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Panicked Investors Are Offloading Homes At Heavily Discounted Prices

A report from the Vancouver Sun in Canada. “Rental prices are softening in Vancouver and Toronto and housing prices are soon to follow as the number of new immigrants and foreign students falls sharply because of border restrictions aimed at combatting the spread of COVID-19. Average rents have dropped by eight per cent in Vancouver and Toronto in recent months. Hundreds of thousands of dwellings filled by last year’s cohort of 642,000 international students are empty. And a record number of investor-owned condo units, formerly rented, have been listed for sale.”

“Zoocasa, a real-estate brokerage, reports the number of condo apartments offered for rent across Metro Toronto has risen by 45 per cent compared to last year. In the core of the city, which has many colleges and universities, condo rental listings have skyrocketed 80 per cent. For Metro Vancouver, there has been a 35-per-cent spike in condo apartments, many of which had been rented, being off-loaded for sale. Almost 3,000 are up for grabs, the most in five years.”

“With Ottawa telling many foreign students to delay plans to attend classes, real estate analyst Stephen Punwasi, of Better Dwelling, says ‘students that have been paying rent and living overseas (away from their homelands) are unlikely to renew their digs in Canada into the school year. … With their extended absence, hundreds of thousands of homes will be sitting empty.'”

The Liverpool Echo in the UK. “A controversial Liverpool property company behind several doomed developments spent 40% of investors’ money on marketing and administration, it has been revealed. Pinnacle Alliance was a group of linked companies behind a number of luxury apartment developments in Liverpool. The ECHO has already revealed how Pinnacle schemes such as the Paramount, Quadrant and Victoria House all stalled leaving buyers owed millions of pounds.”

“Last year a property expert told the ECHO that investors in stalled schemes across Liverpool, including the high profile North Point Global sites, had lost around £200m so far. Now, a special report by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority (SRA) has revealed that Pinnacle Alliance spent 40% of investors’ money on marketing and administration, rather than on building the promised apartments. The buyers’ money was then lost.”

“The SRA has included the Pinnacle Alliance as a case study into their investigation into dubious property schemes across the country. The report explains that investors in Pinnacle schemes were required to pay large deposits on exchange of contracts.”

From Gulf News on Dubai. “Legal notices are to be issued to homeowners in Dubai who have not paid their service charges for the first six months, property management companies confirm. Service charges disputes have escalated in recent months, more so after the pandemic struck and created a situation where property owners have seen declines in their personal incomes. Or successive yearly rental declines are getting owners to demand similar declines on service charges.”

“‘The only way to reduce costs will be to rationalize the workforce at OA companies,’ said the CEO at a mid-sized property management company. ‘The challenge here will be to not compromise on the value of the asset. In the final analysis, reducing costs will take some time and the transition will be painful for all the players involved.'”

From Business Week on Botswana. “The Francistown property market has been hard hit by COVID-19 and a leading analyst says the situation will take some time to recover. In recent weeks, BusinessWeek has observed many vacant commercial spaces in the city’s popular malls and industrial sites, suggesting that the city’s property market is battling with the pandemic’s effects on business. Property expert Elijah Gwamulumba of Willy Kathurima Associates said COVID-19 might even lead to an unprecedented glut in the property market if it does not go away very soon.”

“‘Since the lockdown period, the commercial property market has been on a serious decline with rising vacancy and default levels as most tenants struggle to meet their monthly rental obligations,’ he said. ‘There has been lower demand for high cost houses something which has also caused a glut.'”

The Hong Kong Standard. “William Kwok Tze-wai, a director of Cheung Kong Real Estate, said home prices are under pressure in the short term. Property buyers backed out of 30 home purchase deals at major new projects in August, media reported. A buyer forfeited deposits of about HK$220,000 after cancelling the purchase of a 227-sq-ft flat at Emerald Bay in Tuen Mun, which was offered at HK$4.33 million.”

“In the commercial market, Hang Seng Bank (0011) slashed rents for three street shop premises at Hang Seng Tsimshatsui Building, media reported. Among them, a 1,072-sq-ft shop was leased for HK$200,000, or HK$186 per sq ft, after HK$190,000, or 48.7 percent, was slashed from the original asking rent. In Sheung Wan, a 1,057-sq-ft room at Shun Tak Centre China Merchants Tower was rented for HK$30,600 per month, or HK$29 per sq ft, the lowest in almost a decade at the building, reports said.”

