A holiday topic starting with the Union Tribune in California. "Over the past decade, the dream of homeownership became more elusive than ever as soaring home prices eroded any headway aspiring San Diego buyers made following the Great Recession. 'It all comes back to housing prices. The American dream is going great for people over 65 but it’s eroding more for the bottom up,' said Dowell Myers, a professor of policy, planning and demography at USC. 'The losses are rising steadily from the bottom and that’s not good. You’re building more of the population on the lower trajectories of homeownership and they're never going to bounce back up to the top. You still have a lot of older people who push the average up, but with each decade there’s no one at the bottom with success. It's an inexorable decline.'"

"Real estate agent Jan Ryan has seen a lot of changes over four decades working with residential buyers in San Diego County. Ryan got her broker license in 1981 and can recall young families buying into their first home and starting a life through most of her career. That has largely changed in the last few years. She says she's seen young families saddled with monthly mortgage payments of $5,000, on top of property taxes and insurance. 'It just breaks my heart,' she said."

From Bisnow Houston. "Texas’ 20-year winning streak could be coming to an end. In what has been billed as the 'Texas Miracle,' the state transformed itself into the world's ninth-largest economy on a triple-pronged promise: the Lone Star State has low regulations, low taxes and low costs. A major culprit? A severe lack of housing affordability that has many of Texas' top cities hurtling toward the once-unthinkable reality that the gap between it and cities on the coasts is narrowing to more of a crack. 'The housing advantage that we've had for decades is really gone,' said Steven Pedigo, director of the LBJ Urban Lab at the University of Texas at Austin."

"Growing discontent plus the prospect of losing the state’s economic ace in the hole is worrying developers, economic development experts, urban planners and politicians. Some of Texas’ immediate neighbors are smelling blood in the water and seizing the opportunity to show the state up on costs. Oklahoma, in particular, is making a major play as an alternative to Texas that is just as business-friendly and more affordable, to boot. 'Now other states can take advantage and say, ‘Hey, you can't afford to live in Texas, come to Oklahoma, come to Arkansas or Mississippi, Louisiana, because we have plenty of space and housing here,’ said Roger Arriaga, executive director for the Texas Affiliation of Affordable Housing Providers."

The Boston Globe. "The story of the last two years in Massachusetts has been this: if you like a state with high housing prices, a crumbling public transit system, cold winters, downtown neighborhoods that are as populated as Boston was in 'The Last of Us,' and a new tax on income above $1 million, we are the place for you. That’s not a good story under any circumstances, but it’s an especially tough tale at a moment when employees have unprecedented flexibility about where they work, companies are rethinking their commitment to physical office space, and venture capitalists who used to prefer backing startups inside of Route 495 are now placing their bets globally."

"Even more worrisome is a poll that the Massachusetts Society of CPAs conducted in February. When asked about their high-income clients — people affected by the new tax on income over $1 million — these accountants said that 82 percent of these clients 'have expressed plans to leave Massachusetts in the next 12 months.' They are planning. To. Leave."

The New York Times. "The math is hard to argue with. Buying a home near work is more lucrative than working. The growth of asset values has outstripped returns on labor for four decades, and a McKinsey report found that a majority of those assets — 68 percent — is real estate. Last year, one in four home sales was to someone who had no intention of living in it. These investors are particularly incentivized to buy the sorts of homes most needed by first-time buyers: Inexpensive properties generate the highest rental-income cash flows."

"Real estate is a place where money literally grows on tree beams. In the last decade, the typical owner of a single-family home acquired nearly $200,000 in appreciation. 'Another word for asset appreciation is inflation,' the academics Lisa Adkins, Melinda Cooper and Martijn Konings write in 'The Asset Economy,' 'an increase in monetary value without any corresponding change in the nature of the good itself or the conditions of its production that would make it scarcer or justify an increased demand for it.'"

WSB Radio in Georgia. "The change in housing needs and purchase behaviors caused by the pandemic saw hundreds of thousands move to areas in the Sunbelt, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, including the outlying areas of the Atlanta metro. Despite migration, there are millions of empty homes across the United States, and hundreds of thousands in the Atlanta area alone. For Atlanta, almost 10% of homes for rent were vacant. Census data showed that, as of 2020, 258,245 housing units existed in the City of Atlanta, and 2.4 million in the larger Atlanta metropolitan area."

"The number of homes sitting empty while millions struggle to find housing isn’t restricted to metros in the Peach State. Census Bureau data also shows that while Americans traversed the nation to find new communities, the number of homes sitting empty was in the millions. 'In 645 of the nation’s 3,143 counties, seasonal units made up at least 50% of the vacant housing in the county,' the Census reported. 'In 1,313 counties, seasonal units outnumbered the combined total number of units for rent or sale that were vacant.' The Census Bureau reported there were 4.3 million vacant seasonal units throughout the country, with seasonal units being the largest category of vacant housing inventory 'again.'"

