A report from the Center Square. “‘I have to admit, even I am a little shocked at how fast the market decided to change,’ said Patrick Muldoon, a realtor in Colorado Springs. ‘It is like we had a really hot summer day and a few days later, a blizzard. One weekend we were watching buyers toss everything they could at a house just to have a chance. Four weeks later, sellers were still shell shocked they missed the top of the market.’ A steadily rising supply of housing inventory has helped to shift Colorado’s housing market in favor of homebuyers as many existing homes on the market are now seeing price reductions.”
The Pahrump Valley Times. “Southern Nevada home prices have cooled as buyers pulled further back in July. The once-sizzling market is becoming a more distant memory. The median sales price of previously owned single-family homes — the bulk of the market — was $465,000 in July, down 3.1 percent, or $15,000, from June, according to Las Vegas Realtors. In Pahrump, the median price for a home sold in July was $369,715, according to Rocket’s real estate report. That’s up more than $70,000 from a year ago but also down from previous months that saw peaks near $400,000.”
“‘We’re definitely seeing a shift in the housing market,’ LVR President Brandon Roberts said. ‘We haven’t seen prices slow down like this in several years.’ In July, more than 45 percent of Pahrump homes were sold below the asking price. Homes sat on the market about 20 days longer than they did the month prior.”
“Just over 27 percent of pending sales in the Las Vegas area fell through in June, the highest cancellation rate in the nation, according Redfin, which reported that home sales nationally were nixed at the highest rate since the onset of the pandemic. Also, some 20 percent of Southern Nevada listings had a price cut in June, the fourth-highest share in the U.S., Zillow reported.”
“Agent Jillian Batchelor said the market was still heated early this year but started to turn as interest rates climbed higher. Just three or four months ago, buyers were paying $10,000 over the asking price, but now they’re offering at or below the listing price and seeking concessions, said Batchelor, who also pointed to the surge of price cuts in Southern Nevada. ‘The market is definitely turning,’ she said.”
The Sun Sentinel in Florida. “More people are looking to put their homes on the market as internet searches for selling a house have shot up. Searches online for ‘sell my house’ have soared in the United States, rising 147% as of July, according to an analysis. ‘We have been inundated with seller calls. They know that things have shifted so they want to know how much their house is going to sell for and if they can get what their neighbor got three months ago,’ said Patty Da Silva, broker with Green Realty Properties in Cooper City, noting they’ve had a 25-30% increase in such calls.”
“It’s also reflected in the amount of new homes headed to the market. According to numbers from Whitney Dutton with the Dutton Group in Fort Lauderdale, there’s been about 36% increase in the number of single-family homes coming on the market per week in Fort Lauderdale in August when compared to the year before.”
“‘Let’s say you missed 5% of the market by selling now as opposed to six months ago. If you are going to repurchase, you are going to get that same benefit on the other side,’ Dutton said. ‘Sellers that are investors definitely feel that they have missed 5 or 10% of the market because the multiple offer situation isn’t like it was a year ago.’”
From Forbes. “As July settles into August, the New York real estate market has settled into its own peculiar rhythm. The most expensive neighborhoods have gone quite dormant. Desirable large properties in top buildings, priced at $10 million or more, don’t seem to generate a call or an e-mail requesting a showing from one week to the next. Interestingly, this holds true in the condominium as well as the co-op market. Sponsors are negotiating far more extensively than they were at this time last year, and even with that, contracts signed are down 30% or more.”
“Competitive bidding is largely gone, as are sales over the asking price. Most buyers these days prefer to wait for the next one rather than, as they see it, ‘overpay.’”
The Pacific Business News on Hawaii. “Neighbor Island home sales continued to cool in July, while median sale prices largely continued to increase over the same month last year, according to recent sales statistics. While prices for homes and condominiums on Maui showed positive gains, the market ‘continued its lowdown, showing considerable declines in the number of pending and closed sales compared to the same time last year,’ according to the Realtors Association of Maui.”
“There were 88 single-family homes sold on the Valley Isle in July compared to 110 sold in July 2021, a decline of 20%, while the number of condominiums sold declined 52.9% July-over-July, from 210 in 2021 to 99 last month. There also were 70 homes going under contract, or pending, last month compared to 120 the prior year, a decline of 41.7%, and 95 condos pending compared to 157 in July 2021, a drop of 39.5%.”
