People Were Making Decisions Very Quickly, So They’re The Ones That Are Likely To Feel That Financial Pressure

A report from the Associated Press. “Workers across the country responded with anger and confusion Friday as they grappled with the Trump administration ‘s aggressive effort to shrink the size of the federal workforce by ordering agencies to lay off probationary employees who have yet to qualify for civil service protections. As layoff notices were sent out agency by agency, federal employees from Michigan to Florida were left reeling from being told that their services were no longer needed. David Rice, a disabled Army paratrooper who has been on probation since joining the U.S. Department of Energy in September, also learned Thursday night that he had lost his job. ‘It’s just been chaos,’ said Rice, 50, who had just bought a house in Melbourne, Florida, after he got the job. Rice said he agrees with the Trump administration’s goal of making the government more efficient, but objects to the random, scattershot approach being taken.”

From Reuters. “Termination emails have been sent in the past 48 hours to workers across the government, mostly recently hired employees still on probation. The federal government has some $36 trillion in debt and ran a $1.8 trillion deficit last year, and there is bipartisan agreement on the need for government reform. One GSA employee, who said he had one month left until his probation period ended and had been receiving excellent performance reviews, was told this week he will be fired on Friday. ‘Up until two weeks ago, this was an absolute dream job. Now it’s become an absolute nightmare because of what is going on. I have small children and a mortgage to pay,’ the worker told Reuters.”

WFLA Tampa in Florida. “A United States Army Veteran is struggling to recover from Hurricane Helene after his home was severely flooded. He said his insurance company and FEMA are not helping him out in the process. Several mobile homes in Honeymoon Park are for sale. She said the storm pushed out many of her neighbors. ‘They’re gone. They never came back,’ Tammy Zamensky said. Her neighbor, 90-year-old Charles O’Donnell, lives up north now, and wants to come home, but said he’s been getting the runaround and never thought it would take this long to get assistance. ‘I thought FEMA would hop right in. I thought the state would do what they could to help. And I thought the insurance companies would be honest,” O’Donnell said. ‘The insurance agent has disappeared. It is frustrating.'”

From Bloomberg. “Fannie Mae set aside $752 million for credit losses in its apartment complex lending business in part because of fraud or suspected fraud, denting profits amid an industrywide scrutiny of borrowers. ‘We have discovered instances of multifamily lending transactions in which one or more of the parties involved engaged in mortgage fraud or possible mortgage fraud,’ the firm said in its annual report released Friday. The $752 million credit loss provision was for the year ended Dec. 31, following $495 million and $1.25 billion in 2023 and 2022, respectively, according to the report. Combined with rising insurance costs, credit conditions for the multifamily sector have steadily worsened as delinquencies and defaults rose.”

Bisnow on Pennsylvania. “The Philadelphia region is now the No. 1 destination for New Yorkers on the move, according to a StreetEasy report based on Zillow search data. The city is still working through a glut of new units after developers expedited multifamily projects to capitalize on a tax abatement program that expired in 2021.”

KSAT in Texas. “San Antonio renters could see some relief as a surplus of empty apartments are causing rents to fall and complexes to offer splashy, move-in specials. Complexes are ‘desperate,’ Celso Zepeda of Absolute Apartment Locators said, and move-in specials that weren’t available two years ago are now commonplace. KSAT found apartments listing offers ranging from three weeks to two months of free rent. In an effort to fill units, Zepeda said some complexes are being more lenient about issues that would have disqualified tenants before, like having an eviction on their record or not meeting traditional income limits.”

