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Pricing Is Definitely Under Pressure

A report from Forbes. “In the last year, national home prices have jumped just 0.6%, according to the Housing Market Tracker from Redfin. Just one year ago, annual home price gains were nearing 10%. Add in that housing inventory is on the rise. The conditions are even more favorable for coastal buyers, where many markets are actually seeing home prices decline.”

“In Bridgeport, Connecticut, home prices declined a whopping 15.2% over the year, while in Honolulu, prices dropped 2.2%. In California, San Jose, San Francisco and Orange County saw prices dip 11.3%, 7.9% and 2.4%, respectively. San Jose is also experiencing a glut of inventory. The number of listings on the San Jose market has jumped 82% in the last year.”

From Radar Online on Nevada. “Kody Brown’s personal appearance at Janelle’s open house in Las Vegas failed to bring in any bids and RadarOnline.com exclusively confirmed that the Sister Wives stars slashed the price of the home by $25,000! With money woes looming for the family after they fled Sin City, the drastic price reduction didn’t bode well for the Browns.”

“The Brown family has had trouble selling their three Las Vegas homes. Janelle originally listed the home for $649,000 in October 2018. Janelle’s 4,238 sq. ft. house had a total reduction of $74,100 since she listed it in October 2018. She dropped the house $50,000 in January 2019 but that still didn’t help her offload the Vegas home.”

“Christine Brown’s house originally went on the market for $675,000 but was lowered to $614,900 in early 2019.”

The Coronado Times in California. “$1M Price Reduction! Welcome to the most exquisite and luxurious home in Coronado. Situated just one block to the beach this home is truly a ‘1 of a kind custom masterpiece!'”

The Herald News in Illinois. “An unusual confluence of trends in the northern Illinois housing market presented a mix of challenges and opportunities to buyers and sellers during the final months of 2018, according to an analysis by the RE/MAX Northern Illinois regional network.”

“One significant change was a turnaround in the inventory of homes for sale. The supply of listings in the Chicago area shrank for two years until May 2018, but slowly has expanded since then, said Jeff La Grange, vice president of the RE/MAX Northern Illinois Region. However, most of that growth involved attached homes and luxury homes.”

“‘Pricing is definitely under pressure for homes listed at $800,000 or more, and that is creating some excellent buying opportunities,’ said Dave Shalabi of RE/MAX Synergy in Orland Park. ‘Rising property taxes are dampening the potential price appreciation for those homes, and rising mortgage interest rates may be having a similar impact.'”

The Miami Herald in Florida. “When Ed Goldfarb pulled up at the modest three-bedroom house, he knew there would probably be a sad story lurking inside. Homes headed to foreclosure almost always have one, and as a real-estate agent specializing in so-called short sales, Goldfarb had heard them all: Lost job. Death in the family. Divorce. Drugs and booze. Just plain old bad luck.”

“But this one was different. When an elderly woman opened the door, Goldfarb’s gaze was immediately riveted by a framed book jacket hanging on the wall: ‘Diary of a Survivor: Nineteen Years in a Cuban Women’s Prison.’ And for the next 45 minutes, it all poured out — everything Ana Rodríguez, Cuba’s longest-held female political prisoner, endured during her nearly two decades of incarceration.”

“The full story of what happened with the loans — how many there were, from whom, and where the money went — will probably never be known. Those secrets died with Mier, who lapsed into a coma a few days before her death on March 23, 2008.”

“Quietly, Rodríguez began looking at financial file folders when Mier was asleep. What she found horrified her. ‘It was like she had gone crazy,’ Rodríguez said, shaking her head in despair even now. ‘She had 60 or 70 credit cards. She was buying things we didn’t need, or that I had never seen. She was giving money away — lots of it — to TV evangelists. She had borrowed money against the house and on some of the papers she had forged my name.'”

“Rodríguez believes Mier may have taken out as many as half a dozen loans against the house. It’s hard to know for sure, because her record-keeping turned spotty toward the end, and the loans have been bought, sold and resold so many times that even the real-estate agent, Goldfarb, has trouble figuring out exactly who controls them now.”

“So does her attorney Daryl Jones, who said attorney-client confidentiality prevents him from saying much about the case. But Jones did observe that federal banking authorities significantly tightened the rules on adjusting mortgages downward and easing repayment rules in early 2018, just before Rodríguez came to him for help. ‘Just a couple of months earlier, we could easily have gotten her some help, and I’m certain she would have been able to stay in the house,’ Jones said. ‘Now, she’s going to need outside help. I hope she gets it. She’s a great person with a great story.'”