“Similar sales trends were seen on both Hawaii Island and Kauai in June, according to ales statistics from those islands. However, the single-family home market on Kauai was the only segment to see a decline in median home prices.”
The Dallas Morning News. “The median sale price of a home in the Dallas-Fort Worth area was $421,000 in July, up 15% from July 2021 but down 3% from June. ‘It was such a remarkably good year that it was going to take a miracle for [sales] to go back up again,’ said Jim Gaines, an economist at the Texas Real Estate Research Center. ‘It was going to take the continuation of 2% and 3% interest rates, which didn’t happen, of course.’”
“The count of active listings across Dallas-Fort Worth increased 59% to 18,378 homes because properties are sitting on the market and selling less quickly. A separate report from Realtor.com showed that 27% of properties on the market in Dallas-Fort Worth have had their prices reduced. Michael Hershenberg, a real estate agent in Southlake for Keller Williams, said that as the market softens, buyers who get VA and FHA loans and therefore can’t always pay tens of thousands over the asking price against cash buyers are now finding more success in getting under contract. ‘It’s the correction that needed to happen,’ he said.”
A press release. “According to Redfin, 61.2% of for-sale homes were on the market for at least 30 days, up from 54.4% a year earlier.That’s the first year-over-year increase in ‘stale’ housing supply since the beginning of the pandemic and close to the biggest uptick in Redfin’s records, which go back to 2012. The share of for-sale Oakland, CA homes sitting on the market for at least 30 days was up 60.7% year over year in July, the biggest increase of the 50 most populous U.S. metros. It’s followed by Phoenix, where the share of stale inventory rose 54.5% year over year. Next come Austin (50.9%) and a pair of Southern California metros: Anaheim (49.7%) and Riverside (46.7%). Fort Worth (43.4%), Dallas (42.9%), Washington, D.C. (42.5%), Sacramento 41.7%) and Seattle (41.3%) round out the top 10.”
“More than half of those places–Oakland, Phoenix, Austin, Anaheim, Riverside, Sacramento and Seattle–are among the 20 housing markets that cooled fastest in the first half of 2022. ‘The market did a 180-degree turn from early spring to late spring, with buyers backing out because of high mortgage rates. A lot of sellers are telling me they feel that they’ve missed out on the hot market,’ said Christopher Johns, a Redfin agent in Houston, where the share of stale inventory rose 10.2% year over year in July. ‘I’m reminding prospective sellers that we’re not in a housing-market crash; it’s a correction. If sellers list their home for slightly less than they would have five months ago, they’re still likely to get a solid offer.’”
From Mansion Global. “A 10-acre mountain estate in Alamo, California is headed for auction later this month with no reserve. Located to the east of Oakland in Contra Costa County and approximately 28 miles outside of San Francisco, the estate sits on the ridgeline of the Alamo mountains and is designed to show off panoramic views nearby Mt. Diablo, according to the listing with Dana Green of Compass. The property initially came on the market for $19.8 million in July 2020, Mansion Global reported at the time. It’s currently on the market with Ms. Green—who was not immediately available for comment—asking $17.75 million, should a buyer want to purchase it before the auction. Bidding opens on Aug. 16 and runs through Aug. 22.”
From CBC News in Canada. “Homes are also staying on the market longer in Greater Sudbury, said David Kurt, the broker of record with Lake City Realty in Sudbury. ‘Right now, buyers have a lot more opportunities to look at a house a couple of times before deciding, make an offer, and then maybe even make a conditional offer,’ Kurt said. Kurt said higher interest rates have helped cool housing demand, but there’s also an emotional component that has led to less demand. ‘When the market went up, they [buyers] thought, ‘If I didn’t buy today, then I would never be able to afford to buy,’ he said.”
“Kurt said increasing real estate prices during the pandemic also led to more Realtors in Greater Sudbury. Before the pandemic, he said, the city had about 338 agents, but that has increased to about 450 agents. ‘So there are a lot of new agents out there and there’s going to be a lot less transactions happening, which means a lot of these agents are not going to be making money to be able to survive,’ Kurt said.”
