It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "The Spokane Association of Realtors’ December snapshot…
This Post Has 26 Comments
From the first 12 minute video:
Pay Close Attention To Sales In Vaughan, Richmond Hill & Markham Real Estate
Team Sessa Real Estate
Oct 20, 2022
Vaughan Home Prices, Richmond Hill Home Prices & Markham Home Prices for the week of Oct 6 – Oct 12, 2022.
The second 7:29 video:
How Far Will Australia’s House Prices Fall? – Australian Real Estate Housing Market Update 2022
Han Dol Kim
Oct 21, 2022 How Far Will Australia’s House Prices Fall? – Australian Real Estate Housing Market Update 2022. Everything’s dropping right now as a result of the ripple effect of the Global Economic Crisis we’re currently experiencing, and the Australian Housing Market is no exception. In this video, we’re going to talk about the current situation of the real estate housing market in Australia, what’s causing the price drop in home prices, and overall – how you could use this opportunity to make money under these circumstances.
Timestamps
0:00 Introduction
0:37 Australia Real Estate Overview
1:23 Home Price Prediction
1:50 Interest Rate Hikes
2:52 Andrew Whitson
3:13 Property Valuation Ratios
3:31 Rental Prices
4:00 What’s Happening Now?
4:50 Profit Opportunities
7:00 Final Words
The third 14:12 video:
Mortgage Fraud all over Canada’s Housing Market (The Brampton loan)
Danish Ghazi
Oct 20, 2022 Mortgage fraud caught on camera impacting Sky-High prices in Canada’s housing market. Will this mortgage fraud lead to the next mortgage crisis and housing crash in Canada? A recent investigation by CBC Marketplace uncovered a ring of real estate agents, mortgage brokers, and even bank employees complicit in mortgage fraud, who are raking in astounding amounts in fees from naive new Canadians.
The fourth 6:28 video:
iBuyers Continue to SLASH Prices, CRASHING the Arizona Real Estate Market
Shawn Shackelton
Oct 20, 2022 iBuyers have continued to slash their prices because that is the only way they can continue to sell homes in this market. This is having more of an effect on the overall Phoenix Real Estate Market when it comes to pricing. If you are looking for a deal, take a look at this video so you know where to focus.
The fifth 11:16 video:
San Diego Market Watch – October 20, 2022
Eric and Deva Edelman – Realtors
Oct 20, 2022
The sixth 6:39 video:
Sacramento / Stockton Real Estate Report for 10/20/2022
FindingKevin
Oct 20, 2022 The Sacramento / Stockton area real estate market continues its downward trends in all categories with the exception of rates, which continue to rise. Knowing the trends is the key for sellers getting their house sold in this market as well as for buyers looking for the best deal.
The last 9:26 video:
Mortgage Fraud Exposed and Why This Is A Big Problem! – Finance Fridays
Team Sessa Real Estate
Oct 21, 2022
Anthony Venuto
InTouch Mortgage Solutions
Ally Financial reveals $136 million loss in Better.com investment
“Though it once had a staff of over 10,000 employees, Better has since cut its workforce by 72%. The company hasn’t posted its financial performance for the second or third quarters, which it typically had done in SEC filings through Aurora.”
Will the last person out please turn off the lights.
BRIAN SOZZI: All right, from record home prices to record mortgage rates, 2022 has been a wild ride for the now ice-cold housing market. But could this pain be good for prospective homebuyers down the road? Yahoo! Finance Columnist Rick Newman is here with more. So Rick, I should be cheering these declines because maybe at some point, I’ll be able to buy a home.
RICK NEWMAN: Maybe a year from now or something like that. But it’s getting ugly in the housing market. And it’s probably going to get uglier. So we just saw the eighth consecutive month of declining existing home sales. That’s the worst stretch since 2007.
And what was happening in 2007? That was when the housing bubble was exploding. We got the Homebuilders Index this week. That has been going down. That’s now at the lowest level since the bottom of the COVID downturn. And if you don’t count that, it’s the lowest level since 2012. Again, close to the bottom of the housing bust back then.
So we have a long way to go to get through housing. Everybody has kind of seen this coming. I mean, this has almost everything to do with rising interest rates and mortgage rates. Now, up around 7%. But we haven’t seen prices really fall over yet.
