It’s Important For A Seller To Understand They Must Not Chase The Market With A Higher Price Right Now

It’s Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. “Earlier this week, dozens of probationary employees at the Department of Education, Office of Personnel Management, and the Small Business Administration were fired. Keri Shull, founder of the real estate firm KS Team, says her firm is launching a program that helps workers who purchase a home in the next two months sell that property if they lose their job over policy changes, and won’t take a commission. Shull has worked in the DMV’s real estate industry for 20 years, and says while the changes to the federal workforce are unlikely to create a stall in the market, the stress on individual buyers and sellers can’t be overlooked. ‘There are people who need to move, their family’s growing, their life circumstances are changing, and they feel this anxiety of what if my income changes?’ she pointed out.”

“‘I love this location, which is why I stayed here all this time, through the ups and downs,’ Winter Park Woods condo owner Lorraine Roy said. For Roy to keep living in her three-bedroom condo of more than three decades, her new monthly HOA fee has tripled to $3,371.79. ‘This is way too high,” she said. ‘We underfunded the reserves. That has been happening.’ After his monthly HOA fee jumped from $634 to more than $2,100 a month, Winter Park Woods condo owner Shane Costa received what he considers a low offer of $70,000 for his one-bedroom. The offer came from an investor who appears to have purchased other condos in the complex. ‘I’m in a little bit better circumstance than most people right now, but there’s people losing their homes,’ Costa said.”

“‘There are people who live here no more, and they just they just couldn’t withstand the pressure and had to sell out for a much lower price than they feel was fair,’ Steve Fieldman, an owner of several condos at the Stone Creek at Wekiva complex in Altamonte Springs. A lawsuit filed by Fieldman’s attorneys accuses the condominium association of wanting to ‘terminate the condominium form of ownership and convert the Association into an apartment complex.’ ‘We should have, stronger laws to protect the people who they have their entire livelihood, all their future is in their condominium,’ Fieldman said. Jeff Brandes, a former state senator, said lawmakers are struggling to come up with a solution to provide relief for condo owners. ‘I don’t think that people living in single-family homes think that their tax dollars should go to condo owners who deferred maintenance for 30 years,’ Brandes said.”

“Driving around the New Orleans metro area, thousands of homes are for sale and have sat on the market for months. Real estate agent Linda Babineaux says the time for homes getting multiple bids is over. ‘It’s important for a seller to understand they must not chase the market with a higher price right now. That is not the market to do that in. There are fewer bidding wars. But, if something is priced right it will move,” she says.”

“Herbert ‘Bert’ Whalen, 50, was sentenced Tuesday in federal court in New Jersey after pleading guilty nearly three years ago to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Whalen ran what prosecutors described as a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme in which he sold run-down homes to investors, many living out of Indiana, with a promise to fix them up and rent them out. In many cases he failed to make the repairs and then hid the poor condition of the homes. In some cases, he sent investors fake leases and a few months of rent money to dupe them into believing he was renting out the homes on their behalf. Brian Freeman, a California investor, said he was relieved that Whalen will finally spend time in prison, but that it took far too long. ‘It’s better than nothing,’ said Freeman, who purchased a property and received rent checks for about five months before a city inspector told him the home had been vacant for a long time and was infested with rats.”

“A new housing development taking shape in Bayport would use the open land once eyed by GreenHalo Builds, the troubled home-building company that collapsed in 2023 when it was revealed to be little more than a debt-ridden shell plagued by allegations of shoddy construction and unfinished homes. Two years ago, builder John Sharkey said he would build 46 houses on the site. The City Council was considering the deal when Sharkey was instead pushed out of town as numerous creditors said they couldn’t get him on the phone and were threatening legal action. He filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection and had at least 46 creditors, according to court records.”

