It’s Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. “There are about 250,000 more homes for sale around the country than there were at this time last year, Realtor.com’s study says. Compared to January 2022, active listings are up 65%. Ogden, Utah: Year-over-year active listings increase: 392%. Nashville, Tennessee: Year-over-year listings increase: 304%. Austin, Texas: Year-over-year listings increase: 260%. Sarasota, Florida: Year-over-year listings increase: 259%. Raleigh, North Carolina: Year-over-year listings increase: 255%. Phoenix, Arizona: Year-over-year listings increase: 190%. Seattle, Washington: Year-over-year listings increase: 181%. Colorado Springs, Colorado: Year-over-year listings increase: 164%. ‘Sellers might have to come down or find some other way to sweeten the deal for buyers,’ Realtor Chief Economist Danielle Hale said.”
“During a foreclosure sale at a public auction on Thursday, the lender that recently foreclosed on the developer of the proposed Summit Crossing subdivision in Strasburg cast the only bid on a portion of the project site. The lender is Red Ace Strasburg Land Inc., of Bethesda, Maryland, and the developer that was foreclosed on is Vinton-based Cedar Valley Development LLC. The proposed 113 townhomes were slated to stand on the 14 acres the lender secured at Thursday’s auction. Before the foreclosure, the developer had permits to develop 10 of the townhomes. None of them have been built.”
“Finding good news in Waco’s January economy may have required a magnifying glass as inflation roared, homebuilders hibernated and homes mostly went unsold, according to an economist who prepares a monthly snapshot. ‘The January monthly table of economic indicators is scattered with year-over-year negatives, some of them sharply lower compared to year-ago levels,’ said Karr Ingham, of Amarillo, who prepares the index.”
“Colorado Springs-area home prices, sales and construction tanked again last month, two new industry reports show. The median price of homes that were sold in February dropped by 5.4% to $440,000 when compared with the same month last year — the largest percentage decrease in year-over-year prices since a 7.1% decline in February 2012, according to a Pikes Peak Association of Realtors report. It also was the second year-over-year drop in home prices in the last three months. At the same time, February’s median price was the lowest for any month since an identical $440,000 in September 2021, which means local prices now have slipped to a nearly 1 1/2 -year low, Gazette data show.”
“The pandemic-fueled buying frenzy is behind us. The market will likely stabilize, but buyers shouldn’t expect prices to fall much, if at all, and certainly not as drastically as they did in 2008, said Jennifer Reiszel, director of Branch Operations at Hudson River Community Credit Union. From the spring of 2020 to the spring of 2022 in the Capital Region, the median sale price of homes rose around 20 percent during that same time frame, according to real estate agent Brian Sinkoff. ‘That’s not normal, that’s not sustainable and that’s not healthy,’ he said. Rates may level off or continue to creep up but one thing is for sure: They won’t tumble toward 3 percent any time soon, if ever, Sinkoff said. ‘I don’t want to say never but dinosaurs would have to roam the Earth and zombies would have to come. There would have to literally be an apocalypse for rates to go back to 3 percent.’”
“This past Christmas, Santa delivered a giant lump of coal to Southern California’s housing market, as well as to real estate agents, lenders, escrow officers and anyone else who gets paid by the transaction. Prices also have been dropping on a monthly basis, falling for eight straight months, CoreLogic figures show. The median price of a Southern California home fell to $670,000 in January, CoreLogic reported. That’s down $90,000 from the price peak reached last spring, and down $500 from January 2022. ‘Yeah, those numbers are scary,’ added Dane McClain, a Newport Beach escrow company vice president. ‘I have seen slow January’s before, but never, never to this actual loss of where we’re at right now.’”
“An Alameda County landlord began a hunger strike on Sunday to protest an ongoing eviction ban that he says has pushed him to the brink of bankruptcy. Jinyu Wu, 53, an immigrant from China, has a rental property in San Leandro, but says his tenant hasn’t paid him for three years due to an eviction moratorium implemented in 2020. ‘We worked night and day for our new life and our American dream,’ Wu said in a letter to the board. ‘Today, our property has been stolen from us by you, by this draconian eviction moratorium.’”
“Britney Spears made a loss on her Calabasas home after putting her mansion on the market. The Toxic hitmaker, 41, has officially offloaded her Californian abode for $10.1million (£8.5m), despite originally putting the property up for sale at around $12million (£10m). Of course, $10million is by no means a small sum of money, but the amount is a whopping $1.7million (£1.4m) less than she paid for the place just eight months ago, back in summer 2022.”
“Flagstar Bank’s new owner confirmed Tuesday that it did a significant number of employee layoffs late last week when it restructured its mortgage division to adjust to the nationwide downturn in the mortgage business since 2021. ‘We are in one of the toughest mortgage markets of the last 25 years,’ said Lee Smith, a longtime Flagstar executive and now president of the combined bank’s mortgage division.”
