When You Look At What People Paid For Things In 2020, 2021, It’s Often You’ll Say: Oh Well That’s What It’s Worth Now

A report from WCNC in North Carolina. “David Hoffman of Hoffman Realty in Charlotte told WCNC Charlotte he expects to see prices coming down because high supply is pushing down demand. ‘I think that if you’re looking to move in the next two to three years, I would do something,’ he said. “Now if you’re going to be in your home for at least three years, you can wait. But if you want to wait another one or two years, the challenge will be that when you wait for rates to come down, it’s because prices have come down. So if you have a home to sell, you don’t want to hold on to that and lose your equity just waiting for rates to come down.'”

Allen American in Texas. “In October, Collin County homes remained on the market for an average of 54 days, the same amount of time as September and 31.7% longer than October 2023, before going under contract for 94.9% of the original list price. ‘In October, the county had home inventory for buyers to select from and enough demand to get sellers to the closing table. There is a healthy rhythm to the current housing market allowing many home sellers and buyers to reach their goals,’ said Jamuna Thill, CCAR President. Statewide, housing inventory increased by an impressive 27.8%, creating 4.8 months of inventory.”

The Denver Post in Colorado. “Tulin Yarmon and her 12-year-old granddaughter let incense smoke waft over them from an ofrenda — an altar dedicated to deceased loved ones — that was set up in northwest Denver’s La Raza Park for Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead. The elder Yarmon doesn’t live in the neighborhood, but her family hails from north and west Denver. Her grandmother-in-law lived off West 38th Avenue and Wyandot Street in Sunnyside. ‘If you go down that street (now), I don’t think there’s a single Hispanic left on the block,’ said Yarmon, 56. ‘They knocked down the traditional bungalows, and they build those two-story boxes.’ The prices of homes have skyrocketed. In 2012, the median residential property value in Sunnyside was $208,300, the Denver Department of Finance reported. That number had more than tripled to $711,450 in 2022.”

“Diane Medina, 68, lives near the park today. She grew up on Kalamath Street before her family moved blocks away to Navajo Street. Medina’s early memories of the Northside feature mostly Latino faces. Back then, ‘you had more people that looked like you. You went to school with folks that lived by you,’ Medina said. ‘You were familiar, and that’s what gave the sense of community.’ With every death of a neighbor and sale of a house, Sunnyside grew different. ‘It happens gradually,’ Medina said, ‘and you don’t really notice as much until you’re feeling like you’re a stranger in your own community.'”

The Sun Sentinel in Florida. “The high cost of creating a mini-village of tiny homes for the homeless in Broward County already has one high-profile critic: Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis. Trantalis drilled down on the numbers, asking how much it would cost to build each tiny home. The answer: $20,000 each. ‘If it’s $20,000 per unit, maybe you’re looking at 12 units,’ Trantalis said. ‘And they want to spend a half-a-million dollars to operate 12 units? What kind of crazy operation is that? Where is the logic there?'”

“An estimated 8,263 people are living on the streets of Broward County, according to a yearlong study that ended in September 2023. Nearly half of them are based in Fort Lauderdale. But Fort Lauderdale is not planning to build a tiny home for every single homeless person, Trantalis said. ‘We are not looking to set up a mini-city for homeless people,’ he said. ‘It’s transitional housing, not permanent housing. We do not want to build 2,000 (tiny) homes. We don’t have a place to put them anyway.'”

Boston 25 News in Massachusetts. “A new affordable housing project proposal near the Mass and Cass corridor is reserving 10 percent of its units for people who are homeless. Neighbors in Boston’s South End told Boston 25 News they want to make sure that active drug users won’t be moving into those apartments. ‘What we’re afraid of is that the city will be pulling people off the streets and just giving them apartments,’ said South End resident George Stergios. Stergios said the controversial temporary housing program at the Roundhouse Hotel proved what can go wrong when active drug users are allowed to move in. ‘Everything that comes with people who are actively using, like prostitution, theft, squalor, and drug dealers,’ he said. ‘They didn’t listen to us, and everything we said was going to happen, happened!'”

Reality Tea on California. “The perfect little life that Dorit Kemsley and PK Kemsley built together is slowly coming apart at the seams. It all started when the two announced they were separating after admitting to years of marital ‘struggles.’ The latest chapter in this heartbreaking saga: their $7.5 million mansion is allegedly in pre-foreclosure after the couple missed months of payments. Records showed a default filed against their Encino home on October 16, 2024. Fans of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills know this home well. The couple bought it for $6.5 million in 2019. Since then, Dorit has hosted a handful of chic parties in the sprawling estate, taking full advantage of the indoor/outdoor entertaining space. Plus, this is the same house that was targeted by burglars back in 2021.”

“In addition to falling short on their mortgage, the couple have been entangled with the IRS over a $1 million tax debt. On top of that, Dorit recently just settled an outstanding debt of her own over a closet reorganization service. She owed the company a whopping $8,556.15, all for a closet that she might not be able to keep.”

RE Business Online on Washington DC. “Commercial property owners in the District of Columbia are crawling out of a post-pandemic fog and into a new, harsh reality where office building values have plummeted, but property tax assessments remain perplexingly high. Once the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates to combat generational inflation in 2022, however, hopes for a ‘return to normal’ vanished and a grim reality set in. The other shoe began to drop on office market pricing in early 2023 with a rise in distress transactions, in which the office owner sells or forfeits the property to resolve some form of trouble, typically financial.”

