A report from WVUE. “Many Louisianans are feeling the pain of soaring homeowners insurance premiums, and there are projections things could worsen. Cheron Brylski has had enough. When Brylski and her husband moved into their 3,400-square foot home on Coliseum Street in Uptown New Orleans nearly 30 years ago, they poured everything they had into it. For two decades, they made many memories in their home, until Cheron’s husband Harold died in 2015. Recently and reluctantly, she decided she had to sell her home of almost 30 years because of the insurance cost. ‘It’s, basically, making living in a house that I own — and I own outright — impossible to stay here,’ she said. ‘And I’m not the only one in New Orleans experiencing that. You can drive around this neighborhood and others and see a ton of ‘For Sale’ signs.’ Brylski has listed her four-bedroom, 2½-bath home at $1.1 million, but finding someone who can afford to buy and insure it is another matter. So far, she’s only shown it to one prospective buyer.”
From Moneywise. “‘Affordability was always a problem — an increasing problem in the last three or four years — but now it’s truly an availability problem,’ Michael McCarron, owner of Lakeside Insurance in Arvada, Colorado, told WSJ. McCarron said many of his clients’ home insurance bills are ballooning by 20% to 40% a year. While price growth could slow down in 2025, he doesn’t expect insurance premiums to return to what they were before the 2021 Marshall Fire, which blazed through neighborhoods between Denver and Boulder. ‘This is the new normal,’ he said.”
From Fox 4. “Condo living has been a popular lifestyle in Florida for decades, but with rising insurance costs and HOA fees could this lifestyle be coming to an end? At the Dolphin Way of Hickory Point condo complex on Little Hickory Island, Jim Boehme says residents have paid more than $50,000 a piece in assessments to get the complex back open. ‘Very frustrated,’ Boehme said, describing the situation. ‘If we had the insurance money we would be done.’ In Cape Coral, the neighbors who live at the Somerville at Sandoval condo complex told Fox 4 they’re currently in a legal battle with their insurance provider. ‘It’s been a hardship on a lot of residents here,’ Anthony Marchese told Fox 4.”
The Los Angeles Times in California. “For sale at $875,000, the Hollywood listing boasted that the house was featured in the 1970s classic film ‘Chinatown’ and was minutes away from the studios. But despite being one of the cheaper options in the area, it drew no offers. In May, the seller cut the asking price by $50,000. ‘Some people felt the neighborhood was an issue,’ explained Bobby Duarte, the listing agent. At $994,522, the average Hollywood home price is 8% below the peak in the neighborhood. Other places experiencing price declines are the central L.A. neighborhoods of Arlington Heights, downtown and the area surrounding MacArthur Park, where apartment blocks are overcrowded and crime is high. Firefighters this month found a man lying face down, dead in the park’s lake.”
“Duarte said some people felt the nearby area wasn’t that safe, but he didn’t know why. Recently, the editor of an organized labor publication said, a couple parked their old Hyundai Elantra on his street and left piles of garbage on it. Alex Weber, 39, lives nearby and said he’s never been the victim of a crime, but he noted that sex workers are a common sight on Western Avenue at night and he’s seen an increase in homeless encampments in the last few years. ‘They were cool,’ Weber said. ‘But I can’t imagine it creates a good impression when you go in to see a unit that just hit the market and … what’s happening in front of you is an unpleasant scene of chaos and human desperation.’”
From Boston 25 in Massachusetts. “The warmer weather is bringing the crowds back to Boston’s open-air drug market, and neighbors say it’s fanning out deeper into neighborhoods. Some South End residents said their quality of life issues are already proving to be worse this year because the activity isn’t concentrated in one place. Boston 25 News observed the new reality of more scattered activity firsthand while driving through parts of the South End, Roxbury, South Boston and Dorchester. ‘We have a real estate market that’s booming across the state, but it’s dead right here in our neighborhood,’ said John Stillwaggon with the Worcester Square Area Neighborhood Association. ‘Neighbors on the other side of the South End are certainly disconnected from the reality of what we’re facing over here.’”
From CBS News. “The housing market is finally balancing out, according to some North Texas realtors. ‘I would say now’s the time to buy. It’s more balanced. It’s not a seller’s market anymore,’ says Williams Trew Real Estate realtor Debbie Petty. Petty sells homes in Fort Worth and says the housing market has reached pre-pandemic levels. ‘So, it’s not a seller’s market. It’s not a buyer’s market. It’s getting very balanced, there’s more inventory, and for us, we really like to see that what you want in real estate is a win-win for the buyer in the seller,’ Petty explains.”
“Petty thinks the feds could cut interest rates more in the fall, but her biggest piece of advice to potential buyers: ‘Don’t wait.’ ‘We like we say, ‘marry the house, date the rate,’ says Petty, ‘if you’re sitting on the fence waiting for interest rates to come down, you’re going to miss the boat. Because as they do start to take down, more and more buyers are coming to the market.’”