They’ve just started to turn. And they will come down, for sure. But we’re at the beginning of a major correction and we probably have months to go.
The lack of mortgage applications means more housing inventory. Phoenix market inventory is up 70% since last year. U.S. inventory is up only 12%. Median sales prices hit a high of about $485,000 in May, according to data from the real estate company Redfin. Since then, prices have dropped to a median of $450,000, a decline of 7%.
-The Apartment Owners Association of California, Inc. (AOA) and the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles (AAGLA) jointly announced today that they have been granted a preliminary injunction they had been seeking to prevent enforcement of Los Angeles County’s broad-based moratorium on residential tenant evictions. In the United States District Court judge’s order granting the landlord group’s motion for preliminary injunction, multiple violations of the “Vagueness Doctrine” and the complete lack of specific standards for how to apply various provisions contained within the County’s eviction moratorium are cited. The District Court judge’s order concludes that “Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their claim that the Resolution’s Tenant Protections are unconstitutionally vague.”
Jeffrey Faller, President of AOA stated: “There’s no rational basis for the County keeping its eviction moratorium in effect for nearly three years especially since the health crisis ended long ago. For the County’s tenants, a ‘rent holiday’ has existed the entire time. As a result, many of our member’s lives are ruined as they have been unable to collect rent, and lost their properties to foreclosure or fire sales, and many others have had to liquidate retirement savings or have gone into debt using credit cards in order to meet ongoing obligations like mortgage payments, property insurance, taxes, and ongoing maintenance and repair costs.” Mr. Faller of AOA further commented: “For nearly three years, virtually one thousand days, renters have taken advantage of the situation created by the County’s ordinance by not paying rent because of alleged COVID-19 impacts while at the same time, they have afforded to travel, purchase new cars, and in the most egregious cases, purchased properties of their own.”
Under the County’s ordinance, tenants are merely allowed to “self-certify” their inability to pay rent due to COVID-19, and unilaterally decide to not pay rent based on the facts and circumstances they determined as if tenants had acted as their own “judge and jury.” Faller further commented: “Eviction bans like the County’s just encouraged unscrupulous renters to skip paying rent without recourse.”
AAGLA’s Executive Director, Daniel Yukelson, stated: “While this ruling is certainly great news for rental housing providers in Los Angeles County, the Court’s decision comes a little too late as the County’s ordinance is already set to expire on December 31, 2022. Nevertheless, we intend to continue pursuing our case and to obtain a final order declaring the County’s ordinance unconstitutional to allow our AAGLA and AOA members to seek compensation from the County to cover what has surely added up to billions of dollars in losses.” Yukelson further commented: “And, we won’t be stopping there. Our lawsuit against the County will be our roadmap to obtain similar rulings against all other jurisdictions that implemented these harmful and irrational eviction moratoriums, including against cities such as Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, and West Hollywood.”
“Jeffrey Faller, President of AOA stated: “There’s no rational basis for the County keeping its eviction moratorium in effect for nearly three years especially since the health crisis ended long ago. For the County’s tenants, a ‘rent holiday’ has existed the entire time.”
Doesn’t Jeffrey realize how badly the Democrats need votes?
Raymond James analyst Buck Horne lowered ratings on all of the home-builder stocks he covers, as he believes the recent “relentless” climb in mortgage rates has ensured a housing recession.
“Begrudgingly, we are tapping out on the homebuilders after a relentless [2 percentage point] increase in 30-year mortgage rates over the past 2.5 months,” Horne wrote. “Unsurprisingly, numerous anecdotes and indicators…corroborate that the recent parabolic spike in rates has cratered what residual housing demand was still in the market this summer.”
Builder sentiment in October marked its 10th consecutive monthly decline, according to The National Association of Home Builders. Outside of a brief period at the start of the pandemic, sentiment is now sitting at its lowest level since 2012.
Investors expect that homebuilder profits will plummet.
KB Home shares now trade at just 2.8 times estimated earnings, down from a price-to-earnings ratio of 13.6 in May, 2021. That’s not an anomaly within the sector; D.R. Horton’s P/E is 4 and Lennar’s is 4.2.
