In The Blink Of An Eye, Profitable Deals Turned Into Loss-Making Trades

A report from Market Watch. “The housing market is changing, and becoming a buyer’s market. Sellers haven’t quite accepted that yet. Real estate agents will often argue that the reason home prices are so high, is because there isn’t enough supply to meet demand. But if you ask a homebuilder, they might say the opposite, that they have too much new inventory and the tricks they’ve used to entice reluctant buyers are no longer working. Basically, sellers are still asking too much for their homes. ‘Sellers are acting like it’s a seller’s market, but it’s not,’ Redfin Chief Economist Daryl Fairweather told MarketWatch. ‘It’s getting closer to being a buyer’s market.’ The problem is the historically high incentives are no longer working. Basically, sellers have to make the homes more affordable to sell them. And since mortgage-rate discounts aren’t fueling the same demand that they used to, some builders have already turned to their last resort to move unsold homes, which is lowering prices.”

The Orlando Sentinel. “More than 75 condo unit owners conveyed two emotions — anger and frustration — to the South Florida Sun Sentinel, which in early February asked the public to describe how they were being affected by rising condo maintenance costs. Some owners are angry that monthly maintenance fees have doubled in recent years. ‘Seems like everyone is in the same boat here,’ said Henry Marcus, owner of a unit in Manor Grove Townhomes in Wilton Manors, about the financial difficulties many unit owners are facing. ‘It’s tragic, really. So many older folks had to put their units on the market. Florida is no longer for retirees or the middle class.'”

“But selling isn’t always easy, as untold unit owners are learning. Twenty-four hours after Nayara Silva listed her condo at Cypress Bend 2 in Pompano Beach for sale, she got an offer for her full asking price, she said. But then the lender told her late last year that it couldn’t finance a loan for her buyer, she said, because 20% of unit owners in her building were more than 60 days delinquent on special assessment payments. The delinquencies made the building ineligible for funding by mortgage loan underwriters Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, ‘regardless of down payment,’ the loan officer told her in an email obtained by the Sun Sentinel. He added, ‘Sorry for the bad news.'”

“Marcus said that Silva’s condominium is on the do-not-lend list, but the cited reason is ‘critical repairs (needed) or deferred maintenance.’ When reached by email and phone, a woman who answered the phone at the property manager’s office acknowledged receiving an email from the Sun Sentinel seeking clarification for why Silva’s buyer was turned down for a loan. ‘I’m not going to discuss any of that with you,’ she said. Silva said the couple decided to rent out the condo unit but are only breaking even because of the assessments and monthly fees. She’s hoping that outstanding issues can be corrected ‘so we can sell the property and get back what we invested.'”

The St. Lucie News-Tribune in Florida. “Q: There is concern for the high, and what we think is unreasonable, fees by our HOA. For example, the annual fees in 2023 that cover insurance and property care went from $2,750 to a $10,744 to cover 2024 and partial payment of 2025. It’s of big concern because most of us are seniors living on fixed income who are forced to be using money from our emergency fund to cover this. My question is what can we do to protect us from eventually going homeless?”

“A: I am sorry to hear this. Based on your question, I suspect that you own a unit in a condominium. Pursuant to the Florida Condominium Act, the association that operates your condominium is required to maintain property insurance for the condominium building based on its full replacement cost. With the cost of insurance skyrocketing across the state (over double, in some cases), it is likely that the drastic increase in assessments is directly tied to the high cost to insure the condominium building. For condominiums three stories or higher, this problem is further exacerbated by some of the new laws enacted after the Champlain Towers tragedy in Surfside, mandating certain inspections and reserves for structural components. Like yours, many condominium associations in Florida are being forced to significantly increase assessments to cover these expenses. Currently, there is no easy solution to this problem. Absent any viable solutions to decrease assessments and absent the luxury of time to wait and see, condominium unit owners may be forced to consider the option of selling their units.”

Cowboy State Daily. “Headlines across the nation are declaring Wyoming and Montana as having the fastest-selling real estate markets. But real estate agents and mortgage lenders in these markets offer a more nuanced and detailed look at what’s happening with home sales from the Canadian border to Cheyenne. In Montana, 15.6% of residential properties sat on the market for more than 30 days, according to the Zillow data, while in Alaska that number is 17.6% and in Wyoming it’s 18.24%. These percentages come in the aftermath of less rosy news revealed in a Redfin survey that found 71% of active real estate agents did not close on a single home sale in 2024.”

