It’s Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. “Realtor Carmen Crane from The Roxberg Group in Draper answers the most frequently asked real estate questions her firm has received. How much will be my down payment? Carmen says it really depends on a variety of factors. Typically it’s between 3%-20%. In some cases as first time buyers you may not need any money down. When is the market going to crash? Carmen says not any time soon because people have more equity in their home and their are many more guidelines when buying a home than prior to the 2008 market crash.”
“Baker resident Terri James, a realtor in Denver for the past twenty years, tells Westword that many of her clients are ‘house poor.’ They spend all their money on mortgages, she says, and can only afford to buy a new house with equity loans. Many of them return to renting because the interest rate for mortgages has climbed from 3 percent to 7 percent in the past few years, according to James, who says she’s felt the same pressure of rising costs to move out of Baker. ‘We have a huge problem,’ James told Mayor Mike Johnston at the meeting. ‘I don’t want to leave my neighborhood. I love my home, and I just don’t know where to even move.’”
“Buyer specialist Joel Picolo, best known for his role in the HGTV show Selling the Big Easy said a multi-million-dollar settlement is in the process of being implemented. A seller will now have to decide how much of the buyer agent’s commission they’re willing to pay, if at all. Picolo said many buyers only have enough savings for a downpayment and maybe closing costs. Now, those who are already on a tight budget have a greater chance having to be the ones to pay their agent. ‘Do you think a buyer is going to want to come out of pocket like that when we’re in a buyer’s market? No! We have seen the most inventory we’ve seen in years,’ Picolo said.”
“Builder confidence fell for the fourth month in a row in August. In August, 33% of builders cut prices, the NAHB said, up from 31% in July. That’s the highest share of builders slashing prices this year. The average price cut was 6%. Sixty-four percent of builders were using sales incentives other than price cuts to improve sales in August, up from 61% in July. These include offering mortgage-rate buydowns. The use of sales incentives was at the highest level since April 2019.”
“Home sales in the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metropolitan statistical area continue another month of decline comnewpared to 2023, with total sales, new listings and pending sales down, while active listings and inventory increased. Median prices in Bastrop, Caldwell, Hays and Williamson counties all decreased compared to July 2023, falling below the MSA’s median price of $450,000. ‘With [mortgage] rates around 6.5%, only about half of homeowners in our market can afford a median priced home and only about a quarter of renters can afford a starter home,’ ABOR housing economist Clare Knapp said in the report. ‘Home prices across the market still need to decrease to meet market conditions and meet buyers where their purchasing power is currently.’”
“There are growing concerns and calls for a special legislative session in Tallahassee to battle a growing issue among condo owners. ‘What this has done is kind of created a rush to the exits as many of these building owners are finding out that they need millions of dollars for repairs,’ said Jeff Brandes, a former Republican state senator in Pinellas County.”
“Over 400 deals to buy a home in Miami-Dade died in June. Over 500 fell apart before reaching the closing table in both May and April. The contracts were canceled. There was no deal. Over 16% of pending home sales have gone bust before closing in Miami-Dade County this year according to Redfin. A record number of home buying contracts were canceled nationwide in June. ‘In the first place, buyers won’t even probably go into a contract if they’re very skittish about the condo market,’ said Miami Association of Realtors Chief Economist Gay Cororaton. The pace of condo sales has fallen in South Florida as the end of the year deadline approaches for the condo reforms. The number of condos for sale has ballooned more than 30% compared to a year ago.”
“Steve Sonza served 16 years in the California National Guard and recently retired. He said the decision was based on medical need — now 100% disabled due to post traumatic stress disorder and memory loss. So, when his family enlisted Anchored Tiny Homes to build a $330,000-plus accessory dwelling unit (ADU) in the backyard, it seemed smart to link the contractor directly to their bank account — to ensure no payments were forgotten. The family says they got a state grant for $40,000, plus a home equity loan for more than $50,000 to pay Anchored Tiny Homes for initial plans and permits. All the transactions took place on the same day. In total, more than $221,000 was transferred to Anchored Tiny Homes’ account. ‘They took the money from our retirement savings. All of it, essentially,’ Sonza said. They ‘drained it.’ The family has nothing new in the yard. He said they’re out $315,700. One Bay Area district attorney’s office says it’s looking into the situation.”