The Daily Mail Australia. “Panicked investors are offloading Sydney homes at heavily discounted prices in a desperate bid to fast track sales as coronavirus bites the market. Some investors with CBD and inner city apartments are slashing up to $250,000 from the original price listed before the pandemic hit Australia’s shores earlier this year. While prices for all housing categories across Sydney has dropped in recent months, the inner city unit market was one of the hardest hit. Advertised unit prices in Sydney’s CBD are down 15 per cent compared to a year ago, according to SQM Research’s Asking Prices Index.”

From Domain News in Australia. “Melbourne’s house prices have been falling since April but experts warn the real test of the market is yet to come. Questions remain for investors after Melbourne’s rental vacancy rate soared to 3.8 per cent in August with a 20.6 per cent spike in vacant rental listings, as casual workers lost jobs and moved in with family, while international students could not get to Australia.”

“Questions remain for investors after Melbourne’s rental vacancy rate soared to 3.8 per cent in August with a 20.6 per cent spike in vacant rental listings, as casual workers lost jobs and moved in with family, while international students could not get to Australia. More and more sellers are dropping their asking prices in order to get a deal done, with the proportion of online listings offering discounts rising nearly fourfold from July last year to July 2020.”

“One owner hoping to sell her Box Hill home this spring is Kerrie Love, who brought forward her decision to move. Ms Love, recently retired from her catering job, had supplemented her income over the past few years by renting out rooms in the historic Box Hill house on Airbnb. It had been an extremely successful income stream, and one which she had planned on continuing following her retirement, with bookings up until October 2021 – until the pandemic hit.”

“‘I’ve had so many cancel. All the borders are closed and there’s so much uncertainty,’ she said. ‘Not being able to rely on that income has brought my decision forward. I’ve had time [during lockdown] to do up the garden, the renovations are all done, so I think it’s time to do it. I’m hoping the fact it’s a beautiful family home will mean it sells now.'”

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This Post Has 62 Comments

    1. Thee memorie$ are long on this HB.B.blog: Thee previou$ peon.$capegoat.ar$e.holy was a fella named Timothy Geithner, whob worked fer the Non.birth.certificate.Kenyan.O’Bammy. He gave away x2 Trillion$ of “Free.$tuff” … ver$u$ … Thee 🍊.Jesus Apostle, Neo.$ocialist American, $tephan Munchin, who di$tributed (unaccounted&knot.audited) x11 Trillion$ of “Free.chesse”

      ($ad)

    2. The Fed Now Owns Nearly One Third of All US Mortgages

      Which means the FED is the largest real estate owner in the country. Get rid of these bums. Seriously….

      1. Which means the FED is the largest real estate owner in the country.

        It’s now been years that I’ve been saying eventually they (and a few close friends) own everything. And everyone will be happy to sell to them at the inflated price they are willing to pay. And why not, when you have the printing press?

    3. It’s obvious what they’re doing – they’re going to “buy everything” to try to prevent asset price deflation. I’ve been asking this for years: “Why wouldn’t the FED just buy everything since they own the printing press?” The answer is: THEY ARE.

      1. Once the central bank owns all the debt financing the U.S property market, what then? Will they sell it back to private interests, give it away for a song to their friends, keep it buried on their balance sheet forever?

        Who eats the bond default
        losses when the Fed buys debt at an artificially inflated price to erase the losses from the books of the bond owner?

        And has anything remotely similar ever previously occurred in the history of banking?

        1. And yet there is great resentment of any assistance to the poor — poor people who were working until they where thrown out of work.

          Especially if they have darker skins. Despite the virtual disappearance of what was once called welfare in this country.

          Perhaps people are pissed that as a result of being employed, some of these people are getting unemployment insurance, instead of nothing.

          I suppose it will have to be taxed to cover all those losses the rich can’t be allowed to take. They’ll have tax collectors harassing people passed out in the gutter to pay their share.

          1. ‘poor people who were working until they where thrown out of work…Especially if they have darker skins’

            Now that’s triple dipping on the virtue signaling!

            vir·tue sig·nal·ing
            noun
            noun: virtue signalling; noun: virtue signaling

            -the action or practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one’s good character or the moral correctness of one’s position on a particular issue.

            Go to wally mart and count the welfare cards at the checkout.

