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The Change In The Balance Of Power Is Bringing Out The Worst In Buyers

It’s Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. “There are about 250,000 more homes for sale around the country than there were at this time last year, Realtor.com’s study says. Compared to January 2022, active listings are up 65%. Ogden, Utah: Year-over-year active listings increase: 392%. Nashville, Tennessee: Year-over-year listings increase: 304%. Austin, Texas: Year-over-year listings increase: 260%. Sarasota, Florida: Year-over-year listings increase: 259%. Raleigh, North Carolina: Year-over-year listings increase: 255%. Phoenix, Arizona: Year-over-year listings increase: 190%. Seattle, Washington: Year-over-year listings increase: 181%. Colorado Springs, Colorado: Year-over-year listings increase: 164%. ‘Sellers might have to come down or find some other way to sweeten the deal for buyers,’ Realtor Chief Economist Danielle Hale said.”

“During a foreclosure sale at a public auction on Thursday, the lender that recently foreclosed on the developer of the proposed Summit Crossing subdivision in Strasburg cast the only bid on a portion of the project site. The lender is Red Ace Strasburg Land Inc., of Bethesda, Maryland, and the developer that was foreclosed on is Vinton-based Cedar Valley Development LLC. The proposed 113 townhomes were slated to stand on the 14 acres the lender secured at Thursday’s auction. Before the foreclosure, the developer had permits to develop 10 of the townhomes. None of them have been built.”

“Finding good news in Waco’s January economy may have required a magnifying glass as inflation roared, homebuilders hibernated and homes mostly went unsold, according to an economist who prepares a monthly snapshot. ‘The January monthly table of economic indicators is scattered with year-over-year negatives, some of them sharply lower compared to year-ago levels,’ said Karr Ingham, of Amarillo, who prepares the index.”

“Colorado Springs-area home prices, sales and construction tanked again last month, two new industry reports show. The median price of homes that were sold in February dropped by 5.4% to $440,000 when compared with the same month last year — the largest percentage decrease in year-over-year prices since a 7.1% decline in February 2012, according to a Pikes Peak Association of Realtors report. It also was the second year-over-year drop in home prices in the last three months. At the same time, February’s median price was the lowest for any month since an identical $440,000 in September 2021, which means local prices now have slipped to a nearly 1 1/2 -year low, Gazette data show.”

“The pandemic-fueled buying frenzy is behind us. The market will likely stabilize, but buyers shouldn’t expect prices to fall much, if at all, and certainly not as drastically as they did in 2008, said Jennifer Reiszel, director of Branch Operations at Hudson River Community Credit Union. From the spring of 2020 to the spring of 2022 in the Capital Region, the median sale price of homes rose around 20 percent during that same time frame, according to real estate agent Brian Sinkoff. ‘That’s not normal, that’s not sustainable and that’s not healthy,’ he said. Rates may level off or continue to creep up but one thing is for sure: They won’t tumble toward 3 percent any time soon, if ever, Sinkoff said. ‘I don’t want to say never but dinosaurs would have to roam the Earth and zombies would have to come. There would have to literally be an apocalypse for rates to go back to 3 percent.'”

“This past Christmas, Santa delivered a giant lump of coal to Southern California’s housing market, as well as to real estate agents, lenders, escrow officers and anyone else who gets paid by the transaction. Prices also have been dropping on a monthly basis, falling for eight straight months, CoreLogic figures show. The median price of a Southern California home fell to $670,000 in January, CoreLogic reported. That’s down $90,000 from the price peak reached last spring, and down $500 from January 2022. ‘Yeah, those numbers are scary,’ added Dane McClain, a Newport Beach escrow company vice president. ‘I have seen slow January’s before, but never, never to this actual loss of where we’re at right now.'”

“An Alameda County landlord began a hunger strike on Sunday to protest an ongoing eviction ban that he says has pushed him to the brink of bankruptcy. Jinyu Wu, 53, an immigrant from China, has a rental property in San Leandro, but says his tenant hasn’t paid him for three years due to an eviction moratorium implemented in 2020. ‘We worked night and day for our new life and our American dream,’ Wu said in a letter to the board. ‘Today, our property has been stolen from us by you, by this draconian eviction moratorium.'”

