It’s Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. “”I’ve had clients call and say ‘I want to sell at the peak,’ and I say, ‘Great, can we sell two months ago? The reason for that is – the peak is over,’ said Andrew Abrams, Chair of the Market Trends Committee for the Denver Metro Association of Realtors.”
“Melvin A. Viera, president of the Greater Boston Association of Realtors, said the frenzied market of the past few years is over He as a message for sellers and agents who still expect to get 20 offers the first day a home hits the market. ‘Understand, we’re in a market that has shifted,’ he said. ‘The buyer who could have bought your $400,000 home with a three percent mortgage? That buyer is no longer there now that rates are around six percent. You’re going to have to price appropriately and realistically, look at the competition and see what they’re doing, adjust your marketing. And we’re all going to have to be patient.’”
“Western Washington’s brokers reporting more inventory, double-digit drops in pending and closed sales. ‘What the changes mean in general terms are more houses on the market, longer market times, stabilizing home prices, fewer showings and open house visitors, fewer offers at one time, and more price adjustments,’ said Frank Wilson, Kitsap regional manager at John L. Scott Real Estate. ‘While there was a decrease in closed and pending sales in June, there is no reason to panic as we continue to move toward a more balanced market,’ said John Deely, executive vice president of operations at Coldwell Banker Bain.”
“In Bend, the median price of a single-family home leveled off at $722,000 in June, according to the Beacon Report. That’s a slight drop from May’s median single-family home price of $740,000 and below the peak price set in Mach at $773,000. In June, there were 381 homes listed for sale in Bend, compared to 153 in the same period the year before. ‘In this kind of market, buyers have a more favorable position because they have more homes to choose from,’ said Donnie Montagner, owner of Beacon Appraisal Group.”
“San Francisco is starting to see prices fall for the first time since the depths of the pandemic. The median house price in the city dropped 3% from a year earlier to $1.89 million in June, according to a report by Compass Inc., after cresting above a record $2 million in the previous three months. Bay Area homes are taking longer to sell and bidding wars are less intense, leading to a smaller share of sales above listing prices, Patrick Carlisle, San Francisco Bay area market analyst for Compass said in his report. But there’s unlikely to be a housing crash comparable to 2008, he said, because most owners today have affordable mortgages and won’t be forced to sell. ‘A correction is not a crash,’ he wrote.”
“The giant sucking sound in the home loan industry grew louder Wednesday when Sprout Mortgage told employees it’s going out of business. A former employee of the Long Island-based mortgage lender told the publication that Sprout had already slashed its workforce several times. JP Morgan Chase, the biggest bank in the country two weeks ago laid off hundreds of employees from its home-lending division. Wells Fargo, the biggest banking mortgage lender in the country, laid off or reassigned employees around the same time. Mr. Cooper, a Dallas-based lender, in June laid off 5 percent of its staff, or 450 employees, after cutting 250 employees earlier in the year. The company’s direct lending business was down 32 percent year-over-year.”
“As Toronto‘s once-hot real estate market continues to shows signs of cooling, one realtor says sellers are growing increasingly ‘desperate.’ Brett Stein, of Toronto’s Stein Realty Group, said those looking to buy a home now have more negotiating power as lowball offers are becoming more common place. ‘Right now, I mean, the table’s open for negotiation. Low ball offers are coming in on houses hundreds of thousands of dollars lower than the asking price and as a seller you can’t get offended. You have to play ball,’ he told CTV News Channel Thursday. ‘A lot of people are desperate to sell right now because they’ve already purchased their next home and in order to get that financing, they need to sell and they need to sell quick.’”
“What does falling home prices mean for Canadians? Economist Stephen Brown announced on June 7 that any further ‘aggressive approach to policy tightening than is ultimately required’ could ‘sharply lower’ housing prices and risk a ‘major recession.’ For Ron Butler, a mortgage broker at Butler Mortgage, Brown’s report ‘undershoots how bad it’s gonna get.’ ‘They’re talking about a 15 per cent reduction in prices. We’re thinking 25 per cent, up to 30 per cent, across Canada,’ Butler said. ‘Some regions have already gone down 30 per cent,’ Butler said, citing ‘north Brampton is down 30 per cent, parts of Durham and parts of Vaughan are down 30 per cent.’”
“‘It has ground to a stunning halt,’ says Phoebe Blamey, a director of Clover Financial Solutions, about demand in Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs, which has powered property price growth for the past 18 months. ‘Buyers are angry because the prices being asked are too high, and sellers won’t budge because the offers are too low to sell,’ says Blamey about the growing mismatch in market expectations. Properties that six months ago would have sold in a weekend are lingering for months as attendance at inspections continues to dwindle, she says.”
“‘The boom is over and property prices are falling, with the pace of decline accelerating,’ says Shane Oliver, AMP Capital’s chief economist. In Sydney, buyers’ agent Patrick Bright says there’s increasing ‘argy-bargy’ in the market because the likelihood that prices will tumble in coming months is resulting in buyers not being willing to pay the asking price. ‘That’s the mental gymnastics being caused by increasingly negative sentiment,’ says Bright.”
“Martin North, principal of Digital Finance Analytics, an independent financial services consultancy, who also expects prices to fall by about 20 per cent, warns buyers’ confidence is falling and capacity to pay is rapidly weakening because of rising interest rates. ‘If you really need to sell, then you have to sell,’ says North about rising living costs forcing some sales. ‘Lenders are discreetly encouraging troubled property owners to put their places on the market.’”
“The number of distressed residential listings jumped by more than 10 per cent across NSW in June compared to the previous month, as owners struggled with falling demand and rising costs, according to SQM Research. The Gold Coast has the highest number of distressed listings, with 315 homes, followed by Western Australia’s central coast area with 201, and Queensland’s Sunshine Coast with 185, according to SQM.
“Distressed residential property listings happen when a property has to be sold quickly, often at a reduced price and possible financial loss for the owner. Recent examples of heavily discounted sales include a three-bedroom, freestanding Victorian cottage in Port Pirie, South Australia, which had a price cut of $119,000 to $99,000 after being on the market for more than 420 days.”
“In Seven Hills, about 36 kilometres north-west of Sydney, a six-bedroom, two bathroom weatherboard house has had its price reduced by $20,000 to $930,000 after being on the market for 55 days. A home in Tartura, about 180 kilometres north of Melbourne, has had its price slashed from $870,000 to $660,000 after being on the market for 58 days.”