A report from the Bangor Daily News. “This time last year, Jordan Stolt would have had no problem finding an eager buyer for her $310,000 listing in central Maine. It’s a solid starter home on Winslow’s Roy Street. The 1,000-square-foot home is well below Maine’s average value, making the cost no barrier to a sale in the hot housing market of the past few years. While Maine’s housing inventory remains critically low, demand for homes has waned since a wave of migration during the COVID-19 pandemic. Maine’s sale prices have dropped in all but one of the months between October and February, according to Redfin. Only 29 percent of homes here sold above list price in February, a significant drop from that time last year. ‘The inventory issue is definitely still there, but I think there’s less demand and of course it’s coupled with interest rates,’ Michelle Labonte, a senior residential lender at Kennebec Savings Bank, said. ‘The bidding wars aren’t happening that are bracing the prices.’”
“Stolt, a designated broker-owner with Summit Real Estate, has not seen the bidding war she expected over her Winslow listing, which hit the market on March 11. She recently cut the price by $10,000 to keep the property competitive. ‘The feedback from buyers was that they couldn’t afford the monthly payments with interest rates,’ Stolt said. ‘A lot of people just can’t afford what people are asking for their homes.’”
From Moneywise. “Even for relatively savvy savers — such as Rosalie from San Antonio, Texas —- high mortgage rates may not be enough to resist the temptation to overpay for a home. In a conversation with ‘The Ramsey Show’ co-hosts Jade Warshaw and Ken Coleman, she shared how she and her husband felt ‘in over our heads’ about a property purchase. ‘I feel like it’s way too much money and I’m having a bit of remorse,’ she said. Last year, she and her husband sold their first home to buy a bigger property. Now, they’re paying $4,000 a month for their mortgage. That’s 40% of their $10,000 combined monthly income.”
“Although they clearly qualified for this mortgage, Warshaw believes they should have resisted the temptation to max out their purchasing power. ‘They want you to spend, spend, spend because they get paid off that,’ she said of banks and mortgage brokers. In fact, Warshaw claims she and her husband were once approved for mortgage payments up to 50% of their combined income and decided to turn down the offer. Coleman recommends selling the home and downsizing. This is despite the fact that closing costs could chew into Rosalie’s home equity. ‘Take the hit and you get out with very little stress,’ he said. ‘Learn from this and move on.’”
Fortune on California. “In San Francisco, the median home sale prices peaked in April 2022 (two or so years into the pandemic-fueled housing boom). But it’s plunged 15% or $250,000 since then, as of February, according to Redfin. The average home value in the city is down almost 4% in the past year alone, per Zillow. ‘The typical person who bought in San Francisco at nearly any point in 2021 or 2022, when the housing market was red hot due to ultra-low mortgage rates, would have taken a loss if they sold during the first few months of this year,’ the analysis read. ‘And these sellers are losing big. ‘In San Francisco, the typical homeowner who sold at a loss parted with their home for $155,500 less than they bought it for, the largest dollar loss of any major metro,’ Redfin’s data journalist and senior economist wrote. ‘Nationwide, the median loss was $39,912.’”
“A local Redfin agent included in the analysis said something similar: ‘Home prices have fallen from their peak…It’s not just because mortgage rates are high. San Francisco has lost some of its appeal post-pandemic. A lot of tech employers and big-name retailers have moved out of the city, and some of my clients have reported they’re leaving the area because they don’t feel as safe as they used to.’”
The Los Angeles Times. “Thousands of Californians who won’t see their home insurance renewed by State Farm this summer are homeowners in Los Angeles County, with some upscale Westside neighborhoods hit hard, according to the insurer’s recent filings with the Department of Insurance. A majority of the insurer’s customers in neighborhoods in West Los Angeles as well as in or near the Santa Monica Mountains including Bel-Air, Pacific Palisades and Woodland Hills are going to lose their coverage. Older homeowners and those with comparatively lower incomes who bought when housing was much cheaper could be hard hit. Orinda in Contra Costa County and Los Gatos in Santa Clara County also will see a high number of policyholders lose coverage.”
“Thelma Waxman, president of the Brentwood Homeowners Assn., whose 1,200 members own about 4,000 properties, said it had been a stressful time for members, and for residents living near high-risk fire zones. Losing State Farm coverage ‘is the No. 1 topic of discussion’ among association members, she said. ‘Everybody is nervous.’”
ABC 15 in Arizona. “Police say a fire that destroyed more than a dozen homes under construction in Phoenix Sunday night is now being investigated as possible arson. Firefighters were called to the scene near 59th Avenue and Baseline Road around 11:30 p.m. Sunday where multiple homes were engulfed in flames. The homes are part of a D.R. Horton build-to-rent community, Ascend at South Mountain, scheduled to be finished by year’s end. The homes were not available for lease yet. This was the second major blaze impacting homes under construction that ABC15 reported on within a week. A fire recently ripped through an apartment complex site in Prescott Valley, causing an estimated $60 million in damage.”
From 10 Tampa Bay. “When Bill Lundy bought his brand-new home at The Preserve at La Paloma in Sun City Center just off I-75, he wasn’t expecting the need for contractors and repairs almost soon as he got the keys. Property records show Lundy purchased the property in 2023 from a homebuilder called Mattamy Homes. A behemoth in the development world, the company has built thousands of homes across the nation and in Florida. 10 Investigates combed through court records in multiple counties across the state and counted more than 100 lawsuits with hundreds of complaints against Mattamy and its subcontractors for construction defects.”