“Britney Spears made a loss on her Calabasas home after putting her mansion on the market. The Toxic hitmaker, 41, has officially offloaded her Californian abode for $10.1million (£8.5m), despite originally putting the property up for sale at around $12million (£10m). Of course, $10million is by no means a small sum of money, but the amount is a whopping $1.7million (£1.4m) less than she paid for the place just eight months ago, back in summer 2022.”

“Flagstar Bank’s new owner confirmed Tuesday that it did a significant number of employee layoffs late last week when it restructured its mortgage division to adjust to the nationwide downturn in the mortgage business since 2021. ‘We are in one of the toughest mortgage markets of the last 25 years,’ said Lee Smith, a longtime Flagstar executive and now president of the combined bank’s mortgage division.”

“Blackstone Inc has defaulted on a 531 million euro ($562.5 million) bond backed by a portfolio of offices and stores owned by Finnish company Sponda Oy, Bloomberg News reported, as rising interest rates hit European property values. The asset management giant and prolific real estate investor sought an extension from the bondholders to repay the debt, but they voted against it, the report said on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.”

“Sinking real estate sales in many Canadian cities may find a bottom in the first half of this year, predicts Rishi Sondhi, economist at Toronto-Dominion Bank. Activity has fallen to the lowest level in about 20 years, he points out. ‘How low can you go? Activity at some point has to pick up,’ he said. In the area around Hamilton, inventory has increased across all price segments – and particularly in the lower ranges, according to the Realtors Association of Hamilton-Burlington (RAHB). The benchmark price has dropped about 20 per cent to $809,800 in January from $1,012,700 in the same month last year, reports RAHB. Mr. Sondhi points out that affordability remains strained in the Greater Toronto Area and therefore prices are unlikely to jump. ‘That might disappoint some sellers that are looking at February, 2022 prices,’ he says.”

“Selling your home is stressful at the best of times – and now it is even worse. The best sellers’ market for a decade is over. Buyers are in the driving seat, with uncertainty about the future forcing sellers to shave £14,000 off their asking prices on average – the biggest discounts seen for five years. Only a short time ago competitive buyers were turning up at their sellers’ village churches or pubs to butter them up, with some even promising to look after wildlife and pets left at the property in order to clinch a sale. Jeremy Leaf, of estate agents Jeremy Leaf and Co, says the change in the balance of power ‘is bringing out the worst in buyers. When they came back into the market after the mini-Budget we certainly saw them flexing their muscles.'”

“Andrew Downing-Booth of Andrew Downing-Booth Estate Agents says he has seen an increase in buyers heavily negotiating price reductions because they have heard the market is going to drop. ‘Buyers know it’s a buyers market and try to push prices down as much as possible, but vendors are not taking kindly to this and so the sale then falls through.'”

“HOUSE PRICES in the Finnish capital region are expected to drop by around 10 per cent from the peak observed last year, reveals Juho Kostiainen, an economist at Nordea. Kostiainen on Tuesday told Helsingin Sanomat that although the prices are expected to remain on a downward trajectory this spring, most of the decline – about three-quarters – has already been witnessed. ‘The house market has been in hibernation this winter,’ Kostiainen summarised to Helsingin Sanomat.”

“Nordea said in its latest house market review that the sustained period of low interest rates on housing loans created ‘a bit of a bubble’ in the investment housing market. The spike in interest rates has burst the bubble, sending the prices of one-room houses on a sharper downward trajectory than those of two-room and family houses.

“Home borrowers who take out a 35-year home loan to reduce the pressure of monthly repayments would pay up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra interest over the life of the mortgage. The figures are even starker for longer terms. Borrowers who take out the same loan over 40 years will reduce their monthly repayments by $652 but will pay an extra $610,664 over the life of the loan. The figures are based on an owner-occupier paying principal and interest with a 20 per cent deposit.”

