A report from the Guardian. “Home ownership was initially a pandemic silver lining for Kay Kingsman. After a whirlwind month of house hunting, she made an offer on a Portland townhome in late July; it was only the second property she saw in person. A week later, Kingsman closed the deal and paid her new home a visit. It was there that she felt her first twinges of buyer’s remorse. This, it seemed, was her reward for persevering in a dog-eat-dog real estate market. ‘I thought it would be a good investment,’ she tells me. ‘And then the first mortgage payment hit, and I was like, ‘Oh no. I am trapped.’”
“Real estate grievances are now a mainstay of online forums like Reddit, where calls for commiseration are often phrased in question form and answered, in turn, by commenters’ consensus. ‘Anyone buy a money pit and regret it like I do?’ reads ones post’s header (the answer: yes). ‘How common is buyers remorse?’ asks another (the answer: quite common).”
“Kingsman is trying to make the most of her situation. She says she’s working to reclaim access to her parking spot through a baroque legal negotiation with her home’s previous owners (‘Who I’m still mad at for not cleaning up their beard shavings,’ she adds). And, bit by bit, she’s sprucing up the space. ‘I’m doing the fun house stuff that you get to do, like paint the walls and put in new furniture,’ says Kingsman. ‘So, that’s nice. But also, that money could have been spent in, like, Bali.’”
The Baltimore Sun in Maryland. “People lie on mortgage applications every day. With a few keystrokes and a signature, homebuyers can save themselves tens of thousands of dollars over the life of a 30-year mortgage — if they don’t get caught. Federal prosecutors say they found Democratic State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby of Baltimore doing exactly that. If anything, it was commonplace, said Eric Forster, an expert witness in mortgage fraud cases who reviewed Mosby’s indictment. ‘I didn’t see anything very clever done on her part,’ he said. ‘Actually, I saw a number of things that were quite dumb. But the point is that I’ve seen people do it all the time.’”
“Many people who lie about a vacation home that’s an investment property aren’t caught because federal prosecutors can’t keep up with the number of mortgage fraud complaints sent their way, Forster said.”
From Mortgage News Daily. “If you received a mortgage rate quote any time in the past few days or weeks, unless it was at the end of the business day on Monday, March 14th, you’re looking at a relic of a bygone era. Print it out and hang it up in the halls of Woulda, Shoulda, Coulda. The average conventional 30yr fixed rate is easily up and over 4.25% now, with lenders anywhere from 4.375 to 4.625% depending on the scenario.”
From Bisnow. “Months into the pandemic, special-purpose acquisition companies exploded in popularity before fizzling out in the spring of 2021. But the repercussions of that brief boom are yet to come. ‘We’re in a correction period, which I think will be fairly lengthy,’ said Peter Lewis, Wharton Equity Partners chair and founder. ‘I think you’re going to see some bloodbaths going on.’”
“For the most brazen of such operators attempting to run multiple SPACs at once, some loans were structured to depend on one SPAC finding a successful acquisition in order to finance and pay back another, said Shadow Ventures founder KP Reddy. ‘It’s kind of like having a second mortgage, but if you have to sell the property when it’s [financially] underwater, everybody gets screwed,’ he said.”
From Newstalk in New Zealand. “REINZ data showed national house sale volumes dropped 33 per cent annually but Auckland volumes fell by 40 per cent. Auckland prices dropped from January’s $1.2m median to $1.1m last month. Westpac’s latest housing research out last month from acting chief economist Michael Gordon said there was now enough evidence to declare that the housing boom has ended, with prices turning downward in the last two months.”
“‘We’ve long been saying that house prices can and would fall once we saw a meaningful rise in mortgage rates. That has now happened, with fixed-term rates now factoring in the prospect of a series of OCR hikes over the next couple of years,’ Gordon said.”
From Bloomberg. “Chinese policy makers are closely watching residential prices, which have now fallen for six straight months. Earlier this month, chief banking regulator Guo Shuqing, signaled he’s comfortable with moves being seen in home prices during the industry slowdown — as long as they aren’t too extreme. ‘A lot of people borrow to buy properties for the purposes of investment, or speculation,’ said Guo. ‘Should property prices drop or other problems emerge, it could turn into a huge financial crisis.’”