A report from News 4 Jax in Florida. “Jacksonville-based realtors are seeing some cases where buyers are pulling out of contracts. ‘I had a friend of mine who’s also a realtor. He had buyers. They got into a contract and within 10 days they backed out of a contract. They used the inspection didn’t come up good and all that. But we assume that they were better houses they had seen and they decided to push forward with a better house,’ said Jacksonville-based Realtor Emiliya Mustafaeva. ‘Because what we’re seeing now on the market is that there’s a big increase in houses. And it’s a buyer’s market and if there’s a little thing they just move forward with a different house.’”
The News Press in Florida. “Starting in the fall of 2020 and continuing into this past spring, the Naples housing market experienced remarkable sales activity that was fueled by a frenzy. However, as pandemic pandemonium diminished, broker analysts predicted a slow, gradual return to a balanced market would occur in Naples. Market experts reviewing the July report say buyers should not expect home values to drop dramatically. While year over year price growth is trimming, demand is still high, and inventory is still not at prepandemic 2019 levels. The median closed price in July increased 16 percent to $545,000 from $469,950 in July 2021; it decreased 9.8 percent from $604,000 in June.”
Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia. “Homes at Smith Mountain Lake are still in high demand, but the housing market may finally be showing signs of cooling after years of being red hot. Tom and Eric Fansler, Realtors for Berkshire Hathaway Home Services, said the high demand for waterfront property in the past two years led to many people quickly bidding on homes sight unseen before anyone else was able to make a bid. Tom Fansler said people are still looking to buy at Smith Mountain Lake in 2022, but home buyers are being a bit more careful before making a purchase. ‘Clearly, I think the market has cooled a bit,’ Fansler said.”
“The average cost for a waterfront home has also seen a massive jump in the past two years. Waterfront home prices averaged around $600,000 for more than a decade until 2020 when it increased to $717,000. In 2021, it increased again to $916,000. Fansler said he expects the average price of a waterfront home to exceed $1 million in 2022.”
WBIR on Tennessee. “For the first time this year, the average price of a three-bedroom home in Knoxville fell compared to the month before. In June, it was around $361,300. According to reports of trends in July though, the average price fell to about $343,000. The number of sold homes in Knoxville also fell steeply compared to the month before. ‘Sales have been so high for so long, they had to level out sooner or later and I think what we’re seeing here is a slight correction in the market,’ said Suzy Trotta, who writes regularly about Knoxville’s housing market.”
KPHO in Arizona. “There’s one place where rent prices have actually been falling. Information from Rent.com shows rent prices on a one-bedroom apartment in Glendale are down more than 22.1% since last year. The reasons include everything from fewer new developments, an increase in vacancies, and less interest in one-bedroom units. ‘We see a lot of demand for two-bedroom apartments, more than one-bedroom apartments,’ said Jon Leckie with Rent.com. ‘It’s not really that surprising that you would see these price drops, one-bedrooms as opposed to two.’”
From Yahoo Finance. “Home prices are beginning to soften across the nation, and one housing expert said more pullback is yet to come. ‘Expect prices to continue to fall the rest of the year,’ Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin, told Yahoo Finance Live. ‘Mortgage rates are so high, homebuyers simply can’t afford their monthly payments. Monthly payments are about 40% up from last year.’”
“Still, the recent pullback in buyer demand is unlikely to cause home prices to plunge so sharply that the market will fall into a housing recession, Fairweather said. ‘I think ‘housing recession’ is a bit of hyperbole. This is a normal part of the housing cycle. We just had a really hot period,’ Fairweather said. ‘And you know what goes up must come down eventually — that happens in the housing market every so often.’”
The Review Journal. “Almost any way you look at it, Las Vegas’ housing market was accelerating rapidly a year ago. Today? The buying binge is becoming a more distant memory each week. By almost any measure, Southern Nevada’s housing market is hitting the brakes. People are buying fewer homes, sellers are slashing prices, availability is soaring and home builders are pulling fewer construction permits. Simply Vegas agent Jillian Batchelor told me a few weeks ago that the market was heated earlier this year but started to turn as mortgage rates climbed higher. Buyer demand is down, and house hunters are making offers at or below the listing price and asking for concessions, Batchelor said.”
“This is a stark difference from last year when rock-bottom mortgage rates fueled a buying frenzy in which sellers were flooded with offers and buyers routinely paid above the asking price. Overall, it’s been a ‘really quick turn of events,’ Batchelor said. Las Vegas’ home buying frenzy was bound to end at some point, as the market can only keep its foot on the gas for so long. The question was always when, and how, it would come to a stop. And lately, we seem to be finding out.”
The Spokane Journal in Washington. “Rob Higgins, executive officer of the Spokane Association of Realtors, says membership has been growing at a steady rate, but he expects that to change as economic conditions create a slowdown in the real estate market. ‘We saw sales down close to 30% this July compared to July a year ago, and when sales slow, we see membership drop a little,’ Higgins says. ‘If the market continues to slow down, we will see a slowdown in new members, because there will be people quitting because there’s not enough activity to justify sticking around.’”
“Scott Wetzel, president of Windermere Services Mountain West, says a market slowdown and resulting contraction in the real estate agent workforce shouldn’t surprise those familiar with the industry. ‘For every incline, there’s going to be a decline,’ Wetzel says. ‘We emerged from the last break about 2010. It’s been 12 years, and it’s about a 10-year cycle.’”
