A report from the Wall Street Journal. "An unusually high number of homes across the…
This Post Has 12 Comments
From the first 10:43 video:
The November numbers are in… | Arizona Real Estate
Rick McHone
Dec 4, 2022
November’s numbers are in for Arizona’s real estate and well, the new construction scene seems to be on a rise…
The second 2:35 video:
Can you time the Bay Area real estate market? Should you try?
KPIX CBS SF Bay Area
Dec 5, 2022
With interest rates rising and home prices dropping for over six straight months, is this the right time to buy? Da Lin examines the factors.
The third 11:19 video:
Austin Weekly Housing Update Nov 21 – Nov 28
David Mercedes – Austin Real Estate
Dec 4, 2022
Welcome to your Austin Housing Market Weekly Deep Dive
In this series, we’ll be looking at the most relevant housing market leading indicators. If you like data, numbers and would like to dig deeper into the data, make sure to check out this insights and statistics link.
The fourth 6:39 video:
Drops In New Construction Home Prices đź‘€
Life In Venice Florida
Dec 4, 2022
Right now is a great time to buy new construction homes in Florida. If you’ve been thinking about buying a new home, but were discouraged with the waiting lists and bidding wars over the last year and a half, you’re in luck! We’ll tell you all the reasons why right now is a great time to buy a new construction home in Florida
The fifth 5 minute video:
Home Sales Dropped by 51%!!! Did Housing Market Crash??? Palo Alto Market Update – December 2022
Talis Team
Dec 5, 2022
Palo Alto market activity ground down to a halt with November sales dropping by 51% compared to November of last year. New listings came in at exactly the same level as last November. But because the number of new contracts fell by a whopping 65%, the number of homes available for sale by the end of November increased by 46% year-over-year.
Let’s focus on the number of new contracts for a moment. This is how many offers were accepted month. It reflects buyer’s confidence and for the last 3 months it was falling – 47% fewer contracts were ratified this September than September of last year, 51% fewer this October than last October and 65% fewer in November, also year-over-year. What caused it? We have to look at three major factors.
First factor is the high-tech layoffs. Companies like Amazon, Meta, DoorDash, Lyft, Cisco, Salesforce, Stripe, Robinhood, Roku, Shopify and many more announced workforce reductions. Workers facing, or experiencing, layoffs abandoned the housing market.
Second factor is the interest rates. As Feds were fighting inflation, mortgage interest rates grew faster than ever and, for a short period of time, exceeded 7% level. The fastest growth happened in September – October time frame when interest rates increased by 2% pushing down housing affordability levels. This further reduced the pool of potential home buyers.
And the third factor is the stock market performance. Many home buyers rely on their investments for the down payment. Double-digit declines in the stock values prevented many potential home buyers from cashing out and forced them to put their home buying plans on hold.
With the number of new contracts falling below the historic norms, the number of homes sales will continue to fall. But it may not lead to an increase of inventory. Sellers are also affected by the higher interest rates. Many homeowners were able to refinance their mortgages at rock-bottom interest rates in 2020 and 2022. For them, selling a home and buying a new one means that they have to obtain a new mortgage at a much higher interest rate than what they are paying now. This type of consideration may prevent them from putting their home on the market.
Another disincentive for selling homes in Palo Alto are taxes. Both property taxes and capital gain taxes. If you owned a home in Palo Alto for 5 or more years, most likely, you are facing a capital gain tax bill when you sell your home. At the same time, when you move, your new home may be subject to a higher property tax, even if you downsize, because Prop 13 limited property tax increases while you owned your home. There are ways to limit your tax exposure when you sell but it is a subject of a separate conversation.
And finally let’s talk about Palo Alto home values. In Palo Alto relatively few homes sell every month – 35 homes got sold in November, 26 in October, 47 in September and so on. On such a small, statistically small, sample there is no reliable way to discern month-over-month trends. Half-a-million-dollar swing may be just a result of a higher number of entry level, Palo Alto entry level, homes sold vs. more luxury properties this month and fewer the month before. Looking at the year-to-date data, 2022 median home sale price is the same as in 2021 – $3.3M.
