A report from Bangor Daily News. “In several surprising areas of Maine, the housing market appears to be slightly cooling after years of soaring sale prices. A huge, pandemic-era wave of in-migration has since settled, and high interest rates — expected to top 7 percent in the coming weeks — mean homeowners are hesitant to enter the market, realtors say. Despite it being a suburb of Maine’s largest city, South Portland has actually seen a 54 percent decrease in average home values this year, according to Zillow. Waterville has seen a 58 percent drop in home values in the last year, and the average home is now valued at around $230,000, according to Zillow. Surprisingly, Kennebunk, a pricey coastal town in York County, has seen a 51 percent drop in home values in the last year, according to Zillow. Values have now fallen below $600,000.”
“Belfast has seen a 53 percent drop in home values in the past year, according to Zillow. They now sit at around $360,000. Becky Nightingale Johns, a Belfast-based realtor with Worth Real Estate Inc., cautioned the dips seen in Belfast and in other Maine communities are part of expected fluctuations in the market. ‘There’s no indication that in the long-term, prices are going to decrease. It’s going upwards, just not as fast as it did in the ‘unicorn years,’ Nightingale Johns said. ‘It’s like weighing yourself every day. Don’t look at the [Multiple Listing Service] every day.’”
The Palm Beach Post in Florida. “In the past, some would assume that the motivation for serving on a condominium board was to leverage a prime parking spot. The more recent reality is very different, with board members’ decision-making history now being put under the microscope for claims of mismanagement and breach of their fiduciary duty. The scrutiny is justified. For condo owners who don’t have the funds to continue to live comfortably in their buildings due to the increased assessments, it is always better to sell sooner than later to maximize profits, especially in a changing real estate market. Given that many individuals could potentially be listing their condos at the same time based on poor inspection results, the decision to sell now could be the best decision that you have ever made. One bad apple can spoil the barrel, and that saying holds true for a bad comparable sale in the same condo building.”
“If board members have shown a history of voting against vital increases in reserves, that behavior could be considered a conflict of interest or self-dealing. Furthermore, these patterns could subject the board members and the association to legal liability. In egregious situations of condo association mismanagement, you could potentially get a group of current owners together and sue the association as well as the board members. If the association attempts to foreclose on your unit while you litigate, you may have some very strong defenses and counterclaims. If you have proof of significant breaches of fiduciary duties, don’t be afraid to dig your heels in and stand up for yourself.”
“For buildings that are currently getting hammered with assessments, the fire sale by some owners is going to negatively impact the value of the units of those that remain. It may even get to a point where fighting back isn’t necessarily that much of a risk because you could eventually owe more on your mortgage than your condo is actually worth. Always remember that you don’t have to take this lying down.”
West Hawaii Today. “It’s likely to be a slow spring for Big Island home sales as the market struggles to recover from 2023. Because 2023’s first quarter sales represented a 41% decrease from the same period in 2022, this year’s market is still lagging considerably behind the post-pandemic peak, before rising interest rates and inflation chilled sales around the country. Despite the stronger sales in some districts, Big Island real estate agents told the Tribune-Herald that the market is still struggling. ‘After the holidays, we usually see an uptick in pending sales,’ said Realtor Davin Padilla. ‘Wer’e not seeing that right now. Spring is usually when sellers start heating up. We’re not seeing that right now, either.’ Padilla said high interest rates and mortgage rates are still keeping potential buyers on the fence, while would-be sellers who got locked into favorable rates during the ‘unicorn years’ are holding onto their homes rather than getting a new home with a worse rate.”
The Real Deal on California. “Interest has ticked up in the San Francisco condo market, especially outside of the downtown core. The upswing in demand started late last year as interest rates came down, agents and developers say, and has continued this spring as tech buyers returning to the office are making deals with sellers who have come to terms with the drop in price required to close deals in the current market. ‘Sellers that really want to sell have realized that prices have rolled back about five to seven years from the height in 2021,’ said Robyn Kaufman of SF High Rises Real Estate, who specializes in Rincon Hill and surrounding SoMa neighborhoods.”
