There Was A Whole Group That Thought, Trees Do Go To The Sky And Rates Will Always Be Low

A report from DC News Now. “Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin is sharing some new resources, including touting tens of thousands of jobs he says are available right now. Fired workers, especially those with specific skill sets, said it won’t be easy finding a new job. ‘I would like him to tell me where I should get a job that will pay me what I was making, so I can pay my mortgage and stay in the state of Virginia and not have to move back to the Midwest, because I love it here,’ said Samantha Leach.”

Miami’s Community Newspapers in Florida. “As a local real estate expert and member of the Master Brokers Forum, I often am asked ‘How’s the market? First, closed sales during the 2024 calendar year hit their lowest level in 30 years. This, coupled with the fact that there are 70 million more Americans today than in 1995 should tell you that the market is incredibly SLOW. Slow, however, does not mean bad. It simply means that buyers are now driving the market and sellers need to be aware of how to market their home properly and be prepared for negotiation. Gone are the COVID-fueled contracts that had no inspection contingencies and over-asking price offers.”

“There is another large psychological factor that no one will admit to or discuss that is contributing to our slow real estate market. DRUMROLL PLEASE In the eyes of buyers, hiring a Realtor is no longer ‘free’. Until now, buyers believed their agents were working for FREE since they never had to pay them directly. Now, it feels ‘expensive’ to hire a professional. Instead of the commission essentially coming from the proceeds of a 30-year mortgage, they are paid in full at closing. When this all went down, media outlets wrote ‘interesting’ headlines. CNN stated ‘real estate commissions have been baked into a home’s listing price, inflating home prices for years.’ As of 2/12/25, there were 159 properties for sale in Pinecrest, 15 homes pending sale and 13.25 months of inventory (buyer’s market).”

Sarasota Magazine in Florida. “The Sarasota and Manatee housing markets began 2025 with rising inventory, longer sales timelines and declining prices—once again signaling a shift toward more favorable conditions for buyers. Hailey Kendall, a realtor with William Raveis, attributes the inventory growth to multiple factors. ‘Sellers who’ve been holding off are testing the waters,’ Kendall says. ‘Buyers just aren’t entering the market with the same confidence. The influx of new construction is also adding thousands of units to the inventory. It’s tough to sell an older condo when new construction is popping up everywhere. Buyers not only have more options to choose from, they can extend the closing date and ask for more time for due diligence periods, where they might uncover other points they can add to negotiations.'”

“Outside of Manatee County’s single-family homes sector, which remains balanced, all other sectors have tipped into buyer’s market territory. ‘With so many options, prices are under pressure,’ Kendall said. ‘In Venice, new homes that were listed around $1.5 million last year are now in the $800,000s. Buyers are motivated by the opportunity to get what they couldn’t a year ago.’ Foreclosures remain low but have increased in the single-family sector, too. The North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota metro area recorded 11 single-family home foreclosures in January, up from 5 the previous year. Sarasota County’s condo sales grew 15.8 percent, to 242 transactions, though the median price dropped 17.4 percent, to $347,000. In Manatee County, sales fell 7 percent, to 172 units, with a 6.1 percent price dip to $335,990. Sarasota’s single-family median price slipped 1 percent, to $529,750, while Manatee’s declined 8.6 percent, to $480,000.”

Times of San Diego in California. “Adam Hardesty insists he wanted to do everything by the book. Before moving forward with his plans to convert the garage of his three-story condo into a ground-floor apartment, he canvassed local architects and engineers to make sure a kitchenette, a bedroom and a bathroom could all be packed safely and legally into just 417 square feet. He pored over local zoning maps, checked with the city of Carlsbad and got himself a building permit. An unemployed project manager who has struggled to find work for more than a year, Hardesty had the time to do the research, the training to conduct it thoroughly and the financial rationale to turn his garage into a rental. ‘To help offset the housing crisis and also provide affordable housing, but also to provide a revenue source for my family — why not?’ he said.”

