A report from Market Watch. “‘A few markets may see double-digit price drops, especially some of the more expensive parts of the country which have also seen weaker employment and higher instances of residents moving to other areas,’ said Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors.”
Yahoo Finance. “Some of the most popular pandemic boomtowns such as Phoenix and Seattle, plus perennially popular West Coast cities like San Jose and San Francisco, posted home price declines of more than 10% from their 2022 peaks, according to Black Knight Inc. That outpaced the average national decline of 5.3%, off their June 2022 peaks. San Francisco took the lead, with home prices there down 13% in December 2022 from their peak, Black Knight data showed. This was followed by San Jose ( down 12.7%), Seattle (down 11.3%), and Phoenix ( down 10.5%).”
“‘We’re finally seeing real price corrections,’ John Downs, senior vice president of Vellum Mortgage, told Yahoo Finance. ‘Home prices remain high, but they are better now and dropping. If you’re a first-time buyer in a market like Washington, D.C., you know the last three years truly have been crazy. But prices are finally easing.’”
The Idaho Statesman. “The median sales price of an Ada County home has dipped below $500,000 for the first time in a year and a half. ‘It’s not what we’d call a buyer’s market, but it’s more of a balanced market than we’ve seen in a really long time,’ said the new president of Boise Regional Realtors, Debbi Myers. ‘That feeding frenzy we had before is gone.’ The report said the median price of a single-family home in Ada County dropped to $487,495 in January, down nearly 10%, or $52,500 from January 2022. The report for Canyon County showed the median price fell there as well, to $395,445, down 6.4% year-over-year.”
“The median price of newly constructed Ada County homes was $494,990, a 16% decrease year-over-year. In Canyon County, the median was $415,450, a 10.7% decrease. The median price of existing Ada County homes was $479,800, a 6.8% decrease. In Canyon County, the median was $339,000, a 13.1% decrease.”
The Gazette. “Colorado Springs home prices increased in late 2022 at one of the slowest rates in the nation — a dramatic turnaround from recent years when the city regularly was near the top of the pack for price appreciation. The median price of homes that sold during the fourth quarter of 2022 in the Springs rose to $443,400, a miniscule 0.2% increase over the same period in 2021, according to the National Association of Realtors. ‘We’ve never seen it this flat like this before,’ Harry Salzman, a veteran real estate agent, said of prices. ‘Flat, zero appreciation is something new and different for this market.’”
The Sun Journal. “We have seen the median days on the market jump 133% from January of last year to January of this year in Craven County. With the feeding frenzy over, days on the market ticking up and prices leveling off, buyers have more leverage. The list-to-price ratio has dropped down below 98%. For a lot of 2021 and the first half of 2022, we were seeing a lot of sellers get more than they were asking for their homes. Now buyers are negotiating prices down and, in some cases, getting closing costs paid. Sellers are getting more anxious to sell in some cases.”
Fox 13 Memphis in Tennessee. “‘We’re seeing the prices come down,’ said Michelle Hayes Thomas, a broker. ‘We’re also seeing buyers have the ability to make offers that are more favorable to them as opposed to it being just a seller’s market.’”
Times of San Diego in California. “Sales of existing single-family homes in San Diego County fell nearly 20% in January as the 2023 real estate market got off to a slow start. The median sales price was $849,000 in January for single-family homes, down 3.5% from $880,000 a year ago. There were 886 homes sold in January, down 19.2% from 1,027 sales in December, and off 36.9% from the 1,404 sales a year ago in January, according to the association’s monthly data report.”
CBS Sacramento in California. “Dozens packed a community room in Fair Oaks to find out how Sacramento County will address the growing homeless problem in their community. The elected official hosting the meeting said the many issues stemming from the crisis occupy 90 percent of his job. Lee Grichuhin worries homeless encampments along a canal in the Gold River area are a public health concern. ‘It’s a cesspool, and I see dogs and kids playing in it down by the river end,’ he said.”
The Los Angeles Times on Oregon. “If you want to understand the schism that dominates the political and social landscape in this famously liberal city, a walk down Southeast Rhine Street might be a good place to start. Flora Gonzalez, who lives on the north side of the street, is distressed about conditions in the historically blue-collar neighborhood. The 40-year-old package handler for FedEx said that people have openly dealt drugs and urinated on the sidewalk outside her family’s duplex. They’ve dumped feces and used syringes in her manicured yard, played booming music at 3 a.m. and stripped stolen cars for parts. Shots have been fired behind her children’s bedroom. ‘We feel abandoned,’ Gonzalez said. ‘We pay our taxes and the police are not watching over our security.’”