“Some sellers have dropped their prices from $1,500 per square foot at the height of the market to less than $1,000 as demand downtown dried up, she said. Kaufman has turned down potential listings if the sellers don’t seem to grasp the new reality since the combination of the pandemic, subsequent embrace of remote work and rising interest rates brought the condo market to a near standstill starting in mid-2022. Tim Gullicksen at Corcoran Icon said he helped a client close a deal last year along the central waterfront on a condo that had already gone through two price cuts. She ended up paying $200,000 less than the sellers had when they bought the unit six years ago.”
“He has sold San Francisco real estate through the dot-com crash, the financial crisis and now the aftermath of the pandemic. In each case, he said, downtown condos were the first to get hit and the last to recover. Gullicksen said none of his current clients are looking downtown. First is the perception that the area is still ‘dreadful and boring and empty,’ he said. Plus, people who want to live in San Francisco may be predisposed to prioritize charm and quirkiness instead of a clean modern look and the newest amenities, he said, which often come with hefty HOAs. ‘They’re always building new buildings, so how is yours going to be a good investment when it comes time?’ he said. ‘And why do I pay $1,400 a month in HOAs? Because there’s a dog washing station in the basement? A vast majority of my clients don’t feel like that’s a worthwhile use of their money.’”
Blog TO in Canada. “Despite the Greater Toronto Area’s real estate market seeing an increase in the average home price last month, properties in various communities continue to sell well below their asking prices, showing just how unpredictable the region’s housing market tends to be. Take this luxurious five-bedroom home in Vaughan for example, which sold in early April at a staggering $860,000 loss after sitting on the market for 210 days. The lavish property originally sold for $4.28 million back in December 2021, and was relisted for $4.68 million just a year and a half later in April 2023.”
“After sitting on the market for just over four months, the home was relisted at a massive loss for $3.68 million in September 2023. Once again, the home failed to attract any buyers and sat idle on the market for a few more months. Eventually, the luxurious home sold for $3.42 million in April 2024 — exactly $860,000 less than it originally sold for just two and a half years earlier. Throughout 2024, there have already been multiple well-documented cases of properties selling at significant losses. Last month, a home in Burlington’s affluent LaSalle neighbourhood was sold for $700,000 less than it was purchased for just two years earlier.In another case, a 9,400-square-foot home in North York’s St. Andrew-Windfields neighbourhood slashed $2.5 million off its price tag after two failed attempts to sell.”
I News in the UK. “When lockdown hit, Jess Bolton, 31, and her husband wanted a change from the busy London life they’d led for five years. So they moved in with Jess’s parents who lived in the Wiltshire countryside, where they got two greyhounds. The couple stayed at her parents’ house for a while, before eventually buying their own Victorian terraced house in Gloucester in April 2021. The couple settled on an end-of-terrace fixer-upper. It was still in a city, but far from the hectic pace of the capital. ‘We thought people would come and visit us, and we’d go and visit people, but people just don’t travel. We don’t go and visit our friends much and they don’t come and visit us. I think being near them makes it easier. Now we want somewhere less rural than we are.’”
“It’s not just the location that has been a challenge for the couple. They chose a project house that needed a big renovation, which they estimated to take around a year, but it still isn’t finished three years later. ‘We were watching all of that stuff [on TikTok] and thought that it would go great. My husband had some experience renovating. We had all our weekends and our evenings, and we’d got used to having no social life and thought it was going to be fine,’ says Jess. ‘The grafting and hard work was fine but the thing we really struggled with was living in a house that was a building site.’”
