Every Month, There Are More Listings Than The Last

A report from the Arizona Republic. “An Arizona county known for its natural beauty and outdoor adventure opportunities was ranked among the top markets for vacation homes. Coconino County landed at No. 6 on the list from Pacaso, a marketplace for second or vacation homes. In Coconino County, a second home, on average, costs slightly more than $796,000. The proportion of second homes to primary homes is more than 46%. ‘Coconino County, Arizona, with its county seat in the beautiful mountain town of Flagstaff, is surrounded by the Coconino National Forest and the world’s largest contiguous ponderosa pine forest, the study said.”

From Flagstaff Business. “Speculation can make the housing market seem like one big guessing game! Will rates go up or down? Will values go up or down? Will people want to buy in Northern Arizona or not? When I first began in the business in 2009, the maximum conforming loan limit on a single unit for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac backed loans was $417,000. It is a bit fascinating to note that conforming loan limits started in 1980 at $93,750 and grew as Fannie and Freddie worked to keep up with change in markets and inflation. From 2006 to 2016, that $417,000 was the prevailing loan limit as we saw the crash and recovery of the great housing bubble.”

“Since 2016, we’ve seen steady increases to that limit with 2024’s limit at $766,550 for a single unit. As you’ll see in the chart, the conforming loan limit for 2025 has reached $806,500, which marks a significant threshold. Yes, you can do as little as 3% down with conforming loans and a national average of down payment closer to around 10%, but with a 20% down payment, 2025’s loan limits put you in the seven-figure house-buying budget. It is exciting to see that we are heading into 2025 with more inventory than we’ve started any year with since the end 2019.”

From NBC 2. “Currently, over half of a home insurance policy in Florida covers windstorm damage, and many people can’t even get it. Some state lawmakers want state-run Citizens Insurance to offer wind insurance coverage to everyone. Property owners like Dave Rodwell, of Fort Myers, said he has had to increase his deductible on his policy in order to keep the price of insurance down. That means he and others pay more to repair their damages. ‘What it means to us is that our reserve funds have gotten used up because of the hurricanes,’ Rodwell said. For Karen and Juan Suarez, it simply means less money to live on. ‘Since we’ve purchased the house it has tripled. It has definitely made an impact on the way we live,’ Karen said.”

The San Francisco Chronicle in California. “For years, recently retired Berkeley City Councilmember Susan Wengraf has been hearing the stories of Berkeley homeowners who opt to leave unpermitted secondary housing units vacant. Some have been burned by previous tenants who stopped paying rent upon learning the unit was illegal. Others are worried about liability risk or getting slapped with a notice of violation if a neighbor were to file a complaint. Many are afraid of taking chances on renting out an unpermitted apartment in a city with some of the strongest pro-tenant laws in the country. It bothered her because many of these apartments — also known as ‘granny flats’ or accessory dwelling units (ADUs) — provide perfectly adequate housing and are among the most affordable accommodations.”

“During a four-year pilot program that started Wednesday and extends through 2028, Berkeley homeowners can approach city planners about getting unpermitted accessory units inspected for safety, and legalized, while being assured that the process will be confidential and no penalties will be assessed on the previously undocumented apartment. Denise Pinkston, a Berkeley resident who founded the Casita Coalition, called the ‘certificate of compliance’ option ‘a trade-off between safe affordable housing and no housing.’ She said she is confident that the program will be popular; similar amnesty initiatives have worked well in Los Angeles and Santa Cruz. ‘I have friends in Berkeley who have unpermitted ADUs that they couldn’t afford to bring to building code and they are all going to look at this,’ she said. ‘On my block there must be six ADUs that are of questionable legal status. The neighbors just look the other way — we don’t know if they are safe.'”

“Wengraf stressed that units need to be safe in order to be deemed legal: Amnesty doesn’t mean that squalid hovels with shoddy wiring or leaky pipes will be given the city’s blessing. Wengraf said bringing existing units up to code is potentially much cheaper than building new standalone ADUs, which generally cost about $500 a square foot. She said she and her husband looked into putting a new ADU in their backyard ‘and calculated that we would never get our money back in our lifetime.'”

Bisnow on Texas. “With the holiday season in the rearview mirror, shoppers are seeing fewer and fewer deals — unless they’re in the market for industrial space in the South Dallas area, where developers rushed to build in the wake of the pandemic only to see demand fall off sharply. While Dallas-Fort Worth was named the No. 1 metro in the nation for distribution and warehousing by CommercialSearch in November 2024, the South Dallas submarket is facing a supply glut. Overbuilding has helped lead the DFW region to the highest industrial vacancy rate in the south, continuing an upward trend that began in Q2 as the market moved into oversupply.”

“South Dallas was the last area of the Metroplex to see large-scale development of industrial space. Meanwhile, demand for that product has waned since the pandemic, according to Avison Young principal Buddy Turner. ‘It dried up after [developers] went down there and built so many square feet,’ Turner said. ‘There’s still leasing activity, it’s just slowed way down. We recently did a renewal and realized that South Dallas and East Dallas are starting to lower their rental rates a little bit to try to attract tenants down there.’ But he expects it’ll be sometime in 2026 before the area catches up to its current oversupply. ‘They’ve got some buildings still being developed,’ Turner said.”

