It’s Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. “After two lucrative summers, Jeanette Robinson said seasonal reservations are trickling in much slower for her Falmouth bed and breakfast. ‘The rental market is totally flooded,’ said Robinson, who has owned the Frederick William House for 20 years. ‘Occupancy [on the Cape] is down because we have so much inventory.’ ‘Pricing is going to have to come down,’ said Blake Decker, CEO of Pretty Picky Properties. ‘It’s a consistent conversation I’m having with homeowners who are used to getting a certain amount of dollars per week.’ Robinson believes some of the newer Cape Cod property owners will eventually unload their rental properties to invest in other things. ‘I do think some of these rental units, the people who purchased them during COVID, I think they’re going to end up selling,’ Robinson said.”
“Cassie Brewer said her home, in St. Petersburg’s Yacht Club Estates, was dropped by Citizens after $200,000 in upgrades drove the cost to rebuild the property over $700,000. Brewer and her husband then were forced into the private insurance market, where they said their insurance costs have reached $14,000 a year. ‘Where does it stop? If it goes any higher, we’re probably going to have to sell’ like several neighbors, she said. John Hendrick, of Madeira Beach, said a December 2022 law requiring Citizens policyholders to also carry flood insurance beginning in April 2023 would force him to drop his Citizens policy in June. ‘Seniors are being eaten alive financially,’ he said.”
“The state’s chief financial officer Jimmy Patronis called the state’s insurance crisis a ‘manmade’ one caused as suing insurers became a ‘very profitable business.’ Reforms enacted in 2022 and 2023 aimed at removing the profit motive are starting to work, he said.”
“On the west coast of Florida, housing supply is surging, sellers are cutting their asking prices and the time it takes to sell a home is soaring—all at a faster rate than anywhere else in the U.S. The story is similar in parts of Texas. ‘The sharp ascent in Florida housing prices in recent years has driven a lot of homeowners to cash in on their equity, but some of them are having a hard time adjusting to the fact that it’s a buyer’s market,’ said Eric Auciello, a local Redfin sales manager. ‘My advice to sellers is to price your home fairly; the comps from six months ago don’t exist now. And if you’re a buyer, know that the odds of getting an offer accepted below market value are pretty high.’”
“Connie Durnal, a Redfin Premier real estate agent in Dallas, said her market has also been sluggish. ‘Last year was by far the slowest market I’ve seen in my 20 years as a real estate agent,’ Durnal said. ‘Move-up buyers are almost nonexistent. Even though a lot of homeowners have built up a ton of equity, many don’t want to sell because their monthly payment would double or triple due to high mortgage rates.’”
“Landlord and tenant groups made their cases before the Rent Guidelines Board on Thursday ahead of a key preliminary vote next week that will help determine potential rent increases for roughly 2 million rent-stabilized New Yorkers. ‘Without sufficient rent adjustments, these buildings have no future,’ said Jay Martin, executive director of the Community Housing Improvement Program. ‘The reality is that no one is forced to be a landlord of a rent-stabilized building,’ said Leah Goodridge, a former tenant representative on the board and a tenants’ rights attorney. ‘A lot of the framework that’s provided is this sort of equivalency of someone [who] is facing homelessness, can’t afford the rent [versus] someone [who] has made a business decision that isn’t generating profits.’”
“A vacant downtown D.C. office building is being delivered to its lender, setting the stage for a residential conversion. Starwood Property Trust filed a foreclosure affidavit Wednesday for 1200 K St. NW, seeking to take control of the 390K SF property from Brookfield Properties. On Starwood’s fourth-quarter earnings call in February, CEO Barry Sternlicht said he visited 1200 K St. NW, calling it a beautiful building. He said the firm plans to convert it to residential. ‘It’s an unimaginable amount of equity our borrowers have lost, unfortunately,’ Sternlicht said of the K Street asset.”
“The Swig Company has created a new benchmark for Downtown L.A. office sales — $94 a square foot, The Real Deal has learned. The firm sold 617 West 7th Street, formerly the headquarters for Union Oil, for $20.5 million, or roughly 47 percent less than what it bought it for more than a decade ago, according to property records filed with L.A. County. The deal marks the lowest price for an office tower in Downtown L.A. on a per square foot basis over the last four years. The last tower to trade was the AON Center, which sold to Carolwood for about $134 a square foot. Swig also had to pay $1.2 million to the City of Los Angeles, under the city’s 5.5 percent transfer tax on sales over $10 million, according to the deed.”
“New Jersey’s top loan officer based on volume and his former assistant have been charged for their involvement in a mortgage fraud scheme, the U.S. Department of Justice said. Christopher Gallo, 44, of Old Tappan in Bergen County, and his former assistant Mehmet Elmas, 32, a U.S. citizen who lives in Turkey, were each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud. The Justice Department, citing court documents and statments made in court, said from 2018 through October 2023 Gallo and Elmas were involved in a scheme to falsify loan origination documents sent to different mortgage lenders including their former employer to get mortgage loans approved fraudulently. They are also accused of fraudulently obtaining cheaper mortgage rates by not disclosing that the mortgage loans were intended for the purchase of rental or investment properties, as opposed to primary residential homes.”