So far, profits appear to be holding up: In September, Lennar reported a 4-per-cent increase in its fiscal third-quarter profit, compared with a year ago. KB Home reported a 70-per-cent increase in profits over the same period. Clearly, the healthy backlog in orders is helping.
“Order growth was another matter,” Jay McCanless, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, said in a note this week.
He highlighted that KB Home’s orders were 50 per cent lower in the third quarter, year-over-year, which was far worse than his estimate of a 15-per-cent decline.
It is an axiom of Canadian politics that a thing is not known until the Liberals know it. Free trade was terra incognita before the Liberals discovered it, a creature of Tory myth that Brian Mulroney somehow convinced the public to support in 1988. As late as 1993 the Liberals were still campaigning against it.
But then they won power, after which it was suddenly transformed into conventional wisdom – one of those things everybody knows, and what is more has always known. By a similarly mysterious process the GST, balanced budgets and price stability, ideas once so barbaric no civilized person could repeat them, became familiar parts of the Liberal lexicon.
Something of the same seems now to be happening in the realm of foreign policy. For some time now it has been apparent that the great hope of post-Cold War diplomacy, that the world could be made not only more prosperous through trade but also more democratic and more peaceful, had failed.
Hence the news value in last week’s speech in Washington by the Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland – a speech that has given rise to excited proclamations of a “Freeland Doctrine.” Certainly it was news to hear a senior Liberal declare that the age of peace through prosperity is over; that China and Russia are not our partners but our implacable adversaries; that national security, with the threat of nuclear war in the air, trumps the gains from trade, or – dare I say it – even the environment. That it was news, however, was not because the ideas are new – only because a Liberal said it.
The “three pillars” on which Ms. Freeland proposed to build a new international order – closer trade and investment ties among the democracies, openness to trade with other countries who share our values, and a determination to stand together against the encroachments of the autocracies – were likewise not particularly new.
In any case, it’s hard to square the “friend-shoring must be green” dogma with the most remarked-upon bit of Sudden Liberal Awareness in the speech, the commitment to “fast-track” energy and mining projects “our allies need to heat their homes.” Quite what this means we can only speculate: Could it really be that this government is now prepared to put the demands of a global security crisis before the delights of environmental purity? Was it only two months ago that the German Chancellor, on a visit in search of Canadian liquefied natural gas, was turned away empty-handed?
But like much else in the speech it seemed to imply the Liberals were prepared once again to give their blessing to common knowledge, and for that I suppose we should be grateful.
Was it only two months ago that the German Chancellor, on a visit in search of Canadian liquefied natural gas, was turned away empty-handed?
And he’s still empty handed.
Despite the cooling market, the statewide median home price last month was $365,000—a gain of nearly $15,000 in the past year alone. While prices are still trending up, mounting evidence continues to suggest the upward pressure is easing. “In September, Virginia’s average sold-to-list price ratio, meaning what a home sold for compared to the price it was listed for, was 99.9%,” says Virginia REALTORS Chief Economist Ryan Price. “While this may not seem significant, it’s actually the first time this ratio has dipped below 100% since January 2021.”
Another piece of good news for home buyers is that the inventory of available homes is continuing to grow in many parts of the state. Some of the largest growth in supply has been in the New River Valley, the Winchester area, and parts of Central Virginia.
“Last month, about 44% of all counties and cities in Virginia had more inventory on the market than at the same time last year,” says Virginia REALTORS 2022 President Denise Ramey. “While our inventory levels remain historically low, we’ll likely see them continue to build as the market continues cooling.”
Steadily rising mortgage rates significantly affected the number of homes sold in Whatcom County during the third quarter and tapped the brakes on price appreciation.
Only 773 Whatcom County homes sold in the third quarter ending Sept. 30, a drop of 19.9% from the third quarter in 2021, according to Troy Muljat, owner and president of Bellingham-based Muljat Group Realtors.
Muljat prepared a report based on data from the Northwest Washington Multiple Listing Service.
The median price of homes sold in the county in the third quarter was $599,000, which was 7.7% higher than a year ago but 7.7% lower than this year’s second quarter.
“Much of the housing market’s change can be attributed to rising mortgage rates,” Muljat said. “The average 30-year mortgage rate is now around 6.7% after starting the year at 3.3%, according to Mortgage News Daily. That makes the monthly house payments soar and the number of people who qualify to buy a home shrink.”
