A report from the Times of San Diego in California. "Jason Elliott, Newsom’s top advisor on housing and homelessness, was joined on the virtual panel, by Jennifer Svec, legislative advocate for the California Association of Realtors, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, a Democrat from the East Bay; and Adam Fowler, research director at Beacon Economics, all of whom agreed that a supply shortage was largely responsible for ballooning home prices. On home prices, Svec refrained from calling California’s housing market a 'bubble.' She expects the housing market will remain much more stable this time around than after the 2008 foreclosure crisis, and doesn’t expect prices to drop anytime soon."

The SFist in California. "Housing inventory, or the number of homes on sale, within the city of San Francisco proper has skyrocketed by 96% since February. This, according to Zillow, is largely due to many of residents trying to sell their houses without a commensurate increase in buyers. Quite a shift for someone who has lived San Francisco since 2013 where sellers held onto their homes like their property was the Holy Grail."

From NPR. "This time last year, amid the pandemic lockdown, Marissa Lovell's landlord offered to sell Lovell her current rental house in Boise, Idaho, for $256,000. Lovell and her fiancé are first-time homebuyers — she's a freelance writer and publicist for a local music festival, and he's an arborist. So it took them until July to get all their paperwork together and loan secured. By then, her landlord had raised the asking price to $300,000. Today, one year later, it's for sale for almost $400,000."

"The house isn't exactly palatial either: 730 square feet, two bedrooms, only one bathroom and no space for laundry or even a dishwasher. But if they tried to buy this place now, they'd go way into debt, with their mortgage payment possibly double what they're currently paying in rent. 'There's kind of just a feeling of panic-buying almost, which I don't want to do. It's hard to know whether we should be buying now or wait, or if we wait, are we going to be completely priced out,' Lovell says."

"Will it only get worse for Lovell, or should she ride it out and wait for some sort of correction or even crash? That's a question real estate economists like Vivek Sah are getting a lot right now. 'The boom is sustainable. The growth in prices is not,' says Sah, director of the Lied Center for Real Estate at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas."

The Sun Journal. "A developer has pulled out of a proposed condominium project near Central Maine Medical Center, but could return in the future with revised plans. Planning Board Chairman Pauline Gudas said she walks the neighborhood often. 'The roads are terrible,' she said. 'If you have false teeth you’re probably going to lose them. The holes on Whipple Street in the road are absolutely insane. If I lived there I would be banging on my city councilor’s door every day. It just seems that economic development and our City Council is fixated on one section of the city.'"

The Orlando Sentinel. "The pandemic didn’t only displace low-income Floridians. Alexiss Green, 45, had worked for 20 years as a corporate accountant, earning over $50,000 a year. In 2019 she wanted to reinvent herself, so she quit her job, moved her two teenagers into a rental home in Clermont and used her savings to buy a fixer-upper, the first investment in her new house-flipping business."

"Three months after buying the property, COVID hit and she couldn’t safely send out crews to work on it. She fell behind on the loan payments and is now working with the lender to relinquish the property. She lost entirely a second investment she made in a joint property. Without any income, paying the rent — $1,850 for a four-bedroom house — became impossible. In September, she found an eviction notice taped to the front door. She hadn’t paid rent since April 2020."

"'I’m not a deadbeat person who doesn’t pay her bills, I’m just a person in a hard situation,' Green said. She said she understands her landlord has bills, too, 'but I don’t have control over what’s going on in the world right now.'"

From Domain News in Australia. "You’ve just lost your dream home to a wealthier bidder at auction. The bank refused to lend you the little extra you needed to buy the apartment you’d set your heart on. The house you knew would suit you perfectly sold for $500,000 more than the agent said it would. Suddenly, you’re overwhelmed by something that feels a lot like grief."

"But, surely, that’s silly? An outpouring of grief is something that comes as the result of a family member dying, a lost job, a relationship break-up, an illness or an accident; not from something as prosaic as the housing market."

