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I Can’t Help But Wonder How A Buyer Who Purchased For The Full Price Last Year Is Reacting

A report from the Toronto Sun in Canada. “In a scenario that is no doubt being replicated in major urban centres across Canada, sales of homes in Toronto dipped 68% in the first week of April while condo sales were down a whopping 80%, according to statistics released by Toronto realtor Doug Vukasovic, who has also found that sellers are pretty much becoming resigned to abandoning the concept of a bidding war. ‘I wouldn’t be selling right now … it’s not a time to be testing the market,’ he said.”

“He said a client of his purchased a condo Wednesday and paid about 5% less than a similar one sold two weeks ago. Asked if the time is ripe for buyers, he said they will definitely find ‘some better deals’ in this market — particularly with homeowners who need to sell. But don’t expect fire sales, he warns. He said many sellers still have the ‘mentality’ of clinging onto prices seen before the pandemic. ‘From a sellers’ perspective, I think they’re still expecting to see what they were getting,’ Vukasovic said.”

From CBC News. “Physical distancing is meant to flatten the curve of the spread of COVID-19 among Albertans. But it’s also flattening the real estate industry in a province already reeling from a dramatic drop in energy prices, the Alberta Real Estate Association says. Calgary’s housing market had become sluggish long before the pandemic arrived in Alberta, with sales figures and prices dropping since about 2017. As a result, the almost 10-per-cent decline in March sales over last year doesn’t seem too ominous — but it does mean home sales are now tracking at 24 per cent below the five-year average, according to AREA statistics.”

“‘The Calgary market was already struggling with oversupply and price declines prior to the recent changes caused by the pandemic and oil price crash,’ the release said. The hardest hit region was Fort McMurray, where sales in March dropped by almost 30 per cent over March 2019, the lowest level since 2016, when a massive wildfire tore through the community. Currently, sales are tracking at 21 per cent lower than the five-year average. Also taking a significant hit was Grande Prairie. The oil-and-gas community in northwestern Alberta saw its sales drop by 19 per cent over last year.”

The Edmonton Journal. “The Edmonton area’s housing market started strong in March but couldn’t keep up the pace because of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Alberta Real Estate Association (AREA). The average price for the area — which includes Cold Lake, Fort Saskatchewan and Spruce Grove — dropped about 4.7 per cent to roughly $350,000. ‘On the whole, we have seen pricing trending down in Edmonton,’ said AREA chief economist Ann-Marie Lurie. ‘That being said, it was trending down before COVID-19.'”

The News Optimist. “Active listings in Moose Jaw fell 9.6% to 255—off almost 13.0% from the 5-year average. The sales to listing ratio was 35.6% in Moose Jaw and 36.6% in the region suggesting a buyers’ market in the area. Average home prices in Moose Jaw fell a significant 18.3%, going from $268,174 to $219,019 and were approximately 10.0% below the 5- and 10-year average prices of $243,401. Average home prices in the region also fell a significant 21.5%, going from $250,452 to $196,719—10.7% below the 5- and 10-year average price of $220,308.”

“Homes in Yorkton stayed on the market an average of 109 days in March—up 1.9% from 107 days last year (and still above the 5-year average of 88 days). Average home prices in Yorkton fell a significant 45.1%, going from $304,398 to $167,069 which is approximately 26.0% below the 5- and 10-year average price. Average home prices in the region also fell a more modest 17.1%, going from $151,200 to $125,333—more than 16.0% below the 5- and 10-year average price.”

“The sales to listing ratio was 28.3% in the region, 27.3% in Weyburn, and 14.7% in Estevan, suggesting that market conditions favour buyers at the moment. Average home prices in the region fell 11.0%, going from $185,445 to $164,080, or 19.5% lower than the 5-year average. In Weyburn, average home prices were down 34.3%, going from $282,625 to $185,750.”