“‘It’s a matter of low inventory,’ said David Feitveit, a Realtor with PureWest Real Estate in Lakeside, Montana, who said his large, statewide firm is ‘finally seeing an uptick in listings.’ He identified homes in the $750,000 to $2 million range as ‘the dead zone right now.’ Broadly speaking, those homes are owned by would-be sellers who would like to upgrade or downsize, but can’t bring themselves to trade a 2% or 3% mortgage interest rate for one over 6%. ‘A lot of that stuff has dropped off the market,’ said Feitveit.”

“Montana might have the smallest percentage of homes remaining on the market past 30 days, but Ed Nissan, a loan officer with CrossCounty Mortgage in Whitefish, Montana said describing the market as ‘fast-selling’ doesn’t tell the whole story. In fact, in some ways, real estate transactions have slowed down from quick clicks on a computer to face-to-face meetings with aspiring borrowers. ‘Two years ago, there were over 400,000 loan officers in the country, and there’s now about 95,000 loan officers,’ said Nissen. ‘So, a lot of people have left the business.'”

Wall Street Journal on California. “In two Los Angeles neighborhoods where wildfires destroyed thousands of homes less than two months ago, the selling season is already well under way. More than 80 new listings of scorched plots in Pacific Palisades and Altadena have hit the market since the middle of February. Some are facing exorbitant out-of-pocket costs to rebuild, even with their insurance payouts. And the wait times could stretch for years while they are springing for temporary housing and paying off a mortgage. ‘There’s a daily cost to carry the property,’ said local real-estate agent, Richard Schulman. ‘So money today is better than money tomorrow.’ Schulman listed a Pacific Palisades lot eight days after the owner’s home burned down. He received more than 60 inquiries, primarily from small to midsize investors looking to either flip the 9,932 square-foot lot or rebuild the single-family home to sell at a profit.”

“The seller reached a deal with an investor for $1.2 million and is now moving to Santa Monica. That topped the asking price of $999,000, but it was likely 20% less than what the land, excluding the home structure, was worth pre-fires, according to Schulman. In Altadena, real-estate agent Tracey Kardash is setting asking prices at roughly 40% of what the property was valued at before the fires, which she sees as the land’s fair market value.”

Vancouver Sun in Canada. “Austin, Texas, is a booming tech industry hub often fondly name-checked by Vancouver’s mayor as a fun, vibrant city to emulate. The Greater Austin area has also, in recent years, seen a phenomenon that seems almost unthinkable to Vancouverites: while the city is growing, rents have been falling. Starting around 2020, Austin saw rapid population growth, quickly rising rents, and‚ with its liberal land-use policies and fast building permitting processes — a construction boom, Los Angeles-based urban planning expert Nolan Gray told a crowd of local real estate types Friday in Vancouver. ‘Because they allowed the flexibility, and they allowed housing markets to respond to demand. … Now, what do you know? Now the crisis has flipped, now the crisis is rents are falling too much. I can tell you, we would love to have a crisis like that in L.A.’ Last month, the Texas Tribune reported that rents in Austin had fallen for 19 consecutive months, with asking rents decreasing in nearly every part of the Texas capital’s metro area.”

The Daily Hive in Canada. “The rental market in Metro Vancouver saw a pronounced change last year. The region is known for its rapidly rising housing prices — and rental fees to match — but in 2024, things finally cooled off. Apartments are being listed at up to 10 per cent less than landlords were charging last year. Ravi Kahlon, B.C.’s Minister of Housing, has said publicly the levelling off of rental prices is a huge win amid the housing crisis. Rental prices for one-bedroom apartments are nearly the same as they were this time last year, according to its 2025 Rental Market Trend Report released Wednesday. One-bedrooms listed on its platform are less than one per cent more expensive now than 12 months ago — a significant change than the 10 per cent year-over-year price hike seen in 2023.”

“Certain neighbourhoods in Metro Vancouver saw steeper declines in rent prices than others. The West End and downtown core saw the most pronounced price declines over the last year. Richmond also saw softening rental prices as people left the city. There’s a mismatch in sentiment between landlords and tenants as well. Live.rent surveyed 350 individuals for its report, and two-thirds of the landlords reported not making a profit. Landlords say there’s weak interest, and it’s hard to cover expenses.”

