It’s Going To Cost People Their Homes, And Their Life Savings For Some Of Them

A report from Guru Focus. “Toll Brothers Inc reported first-quarter deliveries of 1,991 homes at an average price of $925,000, generating home sales revenues of $1.84 billion. There was a significant rise in inventory, particularly in construction in progress, raising concerns about potential oversupply. Q: How are you managing your spec inventory in light of the mixed spring selling season? A: Douglas Yearley, CEO: We are strategically timing our spec inventory to align with seasonality, focusing on the summer months when demand is higher. We have 3,200 spec homes at various stages of construction and are managing starts based on market conditions. Q: How are you handling incentives in your gross margin forecast? A: Douglas Yearley, CEO: We expect higher margins due to more luxury and spec homes in our mix. Incentives have decreased from $68,000 in Q4 2024 to $55,000 at the start of Q2 2025, but we may adjust them based on market conditions.”

From Bloomberg. “Wall Street’s pandemic gem faced a broad selloff Wednesday as fears of constrained homebuilders’ margins, bloated inventories and elevated mortgage rates rattle investor sentiment. Shares of all 18 members in the S&P Composite 1500 Homebuilding Index fell, sending the gauge to the lowest level since December 2023, after results from luxury homebuilder Toll Brothers Inc. and key construction data Wednesday indicated the residential real estate market may be in store for more turbulence. Analysts including Evercore ISI’s Stephen Kim see Toll’s elevated level of cheaper spec homes — built under the assumption a home will easily sell — as the main driver for the company’s lower-average selling price. But he views the guide for second-quarter gross margin as ‘encouraging.’ Still, Horne warns that while Toll maintained its guidance, it’s important to recognize that it’s ‘increasingly back-end loaded.'”

The Des Moines Register in Iowa. “Just six weeks from completing her one-year probation with the U.S Department of Agriculture in Ames, Kim Vore loved her work. But on Feb. 14, in what federal workers are now calling the ‘Valentine’s Day Massacre,’ Vore joined thousands of her counterparts who were suddenly out of a job. Vore was working with scientists researching bird flu in cattle, helping them present their findings. ‘I helped them with the artwork that they submit with their articles. So I was working on graphics work for that,’ she said. Now Vore, who is in the process of buying a new house and selling her old house in Ankeny, is faced with two mortgages and no job.”

From Fox News. “The Housing and Urban Development (HUD) headquarters in Washington, D.C., is among the federal buildings that turned desolate like an off-season ‘Spirit Halloween’ store as employees worked from home under the Biden administration and left offices relatively untouched since the first Trump administration, Fox News Digital has learned. Fox News Digital obtained a photo taken in the HUD office in 2025 that shows an employee’s business card tacked onto a white board. Administration officials confirmed to Fox Digital that the card was placed on the white board at the end of Trump’s first administration, and apparently remained untouched and in the same place until officials under the second Trump administration spotted it. Scott Turner, who was confirmed as the nation’s 19th HUD secretary earlier in February, added in a comment to Fox News Digital that ‘the four-year vacation’ under the Biden administration ‘is over.'”

“Costs for operating the 10-story building – which is styled in the popular minimalist Brutalist architecture of the 1950s – also come with lofty price tags. Fiscal year 2024 cost taxpayers $111,978,115 in combined rent and operating costs for the Weaver building, Fox Digital learned.”

The Tampa Bay Times. “Time is up for condo owners across Florida to meet safety guidelines passed in the wake of 2021’s deadly Champlain Towers collapse. The market took a nosedive in the lead up to that deadline as owners rushed to list their homes to avoid paying for newly mandated repairs. ‘I think you’re going to see bankruptcies, I think you’re going to see people losing their homes,’ said Jeff Brandes, a former state Senator who runs the Florida Policy Project, a nonprofit studying statewide issues including the condo crisis. Statewide, condo listings shot up nearly 43% in 2024, according to data from Florida Realtors. The number of homes sold remained flat and the median sales price fell about 4.5%.”

“Ultimately, the Legislature doesn’t have many good options to help struggling condo owners while prioritizing safety, Brandes said. ‘It is a bitter pill that gets us healthy,’ he said. ‘But it’s going to cost people their homes, and their life savings for some of them.'”

From NPR Local. “Faced with the threatened loss of his home insurance, lifelong Chappaquiddick resident Bob Fynbo spent $70,000 last year to fix his roof. He didn’t think it was in bad shape – and a building inspector wrote a letter saying as much – but his insurance company disagreed. ‘They still wouldn’t touch it,’ Fynbo said. ‘So I did all that. Everything they asked for. ‘It was a massive sum for the 65-year-old engineer, who operates a wifi tower in the tiny island community off Matha’s Vineyard that boasts about 250 year-round residents. But Fynbo’s mortgage requires that he maintain home insurance, and he figured that the repairs would keep his policy cost at the same annual rate of about $3,200, already double the average for Massachusetts homeowners.”

