I Almost Feel Helpless, There’s No Showing, There’s No Offers

It’s Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. “Axed workers among the thousands fired by DOGE say they can’t afford necessities, travel and health care. The workers filed affidavits as part of a multi-state lawsuit. ‘I have had to cut back on healthcare costs and discretionary spending. I am pushing off the new purchase of new contact lenses and not booking overnight travel for my kids’ weekend soccer tournaments in nearby San Diego and Orange counties. I am having to give serious thought to budgeting since unemployment benefits cannot cover the cost of my mortgage,’ said a California employee fired from the FDIC. One Education Department employee got ‘no reason for my termination’ from the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services. ‘I am in the process of building a new house in Maryland and if I do not find a new job soon, I may not get approved for my mortgage or be able to afford mortgage payments,’ said the ex-worker. A Minnesota worker at the Small Business Administration got fired even after ‘positive reviews’ during performance appraisals. ‘This was my dream job.'”

“A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employee in Delaware is no longer able to take in the ambiance of the local bar. ‘I am unable to contribute to local restaurants and businesses that I regularly patronize,’ said the worker, who focuses on groceries and a mortgage.”

“It’s been nearly three years since flames ripped through a condominium complex in northwest suburban Park Ridge. Since then, unit owners have continued to pay mortgages, homeowner association fees, insurance and more, even as the property’s reconstruction has stalled. ‘It was pretty much a total loss,’ condo owner Bonnie Lennon said. There were no serious injuries. The cause was determined to be accidental. Owners hoped for a quick rebuild. But only the roof and windows have been installed. ‘We have been told there is a gap between…how much the restoration company wants to charge and how much the insurance company believes they need to pay,’ owner Noreen Reilly said. Owners say they’ve been told the two sides are millions of dollars apart. ‘There’s no end in sight,’ Reilly said. ‘We don’t know.'”

“Real estate experts we interviewed say they’re not surprised. ‘Often times, there’s a delta between the cost to rebuild and what the insurance company is willing to pay,’ said Aaron Stanton, an attorney at law firm Burke, Warren, MacKay & Serritella P.C., and an expert on real estate and construction.”

“A Union County woman says a dispute with her Homeowners Association (HOA) over a few hundred dollars in unpaid dues cost her family their home. Taylor Sanders was living in Weddington Hills in 2020. She admits she owed dues to her HOA. According to HOA records, she owned $400. The HOA sent her multiple letters, but she told Action 9 investigator Jason Stoogenke she never received them. Then things snowballed. In February 2021, the board got a lien on her property. Then in April, it sent her a letter, saying she owed about $1,200 and that it was going to start foreclosure proceedings.”

“‘I thought it was a joke,’ she said. It wasn’t. According to county records, her 3,300-square-foot home sold for $49,000. She says just like that, it was gone. ‘Oh my God. It’s devastating for my children,’ she said. ‘I don’t wish this on anyone.’ Records show the person who bought the house turned around and sold it five months later for $850,000.”

“A newly built multimillion-dollar estate in Naples is headed for auction. After struggling to find a buyer the traditional way, the seller has decided to offer the 6,000-plus square foot home up to the highest bidder. The residence, with six bedrooms and nine bathrooms, in The Moorings, is listed for $13.9 million. It’s been on the market for nearly a year, with a lot of lookers, but no takers. In a buyer’s market, that’s often the case. ‘Buyers have not been making offers. They have been touring the property, just not making offers. There is still a lot of inventory out there,’ said Randy Haddaway, CEO of Elite Auctions. His company, based in Naples, is handling the auction. As usual, it’s without reserve, meaning the sellers don’t have a minimum price.”

“When wintertime calls, go where it’s warm. More than one million Canadians do just that every year, including heading south to the U.S., most often to Florida. Dorothy Chabot and her husband were among them. The London, Ont. snowbirds have travelled to the Sunshine State for the past 15 years, owning a condo in Port Charlotte and more recently renting at a 55-plus community southwest of Orlando. Chabot said a number of her neighbours were supportive, but recalled a frustrating interaction with one who gleefully told her, ‘Oh Dorothy, can’t you just wait ’til you’re our 51st state?’ What [Trump] has said about our country … These are our people. We love our people. We love our country. We’re not going back.'”