“AMP Capital chief economist Dr Shane Oliver also warned new borrowers of the more affordable repayments on longer-term home loans, describing it as ‘an illusion.’ ‘The more you have the loan for, the more you’re paying interest. The impact will be quite substantial as the cost of interest compounds,’ Oliver said. ‘There’s no doubt for those who are really stretched, and the choice is between refinancing in the longer term, knowing they have to pay more interest, as opposed to losing the house then it may be better going to the longer-term loan.'”

“New Zealand‘s housing market decline has again accelerated with the country’s property values now down nearly 9 percent on this time last year. Property values dropped across all of New Zealand’s main centres in February apart from Christchurch. Prices in Wellington alone declined 19.7 percent for the year, 2.6 percent for the quarter and 1.6 percent for the month.”

“Ha bought a villa worth VND12 billion (US$508,500) from Novaland using cash and a VND5-billion bank loan after Vietnam’s fourth-biggest property developer pledged to cover most of the interest. But now Ha doesn’t know how she’s going to pay because the company has reneged on its commitment. In late 2021, Ha bought her villa at the Aqua City project, which is still under construction in Bien Hoa, the capital town of Dong Nai Province.”

“‘I don’t know when I will receive the refund because the project has been delayed, and I don’t have enough money to pay interest,’ she said, noting that construction of her unfinished villa has been halted since December 2022. ‘I really want to liquidate the contract to get my money back, even though I know I will be fined, but Novaland said they don’t have money to pay me back.'”

“Nguyen, a resident of HCMC’s Thu Duc City, said she is now ‘sitting on fire’ after Novaland announced it would stop helping her pay interest this month. She bought a villa at the Novaworld Phan Thiet project in the central province of Binh Thuan at a price of nearly VND14 billion. But now, she has to pay all the interest at the annual rate of 12%, amounting to hundreds of millions of dong per month by herself. ‘I can’t arrange the cash flow to pay interest. I’m considering liquidating the contract, paying a fine of billions of dong, or switching to another property with a lower price to reduce the financial burden,’ Nguyen said.”

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This Post Has 73 Comments

  1. ‘Buyers know it’s a buyers market and try to push prices down as much as possible’

    That’s the spirit!

    1. I call BS on that narrative. We saw during the pandemic that there are always buyers willing to borrow the maximum amount a lender will offer them in order to pay as much as possible to get on the property latter. This is because real estate always goes up, and owning a home is the modern day equivalent of staking a claim in the 1849 California Gold Rush.

      Fast forward to 2023: With mortgage rates trending north of 7% and no sign they will drop back towards 2022 levels any time before the sun experiences heat death, the largest purchase price a borrower can finance off his monthly income has dropped dramatically. It’s not that buyers don’t want to pay 2023’s astronomical list prices…they literally can’t afford to.

      On the other hand, sellers can always reduce their reservation price if there are no buyers forthcoming at the current offer price.

  2. ‘Only a short time ago competitive buyers were turning up at their sellers’ village churches or pubs to butter them up, with some even promising to look after wildlife and pets left at the property in order to clinch a sale’

    Well…

    1. Not anymore sucka. If I buy this hovel I will eradicate all the wildlife and clear cut the forests. B/c I can.

  3. ‘Blackstone Inc has defaulted on a 531 million euro ($562.5 million) bond backed by a portfolio of offices and stores owned by Finnish company Sponda Oy, Bloomberg News reported, as rising interest rates hit European property values. The asset management giant and prolific real estate investor sought an extension from the bondholders to repay the debt, but they voted against it’

    No soup fer you a$$hats! But they have the money, so they are just bailing.

    1. Finance execs are slimy and smart. The bought out this outfit’s hard assets in 2018 – the least valuable and some of the oldest properties (40 years old) were placed in this offering. Citi and MorganStanley sold the CMBS bonds – and the losers are the mutual funds and pension funds that bought these as part of their diversification bundle. Yah-yahoo to us pleebs – we cant do anything because of force majeure (ukraine war)

      Blackstone’s notes have now matured and have not been repaid, prompting loan servicer Mount Street to determine a default, according to a statement Thursday. The loan will now be transfered to a special servicer, it added.

      Blackstone acquired Sponda for almost €1.8 billion in 2018.