“But then, last spring, after paying for the new roof and spending another $30,000 for shingles on the outside of the house, the renewal notice arrived from his insurer. ‘When they came back with the quote of $11,900, it was like a gut punch,’ Fynbo said. ‘I just sat there and stared at it going, ‘Sorry, what?’ Fynbo, who bought his home 40 years ago for $86,000, said the best his agent could find was a bare-bones policy for almost $6,000 a year, double his previous premium.”

CBS Colorado. “Six years after moving into his brand new Colorado condo, Alvin Cooper learned he and many of his neighbors had six years of water damage under the floorboards. He says faulty construction was to blame. The builder disagreed. ‘Filed a suit because couldn’t get them to do the right thing, basically,’ Cooper said. Several years and thousands of dollars later, they settled. ‘We got money to pay for the major issues that a handful of units that were having the most problems. But there were definitely owners who didn’t get the best end of that deal,’ Cooper said.”

“They aren’t the only ones who lost out, says state Rep. Shannon Bird. ‘Right now, the way we deal with problems in a home is probably the most expensive way to deal with problems,’ Bird said. She says class action lawsuits involving condo owners have become so costly in Colorado, builders can no longer afford insurance and are pulling out of the state, leaving first time home buyers with few options. Bird says in 2008, condos made up 20% of new home starts in Colorado. Now they are under 5% and those that are available, she says, aren’t affordable because builders are paying anywhere from $3,000 to $30,000 more per unit in insurance.”

The Sacramento Bee in California. “Inspired by a now-shuttered Fair Oaks company, a new state bill aims to make it harder for Accessory Dwelling Unit building companies to ‘defraud’ homeowners. Assemblymember Marc Berman, D-Menlo Park, Tuesday introduced a bill that would limit the amount contractors can charge upfront for the construction of Accessory Dwelling Units, or ADUs, a news release from Berman’s office stated. It would also increase penalties for contractors who violate those protections. ‘California is in the midst of a severe housing crisis, and ADUs are a critical part of the overall effort to build more housing units,’ Berman said in the release. ‘Unfortunately, as demand for ADUs has grown, so too has exploitation of homeowners by unscrupulous contractors. AB 559 will ensure that homeowners are not scammed out of their life savings or left abandoned with unfinished ADUs.'”

“Homeowners across the country have sued Fair Oaks-based Anchored Tiny Homes in Sacramento Superior Court, including Oak Park retirees Kate Brolan and Sydney Brown. The pair in 2022 hired the company to construct an ADU in their backyard that they could rent out, their lawsuit filed in August alleged. After paying the company at least $344,000, their ADU has issues that would cost over $70,000 to repair, according the the lawsuit. A Facebook group called ‘Scammed by Anchored Tiny Homes’ has over 1,000 members. One of them is a Roseville homeowner who said she paid the company $40,000, never received her ADU, and only got $5,000 back, she told The Sacramento Bee in August. The company is now closed and filed for bankruptcy in October.”

The News Tribune. “The long-abandoned Tacoma Town Center development near the University of Washington-Tacoma campus has hit another debt-collection benchmark. The site, a portion of which is at the center of an ongoing contractor’s debt collection lawsuit, is now listed as ‘in foreclosure’ by Pierce County on the seven undeveloped parcels. The parcels’ delinquent property taxes total more than $600,000. Boise-based Galena Equity Partners took on the development via affiliated Tacoma Town Center Partners LLC in 2021 after original developer Bellevue-based North America Asset Management (NAAM) was unable to generate sufficient financing, including EB-5 investment. Plans for the multi-phased project called for hundreds of apartments, office and retail space, accompanying infrastructure and a public plaza, at a cost of more than $300 million. After preliminary work and various permit filings, Galena faced financial struggles in both Washington and Idaho, including a more-than $10 million judgment against it for breach of contract with NAAM.”

The Globe and Mail in Canada. “90 Sumach St., No. 304-305, Toronto. Asking price: $4,499,800 (September, 2024). Previous asking price: $4.5-million (April, 2024). Selling price: $3.8-million (December, 2024). Property days on market: 247. Agent Mikayla Rugala scoured the city last year to find her client a space that would meet a very demanding shopping lift: a loft with high-end finishes and more than 3,000 square feet of space. She found three contenders, among them, this three-bedroom loft in a former CBC prop house, which hit all the right notes – except price. The buyer balked at paying the asked-for $4.5-million and negotiations flatlined. But a few weeks later the sellers reinitiated discussions with the buyer to orchestrate a $3.8-million deal.”

