A report from 19 News Cleveland. “Layoffs happened at a popular home mortgage company headquartered in Northeast Ohio. Union Home Mortgage in a statement told 19 News they are temporarily adjusting staffing levels to accommodate rapidly changing conditions in the housing market. But, a newly laid-off employee says the company was continually hiring, and even expanding, while struggling for business and the writing was on the wall. Max Berger says, ‘I think half our department is gone, it’s probably the biggest department in the company. At least 75 at least got laid off.’”
“Berger found out last Tuesday he was out of a job along with dozens of others. Berger worked as a Connect Team Partner to find leads for loan officers. ‘They just told us we don’t have much business anymore. There’s not enough leads to go around for everyone to make money and for the company to make money,’ Berger told 19 News. ‘Everyone knew that what happened in the last two years in the mortgage industry was kind of an anomaly, and there was going to come to a point where it was going to come back down to earth, and they just kept hiring people and hiring people.’”
From WPTV in Florida. “After losing 12 offers on other homes to cash buyers, Brooks Feeser closed on a three-bedroom, two-bath Hobe Sound home in February for $430,000. With the security of owning a home comes the reality of paying for it. Feeser is a boat captain who is working 14-hour days, seven days a week to make ends meet. ‘The sale price of the house is scary. Will I get upside down on this? I will work hard to make sure that doesn’t happen,’ he said.”
From GV Wire in California. “Mayor Jerry Dyer’s ‘One Fresno Housing Plan’ should inspire interesting comments and divergent views today during the city council’s 1 p.m. special meeting. The same report also declares that ‘Fresno has a glut of 28,310 single-family detached units over and above what Fresno households need based on household size.’ Try telling that to everyone who is paying $10,000 to $50,000 over the asking price for a home right now. Fresno can’t be the nation’s most overcooked housing market if it has 28,310 too many single-family homes. In that scenario, prices would plummet, builders would exit, and real estate agents would look for another line of work.”
The San Antonio News Express in Texas. “Chimene Van Gundy refers to herself as the ‘Queen of Mobile Homes’ and ‘the Mobile Home Millionaire.’ The monikers reflect the business she says she’s built buying manufactured homes on the cheap, fixing them up and then flipping them for a tidy profit. Some who have invested with Van Gundy expecting heady returns, however, have a far different take on the entrepreneur. They say she’s reneged on principal and interest payments on the loans they made to her. And they allege she’s orchestrated a Ponzi scheme that has collectively cost them and others at least a few million dollars.”
“A Comal County judge recently appointed a receiver to take control of one of Van Gundy’s firms — Outstanding Real Estate Solutions Inc. (ORES) — and her personal financial affairs. Part of the receiver’s job will be to locate assets and preserve what’s left for creditors. There may be little to recover.”
“‘Everything we’ve seen indicates ORES has no assets,’ attorney Clayton Matheson, who represents some investors, said in arguing for a receiver during a court hearing. ‘The only property ORES is affiliated with is (her) homestead, which Ms. Van Gundy tried to sell…without telling us. So, at the end of the day, there’s nothing there,’ he said.”
The New York Post. “Their money was meant to help create jobs — instead it appears to have gone towards buying one man three mansions. So claims the Securities and Exchange Commission in a case filed against Queens developer Richard Xia. ‘Since 2018, many investors have been demanding the return of their funds, including through lawsuits,’ a late 2021 SEC filing states. ‘To date, no investor has received his or her capital contributions back. And given that the projects consist of an unfinished building and a hole in the ground with insufficient funds to complete either project, the prospects for investors to receive their capital contributions back are remote at best.’”
From CTV News. “It appears the red hot real estate market in Canada’s largest city is finally cooling down. ‘We are starting to see significant drops in some communities of more than 20 per cent for single detached homes in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA)’ said Michael Carney, the director of business development at HouseSigma.”
“According to it’s latest figures of GTA home prices, detached homes sold in February were selling for a median price of 12.1 per cent less in April, a price drop from $1.65 million to $1.45 million. Semi-detached homes dropped 13.5 per cent in the same period from $1.33 million to $1.15 million and the biggest drop was in freehold townhouses which were selling for 22.6 per cent less a drop from $1.24 million to $960,000. Condominiums had the smallest decrease of 6.8 per cent, a drop from $740,000 to $690,000.”
From CBC News. “Canada’s red-hot housing market is finally showing signs that it may be cooling. Suddenly, the housing market isn’t quite as absurdly hot as it was even just a month ago. ‘January, February was kind of peak insanity,’ said Vancouver real estate agent Steve Saretsky. ‘It kind of feels like someone turned the lights out.’”
“Saretsky says it will be worse. He’s already seeing properties sell for 10 or 12 per cent lower than comparable homes sold just six or eight weeks ago. ‘That’s comparing it off a peak price, where I think people in February had lost their marbles and were paying way too much,’ he said.”
From News.com.au. “More than half of Aussies who took out a new home loan with one of the major banks lied about their circumstances on the advice of their banker to make sure their loan was approved, shocking new research has revealed. It found that 55 per cent of respondents who had taken a mortgage with ANZ in the six months to December 2021 had made false representations on their application, investment bank UBS’ survey showed.”
“‘We think this is particularly concerning, given ANZ’s persistent declines in mortgage market share, and the fact that 81 per cent of the 93 respondents who misrepresented their ANZ originated loan claim they were advised to do so by their banker,’ said UBS analyst John Storey in the analysis.”
From Domain News. “Australia’s extraordinary run of house price growth has finally come to an end in all but a couple of cities, with the latest data revealing a patchwork of property markets slowing across the nation. House prices fell in Melbourne, Canberra and Darwin over the March quarter, according to the latest Domain House Price Report, released Thursday, while Sydney’s once skyrocketing price growth has now stalled and flatlined.”
“The easing of prices comes as a relief to Sydney first-home buyer Marty Newkirk, who sat on the sidelines of the property market last year watching on in disbelief. ‘Just recently we passed up a house that we were pretty interested in because we felt that we could now probably get something very similar, but for cheaper,’ he said. ‘It felt like the vendors were still hanging on to the end of the bull market, so we walked away. That’s a big change. We might have pulled the trigger on that one if we thought the market was still going up.’”
“Buyer’s agent Peter Kelaher said the pandemic property boom had been an unrealistic and unsustainable situation. ‘It was the biggest property boom in 40 years. It’s over. What we’ll enter into now is a fairly flat sort of market for the next couple of years that looks more like the 2018/2019 market,’ he said. ‘Some vendors still want 2021 prices and the market is just not paying that.’”