From Cabin Radio. “Kim Knutson had only just launched her own real estate agency in Yellowknife, Re/Max North of 60, when the coronavirus pandemic hit. ‘I was really panicking about 10 days ago,’ said Knutson. ‘Oh my God, what have I done?’ Many clients are ‘waiting in the wings,’ Knutson said, for a better time to move – but for some, time is more pressing. One couple is paying monthly to stay at a hotel in Yellowknife until they can find somewhere to live. ‘They are desperate to find something,’ said Knutson, ‘but their price range is under $400,000, which is really popular, and there’s nothing in this price range.'”

The Montreal Gazette. “Free parking with that Montreal condo? How about Europa’s Marché Saint Jacques project, which is offering a one per cent teaser interest rate for the first three years’ of ownership. In fact, given that we’ve just headed into the first buyers’ market for condos in 15 years, why pay a mortgage at all on your unit for the first 12 months? These are the kinds of unprecedented deals I’m hearing about, as developers throw parties, slash prices and throw in ‘freebies’ in an effort to sell condos.”

“While Canadian real estate sales appear to have bounced back after a sluggish winter, Montreal inventory continues to soar to heights not seen since the late 1990s. Buyers have more choice and are taking their time in committing to a purchase. I can’t help but wonder how a buyer who purchased a condo at one of these projects for the full price last year is reacting to all these ‘freebies.’ Sometimes it pays to wait.”

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This Post Has 107 Comments

  1. I’m going to deal with these craters one by one to sort through all the information. Next up – Australia!

    ‘stay at a hotel in Yellowknife until they can find somewhere to live. ‘They are desperate to find something,’ said Knutson, ‘but their price range is under $400,000, which is really popular, and there’s nothing in this price range’

    Yeah, no bubble in Canada, right.

    1. For the life of me I cannot understand how Canadians have been servicing the debt on those houses. Vancouver was so expensive that even doctors couldn’t afford it.

      1. Like folks in New York and San Francisco lots of middle and upper middle class folks rent in Vancouver and Toronto. My parents pay less than $1,600 per month to rent a water view one bedroom apartment in Vancouver’s West End (a very nice area). Compared to San Francisco or even Seattle renting in Vancouver is somewhat affordable.

      2. Easy answer …..Six figure drywallers, executive landscapers, white collar home inspectors and vinyl siding millionaires. It’s been quite the evolution from the 80’s when it wasn’t uncommon for a drywaller to work for cash deals and operate out of the back of a beat up caprice station wagon.

        1. Also a lot of real estate agents, interior decorators etc. They have been making a ton of $ the last 5 years.

      4. One of my friends lives in Toronto. He’s in finance and wife is a doctor. They rent.

        I think owners in Canada nowadays are generally 1) older people who were able to use equity from the bubble in their old purchases to fund move-ups, and 2) money launderers.

  3. ‘Two weeks on and now the GTA condo market is bordering on a buyers’ market. Zoocasa says condo sales fell 53% and new listings were down 26%. This puts the sales to new listing ratio at 40%, down from 62% in the week prior to the state of emergency. In the period of March 17 to 30, sales of semi-detached and detached homes have plunged 53% and new listings dropped 30%.’

    “While real estate fundamentals indicate that housing demand will bounce back over the long term in major urban centres like Toronto, COVID-19 has caused an immediate slowdown in housing market activity and across the economy more broadly,” said Zoocasa. “Just two weeks following the announcement of a state of emergency, there was a noticeably visible impact on the house and condo market in the GTA.”

    https://leaderpost.com/executive/posthaste-the-coronavirus-crisis-has-cut-toronto-housing-sales-in-half-in-just-two-weeks/wcm/338a30ef-6232-4136-a3ef-fc6b7300a440/

    1. Falling knives, all of them. Folks should wait four months for the real deals. That’s when the indebted folks won’t be able to hang on any longer and will have to vacate/sell. Any UBI will not be to save them.

      (And having watched the news, I don’t have much faith in UBI. Geez, our idiot gov can’t even hand out a one-time thousand bucks without effing it up. Sliding scales and four-month rollouts is ridiculous.)