The San Francisco Chronicle in California. “What does that mean for the Bay Area? It remains to be seen for certain, but already, price reductions for active home listings in San Francisco are up nearly 200%, according to Compass. And a Redfin report in July suggested that the Bay Area housing market is cooling faster than anywhere else in the country.”
From Realtor.com on California. “Rihanna has finally parted ways with her Hollywood Hills mansion. The singer and businesswoman sold the L.A.-area residence for $6.55 million earlier this month. The deal leaves the 34-year-old with a loss on the contemporary-style home she bought in 2017 for $6.8 million. Shortly after buying the place, an intruder broke in and stayed for hours while she was away. Soon after, the performer called it quits on the sleek space and placed it on the market. It was initially listed for $7,495,000 in 2018, then it went on the luxury rental market for $35,000 a month. The nine-time Grammy winner relisted the home in October 2021 for $7,295,000.”
The Toronto Star in Canada. “It took six weeks and required a major cut in the asking price, but Premier Doug Ford has finally sold his Etobicoke house for $2.7 million. Ford and his wife Karla originally listed the two-storey, 4,500-square-foot detached house with four bathrooms, an in-ground pool and a two-car garage for $3,199,888. Faced with a cooling real estate market due to rising interest rates, the couple lowered the price last month to $2,800,888. It was sold on Tuesday for about $100,000 less than that, with a closing date of Oct. 27.”
“The Fords have lived in the Kipling Avenue and Eglinton Avenue West residence since buying it in 1998 for $535,000.”
The Globe and Mail. “Some real estate agents who spent the first couple of years of the pandemic advising city dwellers on the ins and outs of septic tanks, ice jams and unreliable WiFi are listing the same properties again. Shawn Lackie, real estate agent with Coldwell Banker R.M.R., said he believes the flight from big cities set the stage for the current real estate downturn. Canada’s housing market has seen corrections in the past, but this one as different, he says.”
“‘I’ve never seen it before; because people were able to work from home, all of the values in the outlying areas went sky-high,’ Mr. Lackie says. ‘Then all of a sudden, the culture shock set in.’ Eventually, they realized the town doesn’t have a Starbucks and the bars close at 11 p.m.”
“Mr. Lackie says high gas prices are making employees who need to return to their Toronto offices rethink the commute, while higher interest rates are making large mortgages tough to carry. He has had conversations with quite a few potential sellers who are contemplating a return to the city. The dilemma many have now, he says, is that they will likely lose money if they try to sell a property they bought when bidding wars were rampant. Sales are slow and months of inventory are building.”
“‘Get used to commuting’ is his best advice to homeowners caught in that situation. Mr. Lackie expects listings to increase as more homeowners face financial stress. In hard-hit St. Catharines, the average price dropped 10.2 per cent in June compared with June, 2021.”
Stuff New Zealand. “In the space of a year, the monthly repayment property investor Matthew Ryan will be making on a $1.1 million home loan will more than quadruple. The double-whammy would result in his monthly repayment on that loan jump from just over $2000 to just over $8700. He said he could reapply for the loan and attempt to hold onto interest-only repayments, but banks were moving away from such arrangements as the market fell. ‘When the market’s flying they go: ‘Oh well, the property values are going up, we have security, we’re not too worried about whether people are paying the principal back,’ he said. ‘When the market starts falling, and we’re in the situation we are now, they start saying: ‘Oh no, we’re a little bit worried, we want to start to get some of our money back.’”
“Ryan said he had expected interest rates to stay low for a considerable time, and all signs seemed to be pointing that way. ‘A year ago I could easily have locked in for maybe 2.49% or 2.5% for two years. Categorically, I am the first to say I got it 100% wrong, but then again I know people I would say are very astute of swap rates and interest rates, and they all got it wrong as well.’ He said many had made the same bet he had, which would likely leave them struggling.”
From Stockhead. “With but a momentary pause ahead of the next central bank rate hike in early September, Australia’s woefully indebted households and their awfully expensive houses are helping to add some genuine momentum to a property downturn which some analysts – possibly drunk with power – are saying could bottom out at a -20% fall. The market hardest hit is where sellers have the most to lose…. and, yes, that’d be in beautiful Sydney, where home values have taken a near 5% dive in just the past three months.”
“Further falls are kinda inevitable as the Reserve Bank, which meets again in just under two weeks, raises borrowing costs at the fastest pace they possibly can without actually breaking any laws. Properties are taking longer to sell, vendors are gradually lowering their prices, and reduced appetite for finance means there is less buyer competition amid a larger number of properties available for sale.”
“For those considering purchasing their first home, we asked CoreLogic’s brilliant, yet relentless Queen of Numbers, Eliza Owen: ‘Falling property values may make it easier for some of you people to access a home loan. There. I said it...While this is going to sound crazy… it’s possible not everyone has money saved for a deposit. Now, those of you that do may be tempted into home ownership just to avoid rising rents. Or as we at CoreLogic like to call this move: ‘The out of the rent uncomfortably hot frying pan market into the home ownership oven of unyielding pain.’”
From The Hill. “Professor Robert Z. Aliber, who co-authors Charles Kindleberger’s classic, ‘Manias, Panics and Crashes,’ sees the unraveling of China’s property bubble as marking the end of the country’s economic miracle of the past four decades: ‘The Xi government may provide a burst of liquidity to paper over the insolvency of property developers, but it cannot paper over the demographics of a declining population and forty or sixty million vacant and overpriced apartments.’”