It’s All The Stages Of Grief — Anger, Resentment, Denial — Everything

A report from CBS Minnesota. “A Minnesota man who was fired from his federal job as part of President Trump’s federal layoffs should get his job back because of a new federal court order. Chris Wicker is one of those employees who could go back to work as soon as Monday. Wicker, a six-year Air Force veteran, was fired last month from his job as Deputy Director of the Small Business Administration in Minneapolis. ‘Nobody has been in contact with me. It’s my understanding they have until noon central on Monday to reinstate me, but what that means — I don’t know,’ Wicker said. Wicker joined a class action lawsuit that argued the layoffs are invalid under federal law because there was no cause given, no notice and no severance. ‘One of the biggest concerns for me, personally, is the colleagues I have had here,’ he said. Wicker says co-workers are also devastated and some are in rough financial shape, not knowing how they will pay mortgages and other bills.”

Wall Street Journal. “Condominium owners across the country are facing a paralyzing problem: They can’t sell their properties because of a fast-growing and mostly secret mortgage blacklist. Real-estate agent Paul Gangi was days away from closing a sale of his listing in Shadow Ridge, a 440-unit townhouse and condo complex in Ventura County, Calif., in December. That is when his phone rang. ‘I got a panicked call from the lender saying, ‘Sorry, we’ve just found out Shadow Ridge has been blacklisted,’ he said. The buyer tried several other options for getting a loan, without success, and the sale collapsed. Its homeowner’s association was recently quoted $2.6 million a year for a Fannie-compliant policy, 10 times the current rate, according to Jinah Kim, one of the board members. ‘The timing of the blacklisting is horrific,’ she said. ‘Even though we were spared in the fires, we now don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting affordable insurance.'”

“The blacklist is maintained by Fannie Mae and includes condo associations that the mortgage finance giant thinks don’t have adequate property insurance or need to make critical building repairs. Florida has more than 1,400 developments blacklisted. The next four states featuring heavily on the blacklist—California, Colorado, Hawaii and Texas—are prone to natural disasters and restrictive insurance policies. After Robert Cenzon listed his two-bedroom condo in Dallas for sale last year, he learned that his neighbor’s sale had fallen through and that the neighbor had ended up selling the unit for cash at a lower price. Cenzon’s unit sat on the market for months, and he cut the price from $239,000 to $170,000.”

“He accepted an offer at that price, but the buyer’s mortgage was denied because the condo association’s insurance policy didn’t provide replacement cost value for some amenities, including the pool, Cenzon said. The association told him that it could buy additional insurance but that Cenzon would need to cover the cost, he said. Instead, the buyer found another lender that was willing to make the loan. ‘I just got lucky’ that the sale went through, Cenzon said. ‘Otherwise, I think I’d probably still be stuck with that place.'”

From CBS News. “A new condo safety bill looks to shore up safety, but it comes at a cost. A Florida House panel has advanced legislation that allows condo boards to borrow money without member consent. ‘Assessments have been tough to handle,’ shared Brickell condo owner Julian Donado. Donado told CBS News Miami he never imagined paying so much to live in Brickell by the Bay when he purchased his condo in 2019. ‘I did the math at the time,’ explained Donado. ‘My mortgage was actually going to be cheaper. Now, not by a long shot, a lot more expensive.’ And now, a new financial cliff could await him and others. Condo owners told CBS News Miami they’re trying to keep up with the changing laws and the cost that comes with it. ‘It’s just a lot of money to keep up with all the repairs to meet the state requirements, really just trying to get ahead,’ said a Brickell condo owner who goes by Kurd. ‘I just wish that it happened a little bit sooner, probably before I bought in and I had a little bit more of an idea of what I was buying into,’ added Donado.”

From KTAR News. “A Phoenix insurance producer was ordered to pay $1,411,950 in restitution for scamming several real estate investors via a ‘Ponzi scheme,’ according to the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC). Gregory Patrick Talbot was caught offering ‘alternative’ investment options to potential investors which he claimed were ‘sound and proven,’ according to initial court documents filed in December 2022. A key option discovered by the ACC was connected to a Ponzi scheme-ridden company named Woodbridge. The ACC said Talbot had offered these false investments since at least July 2016. These investments were controlled by Florida-based company, EquiAlt, LLC., and potential investors were advised EquiAlt was ‘raising capital to purchase, improve, lease and dispose of distressed real property,’ according to a press release.”

“Through its case investigation, the ACC discovered EquiAlt was also operating a Ponzi scheme, and nationwide at that. At the end of Talbot’s scheme in February 2020, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) confirmed suspicions of EquiAlt’s Ponzi scheming by filing a complaint that alleged the company had raised over $170 million by fooling more than 1,100 investors.”

Wall Street Journal on California. “The wildfires that devastated Pacific Palisades, Malibu and Altadena in January created an especially tricky challenge for real-estate agents. Ruslan Shkurenko, an agent with Carolwood Estates, has a two-bedroom, 1,708-square-foot listing in the Pacific Palisades that is for sale for $2.35 million. The marketing touts it as being located in ‘one of Los Angeles’s most desirable neighborhoods,’ but that language will have to change, he says. The house was only partially damaged, but it is surrounded by rubble, he says. With the construction traffic that will inevitably come over the next few years, he says ‘it will be difficult. Everything is completely burnt down.’ The seller wants to keep the house on the market, which means Shkurenko will have to figure out the appropriate price. He says he hasn’t heard from any buyers in the Palisades right now, except for bargain hunters who have called offering $400,000 for the property.”