“As the Toronto condo market faces a major slowdown, John Pasalis, president and broker of Realosophy Realty, said there are two major trends occurring. One is that sales have fallen due partly to the fact that end users are facing challenges when buying units and ‘investors have largely disappeared.’ ‘And on top of that, we have a lot of investors selling. They’re exiting the market. The units don’t make sense from a cash flow perspective,’ he said. Pasalis also highlighted that demand has fallen for pre-construction condos. ‘That’s because prices have been flat, so they’re thinking, what’s the point of buying a project if I don’t know where prices are going to be four years from now,’ he said.”
“As buyers continued to benefit from increased choice in the GTA marketplace last month, many sellers were forced to knock thousands of dollars — or in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars — off their properties just to finalize a sale. One recent example involves a four-bedroom, three-bathroom townhouse in Brampton, which originally sold for $1.25 million in March 2022, when cheaper borrowing rates contributed to heightened demand throughout the region. The home was re-listed in April 2024 for $1.1 million, but was put back on the market again as a power of sale in August. The home was sold for $875,000, representing a loss of $376,000 when compared to its price just two years earlier.”
“Hundreds of homes built for the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham are being sold off by the council at a projected loss of more than £300m, in a situation branded ‘nothing short of a scandal.’ The development was stalled because of the coronavirus pandemic, with the athletes housed in student accommodation instead. The 968 apartments have been sitting empty since they were eventually completed in 2023. The authority has spent £325m on the development, of which £292m was borrowed. The council report said the commissioners supported the decision to sell off the properties to an investor, but that lessons needed to be learned. ‘A rigorous analysis might well highlight areas of optimism bias and lack of awareness of risk which can guide a better understanding of both current and future proposals,’ the report said.”
“More than 400 houses in the huge Maritseng housing project in Matatiele in the Eastern Cape have been left half-built, with no roofs. The 1,500-house project, in several parts of Matatiele including Ramohlakoana, Jabavu, Maluti and Hardinburg, was launched in 2015. Resident Malebo Mofokeng said meanwhile people were living in mud houses. ‘The sad part is that our government doesn’t allow us to complete our RDP houses on our land,’ said Mofokeng. ‘Having a house that is incomplete in your yard is not a good thing. The incomplete house is a sign that our government failed to do financial management.’”
“Angry investors in China protested outside a shadow bank on Wednesday, after it missed payments on dozens of investment products. This rare show of public anger points to serious trouble amid debt and housing distress in the world’s second-largest economy. The protest took place outside the offices of Zhongrong International Trust in Beijing with about two dozen protesters demanding payment on their investment products. ‘The financial statements said there is a profit, and it has matured,’ a woman shouted angrily in the video, per an Insider translation. ‘So why aren’t you honoring your payments to us?’ In response, the company employee appeared to urge patience and calm, but the crowd continued to demand answers.”
“Jimmy Yang believed he was making a boring but safe investment when he bought convertible bonds of China Grand Automotive Services Group Co. in May. The country’s 801 billion yuan ($119 billion) convertible debt market was long an oasis of small but sound returns, providing shelter even during last year’s brutal market downturn. But by mid-July, the 38-year-old lost half of his 1 million yuan investment as tighter capital market rules led to panic selling in small-cap stocks and their related bonds, including Grand Auto’s. ‘I’d told myself it’s safe because it had an AA+ rating,’ said Yang, a finance director at a manufacturing company in the southern city of Guangzhou, adding that he’d been emboldened by past investment successes. He thinks authorities could have done a better job protecting investors like him, but unlike some others who’ve protested over their losses, he’s not optimistic about getting any money back. ‘I’ve lost hope,’ he said.”