      Fitch downgraded the notes in December, saying that “weak macroeconomic outlook and limited appetite for lending against secondary quality illiquid assets” create significant challenges for refinancing.

      The loan was originated by Citigroup Inc. and Morgan Stanley and is secured against 45 properties in Finland, most of which are offices. At the time of the downgrade, €297.1 million of the senior loan remained outstanding, according to Fitch.

      The portfolio is about 45% vacant, having risen about 10 percentage points higher during the pandemic, according to the report. Travel restrictions then hampered Blackstone’s sales efforts before the war in Ukraine unleashed a fresh wave of volatility.

    2. Seems like a lot of megasized real estate investors are in the process of getting their azzes pounded.

    3. Remember last time when all of these same outfits were on the record talking about how immoral strategic defaults on houses were, and how people should keep paying even though the house wasn’t worth even close to the loan amount?

      In fact, I specifically remember J.P. Morgan strategically defaulting on a San Francisco tower while talking out of the other side of their mouth. We live in the most corrupt times in the history of our country.

      1. “We live in the most corrupt times in the history of our country.”

        Sad given our breadth of information services.

    4. So what is the difference between Evergrande and Blackstone defaulting?
      Evergrande has still not declared bankruptcy. Blackstone will similarly stiff bondholders.

  4. ‘Home borrowers who take out a 35-year home loan to reduce the pressure of monthly repayments would pay up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra interest over the life of the mortgage. The figures are even starker for longer terms. Borrowers who take out the same loan over 40 years will reduce their monthly repayments by $652 but will pay an extra $610,664 over the life of the loan’

    That’s right borrowers. That’s just 480 months of easy payments. Don’t give it away!

      1. or when their parents die and leave them the paid-off house, instead or being a ego trippin real xState mogul, and turn it into a STR……

    2. Why stop there? Let the grandkids keep that note alive. 100 year mortgages. How many generations can we f.uck

  5. ‘I can’t arrange the cash flow to pay interest. I’m considering liquidating the contract, paying a fine of billions of dong, or switching to another property with a lower price to reduce the financial burden’

    Dammit Nguyen, yer just giving it away. Yer a billionaire! Would unca Warren give it away? Hell no!

  6. ‘I don’t want to say never but dinosaurs would have to roam the Earth and zombies would have to come. There would have to literally be an apocalypse for rates to go back to 3 percent’

    Wa about the rate daters Brian?

  7. ‘We worked night and day for our new life and our American dream,’ Wu said in a letter to the board. ‘Today, our property has been stolen from us by you, by this draconian eviction moratorium.’”

    Riddle me this, Wu: why would an immigrant from CCP tyranny opt to settle in a state run by the CCP’s ideological clones?

    2. I was literally going to write the same thing. Next time choose a state that still believes in capitalism.

    3. I remembering reading articles where businessmen said doing business in China is easier than doing business in CA.
      WU might be thinking the same thing at this moment in Time and
      China might not be looking to bad to him.

      1. The Chinese government might at least pretend to care about the plight of landlords getting thrown under the bus…unlike California’s.

    4. It is easier for immigrants to build networks and business in an area with their diaspora.

      Something tells me rural Tennessee isn’t the most friendly place for a Beijinger who speaks English as a second language to settle and thrive.

  8. My Garmin bicycle GPS computer received a new firmware upgrade yesterday afternoon. Here are the latest improvements:

    Changes made from version 15.24 to 16.11:
    – Added support Primary Training Device (Unified Training Status)
    – Added support for Connect IQ System 6
    – Added multi code point emoji support
    – Added visual feedback to RCT 715 Save Photo and Save Video buttons
    – Added support for entering an unspecified gender in the user profile
    – Improved Wi-Fi connection stability
    – Fixed certain glances sometimes not refreshing
    – Fixed crash when saving very large activity
    – Fixed performance issue on timer loop
    – Fixed issue with navigating back to start
    – Fixed bugs and improved stability

    3. “Added support for entering an unspecified gender in the user profile”

      “Enter a gender of your choice.”