The Dallas Morning News in Texas. “Zillow reports the typical asking rent for a single-family home in D-FW was just over $2,300 while apartment rents were just over $1,500. A record number of new apartments have opened to renters. In February 2020, the going rent for a single-family home was just over $1,700. The figure sat at $1,265 for an apartment, making it only a 35% price premium for single-family homes. The gap hit 50% for the first time at the end of March 2024, Zillow reported. Among a sample of 52 large metros, only five metros had a larger gap than Dallas — Salt Lake City, Denver, Los Angeles, Portland, and Providence, R.I. Since 2014, D-FW has built the most apartments in the country, and no other market comes close. As a result of the ongoing oversupply, property owners are offering concessions at a higher rate than the national average. Roughly 59% of rentals on Zillow in D-FW are offering deal-sweeteners like months of free rent and free parking. Concessions are offered on 41% of all Zillow rental listings nationwide — a record high.”

Union Tribune in California. “Not even a rent slowdown can stop San Diego’s apartment building boom. Around 4,000 new apartments are set to open in 2025, coming near or matching totals in the past few years, which were also big for multifamily building. Nathan Moeder, principal with real estate analysts London Moeder Advisors, said competition for renters will still be there, but developers are more likely to offer concessions than come out of the gate with a lower price. For example, many new complexes are offering several weeks, or even up to two months, free.”

The Oaklandside in California. “The certified letter came in a nondescript envelope. Over 70 copies were mailed to the building, but each was addressed to the same recipient: Resident of property subject to foreclosure sale. That’s how Pawel Dlugosz and his neighbors learned in September that a bank had seized their building from their landlord. Foreclosures are actually pretty common and rarely make the news. More than 100 properties — including single-family homes, apartment buildings, offices, and even land — are foreclosed on each month in Alameda County. After Vaughn Management bought the building in 2021, there were signs that they ‘couldn’t get as much money out of it as they wanted,’ said Dlugosz. He and his wife ended up living in three different apartments in that building over a few years, trading up for bigger space and better deals. Each move, they’d been pummeled with incentives by the landlord — one month off rent, an extra $1,000 credit, a low security deposit.”

“Vaughn is not alone. A handful of other newer, large apartment buildings in Oakland have also been foreclosed on over the past year or so. Others have sold at steep discounts, indicating clear signs of distress. Other new multifamily buildings in Oakland are being sold for pennies on the dollar, according to research by CBRE Group, including 17th and Broadway and 19th and Harrison, both built in 2019. About 10 years ago, developers began rushing to Oakland ‘like lemmings,’ said Jefrey Henderson, vice president at CBRE. Then the pandemic hit, major companies went remote or left the Bay Area, and workers moved away. While demand dropped, construction costs and interest rates soared. ‘When you can buy a building built in 2019 for a greater than 50% discount, why would I go through the red tape of California development?’ Henderson said.”

From CBS Bay Area. “The city of Oakland is grappling with another major economic setback. The Marriott City Center, Oakland’s largest hotel located on Broadway, has defaulted on its loan, putting the property at risk of foreclosure. The news follows the closure of two other major hotels in the city in the past six months, signaling a broader economic crisis. Phil Tagami, CEO of California Capital & Investment Group and a commercial real estate expert in Oakland, attributes the decline in tourism to safety concerns. ‘The number one contributor to this marketplace and specifically this situation is probably crime,’ Tagami said. Alan Reay, president of Atlas Hospitality Group, a hotel brokerage and consulting firm, points out that the challenges in Oakland go beyond the pandemic effects hurting hotel industry. ‘With the homeless situation as well as the crime, it is very, very difficult now to attract larger firms to do conventions,’ Reay said. ‘And then on the added side with Oakland is the loss of major professional baseball and football teams.'”

Bisnow on Colorado. “Breweries were Denver’s economic alchemists for more than a decade, leading the evolution of neglected and forgotten Denver neighborhoods into destinations. The cycle has flipped. And it is breweries that are feeling the squeeze. Chris Bell, the owner of Tennyson Street’s Call to Arms Brewing Co., which opened in 2015, has watched these shifts happen in real time. A real estate boom changed the neighborhood, he said. Developers knocked down old bungalows, replacing them with high-density housing that lacked ground-floor retail. More people moved in, but they weren’t necessarily walking to the local taproom. At the same time, even commercial property values skyrocketed. Bell estimates that the building his brewery operates in has quintupled in value since he moved in. Taxes, rent and insurance have soared with it. ‘If I didn’t have [a rent] escalator locked in, there would be no point in staying open,’ Bell said.”

