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A Moribund Result For The Broken Real Estate Dream That Has Become A Nightmare For So Many

A report from the Daily Breeze in California. “How is the housing market doing? The answer depends on whom you ask, says Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors. ‘Some people will say it is terrible,’ he told real estate writers at a recent conference. ‘(Others) will say this is one of the greatest things that has ever happened. So, we have a really strange real estate market where home prices are at a record high, (and) homeowners are smiling. (But) if you ask people who are in the industry — Realtors, mortgage lenders — they’re saying, ‘This is one of the worst housing downturns that I’ve ever seen.'”

“Los Angeles/Orange County home shoppers lost $320,500 in buying power when mortgage rates more than doubled in 2022, said Zillow Chief Economist Skylar Olsen. Inland Empire shoppers lost $194,700 in buying power when rates went up. San Francisco shoppers lost $394,000 in buying power. That compares with a buying power loss of $120,100 in the nation as a whole. ‘Typical homes are no longer affordable to a middle-income household in the U.S.,’ Olsen said.”

The American Statesman in Texas. “As builders struggle to move inventory in the face of higher interest rates, a rising supply of newly constructed homes is dimming the outlook for the rest of the year, according to the latest monthly report from Ben Caballero’s HomesUSA.com, which tracks the new-home market in Texas, including the five-county Austin region. New-home sales in the Austin area were the lowest of Texas’ four largest metros, Caballero said. ‘Moreover, active listings of new homes are up nearly 9% year-over-year in May as Austin builders struggle to move inventory in the face of higher interest rates,’ Caballero said.”

From Summit Daily. “Summit County’s market-rate housing inventory continues to grow — yet it hasn’t been enough to make a dent in stubbornly high prices. Between January and June of this year, the number of new home listings in the county was 365, a 46% increase from that same time in 2023, according to the Colorado Association of Realtors. Final sale figures continue to come in lower than a home’s initial listing price, which experts say could be an indication that buyers have more options and, in turn, more negotiating power. ‘When I see our sales numbers are down, and our prices are up, I really go back to, ‘What’s selling?’ said Summit County Realtor Dana Cottrell. ‘And what is selling is our $1 million and over properties.'”

“Of the 693 current total listings in Summit County, 37% are for homes below $1 million. Of the total sales in June, 40 transactions were for homes over $1 million while 38 were for homes priced under $1 million, Cottrell said. In June, home sellers received 96.8% of their listing price, down from 98.8% the year prior. While not enough to affect market prices, the small dip could point to more ability for buyers to bargain. For much of 2021 and 2022, the sale price figure ‘never dropped below 100% of listing, because the market was so fast moving,’ said Summit County Realtor Dishon Lutz. ‘Now, we’re starting to see that not everything that gets listed the consumer is willing to pay.”‘

From Moneywise. “Homeowners in the Villas of Carillon townhome community of Feather Sound, Florida are trying to wrap their heads around a request from their homeowners association board for a $60,000 special assessment. At a special meeting, the owners arrived in hordes to convince the board to hold off on making a decision. ‘You need to get together, this problem is not going away,’ resident Robert Regan said. ‘And condos, they need to have 100% reserves.’ And then, in an email after the vote on June 21, the entire board announced it had resigned — effective immediately. The HOA board said that insurance companies would no longer insure the complex in a few years if it didn’t have the necessary reserves to pay for new roofs.”

“But Patricia Staebler, a certified reserve specialist based in Sarasota, notes that a project’s time-equivalent cost should already be banked ahead of the renovation if the association wanted to avoid any special assessments. Staebler says these reserve studies should help the board plan for the next fiscal year as well as subsequent years, building in an annual increase over a 30-year period. And while it’s unnecessary for the reserves to be ‘fully funded’ — it is crucial that these yearly assessments are met with the appropriate full funding. ‘There is a difference between being 100% funded and funding your reserve requirements for the upcoming fiscal year 100%,’ she says. ‘I’ve been doing this for 15 years. In my entire reserve specialist career, I have not seen an association which is 100% funded.'”

Bisnow New York. “The long-running saga over Brooklyn’s Pacific Park project could be entering a new chapter. The Related Cos. has entered talks to take over the embattled 22-acre development from Greenland USA after the affiliate of Chinese state-backed Greenland Group defaulted on its loans last year, The Real Deal reported. Pacific Park, the development that was hatched as part of the deal to build the Barclays Center arena, is supposed to include 15 commercial and residential buildings over railyards between the neighborhoods of Prospect Heights, Boerum Hill, Park Slope, Fort Greene and Clinton Hill.”

