The Market Sees Them As Overpriced, So They Sit There Until The Owners Are Willing To Reduce The Price

A report from the New York Post. “This California grandmother’s newly renovated house was completely demolished by the deadly LA wildfires — but she’s still on the hook for the $800,000 mortgage she took out to pay for the upgrade. Miriam Cotero, a 46-year-old Costco worker, had just finished the upgrade — which valued the house at $1.2 million — when the Eaton Fire tore through her neighborhood on Jan. 8. But because she hadn’t yet upgraded her insurance on the property, where she and her family had lived for years, she said she’s only covered for $200,000.’ I had insurance,’ Cotero told The Post. ‘We went from one bedroom and one bathroom to three bedrooms, two bathrooms and an attached garage. The insurance wasn’t updated to reflect the changes. We had just appraised it, because we had it refinanced, and it was appraised for $1.2 million. We borrowed to remodel and the money I owe on the house right now is $800,000.’ Cotero said she bet everything on the family home, and it’s gone up and smoke — leaving her with a $6,000 mortgage payment and nowhere to live. ‘The insurance covers $44,000 for rent. But it will be at least two years until we can rebuild our home. I still have to pay a mortgage of $6,000 a month and rent somewhere to live,’ she said.”

USA Today on California. “Days after evacuating from Pacific Palisades, Maria Alden said, she was watching a TV news report about the wildfires. The three-story home was the only one still standing on her block. Alden said she was getting pushback from her insurance company. They told her she probably wouldn’t even meet her $28,000 deductible because her house is standing, according to Alden. ‘I was like, you guys are idiots,’ Alden said. ‘Do you even understand that this is a war zone in there? What are you going to do, put me back in my house and have me breathe all that stuff in?'”

The Colorado Sun. “Data and technology are feeding a plethora of new methods to help homeowners figure out their property’s risk for wildfire, flooding or other extreme weather event. But if insurance companies aren’t taking those models — or homeowner mitigation efforts — into account, what’s the point, wondered Colorado Insurance Commissioner Michael Conway. ‘It makes me feel like we’re lying to people,’ Conway said at an Oct. 15 town hall for homeowners in Pueblo. ‘So if we’re telling people that they should do things, then that has to be reflected in these models. So they have to get better.’ Several billion-dollar disasters affecting Colorado properties have led to a spectacular rise in homeowner insurance premiums in the past few years, while insurers cite larger losses because they’re paying out more in claims than they’re taking in from customer premiums.”

“‘We’re firm believers that the (catastrophe) models are good and they should be used in our market,’ Conway said. ‘But we also absolutely know that the cat models are going to be inaccurate and they’re going to be wrong. Right now, the insurance companies are really putting all of that risk on the homeowner of the model being wrong.'”

The Record Chronicle in Texas. “The real estate industry remains in recession mode when it comes to activity and sales volume. While prices remain near all-time highs, mortgage and real estate companies continue to cut staff as they adjust to diminished sales activity. The city of Denton saw home sales activity fall 10% year-over-year in December. Pending contract activity plummeted 38.6%! What happened? Simple. The more affluent property owners and buyers who had been keeping the averages propped up for most of 2024 took an early vacation. With prevailing mortgage rates back near 7%, the local market reverted to income-based supply and demand fundamentals. There are only so many people who can afford a $400,000 or $500,000 home with current property taxes and insurance costs. The affordability gap in North Texas is still huge when comparing incomes to home prices.”

“Rent prices have basically gone nowhere over the last two years after the huge COVID-era spike. The continued appetite from investors created a lot of new rental supply in North Texas. The result is that it’s currently cheaper to rent a Denton County home than it is to buy one. The median rent on a two-bedroom apartment in the city of Denton fell 1.1% last month, according to Apartment List. Rents were down 4.1% from last year per the latest January 2025 report.”

From WJLA. “Mayor Muriel Bowser announced a new program to bring life back to empty office buildings in Downtown D.C. The ‘Office to Anything’ program encourages property owners to convert unused office space into commercial, hotel, entertainment, retail, and other non-residential purposes. This initiative complements another program launched last year, which focuses on turning old office buildings into apartments. ‘In 2024, we launched the Housing in Downtown program to convert obsolete office buildings into new housing. But residential conversions are not always viable for every building, and we therefore are encouraging other uses as well,’ said Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development Nina Albert.”