“A backlash is underway. In November, voters passed a measure to overhaul city government and ousted the city’s most outspoken left-wing commissioner, who led a 2020 charge to cut police funds. But they are struggling to agree on how it can return to being the place many once viewed as a liberal utopia. John Toran, 47, the Black owner of a construction company who was born and raised in Portland, said he understood the bail fund was trying to counter malicious prosecution and inequality in the criminal justice system. But, he said, people felt less safe and the city had a duty to respond.”
“‘Progressive’ means something different now than when it did when I was growing up,’ the longtime Democrat said. ‘Now, when I think of progressive, I think of extremism.’”
Yahoo Finance Canada. “Nasma Ali, a broker and founder of One Group, agrees that getting into a bidding war is not in the best interest of a buyer, especially if they’re under pressure to find a property. The best way to avoid competition is to consider homes that don’t have professional staging or have poor photos in the listing, she says, and to ‘use your imagination to look beyond the furniture and funky wall colours. Chances are most buyers aren’t and the seller has been growing somewhat desperate.’”
The Globe and Mail in Canada. “206 Wildfield Cres., Mississauga. Asking price: $5,299,900 (August, 2022). Previous asking price: $5,999,900 (May, 2022). Selling price: $4,850,000 (October, 2022). This two-bedroom bungalow is an unconventional property, custom built six years ago on a 64- by 191-foot lot on the edge of a ravine by Lake Ontario, about 26 kilometres west of Toronto. In the space of 10 weeks, multiple potential buyers booked visits, but not a single one made an offer. The price was slashed by $700,000, generating interest from one buyer, but that sprout quickly withered. About two months later, the seller managed to negotiate another offer that topped out at $4.85-million. ‘We started to see a shift in the market with interest rates starting to go up back in March,’ said agent Ashleigh McCarthy.”
Money Control in India. “It’s been an unusual 6-8-month period as a tracker of Mumbai real estate. Normally, the entire ecosystem is hard-selling a narrative that ‘All is Well.’ However, in recent months I have found myself dealing with the exact opposite scenario from the ecosystem. ‘Who is really driving these sales numbers in 2022 because no one in my circuit is feeling this bonanza?’ enquired one mid-level developer. ‘Which lender is serving these home buyers in the last 6-9 months because they aren’t coming to me?’ one heavyweight lender asked me.”
The Sydney Morning Herald. “As many as one in five Australians with a mortgage could be unable to refinance because of rising interest rates and stringent home loan stress testing, economists warn. In a situation sometimes called a ‘mortgage prison,’ such borrowers cannot refinance to a cheaper loan because they don’t meet the new bank’s lending requirements. Negative equity can be a limiting factor, but tough stress-testing requirements are now more often trapping mortgagors.”
“Jarden chief economist Carlos Cacho in October modelled that 10 to 15 per cent of Australian mortgagors could be stuck in a loan with little prospect of refinancing. This week he said the problem had worsened. ‘Now that would likely be closer to 15 to 20 per cent,’ he said.”
“Red Maple Finance director Nariman Amalsadiwala said people who qualified for a home loan just a couple of years ago in some cases could no longer qualify for finance. ‘Imagine if you were tested at 5 per cent a year ago,’ he said. ‘That took away borrowing capacity for everyone. At that 8 per cent level, you don’t even have the income to service your existing mortgage.’”
“Amalsadiwala said the situation had left some of his clients who bought house and land packages in a difficult position. ‘I have clients who have booked land two years ago and now they don’t have the borrowing capacity to even buy the land, let alone build on it,’ he said. A Brisbane borrower would be at 14 per cent equity. However, RateCity director of research Sally Tindall said Brisbane’s price peak had been later, which the modelling did not reflect.”
“‘Someone who bought in Brisbane closer to the peak might be in a much worse position,’ she said. ‘The Brisbane market peak wasn’t until June ’22 and the drop since [then] has been significant, down 10.7 per cent, in a much shorter space of time.’