A report from the News Press in Florida. “To date, the number of new listings that came to the Bonita Springs and Estero markets in 2021 was 270, which was higher than the 193 total listings that came to market during the same time period during 2020. ‘While it is still a competitive landscape, properties are coming to the market daily,’ stated Erin McDonald, Managing Broker, Premier Sotheby’s International Realty, Bonita Springs, Captiva and Sanibel.”
From KITV 4 on Hawaii. “At first glance, the 43-story Ke Kilohana condominium in the Ward Village area developed by the Howard Hughes Corporation comes with a host of amenities. The 2-year-old building on Halekauwila Street is outfitted with modern furniture, a movie theater, karaoke room, as well as a sky lanai overlooking downtown Honolulu. But occupants of the mixed-use residential condo argue its looks are deceiving. ‘Since pretty much the move in, we’ve experienced lots of issues related to safety and security of the building,’ resident Vlad Melnik said. ‘I don’t feel safe living in the building.’”
“From small parking spaces, a railing on the sky lanai residents deem dangerously short, to a 50 percent maintenance fee hike — some unit owners regret purchasing their homes at the high-rise.”
The Associated Press on California. “Caitlin Foster fell in love with San Francisco’s people and beauty and moved to the city a dozen years ago. But after repeatedly clearing away used needles, other drug paraphernalia and human feces outside the bar she manages, and too many encounters with armed people in crisis, her affection for the city has soured. ‘It was a goal to live here, but now I’m here and I’m like, ‘Where am I going to move to now?’ I’m over it,’ said Foster, who manages Noir Lounge in the trendy Hayes Valley neighborhood.”
“A series of headline-grabbing crime stories — mobs of people smashing windows and grabbing luxury purses in the downtown Union Square shopping district and daytime shootings in the touristy Haight-Ashbury — has only exacerbated a general feeling of vulnerability. Residents wake up to news of attacks on Asian American seniors, burglarized restaurants, and boarded-up storefronts in the city’s once-vibrant downtown.”
“Brian Cassanego, a San Francisco native, owns the lounge where Foster works. The day before he moved, Cassanego stepped out to walk his dogs and saw a man who ‘looked like a zombie,’ with his pants down to his knees and bleeding from where a syringe was stuck on his hip. A woman cried out nearby in shock. ‘I went upstairs, and I told my wife, ‘We’re leaving now! This city is done!’ he said.”
The Oregonian. “Allora is a northern Italian hideaway in the Pearl. A heartfelt puttanesca on a warm summer night. An open mic for the unfiltered personality of owner Paolo Parrilli, and an ongoing toast to his perseverance. The ristorante has shouldered through the pandemic. It outlasted the protestors who spent the summer of 2020 outside its front door on Northwest Ninth Avenue, setting fires and vandalizing the building across the street in which Mayor Ted Wheeler owned a two-bedroom condo.”
“You would hope that history, that affection, that sense of belonging, would be enough to keep Allora’s doors open downtown. But maybe not. Not when your guests don’t feel safe in the Pearl. Not when panhandlers routinely hassle the customers, and your servers are aggressively confronted by the homeless at the restaurant door.”
“When he was in Italy in September, Parrilli says, ‘I didn’t see this. I didn’t feel the anxiety of filth on the streets. It was so discouraging to come back to Portland and walk around. Garbage everywhere. Syringes. Now, they’re shooting (up) in front of you, and people don’t care anymore.’”
“City Hall is boasting of progress downtown. Parrilli hasn’t seen it: ‘The city is doing absolutely nothing. I don’t understand it. The camping gets worse every day. Because Portland is so giving, and keeps giving, and (the homeless) want more and more. They control the city now. That’s discouraging when we’re the ones paying the taxes.’”
From Stuff New Zealand. “Homes.co.nz chief data scientist Tom Lintern says the first signs of a market change may be appearing in the data, with the website’s median house price estimates plateauing across the country, reflecting a serious slowdown from the rapid gains. These ‘HomesEstimates’ are created by an algorithm that takes into account sales data and the estimated values on the website. Lintern says the council-supplied sales data is usually two-three months old, suggesting a shift may have already occurred and hasn’t registered yet. Lintern says feedback is starting to come back to Homes.co.nz that individual house price estimates online are starting to be higher than what properties actually sell for, also suggesting a market fall.”