“‘Our initial offer was at $3.7-million, and they countered back closer to the list price, so I kept sending long, in-depth e-mails with [sales] statistics, my own research, and explanation for everything,’ said Ms. Rugala. ‘The risk is always there that we might lose the unit, but I didn’t think it would sell overnight. Even as the deal died, I thought we had the upper hand.'”

From Coventry Live. “Managers of a Coventry student block say it is too empty and a change is needed to make sure it can stay open. Rooms in Manor Park Court will be rented to non-students if a temporary new use is approved. Erec Estates Limited say the plan is ‘necessary’ to make sure enough people are using the building to sustain the business. They have applied for all 79 units to have flexible use and say only rooms where they cannot find student tenants will be let out to other residents. A letter with plans said managers want to keep the block as student housing for the long term. They are seeking to rent out the rooms ‘in order to increase the occupancy rates and ensure the operation remains viable,’ it says. Oversupply is the ‘biggest issue’ affecting student demand in the city, the letter added. It pointed to other factors include Brexit and Covid which have caused international student numbers at UK universities to plummet.”

Interest New Zealand. “Construction giant Fletcher Building [FBU] has reported a bigger half-year loss of $134 million, versus $120 million a the same time a year ago. The company says in its report on NZX that ‘macroeconomic pressures are expected to persist and economic activity to remain subdued at below mid-cycle levels for the remainder of the financial year.’ Fletcher again won’t pay a dividend, having halted payments last year. The company has raised cash from shareholders in order to pay down debts. In the past 12 months the embattled construction giant has had a host of replacements of both directors and senior staff, including a new chairman (Peter Crowley) and new chief executive.”

“The Residential and Development division reported gross revenue of $240 million, a $111 million and a 32% reduction on the prior period. EBIT (earnings before interest and tax) for the division was $14 million, compared with $41 million in the prior period. CEO Andrew Reding said performance in the Residential and Development division ‘reflected the overall housing market in New Zealand,’ with 115 fewer units contracted and sold versus the prior period, with average market prices also down approximately 2% on the prior period.”

Domain News in Australia. “Sydney home owner Alex Armstrong says he and all his peers have been waiting and hoping for interest rates to start coming down this year. ‘Thank God for that,’ he said, after the Reserve Bank cut the cash rate by 0.25 per cent to 4.1 per cent on Tuesday. Even a small reduction in his mortgage will help his family. The small business owner in recruitment, 45, and his wife bought their three-bedroom-plus-study house in Allambie Heights in late 2019, upgrading from an apartment, and enjoyed lower interest rates at first. Once his repayments rose the family with two children at school became more stringent with their budget, cutting back on takeaway meals and smaller holidays.”

“They could not afford a turnkey house and instead opted for a home in need of renovation, planning to live in it for 12 months and then make upgrades. But their renovation was delayed and spare cash directed to a buffer for rate rises. Canstar data insights director Sally Tindall said stressed borrowers will take any savings they can and either pay it off their mortgage or bring it back into their household budget. ‘In the context of things, it’s literally a drop in the ocean, when you put it against how far the monthly mortgage repayments have risen,’ she said. ‘But borrowers that have been stretched to the nth degree know not to sneeze at a 2 per cent drop in their monthly repayment. Every single dollar counts at this point in time.'”

“Armstrong’s mortgage broker Anthony Landahl said borrowers had been cutting back discretionary spending, such as on dining out and gym memberships. Some had held off buying a new car or had been making decisions about what school to send their children to with their mortgage in mind, he said. He has watched higher repayments eat into clients’ significant savings buffers in offset and redraw accounts that they had built up during the lockdown years. ‘For some clients where they might have held an investment property as well, they’ve been forced to sell up an investment property,’ he said. ‘We haven’t had a lot of clients say, ‘I can’t afford my house any more.’”

From Macau Business. “Macau’s housing market continued its prolonged downturn in January, with home prices falling to the lowest level in more than 11 years, despite a slight uptick in the number of transactions driven by a surge in corporate buyers. The average home price in the city dropped to MOP71,917 (US$8,989.6) per square meter in January, marking a 9.7 percent decline from the previous month and a 17.5 percent decrease from a year earlier, according to the latest data from the Financial Services Bureau (DSF). This represents the lowest monthly average since August 2013, when home prices stood at MOP67,280 per square meter.”

“Peter Lok Wai Tak, chairman of the Macau Real Estate Development Association, warned earlier this month that home prices could fall another 8-11 per cent this year, citing global and local economic uncertainties, the slow recovery of small and medium-sized enterprises, and increasing consumer spending in mainland China instead of Macau. He projected that a market rebound would take at least ‘one and a half to two years.'”