"Psychotherapist Brandon Srot begs to differ. 'It’s really important to acknowledge the grief that comes from the loss of that home you’d been hoping to buy and imagining yourself in,' he said. 'That’s very real and you shouldn’t dismiss it as a first-world problem or inconsequential.'"

"'There are multiple strands of loss here. There’s the actual missing out on the home, but there’s also the crushing of your anticipation of your hopes and dreams being fulfilled by the purchase. Maybe you’d pictured your family living there, or considered how you’d decorate a room, or planned where to put your furniture or seen yourself growing old in that space. To some people, a home is not just a place to live. It’s about security, stability, family, community and belonging. So that loss can be very traumatic.'"

"It’s a sad fact in today’s housing market that housing loss grief, or the FOMO variant, GOMO – Grief Over Missing Out – is afflicting many people."

From Interest New Zealand. "There’s a glimmer of hope on the horizon for prospective first home buyers with the national lower quartile selling price declining in April, according to interest.co.nz’s Home Loan Affordability Report."

A comment: "If one is looking at negative returns, then 2% house price DEcrease is a 10% tax free loss on one’s 20% equity, and 20% loss on a 10% equity. Leveraging works both ways, mate. By the way, using your example (which is flawed anyway, as you are comparing a one-off gain with an ongoing income), to match an 2% decrease on a $800k home is $16,000 pa - that’s you need a $16k increase on after tax income to compensate for this loss."

"By the way, margin lending has nothing to do with the inherent risks associated with what your partially borrowed funds are invested in. This post is an example of financial illiteracy, and financial illiteracy of many kiwis is the reason why they are stuck with a 19th century mentality whereby the best investment is in housing. This is why we have a stagnant productivity and an economy over-reliant on parasitic residential housing speculation, rather than on real productive investment and innovation."

The Aspen Times in Colorado. "The other day at the office, I was wrapping up a call behind my closed door when I heard something odd and unfamiliar: collective laughter and a chorus of voices. Unlike others during the pandemic, I’ve been lucky to be able to work away from home since lockdown was lifted — temp check and facial covering required, of course. It’s been a godsend for me as like a house-trained dog, I must be let out at least once a day to bark, allowed to sniff around and make a mark or two on the local hydrants. And that day, boy did I dig up a big tasty bone! A good old-fashioned bull session right outside my door!"

"Six agents and our support staff — more people assembled inside at work than I’ve seen in the last year — were standing around, sharing stories, jawing about the biz, as well as the recent news about masks. I was enjoying the impromptu conversation so much, I didn’t immediately realize no one was wearing one! I could see everyone’s faces, expressions and inflections. We were all relaxed and enjoying the full facial. For a few fleeting moments, we were free."

"After a year of challenges and changes, there’s no doubt the announcement should have been handled better rather than giving us all another unwelcome shock to the system. Without getting into a useless debate about masks, their efficacy, the vaccine and COVID itself, I’ll simply say our leaders in Washington have way too much faith in the honor system. After all, this is the country where we push our way to the front of the line and do everything we can to game the system."

"And that’s exactly what’s been going on in the real estate market. For sellers it means getting what they want just by asking for it, even if it doesn’t make any sense. And if they’re really lucky, there might even be a nice little tug-of-war and toddler-like temper tantrum as two or more buyers fight for what only one will be allowed to keep."

"As a real estate CEO said recently, 'It is becoming more difficult to convey, through anecdotes or data, how bizarre the housing market has become.' He then tweeted a story about a buyer that offered to name her firstborn child after the seller if they chose her offer. She lost."

"But here’s where it gets really absurd and childish. National media is now tracking a new trend: buyer’s remorse. Number one regret as reported by recent buyers? Paying too much. Others decide once the battle has been won, the cost of ownership is too high. And my personal favorite, after going all in, buyers realize they don’t really like the house or its location."

"So as we ditch the masks as declare COVID in America a thing of the past, it’s clear to me we’re still not acting like normal people."