A report from Realtor.com. “According to Realtor.com®’s December housing data, the housing market continued to cool, with inventory and time on market increasing and listing price growth dropping below 10% for the first time in a year. There were 54.7% more homes for sale in December compared to the same time in 2021. This means that there were 244,000 more homes available to buy this past month compared to one year ago. The national median list price declined to $400,000 in December, down from a record high of $449,000 in June (-11.1%).”
The Jax Daily Record in Florida. “The inventory of single-family homes for sale continues to build as prices fall in the Northeast Florida real estate market, according to the Northeast Florida Association of Realtors January market review. The median price of a single-family home was $360,000 in January, a decline of 2.9% from December. Since peaking at $399,900 in July, home prices have fallen 9.9% and have dropped in five of the past six months. ‘The January market reflects a significant increase in months of supply, moving Northeast Florida closer to a stable market,’ NEFAR President Diana Galavis said.”
“Inventory is up 162.2% from a year ago, when 1,911 homes were on the market. And those homes are staying on the market longer. Also, buyers will have more to choose from. There were 2,650 new listings in January, up 34% over December’s 1,977. Pending sales increased to 1,698, up 29% from December. A year ago, there were 2,083 pending sales in January.”
Hawaii News Now. “For the first time since July 2021, the median price for an Oahu single-family home is below a milliion dollars. The condo median price is just under half a million. Ruthie Kaminskas, realtor-associate with Corcoran Pacific Properties, joined HNN Sunrise Weekend for a housing reality check. ‘I think that we have to change our dialogue. I think we have to change the mentality of what a lot of buyers and sellers are thinking right now that everything’s dropping, everything’s going down. We gotta wait to buy, we gotta wait to, you know, we got to sell now before everything goes down. No, no, no, no, I really, really, I think my main message this morning to all buyers and sellers, is that we are finally normalizing. We’re normalizing what happened in 2020 to 2022,’ Kaminskas said. ‘With our COVID bubble was a frenzy. It was an unprecedent amount of sales, it’s, we’re really not supposed to really experience anything like that more than once in our lifetime. And it’s just not something we can compare to. So what I do when I’m talking to my buyers and sellers is I’m I’m going back to when we were normal, which is 2019.’”
The Denver Post in Colorado. “‘The Denver metro area, along with the entire country, is oversupplied with real estate agents,’ said Steve Murray, president of Real Trends Consulting in Castle Rock. Nationally, there are 1.6 million agents chasing what forecasts predict will be about 4.7 million existing home sales. Given that there is a buy-side and a sell-side to every deal, that works out to less than six transactions per year, not enough for most people to make a living off of once given the various costs involved, Murray said.”
“Home sales in Colorado fell by a fifth last year and are expected to slow even more this year, reducing the number of agents needed to service the volume of transactions available. The mortgage industry suffered huge job losses last year, and the grim reaper could be coming for the careers of real estate agents this year.”
“Big increases in home prices have shifted the market. The sales volume was $33.3 billion in 2020 in metro Denver and $28.6 billion in 2019. If home prices start declining, which they appear ready to do, that will only add more downward pressure on agent incomes. Seattle-based Redfin, where agents are employees, cut about a quarter of its workforce and shuttered its home-flipping business last year. New York brokerage Compass has had four rounds of layoffs since June.”
NBC Bay Area in California. “The Bay Area hit a milestone when it comes to home pricing Thursday that makes it more of a buyer’s market. The average selling price for a home in the region is actually below the average asking price — something we haven’t seen in more than 10 years. ‘Usually there’s a bidding war, and that determines the price. But things have changed,’ said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin. ‘All of those things are adding to buyer confidence,’ said San Jose real estate agent Lynsie Gridley, adding that buyers are starting to come back feeling better about their chances without having to compete with multiple offers. And the deals are getting done. ‘We were seeing offers coming in under asking, and sellers often accepting those offers anywhere from 1% to 5% under asking,’ said Gridley.”