The National Post in Canada. “The funeral rites for Justin Trudeau’s political career could begin Monday but it is left to the Liberal party and the country to wear sackcloth and ashes, not in mourning but in penitence. We all have a lot to be sorrowful about. If speculation is correct, he may well announce plans to resign this week, possibly as early as Monday. What an unmitigated mess, what a rolling disaster, what an unholy, odious, contemptible way to treat a country. For three weeks, Trudeau has been in hiding with only the occasional smile and smirk for the cameras. For all the false bonhomie there has been something louche in the glimpses of the prime minister, one wouldn’t be surprised if he suddenly slipped on a trench coat, turned up his collar and offered to sell you the Ambassador Bridge.”

“Perhaps he was a mountebank all along, a flim-flam ‘medical man’ who told us he had all the answers, all the expertise to cure all our ills. We bought the medicine but it turned out to be worse than the illness. After nine years we are left with a country in an affordability crisis where food banks are being used in record numbers (two million people in March 2024) and scurvy, thought banished with 18th century sailors, is affecting malnourished Canadians. The federal government’s own 2024 report of the National Advisory Council on Poverty describes how rising numbers of the poor have put almost four million Canadians in ‘survival mode.'”

“The cost of housing has risen so high that  59 per cent of Canadians are sacrificing food, clothing and other essentials to get by, according to Habitat for Humanity. Belatedly, the Liberals are promising to tackle a housing shortage but for many it’s too late, their hopes of owning a home crushed. The immigration file has been an absolute disaster. Early in his mandate, Trudeau accused anyone who questioned his higher immigration levels with indulging in fearmongering, intolerance and misinformation. Now he admits the levels are too high but his plan to reduce immigration is basically hoping millions leave.”

Surrey Live in the UK. “There are three areas of Surrey where house prices are falling as new data shows that the county as a whole has recorded house prices growth of below the national average in the 12 months to October 2024. Overall, the cost of buying a home has continued to increase across Surrey, but the region is lagging behind the country as a whole. The average house price in our county was £514,788 in the 12 months to October, according to the Land Registry. Prices are falling in many areas though, with parts of London experiencing the biggest drops in the country. The average home in Kensington and Chelsea cost over £1.1 million in the year to October.”

“That’s a fall of £285,480 per house compared to a year earlier, which works out as a drop of 20.3% and is the largest of any local authority in the UK. The City of London has seen the next largest drop with homes costing 18.3% less than a year earlier, equivalent to £160,166 per house. Hammersmith and Fulham has the next largest drop at 10.5%, equivalent to £86,825 per home. North Devon has seen the next largest fall in average prices at 7.8%, followed by Camden with a drop of 6.2%, Gwynedd with a drop of 5.1%, the Isle of Wight with a drop of 5.0%, Islington with a drop of 4.9% and the City of Westminster with a drop of 4.4%.”

Domain News in Australia. “Buyers can now secure beach houses at a 20 per cent discount in some of Victoria’s most sought-after coastal towns, thanks to rising interest rates, increased land taxes and workers returning to city offices. Popular spots such as Port Fairy, Barwon Heads and a handful of Mornington Peninsula postcodes have recorded double-digit price drops since their 2022-23 post-lockdown peaks. The biggest fall was in Port Fairy, where the median house value fell 23.8 per cent from its peak in March 2023 to $876,000 in November 2024, CoreLogic figures show.”

“There were falls of at least 20 per cent in Barwon Heads (a median price of $1.4 million in November), Mount Eliza ($1.59 million), Rye ($1.03 million), Sorrento ($1.9 million), Blairgowrie ($1.29 million) and Tootgarook (nearly $926,000). CoreLogic research director Tim Lawless said prices in beach towns soared during the lockdown years, but demand and growth fell as fewer people migrated regionally, affordability became strained and land taxes increased. ‘Many of these areas overshot fair value. It was more than just interest rates quelling these markets,’ Lawless said.”

“RT Edgar Bellarine director Brock Grainger said some buyers were seizing the moment to take advantage of price falls. ‘A 20 per cent discount on a property is a really good opportunity,’ he said. In Ocean Grove alone, there were 300 to 350 properties listed, and only interstate or international buyers were making sight-unseen purchases. ‘Every month, there are more listings than the last – that’s part of the battle for vendors,’ Grainger said. ‘What we’re seeing is a lot of overpriced properties creating oversupply and fear of weak competition. If agents have honest conversations with vendors and price properties correctly, they’re selling really well.'”

“Still, prices aren’t exactly rock bottom. Pandemic gains were substantial, with values jumping across these coastal towns, and some places – such as Venus Bay, Sorrento and Tootgarook – had increases above 70 per cent. Even after recent drops, current values remain higher than pre-pandemic levels, ranging from a 10.8 per cent gain in East Geelong to 49 per cent in Lakes Entrance. Carman Real Estate director Jarrod Carman agreed the price plunge presented real value. ‘Yes, prices are falling, but they’ve come off a massive base,’ Carman said. ‘There are fewer buyers, so they have the pick of the litter. Vendors are having to discount and negotiate, but if buyers hit their top price and vendors want $20,000 more, buyers just disappear. They’ll go rent or move on.'”