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  2. ‘Jones did observe that federal banking authorities significantly tightened the rules on adjusting mortgages downward and easing repayment rules in early 2018, just before Rodríguez came to him for help. ‘Just a couple of months earlier, we could easily have gotten her some help, and I’m certain she would have been able to stay in the house,’ Jones said. ‘Now, she’s going to need outside help’

    I thought the shadow inventory had been cleared up? Guess not. There’s a go fund me thing at the link, but considering no one knows how many loans there are it might be like throwing money out the window. Or worse, buying a shack in Vancouver!

  3. ‘The Brown family has had trouble selling their three Las Vegas homes. Janelle originally listed the home for $649,000 in October 2018. Janelle’s 4,238 sq. ft. house had a total reduction of $74,100 since she listed it in October 2018. She dropped the house $50,000 in January 2019 but that still didn’t help her offload the Vegas home’

    ‘Christine Brown’s house originally went on the market for $675,000 but was lowered to $614,900 in early 2019’

    Even the reality TV stuff is crater. This also happened in Australia before the big slide. When the first show that only broke even aired, it was like a national funeral.

    1. “I think it’s horrific that we live in that world and I can tell you I’ve never given 60 seconds of my life, ever, to one of those Housewives of Blah Blah and Kardashians,” -Jon Bon Jovi.

      And he’s right. How they became wealthy enough to get into high end real estate is beyond me. I hope it all collapses on them!

    2. Tonight on HGTV:

      He’s a beach sand collector, she’s a part time web designer consultant. Their budget is $1.7M in La Jolla.

      1. “He’s a surfer and part-time substitute teacher and she’s a canine manicurist. Their budget is $2.3 million.”

        1. He’s a crytpo evangelist and shes a yoga teacher that exclusively works with comfort alpacas. Their budget is 3 trillion 1s and 0s on a usb drive.

  4. ‘Rising property taxes are dampening the potential price appreciation for those homes, and rising mortgage interest rates may be having a similar impact.’”

    Now that the Gimme Dats have discovered they can vote for far-left progressives more amenable to “redistributing the wealth” than staid corporate Democrats, homeowners in the blue states are going to be low hanging fruit for the taxman as those with large illiquid assets are going to be involuntarily tapped to pay for all that “free” stuff being promised to the takers in exchange for votes.

  5. “In Bridgeport, Connecticut, home prices declined a whopping 15.2% over the year, while in Honolulu, prices dropped 2.2%. In California, San Jose, San Francisco and Orange County saw prices dip 11.3%, 7.9% and 2.4%, respectively. San Jose is also experiencing a glut of inventory. The number of listings on the San Jose market has jumped 82% in the last year.”

    Gosh, it’s almost like all these isolated Eee-bola outbreaks, which the NAR assured me were outliers, are spreading like wildfire. That goodness it’s different here in Colorado Springs and those mutating Eee-bola viruses surely cannot survive contact with our high mountain air.

  6. This just out:

    No more SMSF loans for property
    The Australian-2 hours ago
    The move comes amid a slump in the property market, especially in the formerly red-hot cities of Melbourne and Sydney, that has seen prices for smaller …

  9. Bitcoin Is in the Dumps, Spreading Gloom Over Crypto World

    The value of all cryptocurrencies outstanding is down 85% from peak and volumes on U.S. exchanges have been falling; making it through ‘winter’

    “There’s still coffee,” said Eric Larchevêque, CEO of Paris-based Ledger SAS, which makes crypto-storage products that resemble thumb drives, “but you don’t have the extra nuts.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-is-in-the-dumps-spreading-gloom-over-crypto-world-11552927208

  10. I noticed that Yun has been quiet recently. Of course he has not been the only one on the cheerleading boat.

    At some point you just have to call it what it is. Things are in a bit of a second stage past peak. Will need to see uptick in REO listings and foreclosure filings before reality hits the press hard. A significant and unexpected failure of a lending institution would probably kick third phase in. All in time. Overall rhetoric has changed and most people are aware of a shift occurring. Slope and speed yet unknown. No real fear yet. That come in later phase.

    1. “…I noticed that Yun has been quiet recently….”

      See below. Maybe out of the office getting a refill on those BP meds?