“Known as ‘the birthplace of biotechnology,’ South San Francisco is coping with a worsening life sciences real estate market compared to last year’s already sluggish numbers. Supply pinches that plagued biotech markets across the country are a thing of the past, with even South San Francisco struggling with inflated inventories and increased vacancies. That led to a striking 27.4% vacancy rate for South San Francisco in the fourth quarter, up from 15.7% just a year ago. The submarket is filled with brand-new trophy assets that will struggle to find tenants this year as the existing supply glut slowly gets filled amid a challenging time for landlords. ‘South San Francisco remains slow, as we have predicted for a long time,’ Alexandria Real Estate Equities Chairmen Joel Marcus said during the REIT’s January earnings call. ‘Kind of a reckless oversupply there by people who really didn’t know what they were doing.'”

“When Toronto real estate agent Ruchi Jain was helping a couple look for rentals last week, one detail stood out: nearly every unit had clearly been vacant for months. Landlords, meanwhile, have been signalling to her that they’re open to finding a way to come to an agreement with prospective tenants. Negotiating rents or shorter terms? It’s all on the table. ‘I’ll be very honest, people are scared right now,’ said Ms. Jain, who said landlords are dealing with downward pressures in the rental market in a way that hasn’t been seen for years.”

“It’s a big change from just a year ago when Toronto’s overheated market had prospective tenants outbidding each other for apartments with sky-high prices. Rentals.ca spokesperson Giacomo Ladas said listed rents have been dropping for 12 consecutive months in Toronto and 14 months in Vancouver. Average Toronto apartment rents have dropped 7.6 per cent from their peak to $2,615, and Vancouver rents have fallen by 13 per cent from their peak to $2,896.Ms. Jain says she is already hearing from landlords, especially those who are part of Toronto’s beleaguered condo market, that are struggling to fill their units at advertised prices.”

“One month in and QV operation manager James Wilson says 2025 is already shaping up to be an intriguing year for the housing market – though you wouldn’t necessarily know it from looking at the latest figures. The average home is now worth $913,567, which is just 1.3% less than the same time last year and 14.1% below the market’s peak in late 2021. ‘On the surface, we’re seeing a continuation in 2025 of the overwhelmingly flat theme that we saw throughout much of last year. “This is to be expected, given the economic factors at play – namely high interest rates and credit constraints, sustained weakness in the labour market, and an oversupply of properties available for sale.’ Of the main urban areas QV monitors across Aotearoa New Zealand, only three have recorded modest reductions this quarter.”

“One of Melbourne’s most notorious addresses, The Gatwick Hotel, which had a Block makeover in 2018, has a penthouse back on the market — for less than it sold on the show’s auction day. The three-bedroom penthouse was listed in 2022 with a $3.4m-$3.7m price guide, then later returned in July 2023 for $2.8m-$2.9m — but failed to find a buyer. Now its on the market again with a $2.6m-$2.7m price tag, it could sell for $159,000 less than it sold on the renovation show’s auction day more than six years ago.”

“A BlackRock Inc. fund forfeited a Shanghai office complex to Standard Chartered Plc after it didn’t make a loan payment for the property, according to people familiar with the matter. A fund unit of the New York-based asset manager opted not to make a payment for a syndicated loan led by Standard Chartered due at the end of September, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. BlackRock’s fund took out the loan of about 780 million yuan ($107 million) for two towers it bought in 2018 at Waterfront Place in China’s financial hub, the people added.”

“It’s the latest sign that China’s yearslong property downturn has swept up even the world’s largest financial institutions. The development came as BlackRock failed to sell the property even after offering a 30% discount to its purchase price, according to the people. China’s biggest cities are seeing a growing array of gleaming skyscrapers that are barely half-full, triggering rent cuts and a slump in value as the world’s second-largest economy slows. Institutional investors are offloading distressed commercial real estate from Shanghai to Hong Kong amid weak demand and as part of a global trend to reduce exposure to everything from offices to shopping malls. Prime office values have tumbled about 30% from their pre-Covid high in some of the nation’s major cities including Shanghai last year, according to Colliers International Group Inc.”

“The distress is now spilling over to Hong Kong, where average prices of office buildings, shopping malls and other properties have fallen more than 40% from their highs in 2018, eroding the value of the collateral backing many bank loans. Defaults are also rising as more property owners and developers run into cash flow difficulties.”