The Dubious Bounty Of An Out-Of-Control Real Estate Market That Finally, And Predictably, Capsized

A report from WPBF in Florida. “Rebecca Giacobba, a realtor with LPT Realty, said the need for relief is in high demand as insurance and condo association fees skyrocket. ‘Some of the condo fees that were in the two and three hundreds are now exceeding thousands of thousand dollars,’ Giacobba said. Giacobba explained people who own units in the older buildings are therefore having a harder time selling. ‘It’s a harder sell than it ever was for these older buildings,’ she said. For some current owners, the cost is getting too high. ‘Especially the elderly on a fixed income who were in for $200 and now are paying $1,100 and being forced to sell,’ Giacobba added.”

Sun Sentinel in Florida. “During the afternoon meeting of the House Subcommittee on Insurance and Banking, Rep. Michael Caruso, a Republican from West Palm Beach, described getting a letter from an 83-year-old Fort Myers woman whose home was ‘tremendously’ damaged during Hurricane Ian in 2022. Nine months later, she had only received $10,000 from her insurer, he said. ‘She’s still waiting’ for her insurer to pay off the rest of her claim. Meanwhile, the insurer reassigned her claim to new adjusters seven times, he said. Three times, the insurer sent out engineers to inspect her damages. ‘It’s just a deferral,’ Caruso said, characterizing the insurer’s attitude as, ‘we’re just not going to pay this lady.’ He added that the woman still hasn’t been able to return to her home. ‘I think she’s going to die before she gets her money,’ he said. ‘And that’s sad.'”

“Even as the reforms have stabilized the industry, premiums have increased but that’s because inflation has increased the value of homes that policyholders are insuring, said Florida Insurance Commissioner Michael Yaworsky. That value, expressed in insurance-speak as Total Insured Value, or TIV, increased by about 40% in Florida since 2021, he said. ‘It means that the consumer at the end of the day is having to pay more because the cost to replace their home and put themselves where they were before they had the accident is a much more costly endeavor than it was a couple years ago,’ Yaworsky said. ‘The thing about insurance is we’re all in this together at the end of the day. Prices go up for all of us or they go down for all of us, ultimately over time, and it’s really just in the margins where they change.'”

KTLA in California. “Recent wildfires have left a devastating mark on the Los Angeles area, displacing families and exacerbating an already dire housing crisis. For those who lost their homes, rebuilding poses significant hurdles, KTLA 5 consumer reporter David Lazarus said. ‘In Altadena, there’s a number of people who are uninsured. They’re just off the playing field at this point,’ Lazarus explained. Even for those with insurance, Laz said, overages and delays could prolong the process for years. ‘Some estimates say it could take five years or more for many of these residents to rebuild.’ Compounding the difficulty are offers from predatory buyers and lowball settlement offers from insurers. Lazarus says to be very skeptical of any cash offer you might receive. ‘If you get such an offer, not saying walk away from it, but get a second opinion first,’ Lazarus advised.”

KTBS in Louisiana. “A local builder accused of residential contractor fraud made another court appearance Friday. Justin Penn, owner of Creed Contracting, is accused of taking money from several families, including one in Bossier Parish, but failing to complete construction on their homes. Penn appeared in Bossier District Court Friday for a status conference. District Judge Michael Craig reset the court proceeding for the sixth time.
When the Peters family heard the news, they dropped their heads in frustration, upset they still can’t put the ordeal behind them. ‘We’ve already lost the property,’ Nick Peters said. Documents show they had to sign their home and land over to Community Bank of Louisiana after struggling to pay the mortgage while covering legal fees and hiring a new builder. Peters said Penn has left his family in financial ruin and without a new home.”

From Stateline. “Nationally, December rents dropped slightly in 2024 for the second straight year, according to Apartment List. The biggest two-year decreases were in Sun Belt states that experienced apartment building booms: Rents in Arizona, Georgia and Utah dropped 6%, and those in Texas and North Carolina fell 5%, according to a Stateline analysis. Alabama, Colorado, Florida and South Dakota saw decreases of about 4%. In a January TikTok video she titled ‘jaw on the floor,’ 27-year-old Becca Flores said, ‘I just got my lease renewal offer on my apartment in Austin in Texas and it was down almost $200. That has, like, never happened to me in my life,’ she said in the video. Many of the hundreds of comments relayed similar stories of unexpected rent drops.”

“Kirk McClure, professor emeritus of urban planning at the University of Kansas, published a paper last year arguing that the nation built too many homes and apartments in the bubble years of the late 2000s, and that between 2000 and 2020, home construction exceeded the number of new families by 3.3 million. ‘We’re still, to this day, trying to absorb that excess supply,’ McClure said. Prices would drop if we built millions of new homes, he added, ‘but we don’t want to go back to 2008,’ when housing prices collapsed in the Great Recession.”

From Bisnow. “Federal attorneys added six landlords or property managers to its antitrust case against RealPage earlier this month. In the amended complaint, the government outlines how competitors were engaging in anticompetitive practices by meeting to trade information about rates, vacancy and other data. Multiple landlords who spoke to Bisnow complained that the software is too aggressive in its price shifts and frequently recommends downward adjustments, a point highlighted by RealPage as evidence that the software isn’t harming tenants. ‘In Houston, where we own maybe a dozen properties, it’s been adjusting downward almost every day. That’s not a very nefarious trust violation, conspiring to decrease our revenue,’ said Matt Sharp, co-founder of multifamily landlord Hamilton Point Investments.”