“It appears Chabot isn’t alone. Alexandra DuPont, a Fort Lauderdale Realtor who frequently works with Canadian snowbirds, said 36 listed condos with her. ‘I’ve never had this many listings in my life,’ said DuPont, herself a Canadian expat. At this time of year, she would normally have 10 to 15. ‘Buyers? I think I have one’ from Canada, she said. She wonders whether some were already thinking of selling over the weak loonie compared to the U.S. dollar, and pulled the trigger because of Trump’s threats. ‘A lot of my clients … they’ll email me, text me, call me. They want weekly updates. I almost feel helpless. There’s no update, there’s no showing, there’s no offers.’ More home purchases in the U.S. are done by Canadians than any other country — 13 per cent from April 2023 to March 2024, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) says. Half of all Canadian purchases were vacation homes, and roughly 41 per cent of sales were in Florida.”

“Buying a home in the Treasure Valley has been a challenging endeavor since the coronavirus pandemic, with prices spiking, a general lack of availability, and out-of-state buyers flooding the market with cash. However, Michael and Payton Heiser, a local couple, entered the market for their first home late last year and found a surprising outcome. ‘We got married in April of last year. We want to start a family. We figured the next step was to own a house before we start having kids,’ said Michael Heiser. The Heisers, aged 28 and 25, admitted they knew little about purchasing real estate but credited their connection to their realtor for helping them. Unexpectedly, they found options in price ranges and styles of homes. Through their realtor, they connected with lenders, found a home, placed an offer, and got accepted, all within a few months. For the Heisers, the experience was a welcome surprise, resulting in a new home to start their future at a price they never expected.”

“Jared Cook, an economist and real estate specialist at Zions Bank, said over 70 percent of the bank’s new home loans last year were to first-time homebuyers. ‘I think rents have gone up substantially, and so really your overall housing cost is elevated compared to what our parents paid,’ said Cook. ‘But sellers are really willing to negotiate right now, and so are builders. They’re giving away a lot of incentives to buy.'”

“Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes filed a lawsuit last week accusing multiple individuals and companies of engaging in an organized real estate scam. The defendants allegedly conspired to defraud homeowners facing foreclosure by using deceptive tactics to acquire properties far below market value. The fraudulent activity stripped vulnerable homeowners of millions of dollars in equity, according to the lawsuit filed Friday in Maricopa County Superior Court. ‘This scheme relied on an entire ecosystem of supposedly legitimate businesses to put a veneer of legality on blatant consumer fraud,’ Mayes said in a press release. ‘Title companies and law firms knew what they were doing, but they kept going because this scam generated millions of dollars — and they wanted their share.'”

“A string of high-profile bankruptcies accelerated store closures last year and are only expected to escalate further in the coming months. That has put debt servicers on high alert. At least $8.7B of CMBS loans are backed by properties where bankrupt retailers have decided to terminate their leases over the past year, according to a Bisnow analysis of reports by KBRA Credit Profile. ‘The debt is going to be bought for pennies on the dollar, the assets are going to be devalued, which sucks for everybody,’ said Lanné Bennett, a retail real estate broker and consultant in Los Angeles. ‘The banks are trying to work it out as much as they can, but it always gets to that breaking point. I get that call. It’s going to servicing. They’re just like, ‘Submit the best deal you can. Maybe we’ll see if we get the bank to approve it.’”

“More than a dozen times since 2008 the city of Syracuse has taken Brooklyn-based landlord Mendy Kletzky to court over the condition of his rental properties. Mayor Ben Walsh said he hopes that a lawsuit filed by the city on Monday will be the final battle. The lawsuit’s aim is to ‘rid the city of Mr. Kletzky once and for all,’ Walsh said. ‘This man has left a trail of destruction and despair everywhere he’s gone in the city of Syracuse, and he’s done it at a scale unlike anyone that we’ve seen in recent history.’ Corporation Counsel Susan Katzoff said Kletzky has not complied with orders to pay for the demolitions. ‘He puts no money into them. He wrings out whatever rent he can … and then walks away and leaves the city holding the bag to deal with demolition costs. So we can roll those onto taxes, but he doesn’t pay his taxes,’ Katzoff said.”