“Inventory is continuing to increase, which is bringing the supply closer to a balanced market,” he added. “We’re not there yet, but buyers have more choices. Consequently, we are seeing fewer bidding wars and more offers that are under the listing price. After months of seeing the average house sell for more than its listing price, the sales now are averaging at 99.5% of the listing prices.”
Bay Area loses jobs in September, California gains slow to a crawl
East Bay Times|11 hours ago
The Bay Area lost jobs during September, while California’s employment gains slowed to a crawl, a report released on Friday showed, an ominous yellow flag for the once-booming economies in the region and statewide.
A Salem real estate developer was sentenced to prison on Friday in connection with a decade-long mortgage fraud scheme. According to the Justice Department in Boston, 50-yeard-old George Kritopoulos was sentenced to four years in prison to be followed by two years of supervised release in connection with a decade-long mortgage fraud scheme involving at least two dozen loan transactions, totaling $6.5 million, that resulted in more than $3.8 million in losses to lenders.
He was convicted of conspiracy, two counts of wire fraud, six counts of bank fraud, aiding the preparation of a false income tax return, and obstruction of justice. Kritopoulos was originally charged in September 2018 along with co-defendants Joseph Bates III and David Plunkett.
From 2006 through 2015, Kritopoulos, Bates and others engaged in a scheme to defraud banks and other financial institutions by causing false information to be submitted to those institutions on behalf of borrowers primarily in Salem.
Kritopoulos brought newly recruited borrowers to Plunkett, who then prepared tax returns that contained false and inflated income. Some of those tax returns were submitted to lenders in support of the fraudulent loan applications.
Since the borrowers did not have the financial ability to repay the loans, in all but two instances among 21 properties, they defaulted on their loan payments, resulting in foreclosures and losses to the lenders.
In Arizona Governor’s Race, a Question Looms: ‘Where’s Katie?’
The New York Times|12 hours ago
In the final weeks of a tight contest, critics say the Democrat, Katie Hobbs, has been too subdued. Her Republican rival, Kari Lake, a former TV news anchor, is taking full advantage.
Katie is probably following Biden strategy. She knows she will ‘win’ cuz…..
They’re gonna need a bigger ballot box stuffing machine.
As Secretary of State, she definitely knows how to stuff the ballot box.
A 2:17 video:
Phoenix housing market cooling as mortgage applications fall nationwide
Fitch downgrades two nonbank lenders, sets negative outlook for four
HousingWire|11 hours ago
Fitch ratings revised its credit ratings for Finance of America, Freedom Mortgage, Provident Funding, Home Point Capital and UWM. Here’s the outlook for the nonbanks.
Highland, UT Housing Prices Crater 14% YOY As Salt Lake City Inventory Soars
As a noted economist emphasized, “The number one cause of personal bankruptcy in the US is the 15 and 30 year mortgage.”
I work with an H1b (FOB, ~2 yrs in the states) and he says that all his friends/relatives in the states are all about housing. He’s also ready to ‘buy’ but he’s worried he will not get a green card for a long time, but that’s not stopping other people.
This $hit is crazy.
I know an H1B who has already traded up from his starter home.
It seems insane that someone who is on a temporary visa could get a mortgage, but they all do.
From the first 12 minute video:
Pay Close Attention To Sales In Vaughan, Richmond Hill & Markham Real Estate
Team Sessa Real Estate
Oct 20, 2022
Vaughan Home Prices, Richmond Hill Home Prices & Markham Home Prices for the week of Oct 6 – Oct 12, 2022.
The second 7:29 video:
How Far Will Australia’s House Prices Fall? – Australian Real Estate Housing Market Update 2022
Han Dol Kim
Oct 21, 2022 How Far Will Australia’s House Prices Fall? – Australian Real Estate Housing Market Update 2022. Everything’s dropping right now as a result of the ripple effect of the Global Economic Crisis we’re currently experiencing, and the Australian Housing Market is no exception. In this video, we’re going to talk about the current situation of the real estate housing market in Australia, what’s causing the price drop in home prices, and overall – how you could use this opportunity to make money under these circumstances.