To get a bigger picture, let’s look at the prices at the county level, even though we are still getting mixed signals. November median home sale price slid down by just 3.7% compared to November of 2021. The all-time price peak in the county was in April and November prices dropped by roughly 15% since then. And if you look at 2022 as a whole, home sale prices are still 7% higher than in 2021.
The sixth 7:26 video:
London Ontario Real Estate Market Update November 2022 Prices Down 210K from PEAK
Mark Mitchell – Mortgage Broker London Ontario
Dec 5, 2022
#LondonOntarioRealEstate #londonontario #ontariorealestate
London’s real estate market fell again in November, with the Average Price down nearly $64,000 from a year ago, and $212,499 from its peak in February. However, affordability remains worse that it was in November of 2021.
Benchmark Price of a Home in London:
February Benchmark – 749,000
October Benchmark – 584,200
November Benchmark – 575,500
Average Price of a Home in London:
February Average – $823,842
October Average Price – $630,282
November Average Price – $611,643
Median Price of a Home in London:
February Median – $777,000
October Median Price – $575,000
November Median Price – $577,500
Sales to List Price Ratio – Over Asking Pricing:
October Sales to List Price– 97
November Sales to List Price– 96.5
Months of Inventory:
London October 2022 MOI – 2.8
London October 2022 MOI – 2.8
About one in 12 mortgaged homes purchased in 2022 are underwater
HousingWire|7 hours ago
A total of 5% of purchase mortgages originated this year are now marginally underwater, with another 20% in low equity positions.
The frenzy of the Southwest Michigan local housing market has slowed for ten consecutive months in 2022. The Southwestern Michigan Association of Realtors says potential homebuyers have faced significant increases in selling prices for the limited availability of homes for sale, and even if successful in contracting a home, they’ll find mortgage rates nearly double what they were in the first half of 2022. For those reasons, the market has slowed in recent months. In October, the number of houses sold in southwest Michigan fell by 20% percent from the same month a year earlier, while year-to-date sales were down 14%. The association says the average selling price for the month, meanwhile, was up 15% from October of 2021 and the overall yearly average selling price is up 6% from 2021. In October, nine houses that were bank-owned or foreclosed were among the transactions. That’s 3% of all transactions. For six months, the percentage was at 1%, while in January, the rate was 0%.
How the gates closed on Blackstone’s runaway real estate vehicle
The Financial Times|23 hours ago
Blackstone chief executive Stephen Schwarzman recounted a surprise meeting with an investor in the firm’s $69bn-in-assets private real estate vehicle designed for wealthy individual investors. The person had approached Schwarzman to tell him the fund…
There’s a hidden risk to the global financial system embedded in the $65 trillion of dollar debt being held by non-US institutions via currency derivatives, according to the Bank for International Settlements.
In a paper with the title “huge, missing and growing,” the BIS said a lack of information is making it harder for policy makers to anticipate the next financial crisis. In particular, they raised concern with the fact that the debt is going unrecorded on balance sheets because of accounting conventions on how to track derivative positions.
For the length of the trade, the payment obligation is recorded off-balance sheet, which the BIS calls a “blind spot” in the financial system.
It’s that opacity that puts policymakers at a disadvantage, according to BIS researchers Claudio Borio, Robert McCauley and Patrick McGuire.
“It is not even clear how many analysts are aware of the existence of the large off-balance sheet obligations,” they wrote. “In times of crises, policies to restore the smooth flow of short-term dollars in the financial system — for instance, central bank swap lines — are set in a fog.”
The market for SPACs has been hit by a broader rout in more speculative assets amid concerns about tighter regulation from the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The De-SPAC Index is down 71% in the past 12 months compared with a 13% drop in the S&P 500 Index. More than one-third of the roughly 400 companies that merged with a SPAC are trading below $2 a share.