“Just nine of the towers have been delivered to date. Last year, Greenland defaulted on $350M of loans from EB-5 lenders the U.S. Immigration Fund and Fortress Investment Group covering the six remaining development sites. The lenders moved to force a foreclosure auction last year, but it was postponed, and negotiations over the publicly owned, privately controlled land are happening behind closed doors.”

The Commercial Observer. “While ‘foreclosure’ is generally bad news for businesses, for those who work in commercial real estate foreclosures it’s good — and the news has been especially good of late. ‘Foreclosures are definitely up — there’s an absolute ton right now,’ said foreclosure auctioneer Matthew D. Mannion, principal at Mannion Auctions. ‘This is the busiest we’ve been since before COVID.'”

Castanet in Canada. “The Interior real estate market continued to cool in June, a month that is usually red hot. There were 1,330 residential sales last month in the Association of Interior Realtors region, which was down more than 12% from May and more than 21% from June 2023. Meanwhile, benchmark prices fell in every housing category in the Central and North Okanagan. ‘Much like the weather, real estate sales activity in June was not the typical seasonal activity that we have seen in recent years that tends to increase as the warmer climate arrives,’ AIR president Kaytee Sharun said in a press release. ‘Well-priced properties are primed to move at a faster pace. It is important for buyers and sellers to take what you could call a balanced approach, which considers and factors in current market conditions, when navigating the real estate market.'”

“Listings continue to increase, which also helps to explain the cooling market. The Central Okanagan had the largest increase of active listings when compared to June 2023, as they were up 48.3%. Sharun said there is a reason for that. ‘It is interesting to see most of the regions with the highest inventory increases are in areas where income-producing properties may be affected by government policies such as the short-term rental ban,’ she said.”

Interest New Zealand. “In an ASB Household Outlook publication for July, ASB senior economist Mark Smith says the hope is that households are now basing their future decisions ‘on a more realistic outlook’ for household incomes, house prices and borrowing costs. He said many of the current difficulties that have been faced by NZ households are ‘a hangover of the consumer spending and housing market binge’ that occurred from late 2020 to early 2022 which artificially inflated the sector. ‘The music had to stop sometime, and we are now in the midst of the post Covid-19 adjustment. Higher interest rates provided the circuit-breaker and have sharply cooled housing market momentum, house prices and household spending. In inflation adjusted terms, house prices are more than 20% below their late 2021 peak. Household saving buffers have been progressively run down as households struggle to stay afloat. The household sector has gone into hibernation. The housing market is in the doldrums. Consumers remain extremely cautious and are unwilling to extend themselves financially.'”

“He said while the household sector and the housing market were recovering from ‘the Covid-19 related excesses,’ there is still ‘some short-term pain ahead.’ ‘We expect the household sector to stay in hibernation for the remainder of the year, with household sector activity and the housing market on ice. The NZ unemployment rate could hit 6% by mid-2025,’ Smith said. ‘A number of households who have bought at the peak may now be flirting with negative equity.'”

South China Morning Post. “Sales of distressed commercial real estate in Hong Kong jumped in the first half of the year, accounting for about three quarters of the volume, with the coming months likely to see an unusually high number of such transactions, according to CBRE. Distressed sales typically account for less than 10 per cent of commercial property transactions in the city, but with interest rates climbing to a 23-year high in a span of 16 months since March 2022, investors have found it increasingly difficult to service debt, the property consultancy said.”

“In May, a 5,171 sq ft mansion, 10B at Black’s Link on The Peak, linked to Hui Ka-yan, the founder of the liquidated China Evergrande Group, was sold by creditors to a privately owned company for HK$448 million, 44 per cent less than the HK$800 million that appraisers had estimated the property to be worth. The property, which was mortgaged to banks and owned through a company, was classified as commercial real estate. ‘In the second half, there will be something like 50 per cent of [distressed sales] because interest rates are still at a high level and a rate cut is unlikely to happen earlier than September,’ said Reeves Yan, executive director and head of capital markets at CBRE Hong Kong. Many existing asset owners are facing tremendous pressure from the high interest costs of around 6 per cent, while the return on property assets is about 3.5 per cent, he added.”