Timestamps
0:00 Introduction
0:37 Australia Real Estate Overview
1:23 Home Price Prediction
1:50 Interest Rate Hikes
2:52 Andrew Whitson
3:13 Property Valuation Ratios
3:31 Rental Prices
4:00 What’s Happening Now?
4:50 Profit Opportunities
7:00 Final Words
The third 14:12 video:
Mortgage Fraud all over Canada’s Housing Market (The Brampton loan)
Danish Ghazi
Oct 20, 2022 Mortgage fraud caught on camera impacting Sky-High prices in Canada’s housing market. Will this mortgage fraud lead to the next mortgage crisis and housing crash in Canada? A recent investigation by CBC Marketplace uncovered a ring of real estate agents, mortgage brokers, and even bank employees complicit in mortgage fraud, who are raking in astounding amounts in fees from naive new Canadians.
The fourth 6:28 video:
iBuyers Continue to SLASH Prices, CRASHING the Arizona Real Estate Market
Shawn Shackelton
Oct 20, 2022 iBuyers have continued to slash their prices because that is the only way they can continue to sell homes in this market. This is having more of an effect on the overall Phoenix Real Estate Market when it comes to pricing. If you are looking for a deal, take a look at this video so you know where to focus.
The fifth 11:16 video:
San Diego Market Watch – October 20, 2022
Eric and Deva Edelman – Realtors
Oct 20, 2022
The sixth 6:39 video:
Sacramento / Stockton Real Estate Report for 10/20/2022
FindingKevin
Oct 20, 2022 The Sacramento / Stockton area real estate market continues its downward trends in all categories with the exception of rates, which continue to rise. Knowing the trends is the key for sellers getting their house sold in this market as well as for buyers looking for the best deal.
The last 9:26 video:
Mortgage Fraud Exposed and Why This Is A Big Problem! – Finance Fridays
Team Sessa Real Estate
Oct 21, 2022
Anthony Venuto
InTouch Mortgage Solutions
Ally Financial reveals $136 million loss in Better.com investment
https://www.nationalmortgagenews.com/news/ally-financial-reveals-136-million-loss-in-better-com-investment
“Though it once had a staff of over 10,000 employees, Better has since cut its workforce by 72%. The company hasn’t posted its financial performance for the second or third quarters, which it typically had done in SEC filings through Aurora.”
Will the last person out please turn off the lights.
BRIAN SOZZI: All right, from record home prices to record mortgage rates, 2022 has been a wild ride for the now ice-cold housing market. But could this pain be good for prospective homebuyers down the road? Yahoo! Finance Columnist Rick Newman is here with more. So Rick, I should be cheering these declines because maybe at some point, I’ll be able to buy a home.
RICK NEWMAN: Maybe a year from now or something like that. But it’s getting ugly in the housing market. And it’s probably going to get uglier. So we just saw the eighth consecutive month of declining existing home sales. That’s the worst stretch since 2007.
And what was happening in 2007? That was when the housing bubble was exploding. We got the Homebuilders Index this week. That has been going down. That’s now at the lowest level since the bottom of the COVID downturn. And if you don’t count that, it’s the lowest level since 2012. Again, close to the bottom of the housing bust back then.
So we have a long way to go to get through housing. Everybody has kind of seen this coming. I mean, this has almost everything to do with rising interest rates and mortgage rates. Now, up around 7%. But we haven’t seen prices really fall over yet.
They’ve just started to turn. And they will come down, for sure. But we’re at the beginning of a major correction and we probably have months to go.
https://news.yahoo.com/housing-market-existing-home-sales-144159457.html
“We simply borrowed activity from the future, and the future has arrived.”