      1. It’s a training device with an extensive user profile to track weight, heart rate, O2, etc., and it had, Male or Female, in the setup, but that no longer jives these days. Now it has to have third option! LOL

    1. Silvergate bank is in La Jolla…pretty close to home for San Diego. Will La Jolla prove to be ground zero for the crypto CR8R, when viewed through history’s rear view mirror?

      1. Silvergate Bank fears shake crypto industry, bitcoin falls
        Yahoo Finance
        Fri, March 3, 2023 at 7:00 AM PST
        Yahoo Finance’s Jared Blikre joins the Live show to discuss how cryptocurrencies are trading as concerns of a Silvergate Bank collapse swirl.

        – Welcome back to “Yahoo Finance Live.” A dramatic fall for Bitcoin as concerns mount over the contagion caused by crypto-focused lender, Silvergate. Let’s get on over to the YFi Interactive where “Yahoo Finance’s” Jared Blikre is standing by. Jared?

        JARED BLIKRE: Yeah. Silvergate’s earnings came out a couple of days ago. Well, actually they were supposed to, and that’s a problem. They had to file a notice that they were going to be late with the SEC. A bunch of analysts have weighed-in, and I’ll get to that in a second, but I just want to show you the reaction in Bitcoin.

        This is a pretty big deal. Silvergate, one of the huge bankers to the crypto industry. This is a year-to-date chart of Bitcoin, and you can see this is the biggest down candle we’ve seen in a long time. And just on an intraday basis, Bitcoin never sleeps. This happened while I was sleeping.
        …
        https://finance.yahoo.com/video/silvergate-bank-fears-shake-crypto-150052102.html

        1. “Given its success–” and this is Silvergate– “And becoming a key component of financial services infrastructure to the digital assets industry, the bank to some degree has become a lightning rod victim of circumstances, given industry news flow over the last few months.”

          ‘I’m a victim of coicumstance.’

          – Curly Joe Stooge

      2. “Silvergate, a traditional bank founded in 1987 and based in California, increasingly delved into the digital asset space.”

        Ouch! LOL

      3. “Silvergate, a traditional bank founded in 1987 and based in California, increasingly delved into the digital asset space.”

        Ouch! LOL

    1. Yep, they can seize your bank account and impound your truck in Canada for speaking out against the Trudeau government.

      1. Yep, they can seize your bank account and impound your truck in Canada for speaking out against the Trudeau government.
        But at least they didn’t seriously consider killing you Cats like they did in England
        Ytube video on Redacted talks about England considering killing all cats during the Pandemic.

          1. Interesting. I suspect the same idea will be brought up again when we “deal with the Climate Crisis.”

  11. 𝗟𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲, 𝗖𝗢 𝗛𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗖𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝟮𝟵% 𝗬𝗢𝗬 𝗔𝘀 𝗗𝗼𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗗𝗶𝗴𝗶𝘁 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗗𝗲𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀 𝗕𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗖𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗼

    https://www.movoto.com/livermore-co/market-trends/

    𝘈𝘴 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘋𝘦𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘣𝘳𝘰𝘬𝘦𝘳 𝘭𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥, “𝘋𝘦𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘴 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘋𝘦𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘪𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘋𝘦𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘪𝘵 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘢𝘴.”

  12. “…This past Christmas, Santa delivered a giant lump of coal to Southern California’s housing market…” “…Yeah, those numbers are scary,’ added Dane McClain, a Newport Beach escrow company vice president. ‘I have seen slow January’s before, but never, never to this actual loss of where we’re at right now….”

    I do daily bike rides in this area.

    Wonder in the dramatic increase in homeless (essentially zero homeless 5 years ago) and reported crime increases have anything to do with it?

    You pay many millions for a house and then find out there are homeless camping out in the greenery next to the bike path or you turn a corner and some [apparently] drunk is passed out on a bus bench. [This particularly gentlemen has been in the area for years asking for ‘spare change’, drinking Starbucks and smoking stinky cigarettes.

    Dane McClain, Newport Beach escrow, has quite a sales job ahead of her.

    1. I might also add that this week, for the very first time, I rode past newly spray painted graffiti on a stretch of wall between bike path and local golf course.

      In 40+ years, have never seen this, never.

