. RBC Economics released a report in late September finding the number of homes under construction in Canada is at an ‘all-time high.’ It points to starts surging since last summer and reaching more than 260,000 this summer, the highest figure since 1977. The total is also 26 per cent higher — about 54,000 more unit”s — than the annual average over the five years prior. All told, nearly 320,000 units are under construction in Canada — the highest figure ever.”
From News Scotland. “Residents of a new development in Glasgow’s trendy Finnieston – who paid around £320,000 for their properties – were shocked when they found out 41 flats could be let out to holidaymakers by the apartment-hotel firm Sonder. Homeowner Kirsty Colquhoun said: ‘My initial reaction was to be upset and surprised that this was able to happen but now I’m just gobsmacked. Truthfully, I probably wouldn’t have bought my flat here if I knew that there would be short-term letting visitors. We are tied up with mortgages now, so it would cost us to get out of them.’”
From News.com.au. “See that on the horizon? That’s a housing clampdown. And it’s coming this way. Prices are going berserk. Everyone wants in on this rocket to the moon we call Australian property. Debt-to-income ratios are rising. Which is why the clampdown is coming. This is not sustainable. If prices keep growing like this the chance of a downturn gets higher, and the implications of a downturn get worse. Heavily indebted people stop spending if the economy starts to slow down, and that’s something the Australian economy cannot afford.”
From Yahoo on China. “In one of the videos, a female investor can be seen brandishing a knife and threatening to kill herself in front of the Evergrande Wealth staff and other people inside a meeting room. ‘I don’t want the interest on my investment, I just want my money back. So here’s what I have to say to you. If Evergrande Wealth doesn’t give me my money today, I’ll kill myself right here,’ she told the staff. ‘If this isn’t handled today, I’ll die right here, right in front of you. My retirement savings are all in that investment. I have nothing left to live for.’”
“Another clip showed a group of people trying to block a car outside the company’s building. A woman can be heard crying and demanding an explanation in the video. ‘I don’t have any choice but to do this, and I won’t listen to you,’ she said. ‘All my money is gone.’”
The New York Times. “It has long been a central tenet of mainstream economic theory that public fears of inflation tend to be self-fulfilling. Now though, a cheeky and even gleeful takedown of this idea has emerged from an unlikely source, a senior adviser at the Federal Reserve named Jeremy B. Rudd. His 27-page paper, published as part of the Fed’s Finance and Economics Discussion Series, has become what passes for a viral sensation among economists.”
“As Dr. Rudd writes in the first sentence of his paper, ‘Mainstream economics is replete with ideas that ‘everyone knows’ to be true, but that are actually arrant nonsense.’ One reason for this, he posits: ‘The economy is a complicated system that is inherently difficult to understand, so propositions like these’ – the arrant nonsense in question – ‘are all that saves us from intellectual nihilism.’”
“And from that starting point, a staff economist at the world’s most powerful central bank went on to say, in effect, that his own employer has been focused on the wrong things for the past few decades. If you are in charge of making economic policy that affects the lives of millions, you can’t simply shrug your shoulders and say, ‘We don’t know how the world works, so what are we supposed to do?’ You look at the evidence available, and make the best judgment you can. And then, if you think it turns out you were wrong about something, publish a sassy paper to try to get it right.”