Benjamin Tal, CIBC Deputy Chief Economist
https://www.canadianmortgagetrends.com/2022/10/cibcs-tal-this-is-not-a-meltdown-but-expect-short-term-pain/
The lack of mortgage applications means more housing inventory. Phoenix market inventory is up 70% since last year. U.S. inventory is up only 12%. Median sales prices hit a high of about $485,000 in May, according to data from the real estate company Redfin. Since then, prices have dropped to a median of $450,000, a decline of 7%.
https://www.abc15.com/news/local-news/phoenix-housing-market-cooling-as-mortgage-applications-fall-nationwide
-The Apartment Owners Association of California, Inc. (AOA) and the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles (AAGLA) jointly announced today that they have been granted a preliminary injunction they had been seeking to prevent enforcement of Los Angeles County’s broad-based moratorium on residential tenant evictions. In the United States District Court judge’s order granting the landlord group’s motion for preliminary injunction, multiple violations of the “Vagueness Doctrine” and the complete lack of specific standards for how to apply various provisions contained within the County’s eviction moratorium are cited. The District Court judge’s order concludes that “Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their claim that the Resolution’s Tenant Protections are unconstitutionally vague.”
Jeffrey Faller, President of AOA stated: “There’s no rational basis for the County keeping its eviction moratorium in effect for nearly three years especially since the health crisis ended long ago. For the County’s tenants, a ‘rent holiday’ has existed the entire time. As a result, many of our member’s lives are ruined as they have been unable to collect rent, and lost their properties to foreclosure or fire sales, and many others have had to liquidate retirement savings or have gone into debt using credit cards in order to meet ongoing obligations like mortgage payments, property insurance, taxes, and ongoing maintenance and repair costs.” Mr. Faller of AOA further commented: “For nearly three years, virtually one thousand days, renters have taken advantage of the situation created by the County’s ordinance by not paying rent because of alleged COVID-19 impacts while at the same time, they have afforded to travel, purchase new cars, and in the most egregious cases, purchased properties of their own.”
Under the County’s ordinance, tenants are merely allowed to “self-certify” their inability to pay rent due to COVID-19, and unilaterally decide to not pay rent based on the facts and circumstances they determined as if tenants had acted as their own “judge and jury.” Faller further commented: “Eviction bans like the County’s just encouraged unscrupulous renters to skip paying rent without recourse.”
AAGLA’s Executive Director, Daniel Yukelson, stated: “While this ruling is certainly great news for rental housing providers in Los Angeles County, the Court’s decision comes a little too late as the County’s ordinance is already set to expire on December 31, 2022. Nevertheless, we intend to continue pursuing our case and to obtain a final order declaring the County’s ordinance unconstitutional to allow our AAGLA and AOA members to seek compensation from the County to cover what has surely added up to billions of dollars in losses.” Yukelson further commented: “And, we won’t be stopping there. Our lawsuit against the County will be our roadmap to obtain similar rulings against all other jurisdictions that implemented these harmful and irrational eviction moratoriums, including against cities such as Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, and West Hollywood.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/landlord-groups-granted-preliminary-injunction-100000998.html
“Jeffrey Faller, President of AOA stated: “There’s no rational basis for the County keeping its eviction moratorium in effect for nearly three years especially since the health crisis ended long ago. For the County’s tenants, a ‘rent holiday’ has existed the entire time.”
Doesn’t Jeffrey realize how badly the Democrats need votes?
Raymond James analyst Buck Horne lowered ratings on all of the home-builder stocks he covers, as he believes the recent “relentless” climb in mortgage rates has ensured a housing recession.
“Begrudgingly, we are tapping out on the homebuilders after a relentless [2 percentage point] increase in 30-year mortgage rates over the past 2.5 months,” Horne wrote. “Unsurprisingly, numerous anecdotes and indicators…corroborate that the recent parabolic spike in rates has cratered what residual housing demand was still in the market this summer.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/raymond-james-e2-80-98tapping-out-e2-80-99-of-home-builder-stocks-as-a-housing-recession-is-now-a-given/ar-AA13eE4m
Builder sentiment in October marked its 10th consecutive monthly decline, according to The National Association of Home Builders. Outside of a brief period at the start of the pandemic, sentiment is now sitting at its lowest level since 2012.
Investors expect that homebuilder profits will plummet.
KB Home shares now trade at just 2.8 times estimated earnings, down from a price-to-earnings ratio of 13.6 in May, 2021. That’s not an anomaly within the sector; D.R. Horton’s P/E is 4 and Lennar’s is 4.2.
So far, profits appear to be holding up: In September, Lennar reported a 4-per-cent increase in its fiscal third-quarter profit, compared with a year ago. KB Home reported a 70-per-cent increase in profits over the same period. Clearly, the healthy backlog in orders is helping.