          2. Come on Larry, nobody wants to see a working person thrown out of work, POC or otherwise. I even don’t resent that the poor were receiving a generous unemployment package, provided that hardship is the result of the pandemic, and ONLY the pandemic, and provided that the recipient does not receive more than they would have earned in wages.

            What I *do* resent is that there is a rent moratorium in addition to these benefits, a moratorium which is likely to be forgiven. They can’t make a rent payment on $2400 month? Between the unemployment, the bonus, and the moratoriums, some people — who were working semi-skilled or unskilled jobs — were getting upwards of $3500/month, per person. And yet they still cry poor.

            I also resent that Democrats are using this crisis to dovetail into a post-pandemic permanent UBI where people get paid an awful lot of money for not doing work. This will do nothing except dilute the currency to where my hard-earned dollars compete with their printed dollars. I also resent that these programs set threshold for “evil rich” pretty darn low. The most egregious of the proposals would give a family of five upwards of $100K/year for free, with a cutoff of $125K income. I have three STEM degrees and ~20 years experience and even I’m under that. Why go through the trouble of work and school when I could make the same $$ on my back? Of course, that proposal is too extreme to come to pass, but it shows the gimme-dat mindset.

            I am not going to touch your comments on race.

          3. my hard-earned dollars compete with their printed dollars

            Gives a sense of the frustration some of us have experienced over the years, when our hard earned savings could not compete with cheap and easy credit. Millions of people without the means to actually buy a house bid up the price of everything on credit, leaving those of us with cash living on the margins.

            Not that I’m complaining, it’s just ironic.

          4. how big were the checks in 1957 pandemic?
            Take one asprin and chock it out
            We’re now pop adjusted equivalent deaths.

    4. They report 1 trillion out of 10 trillions.
      -Mortgage debt is at 10 trillions.
      -Personal(credit card, etc at very high rates) debt is 4 trillions.
      -Private corporate is at 10 trillions.
      -NATIONAL DEBT: 27 TRILLIONS(80 000 PER EACH OF US. IF YOU HAVE A FAMILY OF 5, YOU OWE 400 000 IN TAXES. Not that you’ll ever pay, but your children and grand kids are on the hook for it.
      Yes, nuclear missiles and endless wars are very costly, and the defense department never sees an audit ever. It is practically a black hole.

    5. Take it from this guy: Preemptively pumping trillions of dollars into bailing out his industry from the ravishes of the death virus was the right thing for the Fed to do.

      “Buying so many home loans is the right thing for the central bank to do to support the economy, Kevin Jackson, a managing director on the mortgage trading desk at Wells Fargo & Co., said in an interview with Bloomberg.

      We had a pandemic arise and you needed a force to come into the market and stabilize things,” Jackson said.”

  2. In the core of the city, which has many colleges and universities, condo rental listings have skyrocketed 80 per cent.

    Is that a lot?

  3. Property expert Elijah Gwamulumba of Willy Kathurima Associates said COVID-19 might even lead to an unprecedented glut in the property market if it does not go away very soon.”

    And just like that, Elijah earns the big bucks.

  4. “William Kwok Tze-wai, a director of Cheung Kong Real Estate, said home prices are under pressure in the short term.

    Gosh, William, what happens if home prices come under even greater pressure in the long term?

  5. “Panicked investors are offloading Sydney homes at heavily discounted prices in a desperate bid to fast track sales as coronavirus bites the market.

    COVID was the pin, but the bubble was getting ready to burst long before coronavirus showed up. Now all the speculators who levered up on debt to buy insanely overprices houses are facing financial wipeout, just as we here on the HBB warned them would happen. Die, speculator scum!

  7. RBNZ: Low rates needed despite risks of inequality

    WELLINGTON, New Zealand–Low interest rates could widen income inequality by pushing up asset prices, but are needed to combat unemployment during the coronavirus pandemic, Reserve Bank of New Zealand Gov. Adrian Orr said.

    Haha! Now the central banks are admitting they’re creating inequality. Just recently they said they had nothing to do with it. Fire these aszclowns!

    2. By the way, what was the excuse for the low rates during the entire duration of low unemployment? These aszwipes have zero credibility. In my opinion they’re being exposed more and more everyday, with a lot of people waking up to their scam.

    3. They are handing out trillions of dollars to HODLers of defaulted corporate and mortgage bonds. There’s no reason to ever worry about losing your bond investment principle with that kind of central bank largesse.