The Sydney Morning Herald. “It was supposed to be a magnificent village of pastel cottages trimmed with golden awnings, one of more than a dozen ‘fairyland’ theme parks to be built across China by the country’s second-biggest developer, Evergrande. These days, the abandoned ruins of the Evergrande Cultural Tourism City in Guiyang, the capital of the Guizhou province, one of the country’s poorest regions, stand as a mausoleum to the bankrupted property giant’s rapacious ambitions and a symbol of the sickness plaguing the real estate market and broader Chinese economy.”

“Weeds have climbed through the nooks and crevices of the now dilapidated cottage village. In the background, looms a post-apocalyptic visage: the steel carcass of the sprawling 100 billion yuan ($20.5 billion) project that was to feature a hotel, an international convention centre and shopping mall. Also unfinished are the skeletons of the real estate towers that were to house thousands of residents on the edge of fairyland.”

“Within a few years, 50-year-old Qiu Shaoyun’s income from a labouring job as a decorator, which relies on a healthy housing market, has plummeted. These days he and his wife, a cleaner, struggle to bring in 10,000 yuan ($2000) a month. ‘I can only earn half as much as I did before the pandemic. When houses are not built any more, there are no more work opportunities for decoration, right?’ he says. ‘In the past, we could afford dining at restaurants but now we even hesitate to order a bowl of meat-less noodles Many people in rural areas are not having children any more. Why? Because they don’t want to bring burden to themselves, and to next generations.'”

“For those caught in the ebbing tide of China’s economic miracle, each day is a grind. Mr Wei, 52, who owns a smelly bean curd stand in Huaguoyuan, lives in a 90 square-metre flat with seven of his family members, including his four grandchildren. Even with the collapse in property prices, he doesn’t have enough money to buy a bigger home. ‘Each year is worse than the previous one. I have no confidence in my future income,’ he says.”

“For Zhang Xiaogang, 40, a father-of-two who resorted to working as a taxi driver after he was forced to close his Sichuan restaurant during the pandemic, the dream of purchasing a home has evaporated as he struggles to make ends meet. ‘I feel like I’m drifting along now. Every living person knows the economy is bad. For example, I could make 300 yuan a day before pandemic but now I’m making less than a third of that,’ he says. As for Evergrande’s abandoned fairytale wonderland in Guiyang, a proposal by architecture student Fan Yunheng to turn the sprawling ruins into a cemetery won top prize at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, China’s most prestigious art academy. A moribund result for the broken real estate dream that has become a nightmare for so many in China.”

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This Post Has 53 Comments

  1. ‘if you ask people who are in the industry — Realtors, mortgage lenders — they’re saying, ‘This is one of the worst housing downturns that I’ve ever seen’

    All time high Larry, yer words.

  2. ‘for those who work in commercial real estate foreclosures it’s good — and the news has been especially good of late. ‘Foreclosures are definitely up — there’s an absolute ton right now…This is the busiest we’ve been since before COVID’

    That’s the spirit Matt, vultures rejoice!

  4. “How is the housing market doing? The answer depends on whom you ask, says Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors.

    Wrong, REIC shills. The data tells its own story about the bursting housing bubble, so the lies, omissions, and dissembling from the likes of Lawrence Yun are so much hot air.

  5. ‘Typical homes are no longer affordable to a middle-income household in the U.S.,’ Olsen said.”

    I bet Skylar looks dashing in his Captain Obvious costume.

  6. ‘I’ve been doing this for 15 years. In my entire reserve specialist career, I have not seen an association which is 100% funded.’”

    Gosh, I sure hope this systemic underfunding doesn’t result in massive levies that force condo owners to bail for whatever they can get.

  7. ‘A number of households who have bought at the peak may now be flirting with negative equity.’”

    You don’t say….

  8. Many existing asset owners are facing tremendous pressure from the high interest costs of around 6 per cent, while the return on property assets is about 3.5 per cent, he added.”

    Dies, speculator scum.

  9. Many people in rural areas are not having children any more. Why? Because they don’t want to bring burden to themselves, and to next generations.’”

    Where there is no vision, the people perish….

  10. “Los Angeles/Orange County home shoppers lost $320,500 in buying power when mortgage rates more than doubled in 2022, said Zillow Chief Economist Skylar Olsen.”