“Order growth was another matter,” Jay McCanless, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, said in a note this week.
He highlighted that KB Home’s orders were 50 per cent lower in the third quarter, year-over-year, which was far worse than his estimate of a 15-per-cent decline.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/markets/inside-the-market/article-us-homebuilders-housing-market-comeback/
It is an axiom of Canadian politics that a thing is not known until the Liberals know it. Free trade was terra incognita before the Liberals discovered it, a creature of Tory myth that Brian Mulroney somehow convinced the public to support in 1988. As late as 1993 the Liberals were still campaigning against it.
But then they won power, after which it was suddenly transformed into conventional wisdom – one of those things everybody knows, and what is more has always known. By a similarly mysterious process the GST, balanced budgets and price stability, ideas once so barbaric no civilized person could repeat them, became familiar parts of the Liberal lexicon.
Something of the same seems now to be happening in the realm of foreign policy. For some time now it has been apparent that the great hope of post-Cold War diplomacy, that the world could be made not only more prosperous through trade but also more democratic and more peaceful, had failed.
Hence the news value in last week’s speech in Washington by the Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland – a speech that has given rise to excited proclamations of a “Freeland Doctrine.” Certainly it was news to hear a senior Liberal declare that the age of peace through prosperity is over; that China and Russia are not our partners but our implacable adversaries; that national security, with the threat of nuclear war in the air, trumps the gains from trade, or – dare I say it – even the environment. That it was news, however, was not because the ideas are new – only because a Liberal said it.
The “three pillars” on which Ms. Freeland proposed to build a new international order – closer trade and investment ties among the democracies, openness to trade with other countries who share our values, and a determination to stand together against the encroachments of the autocracies – were likewise not particularly new.
In any case, it’s hard to square the “friend-shoring must be green” dogma with the most remarked-upon bit of Sudden Liberal Awareness in the speech, the commitment to “fast-track” energy and mining projects “our allies need to heat their homes.” Quite what this means we can only speculate: Could it really be that this government is now prepared to put the demands of a global security crisis before the delights of environmental purity? Was it only two months ago that the German Chancellor, on a visit in search of Canadian liquefied natural gas, was turned away empty-handed?
But like much else in the speech it seemed to imply the Liberals were prepared once again to give their blessing to common knowledge, and for that I suppose we should be grateful.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-with-the-freeland-doctrine-the-liberals-say-what-has-long-been/
Was it only two months ago that the German Chancellor, on a visit in search of Canadian liquefied natural gas, was turned away empty-handed?
And he’s still empty handed.
Despite the cooling market, the statewide median home price last month was $365,000—a gain of nearly $15,000 in the past year alone. While prices are still trending up, mounting evidence continues to suggest the upward pressure is easing. “In September, Virginia’s average sold-to-list price ratio, meaning what a home sold for compared to the price it was listed for, was 99.9%,” says Virginia REALTORS Chief Economist Ryan Price. “While this may not seem significant, it’s actually the first time this ratio has dipped below 100% since January 2021.”
Another piece of good news for home buyers is that the inventory of available homes is continuing to grow in many parts of the state. Some of the largest growth in supply has been in the New River Valley, the Winchester area, and parts of Central Virginia.
“Last month, about 44% of all counties and cities in Virginia had more inventory on the market than at the same time last year,” says Virginia REALTORS 2022 President Denise Ramey. “While our inventory levels remain historically low, we’ll likely see them continue to build as the market continues cooling.”
https://theroanokestar.com/2022/10/21/some-virginia-regions-seeing-more-homes-on-the-market-as-sales-slow-statewide/
For sale: Homes that have had a cut in the asking price, in Milton and Waltham
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/for-sale-homes-that-have-had-a-cut-in-the-asking-price-in-milton-and-waltham/ar-AA13dOw0
Steadily rising mortgage rates significantly affected the number of homes sold in Whatcom County during the third quarter and tapped the brakes on price appreciation.
Only 773 Whatcom County homes sold in the third quarter ending Sept. 30, a drop of 19.9% from the third quarter in 2021, according to Troy Muljat, owner and president of Bellingham-based Muljat Group Realtors.