      In fact, there’s no longer a need for any risk premiums on bonds with a cental bank backstop. All debt subject to the Fed’s implicit guarantee is as good as a Treasury bond, backed by the full faith and credit of the Fed’s electronic printing press technology.

      1. I imagine they are preventing the various pension system annuitants from discovering just how thin the shell is surrounding their retirement nest egg.

    4. unemployment during the coronavirus pandemic

      What coronavirus pandemic? New Zealand stamped out the pandemic in mid-April. Or so they keep bragging about, every darn day. Why would they need financial help?

      1. “Why would they need financial help?”

        The foreign per$on’s flying there on $terilized private.jet$ are knot enough to $timulate their entire eCONomy.

        (They have plenty of prized lamb.chop$ to $erve for tho$e that can make the trip deeth.👾.free!)

  8. “Lael Brainard and Richard Clarida, both serving on the Fed’s Board of Governors, said this week that the Fed may have curbed a quicker post-2008 recovery in the job market by lifting off of zero interest rates too soon.

    “There would have been a different concept of inflation, and a sense that there was no need to preemptively withdraw, or prepare to withdraw, on the basis of an expectation of inflation materializing,” Brainard said in a webinar Tuesday.”

    They’ve blown the biggest asset price bubble in history – “the everything bubble,” and yet these mental midgets are trying to tell the world that they should have even made it bigger. The soundbites from these clowns just keep getting better and better. They’re like a bad liar telling on themselves.

  9. Dumb question of the day: With the Fed directly supporting the housing market, is there any reason to believe that prices will nonetheless correct downwards, aside from the fact that they evidently already are in many locales?

  10. It’s starting to look like the real hammer won’t land until after COVID-19 eviction moratoriums end. At that point, the S will HTF and be flung asunder.

    1. Trump administration announces nationwide eviction moratorium through end of the year
      John Fritze , Nicholas Wu |
      USA TODAY

      WASHINGTON – Relying on a public health law intended to prevent the spread of an illness, the Trump administration said Tuesday it is implementing a national four-month moratorium on residential evictions.

      The moratorium, announced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was the latest measure by the administration to get a handle on the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic absent an agreement with Congress on a more far reaching package that would have the force of law.

      To stop evictions, health officials are relying on the 1944 Public Health Service Act, which gives the administration broad quarantine powers. The moratorium, which will run through Dec. 31, applies to individuals earning less than $99,000 a year and who are unable to make rent or housing payments.

      “President Trump is committed to helping hard-working Americans stay in their homes and combating the spread of the coronavirus,” White House spokesman Brian Morgenstern told reporters Tuesday.
      …

      1. 👀 like thee.🍊jesus doesn’t need a “Miracle!”, just an old fa$hioned part.thee.red.ink.$ea $helter.$hack “Moratorium!”

        (One would think that dtRumpsi$.Chao$tic.Trantrumoi$ would clearly under$tand the negative effect$ of failing to adhere to the “Term$&Condition$” of contract.law $ regarding real.e$tate transaction$! … $ad.)

    2. The news doesn’t stress this, but the moratorium on evictions has strings attached:

      (Politico) “The new ban covers tenants who certify that they have lost “substantial” income; that they expect to make no more than $99,000 in 2020 or received a stimulus check; and that they are making their “best efforts” to pay as much of their rent as they can. Tenants must also certify that an eviction would likely make them homeless or push them to double up with others in close quarters.” Well that’s good, at least the renter has to go to some effort instead of just thumbing their nose at the LL.

      This brings up a couple inconsistencies:
      1. A tenant can still be evicted if the reason isn’t pandemic-related (eg. did damage or wasn’t paying rent pre-pandemic). That goes against the notion of preventing spread of COVID, since any eviction could spread COVID. I guess they think that non-COVID evictions are statistically insignificant.

      2. Trump has been resisting a national mask mandate on grounds of state’s rights or similar. But if he has the power to cross state lines for evictions, then one would think he has the power to cross state lines for a mask order.

    1. The Financial Times
      Coronavirus business update 30 days complimentary
      Coronavirus economic impact
      Covid-19 ends Australia’s 28-year run without a recession
      Economy contracts a record 7% in the second quarter
      A surge in cases meant Melbourne had to be locked down again
      © Bloomberg
      Jamie Smyth in Sydney yesterday

      Australia has entered its first recession in almost three decades after Covid-19 battered the economy, which shrank a record 7 per cent in the June quarter.