      1. Folks should wait four months for the real deals

        An interesting prediction. Didn’t your own wait for a deal last 20 x that?

        1. Oh, are you admitting now that it was a deal? 😋

          I wasn’t only waiting for only a deal. I was waiting for a stable job and a goodly down payment, not just a deal. For 14×4 months, my job prospects were poor and house prices were bubbling. Then I really was serious only for the final 6×4 months, or two years, during which time housing crashed. I was very lucky that the stable job coincided with the housing crash.

          1. It was the deal you wanted, so sure.

            I was very lucky that checkbook balance met distressed property around the same time.

      2. Falling knives, all of them. Folks should wait four months for the real deals.

        You need knife-catchers to bring the market down. You can’t go from the peak to the trough without them.

  4. Stats for those interested:

    Cariboo real estate sales stall, decline due to struggling resource industries, COVID-19

    Sales down in every Cariboo city over the same time last year

    https://www.wltribune.com/news/cariboo-real-estate-sales-stall-decline-due-to-struggling-resource-industries-covid-19/

    Like this:

    ‘100 Mile House and area: A total of 66 (68) properties of all types worth $14.8 million ($16.6 million) have been sold by REALTORS® in the area since the beginning of the year. In the first three months of 2020, 17 single-family homes, 24 parcels of vacant land and nine homes on acreage changed hands. At the end of the quarter there were 373 (375) properties available for purchase through the MLS®.’

  5. ‘Canadian banks have already received nearly half-a-million requests by borrowers to defer or skip mortgage payments in just a little more than two weeks, amid the swift financial uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic.’

    ‘The Canadian Bankers Association said Friday almost 500,000 requests had been completed or were being processed since lenders announced last month they would offer some financial relief, such as up to six months of deferred home-loan payments.’

    ‘Borrowers quickly tried to take the banks up on their offer, flooding their phone lines with thousands of calls seeking assistance or information. The CBA said Canada’s six biggest banks have already deferred payments on more than 10 per cent of mortgages in their portfolio.’

    https://business.financialpost.com/real-estate/mortgages/canadas-big-banks-field-half-a-million-mortgage-deferral-requests

    1. banks and others are being super flexible here in Canada. Even if 1 spouse has a well paying job with full salary, and the other spouse says they they will have some loss of income (for instance bonus and quota checks) —- they are getting deferals etc.

      Some people are playing the system to keep more cash on had – but the banks and the financial system have screwed clients. So fair turn around

      1. At some point the banks will demand payment. If the lost jobs don’t return, and lets’s face it, if your job/income went bye-bye at the first sign of COVID trouble, it won’t be back anytime soon,

        1. if your job/income went bye-bye at the first sign of COVID trouble, it won’t be back anytime soon

          Excellent point!

          2. My GF says I’ll look great sporting a pony tail.

            I think I’m going to take the beard trimmer and shave my head. I can’t go much longer.

          3. I think I’m going to take the beard trimmer and shave my head

            I broke out the clippers today and shaved things down myself. Feels much better!

            And good for the environment — a little bird came by and picked up a mouthful of my hair off the deck to go make his nest!

          5. Restaurants and bars are DONE for the next two years. In general, we can get by with just the office, Wal-mart, Giant (grocery), Home Depot, and a Shell station. I can do all that wearing a mask. But you can’t eat through a mask. (Similar to 1918, when people refused masks because they couldn’t smoke or spit chaw.)

            I am very lucky not to be a parent of a small child in this environment. No kid is going to tolerate a mask.

  6. ‘The year began with packed open houses, rabid bidding wars and sky-high prices, and no expert thought that anything—except perhaps an unprecedented influx of new inventory—could cool the red-hot market in Mississauga and the GTA.’

    ‘Until COVID-19 came along and brought the world economy to an abrupt and staggering halt. As we all stay home as much as possible to “flatten the curve” and stop the virus from overwhelming the health care system (and killing an untold number of residents), we worry about what will become of our economy if social distancing measures remain in place for months to come.’