Washington Post — Support slipping for indefinite U.S. aid to Ukraine, poll finds (12/5/2022):
“While support among the American public for assistance to Ukraine remains robust, Republican backing for aid to Ukraine has slipped since the spring, with 55 percent of Republicans saying they support sending military aid, compared with 68 percent in July and 80 percent in March. Half of Republicans favored providing economic assistance to Ukraine last month, compared with roughly three-quarters in March, according to the Chicago Council’s findings.
The United States announced its latest tranche of military aid to Ukraine last month — the 25th since August 2021. The $400 million package includes additional arms, munitions and equipment, the Defense Department said, and brings total U.S. military assistance to Ukraine to nearly $20 billion since President Biden took office.
With Russia’s war in Ukraine in its 10th month, and no end in sight, Americans are split over whether Washington should urge Ukraine to reach a peace settlement with Russia imminently, the survey found. A plurality — 40 percent — said the United States should continue its current levels of support to Ukraine indefinitely. Fifty-three percent of Democrats favor this approach. In July, however, 58 percent of American respondents said the United States should help Ukraine for as long as it takes, even if that meant higher gas and food prices for American consumers. Now, 47 percent say Washington should push Kyiv to reach a peace settlement soon.
Pay $6 for gas, get a free virtue signal yard sign.
“They’re not sending their best”
Life insurers suffer worst returns on real estate loans in decades
The Real Deal|22 hours ago
Life insurance companies may be feeling a bit sickly about real estate. They are enduring the worst returns … loans on their books instead of writing them down immediately as a loss. So while a negative return looks scary, it is not yet cause for alarm.
You posted a tweet from Bill Ackman essentially agreeing that you believe SBF when he says– when he says that he didn’t knowingly commit any wrongdoing. I guess I wonder what has you still coming to his defense when you’ve lost millions of dollars on this investment, and when so many people have lost money here?
KEVIN O’LEARY: Because I am of the ilk and of the group of people that says, you’re innocent until proven guilty. That’s what I believe. And I want the facts. And so, if you tell me that you didn’t– you did or didn’t do something, I’m going to believe you until I find out it’s a falsehood.
What we have now is everybody on Earth raging against this guy, Sam Bankman-Fried, saying he’s a fraudster. He stole the money. He took it to his own account. It’s hidden somewhere. How does anybody know that if we have no way to audit it? How can anybody make that claim? Are they not as baseless as what Sam Bankman-Fried is saying until we have the facts? That’s all I’m saying. And I think Ackman is in the same camp.
I want the facts. That’s all. I don’t think that’s asking too much. And frankly, I can’t retrieve my money until I know where it is. And that’s the first thing I need to know. I need to know where was my money transferred to? It’s alleged it went to the Bahamian government, alleged it went to the US, alleged it was stolen in a hack.
I don’t know any of that yet. And I want to know where it is because I’ve told all of my lawyers, keep your phasers on stun until we have facts. Then we’re going to get that money back. That’s exactly what’s going to happen. I’m not the only institution in this situation. We all want our recovery path. We need a recovery path, but we don’t have one.
‘How does anybody know that if we have no way to audit it?’
The fact you can’t audit it proves he’s a crook you dummy. He was the CEO right? He has the money or someone else, but he was in charge and now it’s a southpark episode:
Speaking of Southpark, the show’s producers purchased the shuttered Casa Bonita in Dumver, with the intent of reopening it with a better menu (the food there was atrocious). That was announced quite a while ago, and I haven’t heard anything about a reopening date.
Thousand Oaks, CA Housing Prices Crater 21% YOY As Double Digit Price Declines Ripple Across Ventura County
From the first 10:43 video:
The November numbers are in… | Arizona Real Estate
Rick McHone
Dec 4, 2022
November’s numbers are in for Arizona’s real estate and well, the new construction scene seems to be on a rise…
The second 2:35 video:
Can you time the Bay Area real estate market? Should you try?