      The decline in gross domestic product follows a fall of 0.3 per cent in the March quarter, marking two consecutive quarters of contraction — the technical definition of recession — according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

      “The global pandemic and associated containment policies led to a 7 per cent fall in GDP for the June quarter. This is, by a wide margin, the largest fall in quarterly GDP since records began in 1959,” said Michael Smedes, ABS head of national accounts.
      …

      1. “Au$tralia has entered its first rece$$ion in almost three decade$”

        Eye’m hoping to take a good long train ride in that country one day.

        (Stop off fer a few days, here & there … maybee, someday, knot.now)

        Fly to Hawaii, sail from there to “Thee.Land.Down.Under!”

        Ah, the future still hold$ promi$e, maybee.

    1. From the comments: “Just remember that when the Khmer Rouge leaders, many of them educated in France, the leftists cheered them upon their return to Cambodia.”

  18. The Mercury News
    New eviction protections come with a wish — federal
    funds

    There you sit Mercury News, with your hand out next to the bums. How the mighty have fallen.

    1. I don’t know what sort of bias Atlas Intel, the pollster, carries.
      However, they report:
      —————
      Among Black Voters:
      Biden 66% (-23 vs 2016 results)
      Trump 28% (+20)

      Among Hispanic Voters:
      Biden 56% (-10)
      Trump 41% (+13)
      ————

      🤨
      No amount of bias can massage numbers like that. This is so stunning that I have to wonder if the poll is intentionally severely flawed. A couple observations: 1) even if these voters don’t vote, they are more likely to stay home, thus robbing Biden of what was a Hillary vote. He needs all of them, especially in battleground states. (do they have breakdown by state?) 2) Kamala Harris isn’t bringing them home.

      1. The Dumbocrats pwned themselves. With no help from Republicans, they completely turned off their voter base, driving them away in droves. The whole “burnin’ and lootin'” thing where the media coddles violent criminals who are splitting open the skulls of white people did not go unnoticed. People aren’t that stupid.

        1. I meant to add that blacks and Hispanics see right through the facade. They know they are being used as pawns. A lot of them are not having it.

          1. Thee.🍊jesus claims he will get even more “ya’ll.knot.welcome.@.dtRump$is/Jivanka.$helter.$hack$” black voters than the 98% he claims he got in his 2016 election.

            Impressive goal!

    2. Wait for a vaccine to be approved with actual rollout date. S&P will skyrocket and Gold and BTC will drop like a rock. Buy the precious on the v-dip. Wait 18 months until every else figures out that it’s too late to vaccinate against a corporate debt doom loop. Profit!

  22. If you really wanted to do a fair analysis of money due to the offspring of slaves 150 years after the fact, there is a lot to consider.

    (1). How much wealth would a slave of made had the slave not been captured by his own Black Slave Trader in Africa and sold to the World?

    In other words, if the offspring of slaves ,who aren’t slaves in modern times , ended up having more than your average African, than that’s a plus.
    I don’t see a lot of modern black in US wanting to go back to Africa.

    (2):there are to many blacks that have migrated to US who didn’t have slavery in there background, so they would have to be separated out because they wanted to come to America.
    (3) Figuring out payments is just way to far beyond the Statue of Limitations . Further , the US Citizens that did not have slaves were most of the population .
    (4) It’s like any historic wrongdoing anywhere that happened to all the races actually, the current World can’t give a dollar value on all the crimes of history.

    (5) Also, what is the proof that Whites hold Blacks back as opposed to their own bad choices not to advance.
    (6) If you have a majority culture of White population in US, and only 10 to 13 percent Black, the dominate numbers is a factor. That isn’t racism but rather populations living the values they want.
    Look, if blacks don’t like white culture and values than it sounds like they are racist toward whites.
    Would a Black go to Mexico and not expect them to be Mexican with all the culture associated

    (7) How can modern day Black US Citizens not feel that they are American after all these years.. The Police that get involved in a crime would do the same thing to a White person. I’m sure there are bad apples in the Police no doubt.

    Just some thoughts.

    1. Look, if blacks don’t like white culture and values than it sounds like they are racist toward whites.

      It’s hard to speak for other people but it seems like they feel that since they were brought here involuntarily that there should be no pressure to conform to white social norms.

      1. It’s lonely being debt free whereas owing on a metro 2,950-sqft two-story spec, a Ram 3500 Cummings and a Toyota 4runner comes with plenty of camaraderie.

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