      Is this the new ‘vibrancy’ that the local WOK’s are all talking about?

  13. A reader sent these in:

    Many are puzzled with resilience of equities (still around May 22 levels, with 240 bp more in FFR!). All risk assets really. Credit spreads are absurdly rich at these levels. That in and by itself is a factor (no credit unwind). The main reason is too much cash sloshing around

    https://twitter.com/INArteCarloDoss/status/1631393401844146204

    You cannot make this stuff up

    https://twitter.com/simon_ree/status/1631307374135836672

    The lies enablers – anyone labeling this gross disinformation and banning it? no? oh well…

    https://twitter.com/INArteCarloDoss/status/1631299385509199879

    The story of inflation so far has been written with CB lies. It’s transitory, it’s supply-side driven, it’s China, it’s Putin, it’s not a wage-price spiral, it’s peaking, it’s soon about to converge down to target, it’s margin driven…can’t the layman see that he’s the sucker?

    https://twitter.com/INArteCarloDoss/status/1631251495302709249

    “As developers find clever ways to cut mortgage rates, the Fed may fight back” writes @TheEconomist

    https://twitter.com/NewsLambert/status/1631459021113663488

    Houses are less affordable than ever before, especially for first-time buyers https://bloomberg.com

    https://twitter.com/TaylorAMarr/status/1631385819578507308

    I swear to you this is the interior of every house on the market in Central Florida right now.

    https://twitter.com/casey_24601/status/1631384452285734919

    Danielle DiMartino Booth

    But I thought the housing market was turning? /s US home prices fell YoY for the first time since 2012, according to @Redfin. In the four weeks through Feb. 26, the median price for a typical home was $350,246, down 0.6% YoY.

    https://twitter.com/DiMartinoBooth/status/1631356862493863936

    Oh, it’s turning – but not how the chorus wants us to believe. Skis ⛷ pointed ⬇️….way down.

    https://twitter.com/m3_melody/status/1631359555878674432

    Lance Lambert

    🚨 The average 30-year fixed U.S. mortgage rate just jumped to 7.10%. That’s the highest reading since early November.

    https://twitter.com/NewsLambert/status/1631337533949845512

    only fans supply shock incoming

    https://twitter.com/Corp_Raider99/status/1631018645311885312

    Jon Lansner

    Crash! Not only was it the worst January ever for LA/Orange County #homesales — it was the fewest closings for any month in CoreLogic data dating to 1988!

    https://twitter.com/jonlan/status/1631218918298890241

    Closing dinner had lots of chatter about the office market and if folks will be going back to the office any time soon. Consensus:
    WFH is mess.
    Youngs “demand” remote.
    Olds with give preference to folks that show up.
    “Showing up” will be the “winner track” in many companies.

    https://twitter.com/Cribdilla/status/1631150073487794178

    Lance Lambert

    Dallas Fed: “Specifically, the perils detected in the U.S. and German housing markets pose a vulnerability to the global outlook because of the size of those nations’ economies and significant cross-border financial spillovers.”

    https://twitter.com/NewsLambert/status/1631211800644468738

    Just had a wonderful closing dinner. Liveliest conversation was with the lender’s attorney. Suffice it to say- sh$t is bout to get real in the CRE world. But it’s gonna be a slog.

    https://twitter.com/Cribdilla/status/1631130626853052418

    Starting In the 90’s, we devised every way possible to avoid the 20% down for homebuyers which shot demand through the roof.
    If you can’t afford the 20% down, you are probably stretching to buy a home. Want affordable housing, bring back the 20% rule.

    https://twitter.com/LanceRoberts/status/1630896563055624193

    DC slashes revenue projections as slow office market, weak economy take their toll: “Office of the CFO released revised revenue projections …the future, or out years, look increasingly bleak & were revised downward by $464 million through fiscal 2026”

    https://twitter.com/ProducerCities/status/1631070796889169921

    With home-equity lines of credit, they cashed in on their homes to the tune of $14 billion last quarter, a third consecutive quarterly increase and the largest jump in more than a decade, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

    https://twitter.com/unusual_whales/status/1631103725019475969

    Landlord on month 4 of the units being vacant

    https://twitter.com/NipseyHoussle/status/1631104443381870593

    $2,486. If you looked up “unsustainable” in the dictionary, it would show you this chart. Either mortgage rates come down or prices come down, or both.