From Introducer Today. “HBB Solutions looked at those homes currently on the market who have opted to drop their asking price expectations and by what margin they’ve chosen to do so.Across Britain, the research shows that homesellers who are choosing to drop their asking price are doing so by 19.8% on average, reducing from £380,637 to £305,353 – a £75,284 reduction.”
“The regions where sellers are most frequently forced to reduce their asking price are the South East and London, where local reductions account for 24% and 14% respectively of all property asking price reductions spanning Britain. Yet, it’s the sellers in the North East that are being forced to apply the most significant asking price reductions, typically coming down by 20.5%, followed by the West Midlands (20.4%), Yorkshire & Humber (20.2%), and Wales, (20.2%).”
Newshub New Zealand. “The latest QV House Price index for the three months ending in July shows the national average price of a home is now $989,790, dropping by 4.9 percent in the quarter. The average house price in Auckland, Tauranga and Queenstown Lakes District remains above $1 million, but the City of Sails saw the average house price drop to $1,410,163, down 5.5 percent in the quarter. Wellington was harder hit with a drop of 11 percent to $960,004, down by $130,000 over the quarter.”
“QV Operations Manager Paul McCorry said the reduction in annual growth across the country was ‘staggering.’ ‘The almost 30 percent national growth we were reporting at the turn of the year is now down to just 4 percent, and that is only half the story. ‘Locations such as Wellington, Palmerston North and Dunedin, which saw such meteoric increases in mid to late 2021, have had those capital gains wiped out and are now into negative growth over 12 months – the first time in a decade this has happened in Dunedin.’”
“McCorry said while the numbers were ‘jaw-dropping,’ it was no surprise the regions that had seen the highest rises were now seeing the biggest falls. Auckland QV valuer Hugh Robinson said buyers in the city were being more cautious and FOMO had long gone from the market. Wellington’s residential property downturn continues to ‘snowball,’ with home values declining for the sixth straight month. Home values have declined across the wider region by an average of 12.2 percent over the last six months, with the rate of reduction escalating in recent months – from a drop of 1.6 percent in April, to 2.4 percent in May, 2.8% in June, and now 4 percent in July.”
The Sydney Morning Herald in Australia. “Byron Bay’s property boom has begun to slow down, as new figures show its rate of house price growth has halved and experts say prices could plateau or fall later in the year. Domain chief of research and economics Dr Nicola Powell said there had been a marked slowdown in Byron’s property market. ‘What it illustrates is one, that the boom has eased, that has gone and passed, and two, people who have investment properties, or locals, have decided to sell out because it has been such a lucrative time during the pandemic,’ Powell said. ‘Byron Bay property is certainly on the slowdown.’”
From the BBC. “‘Construction stops, mortgage stops. Deliver homes and get repaid!’ That was one of the chants disgruntled apartment buyers in China used at a protest in June. But their ire over unfinished homes didn’t stop at signs and chants. Hundreds of them stopped paying their mortgages – a radical step for China, where dissent is not tolerated. A young couple who moved to Zhengzhou in central China told the BBC that after receiving the down payment last year, the developer withdrew from the project and construction stalled.”
“‘I have imagined countless times the joy of living in a new home, but now it all feels ridiculous,’ the woman, who did not wish to be named, said. A woman in her late 20s who also bought a home in Zhengzhou told the BBC that she too is ready to stop paying her mortgage: ‘After the project is fully resumed, I’ll continue paying.’ Many of them can pay but are choosing not to, unlike the US subprime mortgage crisis in 2007 when money was lent to high-risk borrowers who then defaulted.”
“Experts believe contagion is the concern now – banks won’t lend if they believe the sector is tanking. ‘It will all depend on policy,’ says Ding Shuang, head of Greater China economic research at Standard Chartered. ‘Unlike in other parts of the world where property bubbles break because of the markets, this is government-inflicted.’”
“This crisis is the clearest indication yet that China’s economy is at a crossroads. ‘The government is trying its best to find new sources of growth but that’s going to be challenging because the economy has been very reliant on property, infrastructure investment and exports over the last three decades,’ said Julian Evans-Pritchard, a senior China economist at Capital Economics. ‘The era of very rapid growth in China is probably now over… and that’s most obvious in the property sector at the moment.’”