A report from ABC 7 in Illinois. “In Evanston, there are only 40 single family homes for sale right now; not even a one month supply of inventory. Upwards of two dozen hopeful buyers at a time have been seen in lines forming at open houses. ‘It was the same thing,’ said Allie Payne of Compass Realty Evanston, comparing it to the market in 2008. ‘The house is going for 20% over list and people taking it as is with no appraisal, contingency, you know, closing whenever the seller wants to close, just bending over backwards to get a deal.’”
“But unlike the market that led to economic disaster 13 years ago, Payne said this market is stable. ‘You have to have an agent that Is networking with other agents, that is looking at things that are not on the market yet so that you have a leg up or else you are going to be eaten live,’ she said.”
From DS News. “There’s a solid chance that any recent homebuyer paid more than the asking price, due to supply shortages and increased competition. Those who didn’t take all of the prudent measures—including taking the time to boost credit in order to lock in the best possible rates, something the experts at WalletHub, which just conducted a study on overleveraged mortgagers, have suggested—might be facing a hint or even a significant sense of buyer’s remorse.”
“In its report, WalletHub decided which cities are home to the most overleveraged mortgage debtors by comparing the median mortgage balances against the median income and median home value in more than 2,500 cities. Willis, TX tops WalletHub’s list with a 168% mortgage debt-to-house value ratio and 555% mortgage debt-to-income ratio, which led to a high ‘WalletHub Home Overleverage Score’ of 66.57. Right behind Willis is Dumfries, Virginia, followed by Bell Gardens, California, Ewa Beach, Hawaii, and, rounding out the top five, McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania.”
From Market Watch. “Millions of homeowners have been excluded from federal protections providing pandemic-related mortgage-payment relief. Jacarae Fairbanks, 44, is a single mother of three in Puyallup, Wash., whose home was sold in a foreclosure last fall. She’d fallen behind on her non–federally backed mortgage before the pandemic began and was facing foreclosure in 2019 before securing a loan modification that required 12 months of trial payments.”
“Fairbanks made five payments under the new agreement but fell behind again in early 2020, according to court filings. After the pandemic struck, she lost her job as an accounting assistant and contacted her mortgage servicer, FCI Lender Services, to ask for relief, according to Fairbanks and her lawyer, David Smith. But the investor that owned the mortgage wouldn’t allow a forbearance.”
“For now, Fairbanks and her family remain in the house while she fights in court to salvage her home, arguing that a bankruptcy filing she made in the days after the foreclosure auction should have halted the transfer of the title to the new owner pending a court review. A judge in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Washington ruled in Fairbanks’s favor in January. An appeal is pending.”
“‘I was just trying to have the American dream, like anybody else,’ Fairbanks says. ‘I did it by myself, just to show my kids a better life. And who would have ever known we’d be dealing with COVID-19?’ She has no family with whom she can move in, she says, and ‘I don’t have anybody I can call and say, ‘Can me and my kids come stay with you?’ How can I look at my kids and say, ‘We’ve got to move out’?”
The Los Angeles Times on Nevada. “DeMarcus Cousins just sold his 20,000-square-foot Sin City showplace for $7.5 million, or half a million shy of what he was asking for it last year. Cousins paid $6.5 million for the vaguely Mediterranean mansion four years ago. The estate reached its peak value a year before the 2008 market crash, selling for $12 million in 2007, records show.”
The New York Post. “Disgraced music mogul and entrepreneur Russell Simmons is finally in contract to sell his Financial District penthouse — nine years after it first went on the market. The palatial pad at 114 Liberty St. was last asking $5.5 million — more than half off its original asking price of $11 million back in 2012.”
From Page Six on New York. “Hamptons regulars are stunned after Wall Streeter Heath Freeman bought the beloved East Hampton Point resort for less than $20 million. The resort had originally been put up for sale around 15 years ago for $50 million by the late Ben Krupinski, a popular Hamptons home builder who died in a plane crash in 2018. The sale price was more recently slashed to $27 million.”
From Mansion Global on Florida. “Shaquille O’Neal’s mammoth Florida estate has returned to the market with a facelift, a new brokerage and a $16.5 million price tag. Back in January, and after three years on the market, it looked as though the 15-time NBA All-Star had scored a buyer for the supersized spread in Windermere, but a sale failed to materialize after the contract fell through. Mr. O’Neal, 49, has owned the 12-bedroom home for close to two decades, having bought it in 1993 for $3.95 million, records with PropertyShark show. In mid-2018, he listed the home for the first time for $28 million, almost double the home’s current asking price.”
The Real Deal on Florida. “A Swiss banker’s sentence was cut for his role in an alleged $1 billion international money laundering scheme that illegally funneled money into South Florida real estate. Matthias Krull was a key figure in a sophisticated scheme in which Venezuelan officials and wealthy elite siphoned money out of the country’s state oil company, PDVSA, and into assets in Europe and the United States, according to federal prosecutors.”
“Some of the money allegedly went to buy luxury properties in Wellington, Coral Gables’ Cocoplum neighborhood and in Sunny Isles Beach, including at the condominium Porsche Design Tower. Krull was initially sentenced in 2018 to 10 years in prison for his role in the money laundering operation. U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga of the Southern District of Florida reduced his sentence to three-and-a-half years in September, due to Krull’s cooperation with the federal government, according to an order that was unsealed on Tuesday. Krull is expected to begin his sentence in July.”
“Separately, a former national treasurer of Venezuela, Alejandro Andrade, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2018 for receiving over $1 billion worth of bribes from his co-conspirator, Venezuelan TV mogul Gorrín, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. As part of Andrade’s guilty plea, he agreed to forfeit his assets, which included 17 champion show horses and five real estate properties in Palm Beach County.”
From LA Magazine in California. “For an hour on a crisp January morning, I traverse sidewalks that feel about 30 percent as crowded as they did a year ago. The economic wreckage unleashed by COVID is inescapable, if also oddly random, the blocks a patchwork of closed businesses and those that persevere. Virtually every downtown economic engine has been shut down.”
“The situation has sparked existential dread from even some of downtown’s most ardent boosters. ‘It fuckin’ sucks—but it’s getting better,’ says Hal Bastian, executive vice president of the real estate brokerage firm Major Properties, who for more than a quarter century has lured businesses to downtown.”
From Arlington Now. “The condo market began to turn last summer and got progressively worse through November/December but has improved slightly and stabilized a bit since December. First, let’s take a zoomed-out look at the Arlington and D.C. metro markets. We are still experiencing a rush out of condos (see first chart, New Listings), with the D.C. metro and Arlington both recording record-highs in total condos listed for sale in January and February. The reasons for this range from people seeking more space/yard to investors unable to find tenants.”
From Popville on Washington DC. “Real Estate Fresh Finds is a weekly selection of newly-listed properties in the District. Petworth end-unit 4 BR/3.5 BA row home with a recent massive $150k price reduction. Your REO/Bank-Owned Property of the Week is a fairly spacious 1 BR unit in McLean Gardens/Cleveland Park on the first floor with its own ground level walkout.”