    How much did owners lose in selling power? It doesn’t make much sense to look at demand in isolation without considering the supply side of the market. Just ask our old friend, Larry Yun:

    “(But) if you ask people who are in the industry — Realtors, mortgage lenders — they’re saying, ‘This is one of the worst housing downturns that I’ve ever seen.’”

    2. That guy’s not getting enough attention. He was with Biden for years and flat out calls him a traitor. I love his story about Biden and the Russians. Biden was in Russia meeting with officials and was about to hold forth. The Russians left and turned the lights out on Biden when he was in mid-bloviation. Embarrassing.

  13. “Many people in rural areas are not having children any more. Why? Because they don’t want to bring burden to themselves, and to next generations.”

    Is this situation unique to rural China?

  15. WHAT IS THE FED?

    The Federal Reserve, “the Fed”, is the central bank of the United States of America that was created in 1913 by Congress. It is a banking cartel that has a government-granted monopoly on the creation of money and credit. The Fed literally loans “money” (Federal Reserve Notes) into existence. Federal Reserve Notes are paper promises backed by nothing of intrinsic value and they are only functioning as money because the government forces them on the public through legal tender laws. Federal Reserve Notes are referred to as dollars but are not. The definition of a dollar is a weight of silver (371 grains). To put it simply, the Fed is a group of banks running a national criminal counterfeiting racket with the protection of the government.

    http://endthefed.org

  16. ‘When I see our sales numbers are down, and our prices are up, I really go back to, ‘What’s selling?’ said Summit County Realtor Dana Cottrell. ‘And what is selling is our $1 million and over properties’…Of the 693 current total listings in Summit County, 37% are for homes below $1 million. Of the total sales in June, 40 transactions were for homes over $1 million while 38 were for homes priced under $1 million’

    700 shacks for sale, 78 sold in June = sellers market!

  17. ‘Patricia Staebler, a certified reserve specialist based in Sarasota, notes that a project’s time-equivalent cost should already be banked ahead of the renovation if the association wanted to avoid any special assessments. Staebler says these reserve studies should help the board plan for the next fiscal year as well as subsequent years, building in an annual increase over a 30-year period. And while it’s unnecessary for the reserves to be ‘fully funded’ — it is crucial that these yearly assessments are met with the appropriate full funding. ‘There is a difference between being 100% funded and funding your reserve requirements for the upcoming fiscal year 100%,’ she says. ‘I’ve been doing this for 15 years. In my entire reserve specialist career, I have not seen an association which is 100% funded’

    So the money they are reserving and complaining about isn’t really enough.

    1. So the money they are reserving and complaining about isn’t really enough.

      No one and I mean no one, should buy a Condo in FL right now.
      Wait at least a year or two

  19. *”‘In the past, we could afford dining at restaurants but now we even hesitate to order a bowl of meat-less noodles’ said Chinese labourer Qiu Shaoyun.”

    I wonder if, when labourer Qui Shaoyun & family was eating out at restaurants, they held the chopsticks up high for EVERRRRRYONE to notice that ,YEP, he’s ARRIVED!!
    (much like the Starbucks new mommy/young female office worker/etc crowd holds their status symbol white cup aloft displaying an enviable comforting token of success when leaving the store /entering work/ school carpool. every.$ingle.day.)

    but later, same ol’ same ol’: no money for bills.

    “it’s . . . it’s . . . somebody ELSE’S fault I’m broke. Whaah! bail me out. I deserve to live beyond my means.”

    for the Jeopardy set: I am Icarus, flown high.
    for the Kardashian crowd: I am Wimpy & will pay you tomorrow for a coffee today.

    such peacocking, yet so sad.

    1. This is a weird one which I was looking into the other day. FWIW that county is one of the most corrupt counties in the south and I recommend that people avoid it. The problem is that the tourist population dwarfs the domestic population so the county is awash in money they don’t need. They have a police force that has more dog units than just about anywhere and they use them to get false alerts to search every vehicle and shake everyone down. You can see the illegal searches going on all over the area 24/7. The sheriff even has a special Terrorism Task Force truck that they will never use. They should rename it to Hazzard County, it’s such a joke.

      Anyway, regarding this story, don’t feel too bad for the ‘owners’ they are from out of state and bought it to speculate and make money, they do not live there. However, what is interesting is it was sold by the brother of the mayor. It sits like a block or two from city hall and has been part of a street upgrade plan that has existed for many years. Did they not do a title search? Did they not get title insurance? Why didn’t the city just buy when it became available? There are many questions which lead one to believe that some sketchy stuff is going on with all of the involved. That said, I’m pretty sure you can’t take and demolish someone’s home without actually compensating them. They are all so ridiculous.