    ‘We’re also worried about what might happen to our housing market—especially if we had plans to buy or sell (or both) this year.’

    https://www.insauga.com/will-covid-19-affect-mississauga-house-prices

    1. As mentioned in the article – no need to worry /s.

      Yet i am in downtown Toronto in one of the major condo areas (Libery Village) and there is a ton of worry from folks that bought here – at least as mentioned on the various facebook group pages

      —
      Lauren Haw, Zoocasa’s CEO and Broker of Record, points out that the fundamentals of the housing market, especially in large cities such as Toronto and Vancouver, generally don’t change.

      “There has long been a lot of pent-up buyer demand in these markets, particularly due to a long-term lack of inventory,” she says.

      “Combined with continued population growth in these regions, it’s expected that the market will experience a strong bounce back once the health risks have subsided, and buyers return to the market with restored purchasing power.”

      So if you were worried about a crash, fear not—a market this hot is likely to bounce back.

  8. The number of those age 65 and older and the size of their debt have risen. It’s the amount of debt that’s the killer.
    The new retirement problem is Over 60 With Decades Left on the Mortgage.
    A growing number of older Americans are carrying mortgage debt, and it will likely become more burdensome as the coronavirus crisis puts millions out of work and eats away at retirement accounts.
    Many are still hurting from the financial crisis, which hit millennials when they were starting their careers and boomers during what were supposed to be their prime earning years. In the U.S., some 9.18 million homeowners age 65 and over have mortgage debt, according to federal data analyzed by the Urban Institute. That’s up nearly 60% from 5.82 million a decade ago. (wsj)
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/over-60-with-decades-left-on-the-mortgage-the-new-retirement-math-11586556588

    1. From the comments: “Who says it’s a poor decision on the part of the homeowner? LOL. My brother, who is 67, just took out a 30 year mortgage on a brand new 4 BR place. He lives ALONE. FOUR bedrooms. BRAND NEW. He makes $15/hour at Amazon. He owes the IRS $15,000. He has ZERO savings. YOU do the math. He is laughing all the way to the grave. He is living like a king in a place he has no business getting or living in. We can all see how this ends, yet the lenders seem to think it’s OK.”

      ‘Merika!

      2. “….He makes $15/hour at Amazon. He owes the IRS $15,000. He has ZERO savings. YOU do the math….”

        Here is some math. @15$/hr how is your brother even going to pay non-mortgage related holding costs? (ie. property taxes, local taxes insurance, maintenance, HOA dues, etc?)

    2. After over 25 years of living in it, my late father still owed about $80K on his home when we we forced to move him out a few months before he passed — he had refinanced the mortgage once or twice along the way. In spite of that, his monthly housing expenses were still far cheaper than any renter in his city could shake a stick at. And he still had so much saved that the brief stint in memory care barely made a dent in his estate.

      The “retirement math” worked out for him.

      1. Was this in California? Proposition 13 was a gamechanger to give an advantage to existing homeowners over renters and future homebuyers.

      2. “…my late father still owed about $80K on his home….”

        HBB reader rms didn’t provide the cost basis for his brothers new home, but even a 5X ($400K) cost basis would wildly change the economics, especially when you think that mortgage holder has only a single income stream of $15/hr to service the debt, holding costs.

        Perhaps if rms reads this post, he could provide more $$ detail.

      3. After over 25 years of living in it, my late father still owed about $80K on his home

        That’s $15k more than I paid for my new house.

  10. LIMITED-TIME OFFER | $1 for 4 weeks
    CALIFORNIA
    New signs suggest coronavirus was in California far earlier than anyone knew
    Amir holds a photograph of his late mother, 68-year old Azar Ahrabi, who was the Bay Area’s first COVID-19 victim.
    (Stephen Lam / For the San Francisco Chronicle)
    By PAIGE ST. JOHN
    STAFF WRITER 
    APRIL 11, 2020 5 AM
    SACRAMENTO — 

    A man found dead in his house in early March. A woman who fell sick in mid-February and later died.