    https://twitter.com/JeffWeniger/status/1631041848817983488

    I live in a tough rental market with a college here. First time in years I have seen signs on lawns for rentals.

    https://twitter.com/BearIsh31491145/status/1630982355241553920

    I would have to pay $1,000/mo more than my current rent to own a lesser quality home than the one I’m renting. That’s with 20% down. Just doesn’t make sense to buy at the moment.

    https://twitter.com/DHinDENVER/status/1630980686256672769

    Headline translated: “Fed uses badly lagging data to justify over-tightening & causing a worse recession than necessary”

    https://twitter.com/menlobear/status/1630956473726500864

    Fed governor Chris Waller: “Recent data suggest that consumer spending isn’t slowing that much, that the labor market continues to run unsustainably hot, and that inflation is not coming down as fast as I had thought.”

    https://twitter.com/NickTimiraos/status/1631399314801979392

    BREAKING: Binance used customer deposits for its own undisclosed purposes, according to a report from Forbes. Binance transferred $1.8 billion in stablecoin collateral to hedge funds, the report says.

    https://twitter.com/unusual_whales/status/1630621309070606337

    1. “BREAKING: Binance used customer deposits for its own undisclosed purposes, according to a report from Forbes. Binance transferred $1.8 billion in stablecoin collateral to hedge funds, the report says.”

      Next you’re going to tell me that the entire crypto market is just one ginormous ponzi scheme and that crypto isn’t even a real asset. Ride or die crypto bros!

    2. “Credit spreads are absurdly rich at these levels. That in and by itself is a factor (no credit unwind). The main reason is too much cash sloshing around”

      The punch bowl is not quite empty just yet.

      1. The punch bowl is not quite empty just yet.

        It’s still almost full. They grossly underestimated what $10 trillion in liquidity would do.

  15. Is it safe at this point to conclude that inflation is contained, the Fed will soon pivot, and interest rates will fall back to around 3%, where they were in early 2022?

    1. The Financial Times
      US Treasury bonds
      Deluge of inflation data pushes US borrowing costs to 2007 levels
      Yield on two-year Treasury note hovers nears 5% as investors brace for further Fed rate rises
      The US Federal Reserve building in Washington
      Futures markets show the US Federal Reserve’s main policy rate peaking at 5.45% in September
      Kate Duguid in New York and Tommy Stubbington in London yesterday

      An avalanche of hot inflation data over the past month has lifted US borrowing costs to the highest point in a decade and a half, intensifying debate over how much further interest rates must rise to rein in soaring consumer prices.

      The yield on the two-year Treasury note hit 4.94 per cent on Thursday, a level last reached in 2007 before the global financial crisis. Yields on 10-year and 30-year Treasuries this week broke through 4 per cent for the first time since November.

      The moves follow weeks of unrelenting data showing inflation in the US running hotter than economists had expected, putting pressure on the Federal Reserve to redouble efforts to tamp down growth by raising interest rates.
      …

    2. ‘Rates may level off or continue to creep up but one thing is for sure: They won’t tumble toward 3 percent any time soon, if ever, Sinkoff said. ‘I don’t want to say never but dinosaurs would have to roam the Earth and zombies would have to come. There would have to literally be an apocalypse for rates to go back to 3 percent.’

      Don’t hold your breath for low rates to return.

  16. Only goes to show the Globalists think they can sell anything , no matter how insane, no matter how fraudulent.

  17. “The pandemic-fueled buying frenzy is behind us. The market will likely stabilize, but buyers shouldn’t expect prices to fall much, if at all, and certainly not as drastically as they did in 2008, said Jennifer Reiszel, director of Branch Operations at Hudson River Community Credit Union.”

    I wonder how many mortgages her credit union made in 2021 and 2022.