KPIX CBS SF Bay Area
Dec 5, 2022
With interest rates rising and home prices dropping for over six straight months, is this the right time to buy? Da Lin examines the factors.
The third 11:19 video:
Austin Weekly Housing Update Nov 21 – Nov 28
David Mercedes – Austin Real Estate
Dec 4, 2022
Welcome to your Austin Housing Market Weekly Deep Dive
In this series, we’ll be looking at the most relevant housing market leading indicators. If you like data, numbers and would like to dig deeper into the data, make sure to check out this insights and statistics link.
The fourth 6:39 video:
Drops In New Construction Home Prices đź‘€
Life In Venice Florida
Dec 4, 2022
Right now is a great time to buy new construction homes in Florida. If you’ve been thinking about buying a new home, but were discouraged with the waiting lists and bidding wars over the last year and a half, you’re in luck! We’ll tell you all the reasons why right now is a great time to buy a new construction home in Florida
The fifth 5 minute video:
Home Sales Dropped by 51%!!! Did Housing Market Crash??? Palo Alto Market Update – December 2022
Talis Team
Dec 5, 2022
Palo Alto market activity ground down to a halt with November sales dropping by 51% compared to November of last year. New listings came in at exactly the same level as last November. But because the number of new contracts fell by a whopping 65%, the number of homes available for sale by the end of November increased by 46% year-over-year.
Let’s focus on the number of new contracts for a moment. This is how many offers were accepted month. It reflects buyer’s confidence and for the last 3 months it was falling – 47% fewer contracts were ratified this September than September of last year, 51% fewer this October than last October and 65% fewer in November, also year-over-year. What caused it? We have to look at three major factors.
First factor is the high-tech layoffs. Companies like Amazon, Meta, DoorDash, Lyft, Cisco, Salesforce, Stripe, Robinhood, Roku, Shopify and many more announced workforce reductions. Workers facing, or experiencing, layoffs abandoned the housing market.
Second factor is the interest rates. As Feds were fighting inflation, mortgage interest rates grew faster than ever and, for a short period of time, exceeded 7% level. The fastest growth happened in September – October time frame when interest rates increased by 2% pushing down housing affordability levels. This further reduced the pool of potential home buyers.
And the third factor is the stock market performance. Many home buyers rely on their investments for the down payment. Double-digit declines in the stock values prevented many potential home buyers from cashing out and forced them to put their home buying plans on hold.
With the number of new contracts falling below the historic norms, the number of homes sales will continue to fall. But it may not lead to an increase of inventory. Sellers are also affected by the higher interest rates. Many homeowners were able to refinance their mortgages at rock-bottom interest rates in 2020 and 2022. For them, selling a home and buying a new one means that they have to obtain a new mortgage at a much higher interest rate than what they are paying now. This type of consideration may prevent them from putting their home on the market.
Another disincentive for selling homes in Palo Alto are taxes. Both property taxes and capital gain taxes. If you owned a home in Palo Alto for 5 or more years, most likely, you are facing a capital gain tax bill when you sell your home. At the same time, when you move, your new home may be subject to a higher property tax, even if you downsize, because Prop 13 limited property tax increases while you owned your home. There are ways to limit your tax exposure when you sell but it is a subject of a separate conversation.
And finally let’s talk about Palo Alto home values. In Palo Alto relatively few homes sell every month – 35 homes got sold in November, 26 in October, 47 in September and so on. On such a small, statistically small, sample there is no reliable way to discern month-over-month trends. Half-a-million-dollar swing may be just a result of a higher number of entry level, Palo Alto entry level, homes sold vs. more luxury properties this month and fewer the month before. Looking at the year-to-date data, 2022 median home sale price is the same as in 2021 – $3.3M.
To get a bigger picture, let’s look at the prices at the county level, even though we are still getting mixed signals. November median home sale price slid down by just 3.7% compared to November of 2021. The all-time price peak in the county was in April and November prices dropped by roughly 15% since then. And if you look at 2022 as a whole, home sale prices are still 7% higher than in 2021.