“Ray White Carpenter Realty, franchisee owner, Glenn Carpenter, says he too feels a market downturn may be on the cards. Carpenter had been watching other company’s auctions, and saw one close on Tuesday with only six properties out of 25 sold, and another where only 5 out of 27 sold. ‘So there are some lower results creeping in. Definitely there’s more stock on the market, that’s probably the biggest change.’”
“Carpenter says realtors are already seeing ‘some of the cream come off the top,’ and fewer examples of astronomical sale prices. ‘I see it as a good thing, it was fairly unbalanced before, and I think buyers have got a better shot, and I think people who are moving within the market – they might not achieve a crazy price when they sell, but they’re not having to pay a crazy price when they buy.’”
The Sydney Morning Herald in Australia. “Potential home buyers are trimming their expectations as a new lending clampdown leaves many with smaller budgets, cutting borrowing capacity by as much as 15 per cent. The maximum amount of money buyers can borrow was reduced last month as the bank regulator tries to ensure homeowners only take on manageable debts. Separately, banks have been proactively limiting the level of debt compared to incomes they will allow, nervous about potential new rules covering this measure.”
“It comes after a year of soaring property price growth, with prices up 21.7 per cent across the capital cities in the year to September according to figures released this week, which prompted the Reserve Bank to warn of the need for borrowers to have adequate buffers. New borrowers must now be able to pay back their mortgage if interest rates rise 3 percentage points, under changes to the serviceability buffer.”
“Many banks have stopped lending more than six times a borrower’s income in debt, after the share of new loans in this category reached 23.8 per cent by the September quarter, according to Australian Prudential Regulation Authority figures. It’s an eye-watering level of debt, especially compared to previous generations – Baby Boomers had an average debt to income ratio of 2.6 times and spent 26.9 per cent of their income on monthly repayments, a Canstar analysis found.”
“A Gen Z buyer with a good job looking at buying now would face a debt to income ratio of 6.6 times and spend 40.2 per cent of their income on repayments. ‘If the bank that is the best for their situation has adopted a six times debt-to-income [policy], then it’s a really significant decrease in buying power,’ Shore Financial chief executive Theo Chambers said.”
“Loan Market’s Daniel Koutzamanis has seen a roughly 5 to 10 per cent cut in borrowing capacity, depending on the client. ‘The debt-to-income and that [serviceability] buffer, that would obviously reduce what clients can borrow which is going to then reduce what they can spend up to at auction.’”
The South China Morning Post. “Lui Che-woo, one of Hong Kong’s wealthiest men, met his match in late 2016 when his company lost a bidding war to a Chinese airline that was on a land grab in the world’s most expensive real estate market. The HNA Group, a conglomerate built around Hainan Airlines, paid a record HK$8.84 billion (US$1.13 billion) for a residential land plot at Hong Kong’s former Kai Tak airport, paying substantially over the market’s valuation. It was the opening salvo in a HK$27.22 billion shopping spree over four months that ended with HNA owning four parcels of prime land, each setting a fresh price record.”
“Elsewhere in Hong Kong, mainland developers were busily grabbing land, parking their capital in the city’s fixed assets to get ahead of what was then a depreciating renminbi. The tide has since turned, as a crackdown by China’s central bank and financial regulators forced HNA to dispose of all of its assets. The group went bankrupt in January and had its sprawling operations broken into different parts, while its founder Chen Feng was detained by police for investigation into unspecified ‘suspected crimes.’”
“Aoyuan, based in the Guangdong provincial capital, had been holding fire sales of its Hong Kong assets. The developer last month sold 86 per cent of a 54-year-old residential building at Robinson Road at the Mid-Levels for HK$900 million, reporting a loss of HK$176.6 million from the disposal. It’s also offering to sell an industrial building called the AOffice46 in Kwai Chung for HK$800 million, a discount of nearly 16 per cent from its 2018 purchase price of HK$950 million.”
“The losses reflected the reckoning for Chinese developers, who preferred to subdue their rivals by paying way over market valuations. HNA’s first Kai Tak plot in November 2016 was a staggering 153 per cent over the most recent transaction in the neighbourhood two years earlier. Kaisa’s first land plot in Tuen Mun was bought last year for HK$3.5 billion, 20 per cent more than the next bid at HK$2.88 billion, according to records released by the Lands Department. The developer had wanted to show Hongkongers what Kaisa was made of, regardless of the cost, a former employee said, speaking on condition of anonymity.”