It’s Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. “Denver-area realtors are seeing something that hasn’t happened in nearly a decade: the market is starting to cool off. Sunny Banka with the Colorado Association of Realtors already seen this materialize with a ranch she listed for a client in Aurora. Weeks ago, Banka said she would expect more than 30 showings for the $600,000 home with five to six offers. Now, they only had a couple of showings and actually lowered the listing price to drive up more interest.”
“Part of the slowing demand is the real cost of monthly payments going up with rates, which could mean roughly $150 more per month in payments. ‘The reality of it is to qualify for that extra payment, you are going to need three to four times that in discretionary income available,’ Banka said.”
“‘If a home is on the market for more than a week, people start to wonder why or assume something is wrong with it,’ said Redfin Boston real estate agent James Gulden. ‘Every offer I’ve written recently has faced multiple offers, but some people have finally had enough of all the competition and are pulling out. They’re becoming less willing to make a risky offer in a high-stress bidding war situation.’”
“‘We saw a clear shift in the housing market as rates rose to 5% at the end of March,’ Devyn Bachman, vice president of research at John Burns Real Estate Consulting, told the magazine. ‘We are hearing about qualification issues, rising cancellations, and increased buyer hesitancy, particularly at entry-level price points and in remote locations.’”
“‘If you find yourself saying out loud, ‘I think I can stretch my budget to buy this home,’ don’t do it,’ Dvorkin told ConsumerAffairs. Dvorkin says giving up a right to an inspection was always a bad idea, just like buying a used car without test driving it. ‘Would you trust the seller who says, ‘Don’t worry, I only drive it to church on Sundays, give me your money?’ he asked. ‘Homes are more expensive than cars, so never waive an inspection. Shortcuts might get you into a home or car quicker, but then you’re stuck paying for anything that goes wrong. And trust me, cars and homes always break.’”
“The tragedy of many recently built New York skyscrapers in a city where millions struggle to find affordable housing is that so many apartments aren’t occupied, their owners — many in China — buying them as speculative investments. Studies have suggested there’s a glut in the market for these homes, with many remaining unsold for long periods of time. They don’t have the greatest customer satisfaction record. It’s long been accepted that super-tall, super-skinny skyscrapers will move significantly in a brisk wind (experiencing this for the first time can be unnerving and even nausea-inducing, although you tend to get used to it).”
“The ‘chic’ and contemporary one-bedroom unit #405 in the Rowan at 338 Potrero Avenue, just sold for $775,000 or $1,194 per square foot. The sale was 2.5 percent below its original list price of $795,000 in January and $100,000 below the $875,000 that the seller paid for the ‘used’ condo with a den/office space in April of 2019, representing an 11.4 percent drop in value on an apples-to-apples basis over the past 3 years. The sale was also 1.8 percent below the $789,000 price at which the unit originally traded hands in March of 2017.”
“Bank of Montreal senior economist Robert Kavcic said: ‘There was a lot of excess demand built on the fact that home prices were expected to keep rising quickly. As that expectation changes, the demand disappears, and does so very quickly,’ he said. ‘We’re definitely seeing a shift,’ said Melissa Charlton, broker with the Charlton Advantage real estate team, who has sold homes in the Milton area for about 17 years. ‘Buyers are a little bit more wary and also they have more options,’ Ms. Charlton said. She added that she noticed a change around mid-March after the first interest rate hike. Homes are taking longer to sell and not drawing as many bids.”
“The Vancouver real estate market is cooling down, and luxury properties are no exception. Buyers are ‘increasingly wary of property prices significantly inflated above current norms and weary of multiple offer scenarios,’ the Sotheby’s report noted. ‘As a result, despite strong consumer demand and limited inventory, luxury properties that have been over-ambitiously priced compared to neighbourhood comparables are less likely to draw multiple bids and are at increasing risk of languishing on the market.’”
“Residents have expressed their frustration with life on the A52 in Radcliffe-on-Trent, with some saying they regret moving to the roadwork-plagued area. One resident, who wished to remain anonymous as she intended to one day sell her house, said she regretted moving in two years ago. ‘We bought it during lockdown,’ she said. ‘So we didn’t realise how bad it could get. I regret buying it, absolutely 100 per cent.’”
“House prices may have already fallen further than some figures suggest, according to the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand’s latest House Price Index. Nationally, the HPI is down 4.3% from its peak, with the biggest falls occurring in the Auckland and Wellington regions with the HPI down 7.8% from its peak in both regions. Over the three months to the end of March the HPI had declined in eight regions, increased in three and was unchanged in one. That suggests the decline in prices is now widespread and is gathering pace.”
“‘FOMO (fear of missing out) appears to have given way to INPT (I’m not paying that), aka FOOP (fear of over-paying), aka FOBAP (fear of buying at peak). No matter the acronym, it’s all the same: animal spirits have changed direction, and that has the potential to surprise even the best house price models,’ said ANZ senior economist Miles Workman.”
“Beaconsfield, in Sydney’s inner south, had the biggest decline of 7.2 per cent, taking median house prices back to $1.793 million. Almost half of Melbourne’s 648 house and unit markets went backwards in the first three months of 2022. Upmarket Cremorne in the city’s inner south-east having the biggest quarterly drop of 6.4 per cent, taking mid-point house prices back to $1.446 million.”
“CoreLogic head of research Eliza Owen said the more upmarket suburbs were leading the downturn. ‘It is likely that slightly tighter lending conditions and higher average fixed rates are hitting the very top of housing markets first,’ she said. ‘These same areas are seeing some of the bigger jumps in advertised stock levels too so as we see new demand for housing in these areas decline buyers have more choice, more time for decision-making, and more power at the negotiating table.’”