A report from Business Insider. “I felt pressured to buy a nearly $1 million house at age 27 — and I deeply regret it. This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Elsa, a 27-year-old software engineer who asked that only her first name be used for privacy reasons, about her experience rushing to buy a house in Chantilly, Virginia. Their mortgage payment is more than triple their previous monthly rent, and they’ve been forced to make changes to their lifestyle to afford their home. ‘We were renting a small one-bedroom apartment for $1,800. We were saving around $4,000 a month, so we thought that a $6,000 monthly mortgage payment would be doable. We were expecting rates in the 4% or maybe higher 3% range, but in the end we ended up with a 5% interest rate.”
“‘Our take-home pay each month is a bit more than $11,000, and our monthly mortgage payment is about $6,800. But we’ve been trying to pay a little bit more in order to save on interest. I’ve heard people say to borrow less than what the bank will allow you to. I think we should have done that, but instead, we almost maxed out on our loan. Now that we’re in the house making those monthly payments, we’ve been piling on credit-card debt for the past few months. We definitely didn’t anticipate having as many repair expenses. The house we bought is older, so we have been overwhelmed with repairs like multiple water leaks.’”
“‘Over the past few years, I’ve seen home prices going up, and I don’t see why they would go down anytime soon. Maybe we needed to buy something and then suffer a bit for the first few years. Hopefully our salaries will increase and we’ll be able to get by more comfortably.’”
Community Impact on Texas. “Prices of homes are continuing to trend downward as inventory is on a steady uptick in Cedar Park and Leander, according to Austin Board of Realtors year-end report. In 2022, the peak median price of homes in Leander and Cedar Park was $629,000, according to ABoR data. Home prices in both cities significantly dropped to $531,000 in December, which is a 15.6% decrease. There has also been a steady rise in the amount of available inventory on the market in Leander and Cedar Park since early 2022.”
Islander News on Florida. “According to statistics gathered from MLS data, Ron Shuffield,CEO of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices EWM Realty in Coral Gables showed Miami-Dade County remains a stable market, and although sales have been down, home values still climbed. Shuffield told his viewers he believed, ‘We’re going to see a softening of prices (this year) with more inventory coming.’”
“He said, during the pandemic spike in values, from the spring of 2020 to the spring of 2022, ‘people were pushing (the median price) to $525,000, $540,000, $580,000, but in the last six months it’s come down to $539,000 today, so that shows there’s been some anxiety in the market. (But) we don’t expect a straight line down,’ he added, pointing to a graphic.”
Bizwest on Colorado. “For much of 2021 and the first half of 2022, residential housing sales were overheated, with bidding wars driving up prices of single-family homes. Properties were selling for well above asking price, with, at times, a dozen or more offers. It wasn’t sustainable, and a cooldown provides the sector — including real estate agents — a chance to catch their breath. The market actually is seeing some depreciation in value, noted Todd Gullette, managing broker with Re/Max of Boulder, pausing the double-digit appreciation of recent years.”
NBC Bay Area in California. “Home prices are still on the decline in the Bay Area from the same period a year ago, according to Redfin. In San Francisco, prices have seen the greatest drop nationally, down 15% year over year. Oakland was fourth with an 11.6% drop, and San Jose was sixth with a decline of 10.6%. ‘There’s no longer this strong pull of workers to the area to get a tech job. You can get a tech job just about anywhere. And a lot those tech San Francisco (companies) are laying off workers, so maybe people don’t feel like it’s really worth it to pay for a home when job security is not as great as it used to be,’ ‘Daryl Fairweather, chief economist with Redfin, said.”
Hoodline in California. “A real estate firm based in China is causing some major frustrations in San Jose because of a lack of action on a few major development projects. The drama comes after a top executive for Z&L Properties was arrested in London over a bribery and corruption case in San Francisco. Z&L Properties, which operates a Bay Area office in Foster City, was supposed to start building a housing and retail highrise at the site of the old Greyhound Bus Station in downtown San Jose at 70 South Almaden Avenue. But now Z&L appears to have abandoned those plans and has just listed the property for sale, as reported by San José Spotlight.”
“There’s also concern about another Z&L development called 188 West St. James, which is the address of the project, still hasn’t been fully completed. The project features two large housing towers, but so far, only units in one tower are being sold. Bob Staedler with Silicon Valley Synergy predicted to the San Jose Spotlight that the project might soon fall into foreclosure because of the $330 million in debt that was used to build the towers. To make matters worse for Z&L, its principal executive, Zhang Li, is now facing charges for allegedly trying to bribe officials with the city of San Francisco in order to obtain permits for a large project there.”