The sixth 7:26 video:
London Ontario Real Estate Market Update November 2022 Prices Down 210K from PEAK
Mark Mitchell – Mortgage Broker London Ontario
Dec 5, 2022
#LondonOntarioRealEstate #londonontario #ontariorealestate
London’s real estate market fell again in November, with the Average Price down nearly $64,000 from a year ago, and $212,499 from its peak in February. However, affordability remains worse that it was in November of 2021.
Benchmark Price of a Home in London:
February Benchmark – 749,000
October Benchmark – 584,200
November Benchmark – 575,500
Average Price of a Home in London:
February Average – $823,842
October Average Price – $630,282
November Average Price – $611,643
Median Price of a Home in London:
February Median – $777,000
October Median Price – $575,000
November Median Price – $577,500
Sales to List Price Ratio – Over Asking Pricing:
October Sales to List Price– 97
November Sales to List Price– 96.5
Months of Inventory:
London October 2022 MOI – 2.8
London October 2022 MOI – 2.8
About one in 12 mortgaged homes purchased in 2022 are underwater
HousingWire|7 hours ago
A total of 5% of purchase mortgages originated this year are now marginally underwater, with another 20% in low equity positions.
The frenzy of the Southwest Michigan local housing market has slowed for ten consecutive months in 2022. The Southwestern Michigan Association of Realtors says potential homebuyers have faced significant increases in selling prices for the limited availability of homes for sale, and even if successful in contracting a home, they’ll find mortgage rates nearly double what they were in the first half of 2022. For those reasons, the market has slowed in recent months. In October, the number of houses sold in southwest Michigan fell by 20% percent from the same month a year earlier, while year-to-date sales were down 14%. The association says the average selling price for the month, meanwhile, was up 15% from October of 2021 and the overall yearly average selling price is up 6% from 2021. In October, nine houses that were bank-owned or foreclosed were among the transactions. That’s 3% of all transactions. For six months, the percentage was at 1%, while in January, the rate was 0%.
https://www.wsjm.com/2022/12/05/swm-housing-market-continues-to-cool-off/
How the gates closed on Blackstone’s runaway real estate vehicle
The Financial Times|23 hours ago
Blackstone chief executive Stephen Schwarzman recounted a surprise meeting with an investor in the firm’s $69bn-in-assets private real estate vehicle designed for wealthy individual investors. The person had approached Schwarzman to tell him the fund…
There’s a hidden risk to the global financial system embedded in the $65 trillion of dollar debt being held by non-US institutions via currency derivatives, according to the Bank for International Settlements.
In a paper with the title “huge, missing and growing,” the BIS said a lack of information is making it harder for policy makers to anticipate the next financial crisis. In particular, they raised concern with the fact that the debt is going unrecorded on balance sheets because of accounting conventions on how to track derivative positions.
For the length of the trade, the payment obligation is recorded off-balance sheet, which the BIS calls a “blind spot” in the financial system.
It’s that opacity that puts policymakers at a disadvantage, according to BIS researchers Claudio Borio, Robert McCauley and Patrick McGuire.
“It is not even clear how many analysts are aware of the existence of the large off-balance sheet obligations,” they wrote. “In times of crises, policies to restore the smooth flow of short-term dollars in the financial system — for instance, central bank swap lines — are set in a fog.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/huge-missing-growing-65-trillion-120025349.html
Is 65 trillion a lot?
the debt is going unrecorded on balance sheets
“You owe me money!”
“No, I don’t.”