The Real Deal. “There’s another victim in the mortgage lending industry bloodbath. Dallas-based mortgage originator TexasLending.com filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on June 13 after downsizing last year. The lender is part of Aspire Financial. In the filing, the lender estimated it had assets valued at between $50,001 and $100,000, and liabilities between $1 million and $10 million. TexasLending.com was among lenders accused of unethical behavior as layoffs ravaged the industry in late 2022, National Mortgage News reported. The plunge in mortgage originations has hurt the mortgage lending industry hard. Residential lending activity plunged 68 percent between the first quarter of 2021 and the fourth quarter of 2023, according to ATTOM data. With less work to do, residential lenders are struggling; layoffs and bankruptcies among this sector are on the rise.”
The Globe and Mail in Canada. “Alan Kats felt the justice system failed him by not prosecuting a group of alleged mortgage fraudsters he blamed for scamming his family out of their life savings in an elaborate mortgage scheme. His widow has identified the 46-year-old father of two as the third fatality in a triple shooting in Toronto that left two of the alleged fraudsters dead. Alisa Pogorelovsky, said ‘fear and depression’ engulfed Mr. Kats after the couple lost $1.37-million to a scheme organized by Arash Missaghi, repeatedly identified in court documents as a mortgage fraudster, and a mortgage broker named Samira Yousefi.”
“‘My husband and my family are the victims of a carefully planned scam,’ she told The Globe and Mail. ‘More than half a year ago we made an official report to the police. We hired lawyers, went to court, but no justice was served. As a result, our lives are forever changed, depriving me of a husband and our kids from their father. I need to bury his body and say goodbye now,’ said Ms. Pogorelovsky, who says she will continue with litigation against Mr. Missaghi’s alleged associates. ‘I have two kids to raise on my own with no work, no income, no house, no money.’”
“‘You will almost never find a final judgment or decision against Mr. Missaghi – this was a very sophisticated litigant who knew how to manipulate the courts to his advantage,’ said Peter Smiley, a lawyer who says he represents five to 10 people allegedly victimized by Mr. Missaghi. ‘What happened at Missaghi’s offices at Mallard Road yesterday is the culmination of many years of systematic failures by our court system, police forces and bankruptcy system,’ Mr. Smiley said, adding that his schemes targeted vulnerable communities, particularly in the Persian diaspora.”
From The I. “A story unfolding across Europe deserves attention: the rise of populist far-right politics. The latest European country to be hit is France. President Emmanuel Macron has called a high-risk national election after the far-right National Rally, a party headed by Eurosceptic and Nato-sceptic firebrands, smashed his party – the liberal Renaissance – along with all other rivals, in the European elections earlier this month. The role that high housing costs, a growing problem across most of western Europe, has played in fuelling populism is not given enough attention. Housing was a key concern for voters in last year’s Dutch elections. These were won by the far-right Freedom Party (PVV) headed by Geert Wilders, who is openly anti-Islam. Similarly, in Portugal, where there have also been protests about housing costs, right-wing populist party Chega trebled its vote share in March this year.”
“The Labour Party may currently be leading in the polls, but experts warn that unaffordable housing could yet become a political tool for populist politicians in Britain too. Links were also drawn between housing costs and alleged shortages by Vote Leave during their campaign for Brexit. More recently, the Conservative Party has coined the phrase ‘British homes for British people’ and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has pledged to ‘reform social housing law’ by prioritising ‘local people and those who have paid into the system.’ Reform’s manifesto says: ‘Foreign nationals must go to the back of the queue. Not the front.’”
From News.com.au. “Australians overwhelmingly support a crackdown on Chinese investors buying real estate amid growing concerns over housing affordability, a new survey has found. Eighty-three per cent of Australians believe the government ‘should restrict the amount of investment in residential real estate that is permitted from Chinese investors,’ according to the poll published last week by the University of Technology Sydney. That was the highest number in the four years the survey has been running. A ‘clear majority’ of 80 per cent of Australians agreed with the statement that ‘foreign buyers from China drive up Australian housing prices,’ a seven-point increase from 73 per cent in 2023, and almost back to the 82 per cent high recorded in 2021.”
“China-focused real estate agents told The Australian last month that many mum-and-dad investors who purchased one or two-bedroom off-the-plan apartments were now desperate to offload their properties and bring the money back home to rescue struggling businesses. The implosion of China’s real estate bubble, which has sparked a wider economic crisis and a frantic rescue mission by Beijing to use public financing to buy up unsold properties, had already seen billions of dollars worth of Australian apartment projects by giants like Greenland, Wanda, Country Garden and Poly abandoned in recent years.”
“Plus Agency managing director Peter Li told The Australian that prior to Covid his Sydney-based agency kept ‘buying, buying, buying’ for Chinese clients. ‘We still service a lot of our Chinese clients,’ he said. ‘Now we help them with selling, selling, selling.’”