“Mauro Quattrochi is facing a decision shared by many in Toronto: commit to a ‘wallet-bursting life in the city, or a car-bound, almost-as-expensive life outside it?’ Quattrochi, an engineer living in downtown Toronto, says the mortgage cost on his condominium townhouse will skyrocket upon renewal next year. ‘We’re staring down the barrel of an economic gun,’ Quattrochi told CTV News Toronto. Brad Burgess, born and raised in Toronto, gave up city living with his wife late last year and bought a home in the Maritimes. Burgess returned with his wife to her childhood province of New Brunswick, purchasing a home in Moncton that was mortgage-free. ‘What I don’t miss, number one, is the outrageous cost of living and number two, the crime,’ he said.”
“Cottage owners looking to sell are scrambling to close deals before proposed changes to the rules on capital gains take effect and potentially leave them on the hook for much higher tax bills, realtors say. While it is nearly impossible for individuals to list a property and close the sale before the tax changes, those with cottages already on the market are pushing to move up closing dates, said Barb Williams, a realtor with Baumgartner Realty Group in Haliburton, Ont. ‘It’s chaos,’ Ms. Williams said, adding that a number of clients have told her the changes have upended their financial plans. ‘All the people that decided to put their house for sale a month ago and made the decision at the time that this is the year they’re going to sell based on the numbers their accountant gave them, now the rug is pulled [out from] underneath.’”
“‘It’s a really good position, as a buyer, to approach an owner in Muskoka, or anywhere, if those gains are significantly large,’ said David Bemmann broker at Sotheby’s International Realty Canada. Mr. Bemmann said it is best to stay calm and seek the advice of realtors and tax experts. ‘The worst thing you want to do is panic and take an offer that you just never thought you’d take.’”
“The phone calls were coming on an almost daily basis. Lawyers, real estate agents and people with cash in hand, all looking to purchase Rod Pratt and Diana Paquette’s Mexican time-share at a handsome price. It seemed like a godsend to the Edmonton couple. On their first trip to Mexico, for a 2016 wedding, they had made a snap decision to invest in a beachfront property in Nuevo Vallarta, on the Pacific coast, just north of the resort town Puerto Vallarta. But nothing was as it appeared. ‘Anything you look at and touch, it’s got a dollar tag on it,’ said Pratt, 65. ‘It’s definitely not all-inclusive.’”
“By the spring of 2019, they were desperate to unload the time-share. So when a broker from Atlanta cold-called and said he had a client willing to pay $155,000 US, Pratt pounced. ‘They have, like, these fees and stuff they wanted for opening and closing… all kinds of little ones,’ he said. ‘Anywhere from maybe $1,500 US to $10,000.’ The Jalisco New Generation Cartel (known by its Spanish initials CJNG) has existed for only 15 years, yet ranks one of Mexico’s largest and most powerful criminal organizations. It operates in at least 27 of the country’s 32 states, with affiliates across the globe. Its home base is Puerto Vallarta. No one is sure just how much CJNG is earning from its time-share frauds; just as it’s not known for certain if the cartel was behind the bogus offers made to Pratt.”
“Rod Pratt and Diana Paquette have been busy packing up their Edmonton home, preparing to move and heading for a divorce. ‘All I was really trying to do was get some money back for my wife and for my life,’ Pratt said, tearing up. ‘I would gladly trade the trips to Mexico for a life back,’ he said. ‘I wish we would have never went to Mexico.’”
“Malaysia is scrambling to save its $100 billion city of the future. Forest City, the brainchild of China’s troubled property giant Country Garden, located in southern Malaysia’s Johor has Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar as one of its major stakeholders. Billed as a paradise with turtles and white-sand beaches, Forest City aimed at housing 700,000 people across 7,000 acres on four reclaimed islands upon completion in 2035. But many years into construction, the joint venture between Country Garden and a private Malaysian company backed by the Sultan of Johor and the state government, remains home to less than 10,000 people.”
“Spread over 7,000-acres and overlooking Singapore, it was originally aimed at luring Chinese middle-class buyers. But things quickly went downhill. A combination of scant sales, Chinese controls on capital leaving the country, a pandemic shutdown that all but closed the border and public anger at China’s growing influence in Malaysia left the project in dire straits. Nazmi Hanafiah, an IT engineer and former Forest City resident, told the outlet that the project was a ‘ghost town.’ ‘I didn’t care about my deposit, I didn’t care about the money. I just had to get out,’ Hanafiah said. ‘It’s lonely around here— it’s just you and your thoughts. There is nothing to do here.’”
“Things are difficult on the ground. A Malaysian man named Ozzy, speaking to Foreign Policy, said he was on the hunt for a place in Malaysia. But Forest City is not on his list. ‘Look at how empty this place is,’ he said. ‘I’d only be able to rent it out for one or two months a year. … When I visited in 2018 this place was packed. Now there’s no one here. It’s like it’s haunted.’”