Bisnow Washington DC. “D.C. officials are launching a new push to assist office-to-residential conversions as they attempt to overcome developer skepticism that the projects are a realistic solution to the problems that ail the city’s downtown. ‘It’s mission: impossible,’ said PRP principal Paul Dougherty, a developer who signed a letter to District officials last month raising alarms about the state of the downtown office market. ‘The math doesn’t work.’ ‘Simply put, office buildings were designed to be office buildings and not residential buildings,’ Dougherty said. ‘Most, if not all, of the developers that are undertaking conversions now, at the current market basis, are finding these conversions incredibly challenging and entirely not profitable. The squeeze simply isn’t worth the juice.’”
Willamette Week in Oregon. “Just about everyone still living in Portland had an opinion about last week’s cover story featuring those who left (“They Left,” WW, Feb. 1). We received a flood of emails, comments and Twitter dunks. John Donnerberg: ‘Finally, a realistic story about what people are actually doing in response to the mess in Portland. My family was born and raised in the Portland area for several generations. I owned a business, a rental property, and a house in Portland. I sold everything in Portland over the last two or three years. It simply broke my heart to have to leave. We moved just outside of Sandy. In hindsight, it was the best decision I’ve ever made.’”
“cortmorton: ‘Two Saturdays ago, at 6 am, my house was hit by a bullet. It hit a foot and a half from my head where I was lying. I live on 58th and Belmont. It took eight minutes to reach 911, 40 minutes before the police came. By which time they were long, long gone. My partner and I might be long, long gone from this city before long too.’”
KOMO TV in Washington. “Drivers passing by a homeless encampment on I-5 in Seattle early Thursday morning had to dodge smoke and flames shooting onto the interstate after someone lighting off fireworks started multiple tent fires. This was the sixth reported fire this month at the encampment. Parents of the John Stanford school say there’s nothing left to assess and the state’s focus on finding housing for the people at the encampment does not deal with the immediate safety concerns.”
“‘It’s completely unacceptable,’ said parent Emily Houston. ‘All I hear really is about housing, but it’s so much more than just housing and I think that’s pretty obvious to anyone who goes down there. It’s drugs. I think housing is a piece of the puzzle but that’s what they make it out to be 100% and it’s just not.’”
The Seaforth Huron Expositor in Canada. “The Grey-Bruce real estate market has started off 2023 much different than it did 2022, with home sales and prices significantly lower than they were a year ago. According to the Realtors Association of Grey Bruce, there were 117 units sold through its MLS System in January, which was 33.9 per cent lower than in January 2022, when a sales record for the month was set with 166 residential units sold. The average price of homes sold in January was $560,716, which is down 25.7 per cent from January 2022, when the average sale price was over $756,000.”
“Meanwhile the number of homes on the market continues to rise in Grey-Bruce with a total of 251 new listings in January, up by 19.5 per cent from January 2022. It was the most new listings added in the month of January in more than five years, and was 19.1 per cent above the five-year average and 8.5 per cent above the 10-year average, according to RAGBOS. The number of active residential listings at the end of January totaled 751 units, a surge of 18.4.5 per cent to more than double the levels they were at a year ago. Active listings haven’t been as high as they are in January in more than five years, the association said.”
From Reuters. “Australia’s central bank raised its cash rate 25 basis points to a decade-high of 3.35% on Tuesday and reiterated that further increases would be needed, a more hawkish policy tilt than many had expected. ‘The surprise was not in the decision, but rather the shift in tone and forward guidance in the Governor’s Statement,’ said Gareth Aird, head of Australian economics at CBA. ‘This change implies that the RBA Board has essentially made up their mind and intend to raise the cash rate further over coming months, if the economic data prints in line with their updated forecasts.’”
“The interest rate increases so far – including Tuesday’s move – will add over A$900 a month in repayments to the average A$500,000 mortgage, according to RateCity, a deadweight for a population that holds A$2 trillion ($1.3 trillion) in home loans. Housing prices fell for the ninth straight month in January, with prices in Sydney and Melbourne down about 10% from a year ago.”