“Blackstone Inc has defaulted on a 531 million euro ($562.5 million) bond backed by a portfolio of offices and stores owned by Finnish company Sponda Oy, Bloomberg News reported, as rising interest rates hit European property values. The asset management giant and prolific real estate investor sought an extension from the bondholders to repay the debt, but they voted against it, the report said on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.”
“Sinking real estate sales in many Canadian cities may find a bottom in the first half of this year, predicts Rishi Sondhi, economist at Toronto-Dominion Bank. Activity has fallen to the lowest level in about 20 years, he points out. ‘How low can you go? Activity at some point has to pick up,’ he said. In the area around Hamilton, inventory has increased across all price segments – and particularly in the lower ranges, according to the Realtors Association of Hamilton-Burlington (RAHB). The benchmark price has dropped about 20 per cent to $809,800 in January from $1,012,700 in the same month last year, reports RAHB. Mr. Sondhi points out that affordability remains strained in the Greater Toronto Area and therefore prices are unlikely to jump. ‘That might disappoint some sellers that are looking at February, 2022 prices,’ he says.”
“Selling your home is stressful at the best of times – and now it is even worse. The best sellers’ market for a decade is over. Buyers are in the driving seat, with uncertainty about the future forcing sellers to shave £14,000 off their asking prices on average – the biggest discounts seen for five years. Only a short time ago competitive buyers were turning up at their sellers’ village churches or pubs to butter them up, with some even promising to look after wildlife and pets left at the property in order to clinch a sale. Jeremy Leaf, of estate agents Jeremy Leaf and Co, says the change in the balance of power ‘is bringing out the worst in buyers. When they came back into the market after the mini-Budget we certainly saw them flexing their muscles.’”
“Andrew Downing-Booth of Andrew Downing-Booth Estate Agents says he has seen an increase in buyers heavily negotiating price reductions because they have heard the market is going to drop. ‘Buyers know it’s a buyers market and try to push prices down as much as possible, but vendors are not taking kindly to this and so the sale then falls through.’”
“HOUSE PRICES in the Finnish capital region are expected to drop by around 10 per cent from the peak observed last year, reveals Juho Kostiainen, an economist at Nordea. Kostiainen on Tuesday told Helsingin Sanomat that although the prices are expected to remain on a downward trajectory this spring, most of the decline – about three-quarters – has already been witnessed. ‘The house market has been in hibernation this winter,’ Kostiainen summarised to Helsingin Sanomat.”
“Nordea said in its latest house market review that the sustained period of low interest rates on housing loans created ‘a bit of a bubble’ in the investment housing market. The spike in interest rates has burst the bubble, sending the prices of one-room houses on a sharper downward trajectory than those of two-room and family houses.
“Home borrowers who take out a 35-year home loan to reduce the pressure of monthly repayments would pay up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra interest over the life of the mortgage. The figures are even starker for longer terms. Borrowers who take out the same loan over 40 years will reduce their monthly repayments by $652 but will pay an extra $610,664 over the life of the loan. The figures are based on an owner-occupier paying principal and interest with a 20 per cent deposit.”
“AMP Capital chief economist Dr Shane Oliver also warned new borrowers of the more affordable repayments on longer-term home loans, describing it as ‘an illusion.’ ‘The more you have the loan for, the more you’re paying interest. The impact will be quite substantial as the cost of interest compounds,’ Oliver said. ‘There’s no doubt for those who are really stretched, and the choice is between refinancing in the longer term, knowing they have to pay more interest, as opposed to losing the house then it may be better going to the longer-term loan.’”
“New Zealand‘s housing market decline has again accelerated with the country’s property values now down nearly 9 percent on this time last year. Property values dropped across all of New Zealand’s main centres in February apart from Christchurch. Prices in Wellington alone declined 19.7 percent for the year, 2.6 percent for the quarter and 1.6 percent for the month.”
“Ha bought a villa worth VND12 billion (US$508,500) from Novaland using cash and a VND5-billion bank loan after Vietnam’s fourth-biggest property developer pledged to cover most of the interest. But now Ha doesn’t know how she’s going to pay because the company has reneged on its commitment. In late 2021, Ha bought her villa at the Aqua City project, which is still under construction in Bien Hoa, the capital town of Dong Nai Province.”
“‘I don’t know when I will receive the refund because the project has been delayed, and I don’t have enough money to pay interest,’ she said, noting that construction of her unfinished villa has been halted since December 2022. ‘I really want to liquidate the contract to get my money back, even though I know I will be fined, but Novaland said they don’t have money to pay me back.’”
“Nguyen, a resident of HCMC’s Thu Duc City, said she is now ‘sitting on fire’ after Novaland announced it would stop helping her pay interest this month. She bought a villa at the Novaworld Phan Thiet project in the central province of Binh Thuan at a price of nearly VND14 billion. But now, she has to pay all the interest at the annual rate of 12%, amounting to hundreds of millions of dong per month by herself. ‘I can’t arrange the cash flow to pay interest. I’m considering liquidating the contract, paying a fine of billions of dong, or switching to another property with a lower price to reduce the financial burden,’ Nguyen said.”