A report from the Everette Daily Herald in Washington. “Active listings in Snohomish County more than doubled in May to 1,182, up from 500 a year ago. Sam Mansour, a broker with John L. Scott Lynnwood, said more sellers put their homes on the market to try to capitalize on high prices. ‘Usually a lot of sellers think the market is going to adjust and are trying to get ahead of that, while in reality they are a little bit too late,’ he said.”
From Forbes. “Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather said, ‘Data on home tours, offers and mortgage purchase applications suggest that home buyers have noticed the shift in power and are no longer leaving the market in droves. Buyers coming back will provide support to the housing market, but between now and the end of year, I think the power will continue to shift towards buyers, resulting in mild price declines from month to month.’”
“‘On the other side, sellers are adjusting to this new reality and learning that sometimes there’s not much they can do to increase buyer interest,’ said Redfin Seattle-area real estate agent Caroline Loudenback. Meanwhile, inventory is improving. According to the National Association of Realtors, inventory rose 25% during April and May compared to 8% — the pre-pandemic average for the same time frame.”
From WRAL in North Carolina. “In Wake County, June had 1,807 closed home sales transactions in the residential market, with the median sale price of $474,900, according to Triangle Multiple Listing Service that was obtained by WRAL TechWire. That’s a drop from the prior month, when the median price of residential property in Wake County was $485,000 on 2,332 transactions. In Durham County, across 508 residential transactions, the median sale price dipped below $400,000 in June 2022. That’s down from a median sale price across 570 properties in May 2022 of $424,250.”
“‘If a house has been for sale two weeks or more, the buyer will most likely not have to pay above asking price to win it,’ said Linda Craft, CEO of Linda Craft & Team, Realtors, in Raleigh, ‘And, yes, may get a few dollars off or a little closing cost help.’”
The Herald Tribune in Florida. “Tammy Garner, who is affiliated with the Coldwell Banker Realty office in downtown Sarasota, said that while there is pent-up demand in the Sarasota-Manatee housing market, the ultra-competitive frenzy has settled down. ‘Earlier this year, there was a listing with 26 offers. Last week, one home had three offers,’ Garner said recently. And those are not uncommon examples; Garner has even seen price reductions this spring and summer, although inventory remains tight. There could be some relief in sight, however, due to new construction of move-in-ready spec homes starting at $500,000.”
From Bloomberg. “The turn in the US housing market has been sharp and swift. Just ask Karlyn and Jack Stenhjem, would-be downsizers who dropped the asking price for their home near Seattle by almost $100,000 since May. The brick Everett, Washington, house, with private access to lakes and trails, is now available for $899,000, a price that makes Karlyn Stenhjem ‘cringe.’ ‘Two months ago our house was valued at $1.1 million on Zillow,’ she said. ‘When you look at the map of listings now, the little red dots are on top of the other little red dots.’”
“Sellers with lofty ambitions are having to pare expectations. In the Austin, Phoenix and Las Vegas metro areas, almost a third of listings in June had price cuts, the Realtor.com data show. In Naples, Florida, agent Jennifer DeFrancesco is advising some sellers to drop prices. The flood of calls from buyers in the Northeast have eased. ‘In the month of May, everything came to a screeching halt,’ DeFrancesco said. ‘We have a rule of thumb that says if you don’t have any showings in 14 days, it’s suggested that you’re 10% overpriced.’”
“Older buyers are especially worried because they depend on their stocks and savings to live, said Carolyn Young, broker associate with Christie’s International Real Estate Sereno in the East Bay region outside of San Francisco. The buyer pullback has been dramatic for homes she’s marketing at Trilogy at the Vineyards, a 55-and-over community in Brentwood.”
“She has reduced list prices by $50,000 to $100,000 because cuts that are quick and substantial get buyers in, she said. ‘For sellers, it’s devastating, especially if they bought something else earlier and paid too much for that,’ Young said.”
“For now, Daniel Sweeney, a Realtor with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices in Henderson, Nevada, is telling sellers not to panic. Buyers are in shock because of higher rates, but they’ll be back, he tells them. Still, a house flipper is trying to pull out of a contract to buy a property from one of Sweeney’s sellers. The investor had 40 properties listed for sale and ‘nobody looking at them,’ Sweeney said. ‘It’s a fast change and that has made people feel concerned that it could get worse,’ he said.”
“The Stenhjems are up against the clock. They’re already paying rent on a one-story home they plan to move to. Jack Stenhjem is 87 and Karlyn’s not much younger, and the stairs in their old house are getting harder to manage. The price cut has gotten a couple buyers interested but now they’re wondering whether to make some improvements to the house because so many competing properties have been updated, Karlyn said.”
“‘It would be nice to make enough on this home in case we live to 100,’ she said. ‘We’re giving away our house at this price.’”