      A new class-action lawsuit takes aim at real estate agents and the tools they use to do business, and housing industry watchers say it could revolutionize the way Americans buy and sell the biggest asset they’ll ever own.

      https://www.marketwatch.com/story/big-name-lawsuit-could-upend-realtors-and-their-6-fee-2019-03-19

      One real estate observer calls NAR’s blueprint an “organic monopoly”

  12. Realtor chatter has gone from: real estate is best investment because of appreciation, to blips and gulleys, to buyers in great position.

    End game: buy now.

    They are just chameleons.

    1. Their slogun during the doldrums of 2009-2012 was “it’s always a good time to buy or sell real estate.”

  13. “In Bridgeport, Connecticut, home prices declined a whopping 15.2% over the year

    don’t even slow down there. worse than Gary IN

    1. I remember going to CT 20 years ago. I was imagining some wealthy enclave. Then I arrived at the airport in Hartford, and traveled to the hotel…. What a pit that place was.

      1. Hartford has some really nice areas. West Hartford is a pretty cool place, beautiful homes from the 1800s and early 1900s. And the Hartford suburbs are hard to beat for what you get price wise.

        But the real wealth in CT is the NYC suburbs part of the state. It’s where Wall St money lives or has weekend homes. Wealth like you’ve never seen before.

  14. The Herald News in Illinois. “An unusual confluence of trends in the northern Illinois housing market presented a mix of challenges and opportunities to buyers and sellers during the final months of 2018,

    hand out fat raises = higher re taxes = shitter

  17. The lawyers who took on Big Tobacco are aiming at Realtors and their 6% fee
    Published: Mar 19, 2019 11:39 a.m. ET
    One real estate observer calls NAR’s blueprint an “organic monopoly”
    By Andrea Riquier
    Bloomberg News/Landov
    Prospective home buyers view a kitchen while touring a house for sale.

    A new class-action lawsuit takes aim at real estate agents and the tools they use to do business, and housing industry watchers say it could revolutionize the way Americans buy and sell the biggest asset they’ll ever own.
    …

  18. As much as I hate renting (Vegas), I was reminded of one of the benefits last night – if it gets bad enough, you can always leave in a relatively short time.

    Whenever I have any contact with my neighbors, I always picture myself like this: Sitting Duck – http://i66.tinypic.com/xmn212.jpg

    My next door neighbor was having trouble starting his car and I made the mistake of asking him if he needed a jump. Started out pleasantly, ended with shots fired (profanity laced grievances.) I was taken totally off guard. I think he might have been drunk.

    1. My next door neighbor was having trouble starting his car and I made the mistake of asking him if he needed a jump. Started out pleasantly, ended with shots fired (profanity laced grievances.)

      Yeesh. Something like that would have me moving too. Hope I never buy next to that.

      1. Hey Carl. The conversation started to get ugly when he asked if we had scorpions. I said we had a couple, but no big deal. He ordered me to get an exterminator, since he is having a problem. I suppose I might have if he had proposed it differently.

        It was pretty bad. My daughter was with me, and she started to cry (she is very sensitive and needs to work on that.)

    2. OK you need to expand on the story.
      I’m curious to know how it went from offering a jump to shots being fired.

      1. Scorpions. I have a feeling this comes from another neighbor who announced on Nextdoor that her trees had bugs and that she wouldn’t be able to get rid of them unless everyone around her had their trees treated, too, so we should all have it done right away.

        I suppose I screwed up by not obeying and now I’m in for it.

        1. I would never admit to having scorpions. “Shots being fired” for no good reason would, one might think, profoundly alarm most anyone who recognized the sounds as gunshots.

          1. I don’t understand your reply.

            A big, well over six foot tall guy telling two women (both under 5’2″, one young, one old) to “f-ing get an exterminator”, “you’re okay in your f-ing house”, and what I (me) do to prevent ants “is f-ing stupid” and getting more agitated by the minute is inappropriate. First pause in the tirade, we walked away.

          2. Started out pleasantly, ended with shots fired (profanity laced grievances.)

            I think the confusion is it’s not clear to some people that you meant just yelled profanity, not actual gunshots.

          4. Where they German and singing “rock me like a hurricane”?

            No but they were whistling and singing something about the Berlin wall.

  19. Ha. Just an expression and I did say “profanity laced grievances.” If that happened, I wouldn’t be posting that here – I’d be packing 🙂

    1. No good deed goes unpunished

      From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

      The phrase ‘No good deed goes unpunished’ is a sardonic commentary on the frequency with which acts of kindness backfire on those who offer them. In other words, those who help others are doomed to suffer as a result of their being helpful.

    1. Thanks, Jeff. My daughter is taking it a little hard. New rule: don’t talk to the neighbors. Sad.

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