  21. Here they go again

    Denver city leaders plan to ask voters in November to increase sales taxes to raise roughly $100 million a year for affordable housing projects, helping Mayor Mike Johnston meet his housing development goals.

    Johnston unveiled the proposed new tax — which would add 0.5% atop Denver’s current effective 8.81% sales tax rate — during a news conference Monday morning on the steps of the City and County Building, Joe Rubino reports. The tax wouldn’t be the only hike on Denver’s ballot, and it also wouldn’t be the first time the city has created new taxes or fees to pay for housing-related efforts.

    1. Throwing good money after bad refers to the act of spending more money on something that has already failed or is not yielding the desired results, in the hopes of recouping previous losses or fixing the problem.

  22. New York City leaders from both parties slammed a move by Mayor Eric Adams’ administration to distribute another tranche of thousands of prepaid debit cards to migrant families.

    While Adams’ office claimed at its February inception the program would save the city as much as $7.2 million per year, some city lawmakers decried the latest allocation of 7,300 cards as a signal for more border-crossers to come.

    Councilman Robert Holden, a Democrat from Glendale, Queens, said the “gravy train for migrants has to stop.”

    “Giving out free housing, food, and legal aid while protecting them from federal authorities is unsustainable and only makes the crisis worse. This madness needs to end now.”

    Holden’s borough hosts 70 migrant shelters, the most in the city, according to a New York Post analysis released Sunday.

    The top Republican on council, Joe Borelli of Staten Island, said sanctuary city proponents may finally be realizing the consequences of their actions. “I think Democrats are finding out the hard way that American cities just can’t be the world’s refugee camp,” Borelli said.

    “We’re approaching Year Three of the migrant crisis in New York and the argument for these cards seems to be that it’s the ‘least worst’ way of doing things,” added the minority leader, whose party faces a 45-6 Democratic council majority.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/nyc-mayor-faces-bipartisan-blowback-over-new-round-of-migrant-debit-cards-the-gravy-train-must-stop/ar-BB1pCPUh

    1. Pre-paid debit cards are just an easy way to distribute graft to officials.

      Boxes of graft.

  23. 788 Comments

    @d-nice22
    4 days ago (edited)

    Let’s Go Brenda finally a Black Woman President

    Joe Biden accidentally says he is the ‘first Black woman’ to serve in White House – audio

    Jul 5, 2024 UNITED STATES

    Joe Biden accidentally said he is the ‘first Black woman’ to serve as vice-president ‘with a Black president’, during an interview with Philadelphia’s WURD radio station.

    https://youtu.be/mp6q_acgbMQ?si=ulzsYls1LOSKFSHi

  24. I watch a lot of walk thru videos and the amount of stupid is jaw dropping in many blue cities but it’s especially evident in NYC. These people have lost their minds.

    In other news, here is a fun link for Ookland. A gas station got flash robbed and the police didn’t show up for 9 hours and told them to just file a report online. The friendly city councilor claims to be shaken by it but reminds everyone that crime is down 70%. This is the same street that lost Denny’s and In n’ Out. I’m sure it will be fine.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW8o41nwYGY

    2. The friendly city councilor claims to be shaken by it but reminds everyone that crime is down 70%.

      The chocolate ration has been increased.

  26. Biden Sends Letter Demanding Democrats’ Support

    The Jimmy Dore Show

    3 hours ago

    Joe Biden has penned a curious letter to his fellow Democrats, demanding that they continue supporting him because he won a competitive primary. Of course the Democratic Party did everything in its power to stop anyone, including RFK Jr., from challenging Biden, so everything Biden said in the letter was a complete lie.

    Jimmy discusses all the ways the Democratic Party eviscerates democracy while claiming to be the only party defending democracy.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7GNk0qA-Gg

    8 minutes. 81 million votes.

    1. Jimmy discusses all the ways the Democratic Party eviscerates democracy while claiming to be the only party defending democracy.

      Totalitarian, communist societies (I hesitate to call them republics) past and present claim to be staunch defenders of democracy.

