A report from KUTV Salt Lake City in Utah. “‘We keep talking about housing crash, housing crash, housing crash,’ said Dejan Eskic, senior research fellow at the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute — but he doesn’t see that happening. ‘The market’s on fire.’”
“Things have calmed down – a little. ‘The last 90, 120 days we’ve actually been able to breathe,’ said Clay Winder, a realtor at Keller Williams Westfield Real Estate. ‘It is still a seller’s market over a buyer’s market,’ Winder said, adding that it’s still hot – just not ‘habanero hot. We’re back down to chili sauce hot.’”
The Ahwatukee Foothill News. “The average sale prices for Ahwatukee properties dipped last month while inventory was up slightly and the number of units sold slightly decreased. The average price of a home sold in Ahwatukee decreased in November to $536,195 – down 5.6% from $566,695 in August. The marketing time to get a contract increased from 21 days in August to 31 in November.”
“In August, the number of units that closed escrow slipped to 125 units – 23% less than the average 155 units sold per month in the January-August market. The trend we noted in August continues in the November market with 135 units closing escrow. If inventory continues to increase and the number of units sold continues to decline, it could bode well for frustrated buyers.”
“There could be a slowing or even a reversal of the rising prices as well as an increase in the number of homes for sale. The increase in the number of active listings and the lower average prices of closed listings in November could portend a slowing down of property price increases in Ahwatukee. Metro Phoenix and Ahwatukee homeowners were hit hard by declining home values between 2007 and 2009. The current hot market is reminiscent of the market we experienced leading up to the real estate debacle. But now is not then.”
The Redwood City Press in California. “Like many other neighborhoods along the Peninsula, North Fair Oaks has recently become a hotbed for new developments. Texts and phone calls from developers wanting to buy the residents’ homes, often in cash, are the norm. But many feel that the past year has ushered in a new era, due in large part to Thomas James Homes, a Los Angeles-based real estate agency that has become a ubiquitous (and, by many, hated) name in parts of the Peninsula and South Bay.”
“Since coming last December into North Fair Oaks – San Mateo County’s largest unincorporated area, located between Redwood City and Menlo Park – TJ Homes has purchased half a dozen properties, tearing down the existing houses and building larger, more expensive ones in their place.”
“It wasn’t just the suddenness with which TJ Homes began buying up properties that put the residents on high alert, but the fact that $1.5 million ranch-style houses were becoming two-story mansions that tower over the adjacent homes and sell for double the cost. ‘My patio, my bedroom, my living room, my other bedroom, my bathroom, they all look out west,’ said 36-year resident Susanne Beattie, who lives adjacent to one of TJ Homes’ new developments. ‘And now here they are, 5 feet away, putting up a just-a-couple-inches-under-27-foot house. And the second story has nine windows looking onto me.’”
“In the last five years alone, the median housing price in San Mateo County has nearly doubled, from $1,350,000 in October 2016 to $2,110,000 in October 2021, according to the California Association of Realtors. Redfin reported a 100.2% increase in home prices in November, compared to last year, with houses selling for a median of $2 million.”
The New York Post. “What would we do with a half-billion square feet of Manhattan office space if most of it remains empty? It’s the loaded question about the city’s future that not even our brightest, most optimistic minds want to touch. What if our office towers, the pride of our skyline, turn into towering white elephants?”
From Stuff New Zealand. “The relentless rise of house prices defined the market in 2021, but experts say the tide has turned and next year will be different. Auction activity was reported to be cooling, with fewer attendees and bidders, and more auctions passing in. CoreLogic chief property economist Kelvin Davidson says the market is slowing and there are four key reasons why: affordability challenges, rising mortgage rates, a tighter lending environment and an increase in listings.”
“Kiwibank chief economist Jarrod Kerr says at the start of the year a two-year rate in the low 2s was common, but now finding a two-year fixed rate below 4 per cent is virtually impossible. And they have further to go, with an increase of another percentage point likely across the board, he says. ‘While that will still be much lower than the double-digit highs of the past, it is a meaningful increase, and it will be shocking to many people who have only experienced rates falling.’”
“After months at record lows, listings have started rising. The latest Realestate.co.nz figures show new listings at the highest level in seven years and the total number of houses for sale up 5.1 per cent annually in November. New CoreLogic analysis supports this, with the total stock of listings up almost 40 per cent since its recent trough. Davidson says while the level of listings is still low, the gap to where they were at the same time in previous years is steadily closing.”
“‘The turning point does look to have been reached, and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see listings continue to increase into 2022, as new sellers come forward and sales activity itself tails off further,’ he said.”
From Al Jazeera. “China’s crackdown on private enterprise in 2021 wiped more than $1 trillion off the market value of some of the country’s largest companies. The crackdown has left many businesses and investors wondering nervously about the future of growth and innovation in China. ‘For companies, this means that their job is no longer to make money, but instead to contribute to societal goods,’ Trey McArver, an analyst at Trivium China, told Al Jazeera. ‘Where companies are not seen doing that, they will face swift regulatory action.’”
“The lending curbs have been cited as a primary driver of the liquidity crisis that led to two of China’s largest private developers – Evergrande Group and Kaisa – defaulting on their loans. ‘The regulatory crackdowns are part of a broader paradigm shift that has taken place in how Beijing is approaching its economic policy and management,’ Shehzad Qazi, managing director of China Beige Book International, told Al Jazeera. ‘This includes acknowledging that China’s old debt-fueled, investment-heavy growth model has run out of road.’”