“In RiNo, Hess has seen the same pattern. His brewery has two taprooms in the Five Points neighborhood and RiNo district. Left behind are empty ground-floor retail spaces. River North Brewery owner Matt Hess said there is no shortage of vacancies in RiNo. But landlords are still asking premium prices. Retail saw net negative absorption of 114K SF in the Denver metro in the fourth quarter. The glut of empty retail space is something the district is wrestling with full time, according to Alye Sharp, RiNo Art District executive director of programs and partnerships. ‘We pushed developers to include ground-floor retail, and now they’re sitting empty,’ Sharp said, echoing comments from River North Brewery’s Hess. ‘It’s a no-win situation.'”

Inside Halton in Canada. “The average price for a home in Oakville was $1.35 million in January 2025, according to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board. That’s down 3 per cent or $42,371 from December 2024 and down 6.8 per cent or $99,176 compared to January 2024. Detached houses averaged $1.85 million, down 9.6 per cent or $196,311 month-over-month and down 7.5 per cent or $151,054 year-over-year.”

Domain News in Australia. “Property prices have fallen by double digits since their peaks in a string of inner Melbourne suburbs amid soaring interest rates, creating better conditions for buyers and a weaker market for sellers. House values in Moorabbin recorded a fall of 20.3 per cent from its peak in March 2022, with the median house price down by $295,423, CoreLogic figures show. Once the coastal markets of the Mornington Peninsula are excluded, this was the steepest drop in Melbourne. Median home values were also down by 17.3 per cent since their peak in Flemington and Brunswick West, while Aberfeldie and Essendon North recorded falls of 16.9 per cent and 16.7 per cent, respectively. The median house in Caulfield North is now worth $450,642 less than the suburb’s peak in November 2021.”

“CoreLogic head of research Eliza Owen said the suburbs which have had the largest drops in home values were family oriented areas where properties have traditionally been more expensive. ‘They might be having to take out quite a bit of debt to buy into these areas,’ Owen said. ‘Caulfield North comes to mind, where the median house value, even at its discounted level, is $2.3 million. These areas might be more sensitive to interest rates for that reason as well.'”

“Director of property and buyers advocate at Entourage Finance Antoinette Sagaria said increased costs fuelled by mortgage stress, cost of living and land tax have affected household budgets. Buyer demand hasn’t been as strong as the COVID housing boom, when prices peaked and interest rates were low, she said, pushing home values lower. ‘People were making decisions very quickly … so they’re the ones that are likely to feel that financial pressure,’ she said.”

The Bangkok Post. “Launches of new residential supply in Greater Bangkok will decline for a third consecutive year in 2025, largely attributed to an increase in unsold units carried over from 2024, an uncertain economy and high household debt, according to Kasikorn Research Center. Despite a significant drop in new supply, the centre expects that the cumulative number of unsold units will not decline, likely exceeding 230,000 units – more than the total recorded at the end of 2023. ‘Thai people in the middle-to-lower income group have lost the ability to own a home due to economic conditions and rising living costs,’ said Prasert Taedullayasatit, president of the Thai Condominium Association. ‘Meanwhile, high interest rates have weakened purchasing power, and the loan-to-value policy has diminished homeownership opportunities.'”

“According to Mr Prasert, the third quarter of 2024 was the lowest point for the residential market, with presales in Greater Bangkok hitting a 13-year low — since the fourth quarter of 2011 during the great floods — of 59.5 billion baht. By price range, the largest year-on-year decrease in presales was in units priced below 3 million baht, which plunged 59%, followed by units priced between 3-5 million baht, down 55%. The year-on-year decrease in presales for units priced between 7-10 million baht stood at 33%, while there was a 24% decrease in presales for units priced between 5-7 million baht.”