  27. ‘The long-running saga over Brooklyn’s Pacific Park project could be entering a new chapter. The Related Cos. has entered talks to take over the embattled 22-acre development from Greenland USA after the affiliate of Chinese state-backed Greenland Group defaulted on its loans last year…’Just nine of the towers have been delivered to date. Last year, Greenland defaulted on $350M of loans from EB-5 lenders the U.S. Immigration Fund and Fortress Investment Group covering the six remaining development sites. The lenders moved to force a foreclosure auction last year, but it was postponed, and negotiations over the publicly owned, privately controlled land are happening behind closed doors’

    This was Chinese money laundering and it was all the rage in the globalist scum media at the time. ‘They just want to get their money out of China!’ No mention of how it’s because those commie thugs were kidnapping family members of anyone who said boo at the time. This period ended roughly 2016-18, IIRC. Xitler put an end to that and with it all the money laundering fueled stupidity we saw in airbox projects, like this debacle. There was no real estate basis for this. It was done to launder money, and it failed spectacularly just like the LA graffiti tower. That just got more press.

  28. ‘Listings continue to increase, which also helps to explain the cooling market. The Central Okanagan had the largest increase of active listings when compared to June 2023, as they were up 48.3%. Sharun said there is a reason for that. ‘It is interesting to see most of the regions with the highest inventory increases are in areas where income-producing properties may be affected by government policies such as the short-term rental ban’

    STR are a scam that always blows up Kaytee.

  29. ‘He said many of the current difficulties that have been faced by NZ households are ‘a hangover of the consumer spending and housing market binge’ that occurred from late 2020 to early 2022 which artificially inflated the sector. ‘The music had to stop sometime, and we are now in the midst of the post Covid-19 adjustment. Higher interest rates provided the circuit-breaker and have sharply cooled housing market momentum, house prices and household spending. In inflation adjusted terms, house prices are more than 20% below their late 2021 peak’

    It’s crazy all the things that are chalked up to minor respiratory illness Mark. You got millions of FB’s all over the globe because of a sniffle.

  30. ‘In the second half, there will be something like 50 per cent of [distressed sales] because interest rates are still at a high level and a rate cut is unlikely to happen earlier than September,’ said Reeves Yan, executive director and head of capital markets at CBRE Hong Kong. Many existing asset owners are facing tremendous pressure from the high interest costs of around 6 per cent, while the return on property assets is about 3.5 per cent’

    Dating the rate takes conviction Reeves. This IS the one.

  31. ‘These days he and his wife, a cleaner, struggle to bring in 10,000 yuan ($2000) a month. ‘I can only earn half as much as I did before the pandemic. When houses are not built any more, there are no more work opportunities for decoration, right?’ he says. ‘In the past, we could afford dining at restaurants but now we even hesitate to order a bowl of meat-less noodles…In the past, we could afford dining at restaurants but now we even hesitate to order a bowl of meat-less noodles. Many people in rural areas are not having children any more. Why? Because they don’t want to bring burden to themselves, and to next generations’

    Yer priorities are all screwed up Qiu, and I have to question yer capacity to be a winnah! Yer eating? In this day and age? To hell with the rug rats, do you want to be rich or what?

  32. ‘For Zhang Xiaogang, 40, a father-of-two who resorted to working as a taxi driver after he was forced to close his Sichuan restaurant during the pandemic, the dream of purchasing a home has evaporated as he struggles to make ends meet. ‘I feel like I’m drifting along now. Every living person knows the economy is bad. For example, I could make 300 yuan a day before pandemic but now I’m making less than a third of that’

    You need to vote for change in the next election Zhang.

    ‘As for Evergrande’s abandoned fairytale wonderland in Guiyang, a proposal by architecture student Fan Yunheng to turn the sprawling ruins into a cemetery won top prize at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, China’s most prestigious art academy’

    Remember when Chinese cemetery plots got bid up in a bubble? Good times.

  33. Are You Being Setup to Fail? (Toronto Real Estate Market Update)

    Team Sessa Real Estate

    47 minutes ago

    In this episode we take a look at the current Toronto Real Estate Market specifically the detached home prices and market trends for week ending July 3, 2024. We also discuss how problematic it can be for people to rush into homeownership when they are not ready.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9iWDZr361Y

    13 minutes.

    1. “We also discuss how problematic it can be for people to rush into homeownership when they are not ready.”

      What ever happened to Fiduciary Responsibility?

  34. I f Jill Biden was in a resturaunt and someone yelled…

    Is there a Doctor in the house !!!?