“What he didn’t count on was opposition from his own homeowners association — if only because he’s also the HOA board vice president. Homeowners Association, board member Mike Cartabianco suggested that Hardesty consider ‘scaling down’ the project, perhaps by removing the kitchenette, or by drawing upon the equity in his condo to meet his financial needs. Hardesty persisted, sending a letter of intent to the entire board. Official opposition soon followed. Hardesty, who is still without a steady job and claims to have already spent upward of $8,000 of his savings on the project, said he didn’t have deep enough pockets to keep paying Marco Gonzalez, an environmental and land use lawyer whom Hardesty hired. For now, he is focused on construction. This month, he broke ground and began gutting his garage — without the HOA’s permission or apparent knowledge.”

“Jeanne Grove, a real-estate lawyer with the law firm Nixon Peabody who regularly represents HOAs, said the legal question is ‘really muddy for homeowners associations’ and that it’s not always clear where their contractual responsibilities to enforce their own rules end and state housing law begins. Gonzalez, Hardesty’s former lawyer, said he isn’t surprised by the association’s position. ‘HOA attorneys are pre-programmed to say ‘no,’ he said.”

Silicon Valley in California. “New data out this week shows the number of homes for sale in the Bay Area last month started to approach pre-pandemic levels, a sign that buyers could have more options this year. This was the best January for the number of active listings in the region since 2019, according to numbers from Realtor.com. A total of 4,142 homes were listed across San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties last month, up 23% from a year earlier.”

“House-hunter Maggie Mutchler-Brown, 38, put it bluntly. ‘It sucks right now,’ she said while house-hunting in mid-January. High rates forced her and her partner to shrink their budget, to between $400,000 and $600,000. Even within that price range, they said they found several options around Emeryville and Oakland. Earlier this month, they put in an offer on a $460,000 newly built condo with two bedrooms and two baths in West Oakland. The only downside is the interest rate on their mortgage, which came in at just under 7%. ‘But rates have got to come down in the next few years, and we can always refinance,’ Mutchler-Brown said.”

Multi-Housing News. “Read Investments has acquired Higby, a 98-unit community in Berkeley, Calif., for $32 million, SilliconValley reported. Ullico previously owned the asset, Yardi Matrix shows. The insurance company gained control of the property in August 2024, after The Green Cities Co. provided a deed in lieu of foreclosure on a debt of $34.5 million held by Ullico, the data provider reveals. Troubled debt isn’t new to Greater San Francisco. The tail end of 2023 witnessed what was then the largest portfolio deal in more than a decade when Brookfield foreclosed on Veritas’ 2,150-unit collection, purchasing it for $464 million. Veritas’ loans on the properties had been valued at $900 million before it went into default.”

Bisnow Atlanta in Georgia. “Norman Radow is dusting off his 2009 playbook. His multifamily developer and investment firm, The Radco Cos., has launched a third-party platform to turn around struggling apartments for lenders and equity owners staring down the potential for steep losses, Radow said on a Bisnow panel last week. Radco Property Solutions launched in January, a similar effort to Radco’s business during the Great Recession when the firm helped work out and sell properties held by Lehman Brothers after its collapse. That process, largely untying tranches of debt that complicated and held up asset sales, ended in 2012 and Radco returned to focusing on apartment investments. But with interest rates still elevated and distress levels on the rise, the time is right to jump back in, Radow said.”

“‘What we’re finding is that many lenders and equity shops, they know their properties are in distress, they know their sponsors need to get replaced, but they’re not ready to sell the assets at a loss,’ Radow told Bisnow in a post-event interview. Radow said the lack of CRE recession experience provides opportunities for veteran firms like his to step in and steer troubled assets to safety. But the landscape compared to past downturns is quite different. ‘Interest rates go sky high. Rents just collapsed. Occupancies go wide. Then you can’t evict people, delinquencies are sky high, numbers no one’s ever seen before. Insurance rates are quadrupled,’ he said. ‘No one has seen these issues.'”