The market for SPACs has been hit by a broader rout in more speculative assets amid concerns about tighter regulation from the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The De-SPAC Index is down 71% in the past 12 months compared with a 13% drop in the S&P 500 Index. More than one-third of the roughly 400 companies that merged with a SPAC are trading below $2 a share.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/spacs-collapse-11-billion-deals-172735919.html
Washington Post — Support slipping for indefinite U.S. aid to Ukraine, poll finds (12/5/2022):
“While support among the American public for assistance to Ukraine remains robust, Republican backing for aid to Ukraine has slipped since the spring, with 55 percent of Republicans saying they support sending military aid, compared with 68 percent in July and 80 percent in March. Half of Republicans favored providing economic assistance to Ukraine last month, compared with roughly three-quarters in March, according to the Chicago Council’s findings.
The United States announced its latest tranche of military aid to Ukraine last month — the 25th since August 2021. The $400 million package includes additional arms, munitions and equipment, the Defense Department said, and brings total U.S. military assistance to Ukraine to nearly $20 billion since President Biden took office.
With Russia’s war in Ukraine in its 10th month, and no end in sight, Americans are split over whether Washington should urge Ukraine to reach a peace settlement with Russia imminently, the survey found. A plurality — 40 percent — said the United States should continue its current levels of support to Ukraine indefinitely. Fifty-three percent of Democrats favor this approach. In July, however, 58 percent of American respondents said the United States should help Ukraine for as long as it takes, even if that meant higher gas and food prices for American consumers. Now, 47 percent say Washington should push Kyiv to reach a peace settlement soon.
https://archive.ph/zOcwZ
Pay $6 for gas, get a free virtue signal yard sign.
“They’re not sending their best”
Life insurers suffer worst returns on real estate loans in decades
The Real Deal|22 hours ago
Life insurance companies may be feeling a bit sickly about real estate. They are enduring the worst returns … loans on their books instead of writing them down immediately as a loss. So while a negative return looks scary, it is not yet cause for alarm.
You posted a tweet from Bill Ackman essentially agreeing that you believe SBF when he says– when he says that he didn’t knowingly commit any wrongdoing. I guess I wonder what has you still coming to his defense when you’ve lost millions of dollars on this investment, and when so many people have lost money here?
KEVIN O’LEARY: Because I am of the ilk and of the group of people that says, you’re innocent until proven guilty. That’s what I believe. And I want the facts. And so, if you tell me that you didn’t– you did or didn’t do something, I’m going to believe you until I find out it’s a falsehood.
What we have now is everybody on Earth raging against this guy, Sam Bankman-Fried, saying he’s a fraudster. He stole the money. He took it to his own account. It’s hidden somewhere. How does anybody know that if we have no way to audit it? How can anybody make that claim? Are they not as baseless as what Sam Bankman-Fried is saying until we have the facts? That’s all I’m saying. And I think Ackman is in the same camp.
I want the facts. That’s all. I don’t think that’s asking too much. And frankly, I can’t retrieve my money until I know where it is. And that’s the first thing I need to know. I need to know where was my money transferred to? It’s alleged it went to the Bahamian government, alleged it went to the US, alleged it was stolen in a hack.
I don’t know any of that yet. And I want to know where it is because I’ve told all of my lawyers, keep your phasers on stun until we have facts. Then we’re going to get that money back. That’s exactly what’s going to happen. I’m not the only institution in this situation. We all want our recovery path. We need a recovery path, but we don’t have one.
https://news.yahoo.com/kevin-oleary-ftx-partnership-m-164932779.html
‘How does anybody know that if we have no way to audit it?’
The fact you can’t audit it proves he’s a crook you dummy. He was the CEO right? He has the money or someone else, but he was in charge and now it’s a southpark episode:
Speaking of Southpark, the show’s producers purchased the shuttered Casa Bonita in Dumver, with the intent of reopening it with a better menu (the food there was atrocious). That was announced quite a while ago, and I haven’t heard anything about a reopening date.
Thousand Oaks, CA Housing Prices Crater 21% YOY As Double Digit Price Declines Ripple Across Ventura County
https://www.movoto.com/thousand-oaks-ca/market-trends/
As one Ventura area broker joked, “Thousand Oaks is better known as thousand empty houses.”