    These early COVID-19 deaths in the San Francisco Bay Area suggest that the novel coronavirus had established itself in the community long before health officials started looking for it. The lag time has had dire consequences, allowing the virus to spread unchecked before social distancing rules went into effect.

    “The virus was freewheeling in our community and probably has been here for quite some time,” Dr. Jeff Smith, a physician who is the chief executive of Santa Clara County government, told county leaders in a recent briefing.

    How long? A study out of Stanford suggests a dramatic viral surge in February.

    But Smith on Friday said data collected by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, local health departments and others suggest it was “a lot longer than we first believed” — most likely since “back in December.”

    “This wasn’t recognized because we were having a severe flu season,” Smith said in an interview. “Symptoms are very much like the flu. If you got a mild case of COVID, you didn’t really notice. You didn’t even go to the doctor. The doctor maybe didn’t even do it because they presumed it was the flu.”

    Just as New York has strong ties to travelers from Europe, who are believed to have brought the coronavirus there from Italy, the Bay Area is a natural hub for those traveling to and from China. Santa Clara County had its first two cases of COVID-19 almost a week before federal approval of emergency testing for the disease Feb. 4. Both were in travelers returning from Wuhan, China, where the virus was rampant.
    …

    1. These Chinese people were coming and going every single day, sickly and infecting the world. Why are we letting our enemy into the country again? China is NOT our ally.

      1. I don’t look at Chinese people as “the enemy.” They’ve been part of California since it became a state.

        It would have been prudent for the California governor to block travel from Hubei Province once the outbreak was in plain view by the end of January, but that cruise ship sailed long ago.

        1. I don’t look at Chinese people as “the enemy.”

          I sure don’t look at Chinese citizens as our friends. The CCP IS our enemy, and a large portion of their citizens are loyal to them, not us. I question the intelligence of letting these people flow freely through our country. It’s kind of like people from the middle east – you have no way of knowing who wants to do us harm.

          2. the CCP is their enemy too

            I like the precision of The Epoch Times’ and Ben’s use of “CCP virus.” It correctly identifies and separates the government ideology from the people.

          3. It correctly identifies and separates the government ideology from the people.

            But you can’t know which people share the government’s ideology.

          4. But you can’t know

            Probably. You also can’t tell from a distance here who believes the media narrative.

          5. I think they shut a whole economy down when all we really needed were some masks for everybody and some common sense measures to help control the spread.

            Instead, thanks to the offshoring of our manufacturing base and a bare cupboard instead of a national stockpile, there was no way to equip people and health care professionals in a time of need. So, they made a decision to force everybody to hide out from one another.

    2. Did God intend bats and pangolins for human consumption?

      Methinks no.

      Coronavirus outbreak
      It’s likely Covid-19 originated in bats, scientists say. But did it then spread to pangolins and humans?
      Graham Readfearn
      Thu 9 Apr 2020 02.23 EDT
      Last modified on Thu 9 Apr 2020 10.08 EDT
      Police tape blocks off Wuhan’s Huanan market, linked to several of China’s first coronavirus patients. Scientists are trying hard to determine how Covid-19 started, where it came from and how it spread to humans. Photograph: Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images

      In the public mind, the origin story of coronavirus seems well fixed: in late 2019 someone at the now world-famous Huanan seafood market in Wuhan was infected with a virus from an animal.

      The rest is part of an awful history still in the making, with Covid-19 spreading from that first cluster in the capital of China’s Hubei province to a pandemic that has killed about 80,000 people so far.

      Stock footage of pangolins – a scaly mammal that looks like an anteater – have made it on to news bulletins, suggesting this animal was the staging post for the virus before it spread to humans.

      But there is uncertainty about several aspects of the Covid-19 origin story that scientists are trying hard to unravel, including which species passed it to a human. They’re trying hard because knowing how a pandemic starts is a key to stopping the next one.