From Bisnow. “On the whole, real estate got it wrong. In spring 2020, it seemed a safe bet that global investment volumes and values would fall off a cliff. That did indeed come to pass, but not in the way that anyone predicted at the time. In 2021, something no one predicted happened: Real estate investment had its best year ever. Even as much of the planet remained locked down, $1.3T of real estate was transacted across the globe, 21% more than the previous record in 2019, according to CBRE. Prior to the pandemic, central banks around the world were slowly unwinding the quantitative easing and interest rate cuts put in place after the Global Financial Crisis, which flooded the world with cheap money, brought interest rates to zero and made real estate an attractive investment for a decade.”

“But the response to the Covid-19 crisis was to slash rates back to zero and reinstitute QE. That made real estate an incredibly attractive buy again despite lockdowns and lingering worries about the coronavirus’ long-term impact. That helped stoke inflation in a way unprecedented since the 1970s, in tandem with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — more fallout no one foresaw in 2020. The word inflation didn’t appear in a Bisnow headline between June 2018 and January 2021. Until May of 2021, commentators were predicting that inflation would be a positive thing for CRE.”

“The truth was quite the opposite. Inflation rather than the pandemic itself was what brought about the destruction in values and volumes in commercial real estate. It meant central banks in countries like the U.S. and the UK were forced to raise interest rates at historically high speeds, moving from 0% to 5.5% in the 18 months between mid-2021 and 2023. That meant acquiring real estate was far less attractive than buying other types of assets like government or corporate bonds, which offered similar returns for far less risk. And the cost of borrowing was much higher than real estate cap rates, meaning the type of investor that normally borrowed to buy was paying more in interest than they were getting in rent.”

“In the blink of an eye, profitable deals turned into loss-making trades. Global volumes collapsed, falling by 37% in 2023, CBRE said. In 2024, that figure increased globally by 14%, according to JLL. Yet cities like London had a worse year in 2024 than even the lowest points of the GFC.”

The Bangkok Post. “Stephen Yao travelled from southern China’s Guangdong province to Thailand 32 times in 2017 and 2018 to help middle-class Chinese families invest in condominiums in Bangkok and Pattaya. But his wings have been clipped more recently as the boom in Chinese middle-class investment overseas has faded, with household wealth shrinking amid a sluggish economic recovery and a prolonged domestic real estate slump. ‘Most of the property agents have switched to other careers,’ Yao said. ‘How many middle-class investors are still earning what they were earning back then? They’re struggling with unemployment and domestic mortgage payments, while their overseas investments offer no relief.'”

“In the late 2010s, when the economy was growing rapidly, overseas real estate investment by middle-class Chinese surged, with the condominium markets in Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Japan attracting large numbers of Chinese buyers eager to diversify their investments and experience new lifestyles. Nowadays, Yao said, some of those who were unable to continue paying their mortgages had managed to recover about half their investment through legal channels. Others resorted to domestic consumer and business loans, but those who chose to hold on to their Thai properties were facing ‘sunk costs’ on assets that were not easy to liquidate.”

“‘The market for foreigners’ second homes in Thailand is limited,’ Yao said. “Besides, the bed and breakfast (B&B) market for Chinese tourists, the main source of income for such Chinese middle-class investors, has shrunk significantly due to the decline in the number of Chinese tourists and rising operating costs.’ Zhu Maowen, a freelance writer from Haikou, Hainan province, who bought properties in Bangkok, said the value of second-hand properties in Thailand had not appreciated significantly. ‘While rental returns can be about 5% or higher, the expenses of maintaining a property are much higher than originally expected,’ Zhu said.”

“Emma Jian was one of the many middle-class Chinese investors who flocked to Malaysia to buy property in 2017. ‘The project is still running, and units are still being sold,’ she said. ‘Although prices are still lower than when I bought mine [for around 20,000 yuan (93,500 baht) per square metre, they have improved from the lows of the past two years. I’ve given up on selling the condo because it’s hard to get non-Chinese buyers, and it’s not easy to rent it out. Now I use it as a holiday home, and no longer expect it to appreciate.'”