“Steve Baile, chief operating officer of Selig Enterprises, said capital has a habit of getting ‘frothy’ when interest rates are low, funding new developments without really considering if there’s is a fundamental need, as it did during the subprime crisis. ‘When that stuff starts to happen, you start to see stuff in places that shouldn’t be built,’ Baile said. ‘That means the capital is outweighing demand, and someone’s going to bust.’ For Jamestown’s younger employees, this is new and frightening ground, said Chief Investment Officer Tim Perry. ‘This was sort of their first recession. There was a whole group that thought, ‘Trees do go to the sky and rates will always be low,’ Perry said. ‘Whether it’s investors or lenders or whatever, [in the] last few years, it’s really matured a generation of business that didn’t have those battle wounds yet, those scars to show.'”

The Globe and Mail. “More Ontario homeowners are missing their mortgage payments, according to new data, which suggests they are struggling with higher rates when they renew their loans. Equifax found that homeowners with more than 11,000 mortgages in Ontario recorded a missed payment in the fourth quarter, foreshadowing an increase in the 90-day delinquency rate this year. The credit reporting agency said mortgage holders who are falling behind in their payments are also carrying large mortgage balances. ‘Our numbers are telling us that there are more consumers struggling,’ said Rebecca Oakes, vice-president of advanced analytics at Equifax Canada. ‘We are not seeing delinquency rates slowing. There are more consumers with higher balances that will see a bigger increase in payments.'”

“During the 2020 to early 2022 period, demand for residential real estate boomed because mortgages were so cheap. The increased competition sent home prices soaring. In Ontario, the typical home price jumped more than 70 per cent to a peak of $1,070,400 in early 2022. Home prices have since declined, but the typical home price is still nearly 40 per cent higher than in early 2020. Because buyers overextended themselves during the pandemic years, homeowners with relatively larger mortgages are facing higher monthly payments. The mortgage pain is expected to get worse this year. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. estimates that more than one million fixed-rate mortgages across the country are up for renewal in 2025.”

Cornwall Live in the UK. “The ongoing saga of a huge purple student flats block – which was abandoned three years ago without anyone ever living in its 528 units – appears to be getting worse. Neighbours of the Studytel building in Penryn say they are ‘fed up to the back teeth’ of the eyesore and want it demolished after bits of insulation and purple cladding have started landing in their gardens. Sondica, the company behind Studytel, says that work was halted due to the contractor going bust and that the huge block’s entire frame will now have to be replaced due to new changes in building regulations. There seems to have been little if anything done to the building since then and it has fallen into a shocking state of disrepair. One neighbour, who didn’t want to be named or photographed, said: ‘It’s disgusting – everybody here thinks it’s the biggest eyesore going. We all believe it should come down down as it’s basically falling apart.'”

The Courier Mail in Australia. “Flying solo can hurt the hip pocket at the best of times, but it can be even more costly when you’re in the market — for a home. Half of Millie Brandon’s weekly income is about to go towards paying the mortgage on a two-bedroom unit, but the fiercely independent young woman is ready for it. ‘The rent in Brisbane’s pretty high anyway,’ Miss Brandon said. ‘When I was renting, I was paying $275 a week in rent, plus putting away $500 a week. This is almost the same as that and that was on a lower wage, so I know I can do it.’ The 27-year-old just bought her first property in Annerley after moving back in with her parents to save enough money for a 10 per cent deposit on a loan.”

“She earns $1250 a week after tax and will spend $670 a week on mortgage repayments. ‘There will be no new clothes, even though that’s what I love buying!’ she said. ‘With the second room, because of the new laws, as a first homebuyer, I can rent that out if I was starting to struggle, but I’m actually more than happy to just sacrifice material things to be in the market.’ Miss Brandon said she felt being single was a disadvantage when it came to the property market because the banks only considered one income when it came to assessing a customer for a loan. Ironically, Miss Brandon recently entered into a relationship, but she’s not thinking about the potential financial benefits of moving in with someone just yet. ‘He’s got four of his own mortgages to pay, so we’ll see!’ she said.”