      Prof Stephen Turner, head of the department of microbiology at Melbourne’s Monash University, says what’s most likely is that virus originated in bats.

      But that’s where his certainty ends, he says.

      On the hypothesis that the virus emerged at the Wuhan live animal market from an interaction between an animal and a human, Turner says: “I don’t think it’s conclusive by any means.”

      “Part of the problem is that the information is only as good as the surveillance,” he says, adding that viruses of this type are circulating all the time in the animal kingdom.

      The fact that the virus has infected a tiger in a New York zoo shows how viruses can move around between species, he says. “Understanding the breadth of species this virus can infect is important as it helps us narrow down down where it might have come from.”

      Scientists say it is highly likely that the virus came from bats but first passed through an intermediary animal in the same way that another coronavirus – the 2002 SARS outbreak – moved from horseshoe bats to cat-like civets before infecting humans.

      One animal implicated as an intermediary host between bats and humans is the pangolin. The International Union for Conservation of Nature says they are “the most illegally traded mammal in the world” and are prized for their meat and the claimed medicinal properties of their scales.

      As reported in Nature, pangolins were not listed on the inventory of items being sold in Wuhan, although this omission could be deliberate as it’s illegal to sell them.

      “Whether the poor pangolin was the species at which it jumped, it’s not clear,” Turner says. “It’s either mixed in something else, mixed in a poor pangolin, or it’s jumped into people and evolved in people.”
      …

      1. A fine example of filling space with words about something the author knows nothing. Plenty of that going around.

  11. I survived my Saturday shopping experience In brief:

    – Both Costco and Ralph’s (local grocery chain) were less crowded than on a typical pre-quarantine Saturday afternoon, likely due to a combination of the fear factor and the unpleasantness of social distancing.
    – 95%+ of the shoppers and all of the employees had on masks (ee’s have to wear them, but not customers).
    – Costco has installed plexiglass shields at checkout counters and other points of employee contact with customers to shield their employees from breathing in COVID-19 germs through their masks.
    – Both stores seemed adequately stocked, and I even was able to replenish our dwindling paper product inventory (paper towels and facial tissues).
    – I didn’t even bother checking Costco’s gas price, as after a week since filling up, I have enough left in the tank to last two months.

        1. She stuck it through an opening in the plexiglass in a manner to avoid any risk of contact.

        2. My phone with near field communication (NFC) and the Walmart app processes the payment, allows me to view a detailed electronic receipt stored on their servers and my credit card is linked with my Walmart account, so no pin on a dirty number pad, no dirty credit card from swiping, etc., all good as long as you accept the assimilation.

          1. The Costco cashier was also able to scan my membership card through the plexiglass, and the credit card reader took my card with no cashier intervention. They are doing a pretty convincing job at Costco of protecting their workers.

            The one thing that bothered me is that they made the customers queue up in in the main aisle at an unsafe social distance of 3′. I complained that it makes more sense to let customers independently figure out their own social distancing rather than coerce them to line up single-file and closely-spaced like kindergarteners. (This was scary mask dude’s job.)

          2. If you’re wearing a mask, 3 feet might be safe enough. The 6-feet is how far a droplet goes without a mask. With a mask, it’s something like 2 feet.

            Montgomery County, one of the counties bordering DC, will require anyone shopping in a store to wear a mask, starting on Monday. I hope other counties follow suit.

          3. 6-feet is how far a droplet goes without a mask. With a mask, it’s something like 2 feet.

            Did you just make that up?

          4. Um…don’t the little teeny tiny droplets that can permeate improvised maths spread throughout the airspace of a closed building, to much greater distances than 6 feet? (I just made that up, yet somehow I believe it is true…)

          8. Prof Bear and Blue, no, I did not make that up. I got it from the Peak Prosperity YouTube channel, but I can’t identify which video. (It was in the last two weeks). The Peak Prosperity shows laboratory video taken with a special camera which can detect the moisture droplets. There was footage of someone simply talking, which projected droplets a long way. Then there was footage of someone sneezing through a mask. A few droplets escaped the mask at the top and bottom, but those droplets traveled only a short distance.