“Several real estate investors have approached appraiser Phil Crawford with data provided by algorithms. He said that most are value-add investors, and in the majority of cases, the data does not align with the current market nor what he expects it to be a year later when the asset is improved. The occurrence was most common two years ago when interest rates were low and rents surged at an astronomical pace, he noticed. ‘If the algorithm juiced the rent estimates at that time, then immediately that investor is at a disadvantage by whatever percentage the algorithm was over,’ Crawford said. ‘When you deal with operating expense inflation on top of an overstating of rents, that’s a recipe for foreclosure.'”

The Express News. “After grappling with soaring prices during the pandemic, San Antonio tenants are seeing some relief as landlords offer a month or two of free rent, waived application fees and other enticements to try to fill their buildings. But that could change, as a glut of apartments built over the past two years gets absorbed. The owners of office buildings also are trying to persuade tenants to lease their space. Developers finished construction on 12,858 apartments in San Antonio in 2024, roughly double the typical tally of 5,000 to 6,000 units built annually, according to CoStar. ‘The goal for a lot of these owners and managers right now is just to keep these tenants in place,’ said Daniel Khalil, associate director of market analytics for South, Central and West Texas at CoStar. ‘The heads-in-beds strategy is a lot of what people are talking about these days in the multifamily world. The whole idea is, take as big of a rent cut as you have to, but get people to your community, because once they’ve lived there for a year, they’re significantly less likely to move.'”

From Spacing in Canada. “For years, Toronto’s finance officials have dutifully added an annual footnote to their budget documents, cautioning readers that a portion of the City’s revenues — namely the municipal land transfer tax (MLTT) and, to a lesser degree, development charges — is exposed to fluctuations in property markets. Or could be, except that Toronto’s property markets just kept climbing and climbing so those teeny-tiny actuarial red flags didn’t give anyone pause to contemplate what the downward slope would feel like. All these bullish growth figures reflected a world premised on ridiculously low interest rates and therefore an exceptionally frothy real estate sector. That world, however, is gone, maybe not forever but certainly for the foreseeable future.”

“Pre-sales of condos have flat lined. People who invested in income-generating units at the height of the market are underwater. Rents, mercifully, appear to have crested. They’re still ridiculous, but coming down a bit, which is good news for tenants and not-so-good news for investors. It’s time to revisit those cautious footnotes because what appears to be a bursting asset bubble now spells trouble for the City’s finances. The spending plan released yesterday does propose a $1.3 billion draw on the City’s reserve funds in order to achieve a balanced budget, which is not a sustainable strategy, either. The amount to be extracted from those rainy-day reserve funds, oddly enough, is almost precisely what the City expects to collect from DCs and the MLTT in 2025. It’s difficult to imagine a more precise warning about the risk to the City of getting hooked on the dubious bounty of an out-of-control real estate market that finally, and predictably, capsized.”

From CNBC. “Spain is planning to impose a tax of 100% on homes bought by non-EU residents as it looks to tackle an entrenched housing crisis in the country. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said access to housing was one of the main challenges facing Spanish society and that there was a risk of division among communities. ‘The West faces a decisive challenge: not to become a society divided into two classes, that of rich owners and poor tenants,’ he said, noting that housing prices in Europe had increased by 48% in the last decade, almost twice as much as household income. ‘Non-residents of the European Union bought 27,000 apartments in Spain [in 2023]. They did so not to live, but to speculate, to make money with them, something that in the context of scarcity we cannot afford,’ Sanchez told the forum.”

From Gulf News. “Is a price crash or correction on the horizon for Manila’s condo market? Local media reports and expert warnings hint at an ominous turn for the condominium sector. Housing prices in the Philippines have declined for the first time in three years, according to The Philippine Star. Filipino investment guru Chinkee Tan has weighed in on the unfolding drama, describing the Philippine condominium market as ‘undergoing a significant correction.’ He explains in a mix of Filipino and English: ‘Property prices have been climbing at an unprecedented rate; some condo values have doubled or tripled over the past two to three years. But now, the tide is turning.’ ‘Prices spiked when demand was high and supply was tight. Now, with a surplus of units and waning interest, the market is correcting itself,’ Tan added in a recent video post.”

From Benar News. “Amid buzz about a new free-trade zone at the tip of the Malay Peninsula, some observers are wondering if an anticipated rush of foreign investors will pour in money, given a troubled China-backed housing megaproject in the same area. Malaysia and Singapore signed off last week on the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone (JS-SEZ). But analysts interviewed by BenarNews warn that the still unfinished Forest City project, a U.S. $100 billion endeavor, could spook foreign investment in the JS-SEZ. Started in Malaysia’s Johor state by one of China’s largest developers 12 years ago, the ambitious project has failed to meet its lofty goals and is a cautionary tale.”

“‘The troubled Forest City project could indeed cast a long shadow over the JS-SEZ’s potential to attract investors,’ said Michael Warren, founder of Consulting Board Asia, a business consultancy. ‘Investors may harbor skepticism based on Forest City’s issues, associating them with similar risks in the JS-SEZ.’ Launched in 2013, Forest City promised a futuristic urban paradise of luxury condos, shopping malls, and state-of-the-art facilities. It planned to accommodate 700,000 residents in waterfront apartment towers on four man-made islands. But with its empty apartments, barren malls, and deserted streets, the development has become a symbol of overreach, earning the project the notorious label of a ‘white elephant.'”

“‘One key lesson from Forest City is the importance of aligning development projects with market demand and economic fundamentals,’ said Chan Wei Khjan, lead advisor for the SEZ at YYC Group, a financial consultancy firm. Forest City’s failure stemmed from an overreliance on real estate without a supportive ecosystem, a Johor official said. ‘Everyone learned the lesson after Forest City,’ Johor state official Lee Ting Han told BenarNews. ‘It cannot just be residential or commercial projects. The JS-SEZ has to be about creating jobs, developing industries, and populating the area – not just selling property.'”