The Sydney Morning Herald. “Nearly all of those accused of involvement in a $10 billion money laundering operation smashed by the Australian Federal Police this week have swapped their Sydney mansions for remand cells after appearing in court on Thursday. In its largest-ever asset seizure, AFP officers took possession of at least $150 million worth of property and luxury assets and arrested nine suspects during 13 raids across Sydney on Wednesday, cutting off a shopping spree that included 360 hectares of land purchased for a new suburb near Sydney’s new international airport, worth $47 million.”
“On Thursday, AFP Assistant Commissioner Kirsty Schofield said restraining orders had been obtained on 20 Sydney properties, including two eastern suburbs homes with a combined value of $19 million. Luxury cars, handbags, jewellery and watches – some of which ‘cost more than what an individual would earn in a lifetime’ – were also seized. She said the large land purchase near the airport ‘was for profit.’ The group is alleged to have acted ‘like an underground bank’ with branches all over the world, Schofield said, ‘enabling it to illegally shift money for individuals and organised crime groups.’”
“Vaucluse resident Stephen Xin, the local business partner of fallen global casino industry tycoon, Alvin Chau, is accused of being the ringleader of the operation. He was arrested on Wednesday along with his wife Yi Ming Wang, Bellevue Hill man Zhaohua Ma and six others. Xin and Ma, along with Epping man Jin Yang and Youming Chen from Mays Hill, near Parramatta, were charged with conspiring to deal with more than $120 million intended to become an instrument of crime.”
“Liu’s role in the alleged scheme, and that of chartered accountant Luo, is expected to increase pressure on the federal government to introduce long-stalled Tranche 2 laws, which would force accountants, real estate agents and lawyers to face the same obligations as bankers and casinos to report suspected money laundering.”
Blackburn News in Canada. “The housing market in Windsor-Essex continued its cool down in January with a 46.72 per cent drop in sales. January marked the eleventh straight month housing sales in the region fell. The average selling price in Windsor-Essex was $516,117, down from $644,765 a year ago. Prices peaked last March at $723,739 and have fallen 28 per cent since then.”
Global News in Canada. “The head of the realtors association in the Hamilton, Ont., area is suggesting there’s ‘really good news’ in the market, with supply for first time buyers looking better via an increase in inventory. The average residential price across the market moved to $791,551 in January compared to the same month in 2022 when prices were around 25 per cent higher, and over $1 million. Unit sales were down 26 per cent from January 2022 with just 540 units moving from inventory that spiked 285 per cent year over year to 1,577 homes. The lowest average prices for January were in Hamilton Centre, where a home was around $583,651, down 13.9 per cent year over year.”
The Times Colonist in Canada. “The board’s benchmark price for a single-family home in Greater Victoria dropped in January to $1.117 million from $1.159 million in January 2022, while the median sale price dropped to $1.065 million from $1.25 million last January. The benchmark price of a condominium in the region, on the other hand, rose to $569,900 in January, up from $552,900 a year ago, while the median sale price dropped to $530,000 from $603,420. The benchmark price of a townhouse also rose in January to $785,100, up from $765,000 12 months earlier, while the median sale price dropped to $620,000 from $861,250.”
The Globe and Mail in Canada. “In the last few years, Frank Giralico, a sales representative for Capital North Realty, was doing a brisk trade in the Greater Toronto Area’s preconstruction assignment market, in which investors ante up a down-payment on an as-yet unbuilt condo and then flip the rights to purchase it for a profit before the unit is constructed, never actually intending to own it.”
“That market hums along when prices are going up, and seizes up when they’re coming down, or when interest rates have spiked. ‘I focused a lot of my business on that because the market was geared that way,’ he admits. Things are different now: ‘I’ve seen investors who are now faced with the reality that they’re either going to have to come up with extra funds because the mortgage rate has increased so much that they may not be able to close.’”
The Canadian Press. “The Greater Toronto Area’s real estate board saw home prices plateau in January after being in free fall and depressing sales since spring, but brokers see a return to activity already taking shape. The flattening follows several months of steady declines, which saw prices fall nearly 20 per cent from their spring peak and 16.4 per cent from a year ago. Once the new year began, Michelle Gilbert, a Toronto broker, said sellers that reached out to her were mostly people interested in upgrading their homes to get a bit more space.”
“‘They have accepted the fact that their house or condo will sell for X amount and they’re not going to make much of a profit,’ she said. ‘A lot of them are breaking even, but are willing to do that to attain what’s on the other side for a lower price.’”