From Investor Place. "Speaking of banks and real estate, idiocy is repeating itself. Remember the whole housing crisis of 2007 that nearly took down the U.S. banking system? Do you recall what caused that? In large part, it was banks extending risky loans to subprime borrowers. But we’ve learned, right? There’s no way our lending institutions would repeat that same mistake again…"

"Well, feast your eyes on this delightful MarketWatch headline: Home buyers will now be able to put down as little as 1% on their home, Rocket Mortgage says. Rocket Mortgage is allowing low- and moderate-income would-be homeowners to buy homes with just 1% down on their purchase price. And I know this makes you nervous, but don’t worry! This is in no way, shape, or form like the 'no down payment' mortgages in the subprime crisis. After all, this is an enormous '1%' down payment. See? It’s miles above 0%!"

"Rocket Mortgage’s CEO Bob Walters assures us that borrowers will have to meet 'stringent' credit standards. In fact, Walters is so certain that nothing could go wrong here, that this new 1%-down loan doesn’t even require the borrowers to pay mortgage insurance. Rocket Mortgage will pay it for you! (Is it relevant that Rocket Mortgage reported a net loss of $411 million in Q1?)"

Thunder Bay News Watch. "According to the Canadian Real Estate Association, there was a 30 per cent decline in the number of homes sold in April 2022 compared to the same timeframe the previous year. The average price of a home in Thunder Bay also saw a decrease of 5.7 per cent averaging out to approximately $345,000 for a single detached home. The term 'house poor' has been around for ages, but for this generation of home buyers that really is coming to fruition. There was frantic buying at the height of the pandemic when interest rates were at record lows. However, the peak of COVID years continues to get further away and the markets continue to fluctuate."

"Jay Tysoski, a partner and Mortgage Broker at Mortgage Connection, said being 'house poor' could be more of a reality for many owners. 'Maybe they are financially making their payments and they're able to afford everything that they have, but they also never prepared for a life of not being able to travel when they want to or not being able to eat out or do different other things that they would have expected that they would continue to be able to continue to do simply because they were doing the 'grown-up thing' and buying a home,' he said."

"'Just because you can read it doesn't mean that you understand it. You want to make sure that if you are stressing the limits of your affordability, you have to understand on the backside what the consequences of that could mean, which could mean missing payments, your mortgage defaulting, the bank taking ownership of your home,' Tysoski said, adding those are some of the extreme examples the broker makes when a buyer purchases a home beyond their means."

From CTV News. "As household debt and the cost of living continue to rise, fears of a looming recession grow. Mortgage debt in particular was put 'on a fast track,' according to RBC. 'By late-2021, Canada’s household debt-to-income ratio had exceeded pre-pandemic levels. And it’s remained elevated ever since,' the RBC Proof Point report reads. Victor Tran, mortgage and real estate expert with RATESDOTCA, says many Canadians may have difficulty coming up with the necessary cash or finances to continue to pay their mortgage."

"'They don't really have any other option to get out of it, but to sell their homes,' Tran told CTVNews.ca. 'Otherwise, the bank will do it for them.'"

ABC News in Australia. "Around half of fixed rate borrowers whose low-rate home loans are expiring over the next two years are planning to leave their current lender, but it's those customers who can't that might prove a bigger problem for the banks, new research finds. Banking analyst Jon Mott said the answers would concern bank bosses, and also highlight the problems confronting many home owners."

"'With around $360 billion of fixed rate mortgages maturing this year many customers are facing an increase in interest rates from around 2 per cent towards 6 per cent,' he wrote. 'With APRA requiring the banks to continue using a 3 per cent serviceability buffers, many customers who took out mortgages during 2020-21 are now likely unable to refinance their mortgages and are facing significant financial stress. Our survey indicates around 20-25 per cent of this cohort of mortgagors are in this predicament. This is consistent with estimates from NAB.'"

"NAB has responded to the report, and said its chief financial officer recently estimated that between 15-20 per cent of borrowers were in this situation, with current estimates from the bank sitting at 16 per cent. This group of borrowers unable to refinance their loans have been widely dubbed 'mortgage prisoners.' Mr Mott said banks are likely to help many customers in this group to avoid default by putting some onto interest-only repayment periods or extending the term of the loan, both of which reduce repayments in the short-term but increase the cost of the loan over its life."

"He also said banks may encourage some customers to sell their properties before they default. However, he still expects a growing number of customers to fall behind on repayments and potentially default on their mortgage. 'We expect mortgage arrears to rise sharply over the next 12-18 months as these customers revert to higher interest rates and these loans season,' Mr Mott predicted. 'In our view it is inevitable many customers will not be able to meet their higher repayments and a rise in credit impairment will likely be seen.'"