  20. “Compared to January 2022, active listings are up 65%. Ogden, Utah: Year-over-year active listings increase: 392%. Nashville, Tennessee: Year-over-year listings increase: 304%. Austin, Texas: Year-over-year listings increase: 260%. Sarasota, Florida: Year-over-year listings increase: 259%. Raleigh, North Carolina: Year-over-year listings increase: 255%. Phoenix, Arizona: Year-over-year listings increase: 190%. Seattle, Washington: Year-over-year listings increase: 181%. Colorado Springs, Colorado: Year-over-year listings increase: 164%.”

    It’s pretty interesting how the national percentage increase in inventory was only 65%, yet all the individual locations mentioned had an inventory increase well over 100%. I never claimed to understand relitter maths…

    “‘Sellers might have to come down or find some other way to sweeten the deal for buyers,’ Realtor Chief Economist Danielle Hale said.”

    Ya think!?

  21. On Oct. 25, 1929, Herbert Hoover declared, “The fundamental business of the country, that is the production and distribution of commodities, is on a sound and prosperous basis.”

    The day before Hoover insisted that the fundamentals were strong was the day that came to be known as Black Thursday, when in heavy trading the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost about 9 percent of its value.
    …
    https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2008/9/17/601605/-

    1. Yahoo Finance
      Expert: ‘The underlying fundamentals of real estate are quite strong’
      Dylan Croll
      Fri, March 3, 2023 at 8:25 AM PST·4 min read

      On the surface, it seems like the real estate industry is struggling. It’s easy to see why. The industry, for instance, was ranked as the S&P 500’s third worst-performing sector in 2022. But appearances can be misleading: the real estate business is a lot stronger in reality, according to Todd Henderson, Co-Head of Global Real Estate DWS Group.

      Henderson contends that the market broadly, from rentals to home buyers, is doing well with one exception: commercial office buildings.

      “The underlying fundamentals of real estate are quite strong,” Henderson told Yahoo Finance.
      …
      “So, what we’ve seen is a fallback in pricing, but what has endured are the fundamentals,” Henderson asserted.

      Henderson also noted another positive development — an increase in millennial homeownership, which he said has and will continue to bolster housing market activity. From 2016 to 2021, nearly every U.S. state saw an increase in the number of young adults aged 25-44 forming new households, according to recent Pew Research. For instance, in New Jersey, the number of households occupied by people aged 25-44 grew 13% between 2016 and 2021.

      “I think that that will continue, but housing prices are a bit challenged as a result of the cost associated with owning homes, in particular, the cost of mortgage financing,” Henderson said. “We have seen, however, some slowing. And I would call it more normalization, frankly, of demand in the rental market here, as consumers, as renters, as homeowners are starting to feel the cost of increased goods and the cost of increased mortgages around the housing market.”

      Henderson also noted that the market has seen a precipitous increase in cash buyers. Americans bought one of every three single-family home and condos with cash in 2022, according to data analytics firm Attom.

      “It stands to reason that if you think that mortgage rates are up temporarily, that if you can afford to buy a home un-leveraged, you would buy a home unleveraged, and then leverage it at a later date at the point in time when financing costs are significantly less,” Henderson said.
      …
      https://news.yahoo.com/expert-the-underlying-fundamentals-of-real-estate-are-quite-strong-162522042.html

      1. “It stands to reason that if you think that mortgage rates are up temporarily, that if you can afford to buy a home un-leveraged, you would buy a home unleveraged, and then leverage it at a later date at the point in time when financing costs are significantly less,”

        That narrative of temporarily high interest rates seems as pervasive as yesterday’s transitory inflation story.

        What should you do if you think rates will keep rising and will stay permanently higher than during the policy-induced historic lows of the pandemic?

      2. “From 2016 to 2021, nearly every U.S. state saw an increase in the number of young adults aged 25-44 forming new households, according to recent Pew Research. For instance, in New Jersey, the number of households occupied by people aged 25-44 grew 13% between 2016 and 2021.”

        The poor Millennials got snookered into buying at peak Housing Bubble 2.0 prices.

        But I don’t see how that bolsters fundamentals, especially if yesterday’s lucky winnahs turn out to be tomorrow’s foreclosure victims.

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