“With lots of properties for sale, little competition and falling mortgage rates, now is a golden opportunity for young Canadians who feel secure in their jobs to purchase a house. But the sluggish condo market is throwing a wrench into the plans of even those lucky few would-be homebuyers. ‘People feel like they just can’t upsize,’ said John Pasalis, president and broker of record at Realosophy Realty in Toronto. In some cases, the problem is that sellers are pricing too high, he said. The value of a typical condo in the Toronto region in January was 18 per cent below the peak reached in April of 2022, according to data from the Canadian Real Estate Association. But even condo owners who’ve priced their units competitively sometimes struggle to find buyers, he added. For those who can’t wait to upsize, one solution is to rent, rather than buy, a larger home while renting out their condo, Mr. Pasalis said. ‘We had a client who couldn’t sell their condo. They had a kid, they needed to do something, so they just decided to rent a house,’ he said.”

“Sales activity in Newmarket saw a month-to-month bump in February, going from 35 sales to 63 in February. Jeffrey Graves, a sales representative with Royal LePage Your Community Realty, said Newmarket ‘tends to be its own market’ when compared to Aurora, with the sales increase potentially due to the town’s price’s being a little more ‘buyer-friendly.’ The average price of a house sold in Aurora dropped by more than $300,000 in February compared to the previous month, according to the latest numbers from the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board. The average price dropped from $1,501,173 in January to $1,147,807 in February. There was both a dramatic drop month-to-month and when comparing with this time last year, when the average price was $1,454,030. The median price was also down markedly, from $1,235,000 in January to $1,070,000 this past month. That’s also lower than the median from February 2024, which was $1,313,500.”

“Of those sales, 16 were detached homes, with six condo townhouses and four condo apartment units sold in February. Those 16 detached homes went for an average price of $1,369,587 this past month, versus an average of $1,758,975 across 44 sold detached homes in February 2024. The median was also down significantly, at $1,377,500 compared to $1,607,500.”

“It would appear that Cornwall is witnessing a decline in tourists as Brits are reportedly ‘abandoning’ the county for holidays abroad. Commenter Janet Smith thinks: ‘It’s not surprising really. Holiday home owners got very greedy with their charges, it’s expensive to eat out and it rains all the time. I live here but understand why people would go abroad.’ Alan Parsons agrees: ‘I moved to Cornwall three years ago, but I have recently left and moved back to Somerset. Why? Cornwall is just too crowded and too expensive. Parking charges are a rip off, as are cafe prices. Many good, useful shops closed down and turned into galleries. Most shops are now seasonal, meaning ghost towns in winter. In summer it is too crowded. I had enough and moved away from the land of second homes and tourist industries. Too many greedy people in Cornwall now.’ Sue Jones disagrees: ‘It’s karma, Cornwall is overpriced, overcrowded, there is a lack of dog-free areas/accommodation, it’s a parking nightmare with congested roads, attractions closing, so not much left. Greed has killed what was once a thriving business.'”

“New Zealand‘s housing market might have turned a corner, but it is still a tough time to be a seller. While activity and prices are picking up, there is large amount of stock on the market, and it is keeping a lid on prices. In January, there were 3774 sales nation-wide and 8904 new listings. The number of available houses for sale was up almost 19 percent on a year earlier. Real estate salesperson Brooke Gibson said auctions were a way to focus buyer interest. ‘If you’re a vendor and you want to sell you need urgency, you need to feed the buyers’ greed, and play that whole ‘you can get a bargain.’ She said she had sold two properties at auction last week for more than their council valuations.”

“Significant discounts on completed unsold inventory of Bangkok condos will be required to attract prospective buyers and investors, as developers grapple with mounting pressure from loans totalling over 156 billion baht, due for repayment this year. Frank Khan, executive director and department head of residential at property consultancy Knight Frank Thailand, said 2025 will be even more challenging for Bangkok’s condo market than last year. ‘What we will see is an influx of unsold inventory entering the market,’ he said. ‘Developers will lower prices and offer more promotions. Like last year, it will remain a buyer’s market. This year, investors will be more aggressive in the market because inventory from developers will be released with significant discounts. The entire year will be like this,’ Mr Khan predicted.'”

“According to Prasert Taedullayasatit, president of the Thai Condominium Association, the total value of newly completed condo supply in Greater Bangkok reached 178.4 billion baht last year, and is projected to reach 140.6 billion baht in 2025. Of that amount, a significant portion remained unsold. Additionally, among the sold units, not all will be transferred to buyers due to stricter mortgage lending rules imposed by banks amid a high level of household debt. ‘The market’s ability to absorb this surplus remains uncertain,’ Mr Prasert said earlier this year. ‘Developers, eager to generate revenue, are grappling with limited demand and challenges in issuing new debentures to refinance maturing ones.'”