“Stucco defects and failure, roofing system defects and code violations appear as common homeowner grievances. ‘The quality of their work, of our home, is– I’d give it an F,’ homeowner Mike Harley said. Harley also lives in The Preserve at La Paloma,. Harley said he keeps an Excel spreadsheet of problems that need attention in his new home. ‘We walked into the home on August 1 and had problems since day 1,’ he said. ‘Within the first few days, we had water leaking into the door up to about 10 feet because the sprinkler system was pointed toward the front door. There’s a lot of people who are unhappy,’ Harley added.”
The Miami Herald in Florida. “The corruption trial of a former senior Ecuadorian official charged with laundering more than $10 million in bribes through Miami’s banking system and real estate market may not feature a household name as a defendant. But the Brazilian company accused of paying off Ecuador’s ex-comptroller, Carlos Ramon Polit, is one of the biggest engineering and construction firms in the world. Its name is Odebrecht, which admitted to a massive bribery scheme across the Americas in 2016 and agreed to pay $2.6 billion in a record corruption settlement with the Justice Department. Polit’s trial, a spin-off of that high-profile scandal, started Tuesday.”
“The case, probed by Homeland Security Investigations, is built upon an electronic trail of financial records and cooperating witnesses. One of them took the witness stand after opening statements Tuesday. Jose Santos, who worked as an engineering and construction executive at Odebrecht for 38 years, testified that he was asked to resolve the company’s huge fines with the Ecuadorian government over the power-plant fiasco and then found himself being extorted by Polit. According to the prosecutor, Polit told Santos: ‘My son in Miami makes the money disappear.’”
The National Post in Canada. “The rollout of the City of Toronto’s vacant home tax has been nothing short of disastrous. There’s no point trying to fix it, as it’s a flawed tax that was always going to be a mess. It needs to be axed. The vacant home tax , now in its second year, requires an annual declaration from homeowners that they are either living in their property or renting it out for at least six months of the year. This declaration needs to be made yearly for each property a person owns. But Toronto is not Vancouver. It is not, as one magazine feature described the West Coast city, ‘a giant safety deposit box for China’s elite.’ The same feature detailed how Vancouver real estate firms send recruiters to Chinese cities to bring wealthy buyers over on bus tours of high-end neighbourhoods. In other cases, homes are bought from abroad sight unseen.”
The Luxembourg Times. “Luxembourg’s stalled housing market is hitting even the country’s affordable housing developer, with the Société Nationale des Habitations à Bon Marché (SNHBM) selling almost 80% fewer subsidised properties last year. Despite thousands of people on its waiting list, the SNHBM in 2023 sold 38 new homes – including 16 apartments and 22 single-family houses – compared to 187 units in 2022, the Luxemburger Wort reported on Tuesday. More than a third of the 289 homes the SNHBM constructed in 2022 were still on the market nearly halfway through last year, the organisation said in May. A subsidized apartment near the airport in the social property developer’s Elmen site costs between €5,400 and €5,900 per square meter, an elevated price which SNHBM director Guy Entringer explained in January was the result of its higher loan interest rates, increased construction costs, administrative requirements for archaeological excavations and a low prescribed density.”
The New Indian Express. “Situated on the north-western edge of Delhi, Narela is a dichotomous locality comprised of dense urban villages and massive housing projects by the Delhi Development Authority (DDA). The DDA had envisioned Narela as a mega ‘sub-city’, akin to Dwarka and Rohini. The authority has constructed over 47,000 flats here since 2010. However, 40,000 of these flats remain unsold, with many labelling the locality a ‘Ghost Town’. Outside of the DDA’s planned housing projects, residents of Narela’s urban villages face the same host of issues that plague other parts of Delhi, including sanitation, congestion, and infrastructural issues. However, the most pressing concern for most residents is transportation.”
“‘We need better connectivity to the city centre. The closest metro station is 15km away, and DTC bus service is also inadequate here. It is far more convenient for us to travel to Sonipat than to commute to the centre of Delhi,’ said Vinay Mis hra, a resident of Swatantra Nagar in Narela.”
From Tuoi Tre News. “A top Vietnamese property tycoon was sentenced to death on Thursday in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated $27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defence arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. ‘The defendant’s actions… eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the Party and state,’ read the verdict at the trial in the southern business hub Ho Chi Minh City.”
“Lan, born in 1956, denied the charges and blamed her subordinates. Lan embezzled $12.5 billion, but prosecutors said Thursday the total damages caused by the scam now amounted to $27 billion — a figure equivalent to six percent of Vietnam’s 2023 GDP. She and the others were arrested as part of a national corruption crackdown that has swept up numerous officials and members of Vietnam’s business elite in recent years. Lan appeared to say in final remarks to the court last week that she had thoughts of suicide. ‘In my desperation, I thought of death,’ she said, according to state media. ‘I am so angry that I was stupid enough to get involved in this very fierce business environment — the banking sector — which I have little knowledge of.’”
“After a five-week trial in Ho Chi Minh City, 85 others also face verdicts and sentencing on charges ranging from bribery and abuse of power to appropriation and violations of banking law. Police have identified around 42,000 victims of the scandal, which has shocked the Southeast Asian country. Lan, who is married to a wealthy Hong Kong businessman also on trial, was accused of setting up fake loan applications to withdraw money from SCB, in which she owned an over-90-percent stake. Police say the scam’s victims are all SCB bondholders who cannot withdraw their money and have not received interest or principal payments since Lan’s arrest. Prosecutors said during the trial they had seized more than 1,000 properties belonging to Lan.”