“Quickly they realised their time frame (and budget) wouldn’t be realistic. For the first four months in their new home, they showered at the gym, and it took 18 months to replace their temporary shower with a proper bathroom. It took a further six months to fit a kitchen, and for two years they batch-cooked food at Bolton’s parents to eat throughout the week. Other times they’d use their microwave or plug-in-hob they kept in the hallway. The stress of the work had an impact on their relationship. ‘Living with the dust and a house full of contractors where it’s hard to feel cosy and private and there’s always people coming and going took its toll on us; we felt unsettled.’ Even now, small jobs that could take less than an hour seem a big chore, and as they’re looking at moving away, it might never get finished. ‘We look at things now and we just don’t have the energy. If I could go back I would definitely do some things differently,’ says Bolton. ‘I wouldn’t buy a fixer-upper again, the maximum I would do is paint a wall. We also want to downsize – it’s a lot looking after the house.’”
From News.com.au. “Steel yourselves: Hopeful iron-ore price movements amid booming Chinese exports represent the calm before a perfect storm, warns a leading Australian analyst. ‘A superglut is mounting in China and will crash upon every global shore in a relentless tide over the next five years,’ argues MacroBusiness chief strategist David Llewellyn-Smith. China is the world’s largest steel producer, and iron ore is its core ingredient. But the massive industry is struggling after the dramatic collapse of the local property construction market, which has led to a 13.5 per cent fall in steel production over the past 12 months.”
“Australia is the world’s largest exporter of iron ore. It contributed about $136 billion to national revenue in 2023. It had been selling for about $US130 a tonne in January. It’s recently been trading in the $US90s. Llewellyn-Smith says everything changed for China’s steel industry when Chairman Xi Jinping took power. He immediately set about ‘rebalancing’ the Chinese growth economy towards one based on more sustainable consumer consumption. ‘The 2012 Xi Jinping pivot caught big mining with its pants down, as it invested heavily in the notion that China would grow apartments forever,’ he writes.”
“Then, amid a shaky 2015 economy, the Chinese Communist Party intervened in monetary policy to breathe fresh life into its construction industry. ‘This final panic reversal to the old economic model of building empty apartments blew off Chinese steel output for another six years. It rescued Chinese steel prices and helped iron ore supply to work off its excesses,’ he argues. ‘The problem is the last great 2016-2021 blowoff so bloated developer credit, corruption, and over-construction that today’s property crash is past saving.’”
From Reuters. “New home prices in China fell at their fastest pace in more than eight years in March as the debt woes of major property developers continued to drag on demand and the economic outlook. ‘There’s not much of an improvement in the outlook from here. I think there’s still downside risks to the economy. It’s pretty clear the property glut is still continuing,’ said economist Woei Chen Ho at UOB in Singapore. Potential buyers have also been wary of purchasing new homes because of concerns about the ability of indebted developers to deliver projects on time.”
Mansion Global. “Singapore’s home buyers and sellers are still feeling the effects a year since the city-state doubled the stamp duty for many foreign buyers last April, especially with real estate prices still elevated. But, as with any market in flux, the period of change has brought some buyers an opportunity. Following the March 16 relaunch, Cuscaden Reserve, in the heart of Orchard in District 9 sold 80 of 180 remaining units ‘slightly above S$3,000 per square foot,’ the Straits Times reported this month. The Business Times reported discount offers started from S$2,900 per square foot, about 20% below the average price of the 12 previously sold Cuscaden Reserve units.”
“Buyers may be able to find attractive deals in the secondary market within the CCR, as resale homes are generally less expensive than new projects,’ said Chia Siew Chuin, head of residential research, research and consultancy at JLL Singapore. Between Q1 2019 to Q1 2014, transaction records show median resale prices of CCR condominium and apartments often around 30% to 35% lower than new units in the primary sales market.”
“The Central Business District, one of the world’s great corporate and financial hubs encompassing postal districts 1, 2 and 7, is increasingly becoming a district known for luxury living. Projects are often larger-scale, mixed-use developments which integrate luxury residences with hotels, offices and retail. Caveat records suggest that some units in the 1,800 square foot range sold in the first quarter of 2024 for a nearly 50% discount over comparably sized units in 2023.”