            No, I don’t have the exact calculations, but that’s where I got the idea that 3 feet and a mask may be sufficient.

          9. Masks or no masks, doubling the distance between people increases the area around each by a factor of 4.

    3. “…I didn’t even bother checking Costco’s gas price…”

      Zilch traffic at my nearest Costco Gas station (Tustin Marketplace) today.

      My ‘fillup’ today? $7.00. Haven’t spent such little money on weekly gas since 1968 when I owned a VW bug.

      Plenty of people in the actual Costco store. Checkout line started almost back against the wall with the $5 chickens.

    1. For something that scarce, probably never — but prices for more pedestrian stuff are going to have to drop sooner or later, as the growing glut of equipment for sale continues to bury a diminishing number of customers for it.

      When you have lines forming at food banks and millions already missing rent and mortgage payments as quickly as they did, it doesn’t appear to bode well for discretionary spending in the near future. And not only that, but imagine how much more gear is going to get dumped on the market now, for much the same reasons.

    2. I prefer the white falcon, like Billy Duffys from the cult, but the penguin is awesome too. I’m hoping to get a newer gretsch hollowbody at some point in the future, quality is still considered good.

      Old meth den down the street just went up for sale. Main meth guy died (lost his leg first), then the rest of the crowd faded. New coat of paint and voila, a potential EPA superfund site can be yours for only 650k.

    3. When you can buy a new Taylor for a few hundred dollars, I am not sure the price for any guitar is safe from falling.

      1. Favorite guitar store closed for quarantine purposes?
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      2. You know there’s something wrong when the first picture of the house is NOT the front of the house.

        1. Yup — here’s another one in that same neighborhood, only no inside photos at all:

          https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2788-Pembroke-Rd-Birmingham-MI-48009/24532125_zpid/

          The rule of thumb for this particular city is that a price of about $250,000 is dog whistling that this is, for all intents and purposes, a vacant lot to be cleared for new luxury construction. This one here has the 10% reduction at closing for that already priced in. In a less trendy zip code in this area, it would still be viable as a fixer-upper.

          One of the other reasons there is a shortage of affordable homes in decent neighborhoods that you’ll never hear mentioned in all of the CNBC propaganda.

  14. “Asked if the time is ripe for buyers, he said they will definitely find ‘some better deals’ in this market — particularly with homeowners who need to sell. But don’t expect fire sales, he warns. He said many sellers still have the ‘mentality’ of clinging onto prices seen before the pandemic.”

    The Guess Who — No Sugar Tonight:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMG-Mi9I0-k

  16. Well the problem here in northern California, Sacramento to be exact is lack of inventory currently on the market for potential buyers under 500k. Covid 19 has sellers waiting to post and that is not causing prices to drop.

    1. Sacramento to be exact is lack of inventory

      I heard your realtor business is in critical care. Good luck.

      1. He’s right, you know. There really isn’t — and never has been — an excess of homes in that price range, when homes are priced sensibly and not in a bubble, and the demand from customers is (or at least up until the last month, was) there.

        The problem from Day One has been luxury everything, fed by excessively low interest rates combined with greed fed by the HGTV, flip-this-house and Airbnb mentality that pervades the supply side of the industry and all of the idiots who want to get rich without working for it now.

        Renting versus buying is an individual decision based on everyone’s unique circumstances.

        You’d better think long and hard about the consequences of destroying the right for an individual to own property before you start going around smugly advocating it.

        1. “…The problem from Day One has been luxury everything..”

          Absolutely.

          ‘luxury everything’ ground zero is here in South Orange County.

          It seems that there is some sort of implicit social shame if you don’t outspend your neighbor to buy useless junk that you don’t need and can’t afford.