Investigative Journalism Foundation on Canada. “Dozens of recommendations from a landmark 2022 report on money laundering in British Columbia remain incomplete, an IJF analysis has found, including what observers describe as key proposals to crack down on financial crime. B.C. Supreme Court Justice Austin Cullen’s Commission of Inquiry into Money Laundering in British Columbia concluded that ‘an enormous volume’ — likely billions of dollars — of dirty money was being laundered through the province’s economy every year, much of it stemming from drug dealing, fraud and other ‘crime that destroys communities.’ The commission’s voluminous final report included 101 recommendations for governments, Crown corporations, lawyers, police, the real estate industry and other sectors that can abet or stop money laundering.”

“Brock Martland, a Vancouver lawyer who was senior counsel for the commission, said the incomplete recommendations include key proposals from the commission to beef up enforcement of money laundering. The province has also made no commitment about creating a specialized anti-money laundering investigation unit, something Martland thinks would be key to addressing the problem. ‘My own impression is there’s a government tendency to issue a new announcement and come up with a new acronym … but at the end of the day, do we have actual investigators out doing this work? And if that’s been happening I haven’t heard about it yet,’ Martland said.”

The Evening Standard in the UK. “Hundreds of residents have been ‘left to rot’ next to boarded-up houses with cockroaches, mice and mould on an estate earmarked for regeneration, residents have complained. The Lesnes Estate in Thamesmead, part of the brutalist 1960s estate where Stanley Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange was filmed, has become a ghost town with roughly a quarter of residents still living there. Bexley Council gave outline planning permission to the Peabody housing association in October 2022 to replace 816 current homes with 2,778 new ones. But plans to revamp the area have stagnated and the estate, once dubbed ‘a town of tomorrow’ by its Greater London Council architects, with residents left ‘living in limbo’ next to locked up homes.”

“Rose Asenguah, who has lived on the estate for 17 years told the Standard how it had become a ‘horrible nightmare’ describing how the area has shifted from having a vibrant community to becoming ‘hell on earth.’ Maria Ivanova, 72, told the Standard she had seen groups fighting on the estate using metal poles and she was forced to call the police multiple times. Ms Ivanova, who has lived on the Lesnes Estate for nearly 20 years, said: ‘When my family or guests come to visit they say ‘Is this London? Why is it so dirty?'”

From Domain News. “Some of Australia’s most desirable suburbs have fallen in price over the past 12 months. Analysis from Domain found more than 150 suburbs within 10 kilometres of capital city CBDs where house prices are more affordable now than last year. In Sydney’s Neutral Bay, houses are cheaper than they were 12 to 18 months ago, says local agent Adam Vernon of Vernon Partners. The suburb’s median house price is $2.41 million and has dropped 14.5 per cent annually. A major issue younger buyers face is the higher interest rates, says Vernon, so they can’t borrow as much money, so they’ve begun offering less for properties. ‘The market sees them as overpriced, so they sit there until the owners are willing to reduce the price,’ he says.”

“Property prices in Yeronga have declined despite Brisbane’s median house price reaching $1 million. In the past 12 months, Yeronga’s median house price has slipped by 18.8 per cent to $1.3 million. ‘We’ve got flood-impacted stock in the suburb, which will be at a cheaper price,’ says local agent Jane Elvin of LJ Hooker Annerley Yeronga Salisbury. While a large percentage of the Yeronga market is flood-free, the areas prone to flooding tend to have properties that sell below the median price, which lowers the suburb’s general median, says Elvin.”

From Nikkei Asia. “A stalled housing project started by troubled Chinese property developer Country Garden Holdings has left homebuyers in the central Chinese city of Loudi in a bind. ‘If the home isn’t finished, my son can’t get married,’ said a man who is one of the purchasers. The father visits the construction site almost every day to check on the progress, but no end is in sight. In China, it is common for the groom’s family to prepare a new home for the bride before a couple marries. ‘The other family won’t agree to the marriage because the home isn’t finished,’ he lamented.”

“A mother, who gave her surname as Zhang, bought a unit for roughly 1.5 million yuan ($205,000) at the development because it was near a school. Led by this woman, homebuyers banded together to petition the local government as often as three times a month for construction to resume. Construction restarted for a while. But cash-strapped Country Garden sent only a few workers to the site, which struck some as a performance to stave off protests. ‘There are more concerned homeowners who go to see the site than there are workers,’ Zhang said.”

“Another frustrated homebuyer in his 30s, surnamed Wu, joined in urging authorities to have construction completed as soon as possible. ‘Our local government promises that it will be completed by the end of March, but it has been postponed several times so far, so I find it hard to believe,’ Wu said. The local government responded to the citizen complaints by saying home purchases were ‘speculative activity,’ Zhang said. ‘We just wanted a place to live,’ Zhang said. ‘There were no speculative feelings whatsoever.'”