  35. I f Jill Biden was in a restaurant and someone yelled…

    Is there a Doctor in the house !!!?

    What would she say?

    1. A Wealth of Common Sense
      Buying a House at the Top of the Market
      Posted July 9, 2024 by Ben Carlson

      Greg Ip at The Wall Street Journal penned a piece recently that warned potential homebuyers about the prospect of low returns from current levels:

      I don’t need to offer any more details from the story because you already know them. Housing prices are up a lot. Mortgage rates are also up a lot.

      This is a fair warning.

      We essentially pulled forward a decade’s worth of housing returns into the first few years of the 2020s:

      Housing prices in the 2020s have already outpaced most decades. On an inflation-adjusted basis, only the 1940s saw higher returns and we still have five-plus years remaining.

      If I were a Wall Street pundit, I would say the easy money has been made, but I’m not going to fall for that trap.2

      I don’t know if this is some sort of top in the housing market. Given the gains, I wouldn’t be surprised if housing prices remained stagnant for a while. Even a pullback in prices wouldn’t be shocking.

      My baseline assumption is that prices will rise by something close to the inflation rate in the coming years, but predictions about the future are hard. I don’t know where housing prices will go from here.

      The idea of a top in housing prices got me thinking about what it would mean for those considering buying, selling or staying put in their current home. Here are two scenarios to consider:

      Scenario 1. Housing prices fall by 20%.

      Scenario 2. Housing prices go nowhere for the remainder of the decade.

      How you feel about either of these scenarios likely depends on your current situation or future plans.

      From the perspective of someone who plans on being in their home for the foreseeable future (me), neither of these scenarios makes much of a difference.

      Put aside the fact that a 20% decline in home prices would likely be accompanied by some sort of financial crisis, the value of my home is more or less irrelevant in my day-to-day life.

      As long as I can continue to pay the mortgage, insurance, and property taxes, my life wouldn’t change in a meaningful way if the price of our house fell by 20% tomorrow. It might take away my ability to tap equity through a HELOC but I’m not overly reliant on that as a source of capital.

      It would be a little annoying to watch someone else come into our neighborhood and buy a house on sale for 20% off. And sure, it would be painful if we were forced to sell for some reason but in that case all of the other houses would also be 20% cheaper. We would be trading one asset at a lower price for another at a lower price.

      My net worth would drop but it’s not like the equity in my home is liquid anyway.

      If prices go nowhere for the rest of the decade, we’ve already experienced the pulled-forward gains this decade.

      Anyone who has owned a home for more than a few years is sitting pretty.

      The homeowners who would feel the most pain in either of these scenarios would be people buying right now.

      You don’t have to look back that far in our country’s history to see this play out. From early-2007 through late-2016, U.S. housing prices were underwater from their historical peak up until that point:

      Prices fell by more than one-quarter along the way.

      More than 6 million new and existing homes were sold in 2007, so plenty of people actually top-ticked the housing market back then.

      It was even worse in the hottest real estate markets in the country. Housing prices were underwater in Phoenix and Las Vegas from 2006 through 2020 and 2021, respectively:

      There are no sure things when it comes to housing prices. The national housing market might do well for the rest of the decade while certain local markets struggle. Or certain local markets could remain hot while nationwide prices struggle.

      You really have to ask yourself why you’re buying a house in the first place.

      Is it purely a financial asset where you’re just trying to earn a high rate of return?

      Or is a house something that provides psychic income as a place to raise your family, live in a specific community and make your own?

      Most people probably prefer financial and psychic returns, but it’s not a foregone conclusion that your house will be a wonderful investment, especially from current levels.

      I consider our house a place to live, call our own, and raise our kids. It acts as an inflation hedge because we have a fixed-rate mortgage and there isn’t much land to build on in our area. Plus, paying it off over time builds equity.

      The price of the house doesn’t matter to me as much as our ability to live there for as long as we would like.

      A portfolio is where investment returns matter.

      A house is where investment returns are a bonus.
      …
      https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2024/07/buying-a-house-at-the-top-of-the-market/

      1. “A portfolio is where investment returns matter.

        A house is where investment returns are a bonus.”

        I am pretty sure those housing investment returns mattered quite a bit to all those folks who walked away from their mortgages during the Great Financial Crisis. Perhaps there is a tacit assumption by Mr. Ip that housing prices will eventually go up in the future, even if they drop 20% beforehand.

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