  18. U.S. COVID-19 Death Toll Tops Italy’s as the Midwest Braces for Potential Surge
    A man walks his dog through the deserted Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn in front of the Manhattan Bridge on April 11, 2020 in New York City. A man walks his dog through the deserted Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn in front of the Manhattan Bridge on April 11, 2020 in New York City.
    Johannes Eisele —AFP/Getty Images
    By Kathleen Foody, Amy Forliti and Geir Moulson / AP
    April 11, 2020 3:17 PM EDT

    (CHICAGO) — The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus eclipsed Italy’s for the highest in the world Saturday at about 20,000, as Chicago and other cities across the Midwest braced for a potential surge in victims and moved to snuff out smoldering hot spots of contagion before they erupt.

    With the New York area still deep in crisis, fear mounted over the spread of the scourge into the nation’s heartland.

    Twenty-four residents of an Indiana nursing home hit by COVID-19 have died, while a nursing home in Iowa saw 14 deaths. Chicago’s Cook County has set up a temporary morgue that can take more than 2,000 bodies. And Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has been going around telling groups of people to “break it up.”

    Around the world, meanwhile, European countries used roadblocks, drones, helicopters, mounted patrols and the threat of fines to keep people from traveling over Easter weekend. And with infections and deaths slowing in Italy, Spain and other places on the Continent, governments took tentative steps toward loosening the weeks-long shutdowns.

    Glorious weather across Europe posed an extra test of people’s discipline.

    “Don’t do silly things,” said Domenico Arcuri, Italy’s special commissioner for the virus emergency. “Don’t go out, continue to behave responsibly as you have done until today, use your head and your sense of responsibility.”
    …

  20. The Financial Times
    Investment Banking
    Investment banks brace for pandemic earnings wipeout
    European lenders seen as more vulnerable, with Wall Street poised to grab market
    Deutsche is one bank that has little or no profits to absorb a wave of loan defaults © Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg
    Stephen Morris in London April 11 2020

    Global investment banks risk seeing their annual earnings wiped out by the coronavirus crisis, with European banks more vulnerable than their more profitable US counterparts.

    Even the most optimistic “rapid rebound” scenario, where relative normality is restored in six months or less, could lead to a 100 per cent decline in profits this year, according to a new report co-authored by Oliver Wyman and Morgan Stanley.

    In a more pessimistic model — dubbed “deep global recession” and lasting a year or more — some weaker banks would slump to big losses. In this scenario, credit losses could surge to between $200bn to $300bn, compared with $30bn to $50bn if a rapid rebound unfolds.
    …

  23. level of corruption in the canadian real estate industry
    —-
    7bd / $6500/month leaky, damaged mansion
    https://vancouver.craigslist.org/van/apa/d/vancouver-leaky-home-warning-br-ft2-1st/7102363848.html
    —–
    Lan Zhao is suing Jianping Zhou in BC Supreme Court to ask for more child support, claiming that the realtor lied about his income on the child support financial statements[1].

    A report by a court-appointed Grant Thornton LLP forensic accountant found that the Jianping Zhou made $948,973 in 2015, but the realtor only declared only $17,379.67 as income on Line 150 of his tax return.

    Jianping Zhou appeared to have expensive tastes.

    The forensic accountant’s report states:

    37. We note that expenses are incurred by Mr. Zhou on multiple credit cards (in Canada and China) in the range of at least $2,000 to $9,000 per month. It appears that from 2012 to 2016, Mr. Zhou was paying his credit card off three to four times per month (almost on a weekly basis). In 2017 payments seem to be larger and less frequent (approximately once every two weeks).

    38. Examples of expenditures noted on credit cards include items such as: sporting goods, alcohol, restaurant, toys, groceries, gas, gun, travel agency, car payments, jewelry, electronic devices, golfing, flights, Dr. Herman Shen (optometrist), Rona, Hugo Boss, Juenesse health/beauty products (thousands of dollars), etc…

    https://thinkpol.ca/2020/04/11/vancouver-realtor-declared-fraction-income-tax-return-divorce-case-reveals/

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