The Los Angeles Times in California. “When the megamansion known as The One was auctioned off in March for less than half its $295-million list price, it wasn’t just a deal for the buyer: It set the stage for what is turning out to be a nasty fight among creditors. Hamid Rafatjoo, Nile Niami’s attorney, scoffed at the lawsuit, which does not name his client as a defendant, as little more than a ploy by the developer’s former investor to muddy up the waters. He said it was late in the game to make a claim that Hankey wasn’t first in line to be repaid given that the estate filed for bankruptcy in October.”
“‘This has been outlined in a bankruptcy case since Day One. And only after the sale closes and there’s a disappointing sale price these theories arise,’ he said. ‘At the end of the day, you try to kick up some dirt and see if there’s a settlement somewhere where you can get some money. My client did nothing wrong. He lost $30 million to $40 million of his own money on this project. To say that signatures were forged or that funds were misused is just a waste of time.’”
From iNFOnews in Canada. “While the ultra-rich really don’t care what interest rates are doing when it comes to buying homes, those aren’t the people buying into the relatively modest luxury market in the Okanagan.
That means people wanting to buy luxury homes at $2 million and more are taking note of rising interest rates, high inflation and a soft stock market.”
“‘This is where you see markets changing,’ Faith Wilson,CEO of Faith Wilson/Christie’s International Real Estate, told iNFOnews.ca. ‘Before, you may have hit it out of the park on every single one – you knew the market value was there and there were enough buyers and there was enough heat in the market and there would be more than one buyer coming to the table. Multiple bids are not always happening now.’”
From CBC News in Canada. “A Calgary man who defrauded investors out of tens of millions of dollars has been taken into custody after a judge convicted him in a decades-long Ponzi scheme. Arnold Breitkreutz, 74, was found guilty of fraud over $5,000 by Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Colin Feasby, following a trial that took place earlier this month. When charges were first laid in 2018, RCMP said there were hundreds of investors affected. Those men and women invested in Breitkreutz’s company, Base Finance, and believed their money was secured by mortgages on real estate in Alberta.”
“‘He’s been convicted and we know he’s going to go to jail,’ said Bill Janman, an investor who lost nearly $3 million in the fraud. ‘There was no way to recover from the loss,’ said Janman, who is in his 70s.”
From ABC News in Australia. “A new completion date has been set for a long-delayed riverside Brisbane apartment building, three years after the initial deadline, but buyers are still concerned it won’t be finished on time. The $375 million apartment tower named 443 Queen Street, developed by Cbus Property, is set to be finished by the end of the second quarter of 2023, with settlements forecast in the following quarter.”
“Bob McKercher signed a contract to buy one of the apartments at 443 Queen Street. ‘Quite frankly given all the delays that have been going on, I don’t have any faith that Cbus will finish on time,’ he said. ‘In the interim we’ve bought a very small townhouse that is suiting us over the short term. When we had a get-together with various owners, many people have sold out and renting and they’re out of pocket tens perhaps even hundreds of thousands of dollars.’”
The Vietnam Express. “Many property developers are slowing down their activities due to lack of access to credit, legal challenges and falling demand. During the second half of this year Quoc Cuong Gia Lai would slow down investment and wait for property policies to be streamlined, CEO Nguyen Thi Nhu Loan told shareholders at the annual general meeting. ‘The stalling of projects means developers cannot sell them and therefore their cash flows are blocked. The market is burdened by a shortage of capital.’”
“The head of a property developer based in Thu Duc City, who asked not be identified, said his company achieved the worst second quarter sales in the last five years. The plummeting demand has forced it to stop marketing campaigns, he said. ‘We do not expect much this year, just waiting for this difficult period to be over and be ready for another race next year.’”
From Stuff New Zealand. “In May, the Auditor-General sent a letter to the Treasury regarding the lack of accountability and transparency in $74 billion of Covid-19 spending. It appears that Treasury and some government officials used the pandemic to give many billions of dollars to businesses that were overpaid or did not actually need the money.”
“There were 36 financial and other measures introduced to assist businesses, with the wage subsidy being the largest. MSD staff had been happy to pay property investors up to $3000 per week for properties to use for emergency housing that in some cases weren’t fit for use, including places littered with debris, and others with no ovens, furnishings or bedding.”
“A well known economist and financial journalist, Bernard Hickey, has written that ‘New Zealand’s economic response to Covid was among the worst in the world in terms of widening wealth inequality and the wasteful use of taxpayer funds.’ He calculated that asset owners had increased their wealth by $1 trillion over two years, while those on low incomes went backwards and ended up borrowing $400 million from the MSD. The vast amounts of money given away by officials to businesses who did not need it has cost each taxpayer several thousand dollars and all the surplus cash started an asset price bubble.”