Muljat prepared a report based on data from the Northwest Washington Multiple Listing Service.
The median price of homes sold in the county in the third quarter was $599,000, which was 7.7% higher than a year ago but 7.7% lower than this year’s second quarter.
“Much of the housing market’s change can be attributed to rising mortgage rates,” Muljat said. “The average 30-year mortgage rate is now around 6.7% after starting the year at 3.3%, according to Mortgage News Daily. That makes the monthly house payments soar and the number of people who qualify to buy a home shrink.”
“Inventory is continuing to increase, which is bringing the supply closer to a balanced market,” he added. “We’re not there yet, but buyers have more choices. Consequently, we are seeing fewer bidding wars and more offers that are under the listing price. After months of seeing the average house sell for more than its listing price, the sales now are averaging at 99.5% of the listing prices.”
https://www.lyndentribune.com/news/real-estate-home-prices-dip-from-2q-peak-rising-interest-rates-cut-into-sales/article_f6323db6-5152-11ed-bbaf-3b41789fe5f0.html
Good thing everybody put 20 down.
Bay Area loses jobs in September, California gains slow to a crawl
East Bay Times|11 hours ago
The Bay Area lost jobs during September, while California’s employment gains slowed to a crawl, a report released on Friday showed, an ominous yellow flag for the once-booming economies in the region and statewide.
A Salem real estate developer was sentenced to prison on Friday in connection with a decade-long mortgage fraud scheme. According to the Justice Department in Boston, 50-yeard-old George Kritopoulos was sentenced to four years in prison to be followed by two years of supervised release in connection with a decade-long mortgage fraud scheme involving at least two dozen loan transactions, totaling $6.5 million, that resulted in more than $3.8 million in losses to lenders.
He was convicted of conspiracy, two counts of wire fraud, six counts of bank fraud, aiding the preparation of a false income tax return, and obstruction of justice. Kritopoulos was originally charged in September 2018 along with co-defendants Joseph Bates III and David Plunkett.
From 2006 through 2015, Kritopoulos, Bates and others engaged in a scheme to defraud banks and other financial institutions by causing false information to be submitted to those institutions on behalf of borrowers primarily in Salem.
Kritopoulos brought newly recruited borrowers to Plunkett, who then prepared tax returns that contained false and inflated income. Some of those tax returns were submitted to lenders in support of the fraudulent loan applications.
Since the borrowers did not have the financial ability to repay the loans, in all but two instances among 21 properties, they defaulted on their loan payments, resulting in foreclosures and losses to the lenders.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/massachusetts-real-estate-developer-sentenced-to-prison-for-mortgage-fraud-scheme/ar-AA13eSzU
In Arizona Governor’s Race, a Question Looms: ‘Where’s Katie?’
The New York Times|12 hours ago
In the final weeks of a tight contest, critics say the Democrat, Katie Hobbs, has been too subdued. Her Republican rival, Kari Lake, a former TV news anchor, is taking full advantage.
Katie is probably following Biden strategy. She knows she will ‘win’ cuz…..
They’re gonna need a bigger ballot box stuffing machine.
As Secretary of State, she definitely knows how to stuff the ballot box.
A 2:17 video:
Phoenix housing market cooling as mortgage applications fall nationwide
https://news.yahoo.com/phoenix-housing-market-cooling-mortgage-015033585.html
Fitch downgrades two nonbank lenders, sets negative outlook for four
HousingWire|11 hours ago
Fitch ratings revised its credit ratings for Finance of America, Freedom Mortgage, Provident Funding, Home Point Capital and UWM. Here’s the outlook for the nonbanks.
Highland, UT Housing Prices Crater 14% YOY As Salt Lake City Inventory Soars
https://www.movoto.com/highland-ut/market-trends/
As a noted economist emphasized, “The number one cause of personal bankruptcy in the US is the 15 and 30 year mortgage.”
I work with an H1b (FOB, ~2 yrs in the states) and he says that all his friends/relatives in the states are all about housing. He’s also ready to ‘buy’ but he’s worried he will not get a green card for a long time, but that’s not stopping other people.
This $hit is crazy.
I know an H1B who has already traded up from his starter home.
It seems insane that someone who is on a temporary visa could get a mortgage, but they all do.