“So, how has the District of Columbia adjusted its methodology to properly value office assets in this new and more challenging environment? In short, it hasn’t. A quick look at the 2025 tax year’s assessment values (valued as of Jan. 1, 2024) shows the District largely ignored any change to the market. Among properties that traded in 2023 and 2024, the District’s assessment-to-sale-price ratio is close to 200 percent! In other words, the District’s methodology is producing assessments that are twice the values those properties are trading for. How does the District get around this decision when valuing office properties today? By ignoring any sales that it finds inconvenient and disqualifying them from inclusion in its assessment model.”

CBC News in Canada. “After more than 16 months of his tenants not paying rent, Michael Portman was hoping the problem had been solved when the provincial board that oversees rental issues sided in his favour and served the tenants an eviction notice. But, the Windsor, Ont., landlord was wrong. Days before the tenants would have been forced to leave the home, Portman says they successfully filed for a stay of the eviction, which puts the case on hold temporarily. When he was notified that this process wasn’t over, he says he ‘couldn’t even feel angry.’ ‘I was just numb and it wasn’t a matter of shock, because I knew that this could happen, it was just, once again, the system fails to do its job,’ he said.”

“Portman has been renting out the second unit of his side-by-side duplex for several years, and specifically started renting to his current tenants in 2021. But shortly into their tenancy, he says they stopped paying rent. ‘This is not something that needs to be disputed — these people haven’t paid rent in 16 months,’ he said. ‘I’m trapped in this house. I have no control over my life and … the reason that [the tenants] are allowed to do these things is the Landlord [and] Tenant Board.’ Meanwhile, Portman says he’s just ready for this to all be over. He wants to get the tenants out and sell the property. ‘I want to move to an area where there are few people out in the county and I never want to have anything to do with this ever again, because the law that I had faith into look out for me has utterly failed me,’ he said.”

From ABC News. “Paul Afshar says his biggest regret is buying his one-bedroom apartment through a shared home ownership scheme. ‘Initially I was over the moon. Unlike a lot of my friends, I didn’t get any financial help from my parents, so being able to get a foot on the property ladder, I was elated,’ he tells the ABC. ‘Then it became the start of a 17-year nightmare.’ To break into the property market, Mr Afshar purchased a 25 per cent share of his apartment in East London for 195,000 British pounds ($386,000) in 2007 and split the rest with his local housing association.”

“But he says it wasn’t long before the arrangement, which was meant to make his home ownership journey more affordable, had the opposite effect. Despite owning a quarter of the property, he has to pay 100 per cent of the cost of repairs. In the past five years, his service charges — which cover general maintenance and building insurance — ballooned from $150 a month to $800 a month. On top of that, he still has to pay his mortgage and rent to his local housing association, which is his landlord, for the remaining share of the property. ‘You go to sleep at night thinking, ‘God, are the costs going to go up again? Am I going to have to somehow find that money again?’ It’s awful,’ he says. ‘Your home should be your safe place, and it doesn’t feel like it when you have this constant threat hanging over you. It puts a lot of pressure on people.'”

Mayo Live in Ireland. “Homeowners affected by pyrite in Westport’s Páirc na Coille have issued an impassioned plea for help with the cost of rebuilding their houses. Local elected representatives and five Mayo general election candidates attended a public meeting last Friday outside the home of Linda Claxton, the first house in the estate to be demolished and rebuilt. At least 32 houses in the estate have been confirmed to be infected with pyrite. However, the entire 53-house estate is suspected to be riddled with the mineral, which causes defects in building blocks and results in serious structural problems. This means they will likely require total demolition.”

“This includes Ms Claxton, who has been left with a shortfall of over €90,000 since rebuilding her house – which has no landscaping or driveway. The houses in Páirc na Coille were built by Mayo County Council in partnership with an approved housing body as part of an affordable purchase scheme in the early 2000s. Several homeowners in the estate whose homes have been condemned still have outstanding mortgages to Mayo County Council. ‘There is nothing affordable about this. We the residents are calling on you to please help us. It’s not fair what’s being done to us, through no fault of our own,’ Ms Claxton said.”

“‘The house should be built and the ground put back, the landscaping and everything put back the way it was before anything happened,’ said Independent councillor John O’Malley. ‘Anything less is not doing anything for the people. So actually the Government, and the County Council, are a disgrace, they have done nothing for ye at all.'”

Domain News in Australia. “A cluster of well-heeled suburbs on Melbourne’s bayside have recorded the steepest house price falls in the city over the past three months, and experts say a sluggish market and high interest rates are to blame. CoreLogic data shows Albert Park’s median house value fell 9 per cent in the three months to October, the most rapid decline in Melbourne. It was followed by South Melbourne (down 8.6 per cent) and Port Melbourne (8 per cent). All six bayside suburbs had median values of more than $1.3 million, and were within the top quartile of house prices in Melbourne.”

“CoreLogic head of Australian research Eliza Owen said the price falls in Albert Park were significant. ‘It’s a massive shift and it’s the equivalent to over $200,000 taken off the median value. Albert Park firmly sits in the higher end of house values where, broadly, through this cycle values have fallen the fastest,’ she said. ‘You could say the same for Elwood with both suburbs’ house medians sitting above the $2 million mark. It looks like the price falls across this market are deepening at the moment.'”

“Nelson Alexander Fitzroy agent Roland Paterson said the suburbs were facing a similar market dynamic to the bayside cluster. While prices were going backwards, Patterson said he felt property became overvalued in the COVID-era boom. ‘When you look at what people paid for things in 2020, 2021, it’s often you’ll see it and say: ‘oh well that’s what it’s worth now,’ he said.”