“In the Portuguese Bend Beach Club neighborhood of Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., one of the most impacted areas of continuing landslides on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, the marketing blurb for a $2.599 million, two-bedroom, 1,159-square-foot home starts with ‘Location, location, location.’ However, the listing fails to mention that much of the neighborhood currently has no power or gas service, since it was cut off for safety reasons by the utility companies last year. The house will be sold ‘as-is’ but it is unclear if it has had power and gas restored and the listing agent declined to comment.”

“Nearby, in an area of Rolling Hills where the risk of land movement also prompted a shutoff of gas and power to some of the homes, a four-bedroom, 3,165-square-foot house that is listed for $3 million is touted as an ‘opportunity to go completely off Grid and Green.’ After sitting on the market since June, the price was lowered by around $1 million from its original listing price of $4.15 million. It is currently in contingency, which means certain terms must be satisfied before the deal can close.”

From Bisnow. “The race to slash the federal government’s real estate footprint has created a bewildering gauntlet for brokers and landlords that work with agencies. Lurching along for weeks, the effort has resulted in stalled negotiations, stymied commissions and panicked owners. In the past, individual agencies have handled their own spaces, according to Arco Real Estate Solutions principal Chad Becker. ‘Now, it’s GSA looking at the lease portfolio and saying, ‘We don’t think you need this space, therefore we’re going to send out a termination notice, and you, the agency, have X number of days to vacate.’ So it’s GSA, essentially, that’s driving the decision to terminate space based on perceived inefficiencies in the lease portfolio,’ he said.”

“With an estimated $12B in CMBS debt threatened by the cuts, landlords already coping with a historically difficult market are feeling the strain. ‘It puts more pressure on owners too. I mean, owners are completely freaking out because they’re hearing about this,’ the federal leasing specialist told Bisnow. From spring 2020 to January 2025, the demand for federal lease space declined, said Norman Dong, former head of the Public Buildings Service who now works as a broker specializing in federal government leases. ‘What that meant was that you had fewer and smaller lease transactions and if you work on a commission basis, you can do the math, right?’ he said. ‘Sometimes you would have leases that were renewed at 50%, sometimes you wouldn’t have leases renewed at all. They just simply let the lease terminate.'”

CBC News in Canada. “Being a headliner on the TV series Hustlers Gamblers Crooks was never a goal of Lana McKenzie’s. Nevertheless, that’s where the Courtenay, B.C., mom found herself last year, sharing a nightmare story of being conned out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by notorious B.C. Ponzi schemer Greg Martel. McKenzie says she lost $330,000 to Martel’s swindle. Between 2018 and 2023, Martel took in $301 million from investors and paid out $210 million, according to court-appointed receiver and bankruptcy trustee PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). They say he blew the remaining $91 million on options trading losses, other failing business ventures, and to pay for his extravagant lifestyle. Martel disappeared in 2023 amid lawsuits brought by angry investors wanting their money back.”

“Earlier this week, lawyers and investors lined up to make submissions to B.C. Supreme Court Justice Shelley Fitzpatrick as bankruptcy proceedings for Martel and his bogus company, My Mortgage Auction Corp., move into the clawback phase. A total of 480 so-called ‘winner’ investors and 81 ‘preferred’ investors who profited from the scheme are being ordered to pay all gains minus their original investment into a bankruptcy pool. Many of those facing clawbacks say they dispute PwC’s calculations, including Quadra Island resident Damian Richards, who is cited as owing $22,375.52. ‘We lost our nest egg,’ he said. ‘I’ve paid tens of thousands of dollars in taxes on money I never made. It’s been really tough to suffer a loss like that. It’s all the stages of grief — anger, resentment, denial — everything.'”

The Evening Standard. “Across Britain, the average price of a home coming on the market this month is £371,870, according to a property portal. While new spring buyers will not beat the stamp duty deadline, they will benefit from the highest property choice at this time of year for a decade, Rightmove said. Colleen Babcock, a property expert at Rightmove said: ‘Historic averages show that this March is likely to be one of the strongest months of the year for sellers to spring into action. However, sellers can’t just rely on these historic averages for success, as this year they are facing a decade-high level of competition. Those who are successfully finding buyers right now are working hard with their agents to price competitively and present their home in the best possible light.'”

“The pace of rental growth has been dragged down by London, where newly agreed rents were down 2.8 per cent on a year earlier. The falls put the cost of moving into a new rental property in London back to May 2023 levels, the report said. Aneisha Beveridge, head of research at Hamptons, said: ‘Tenants moving into a new home have seen rental growth grind to a halt, with prices rising at the slowest rate since September 2020. Londoners, in particular, have seen rents go backwards.'”

South China Morning Post. “Hong Kong property investment firm Gale Well Group is set to offload assets worth around HK$3 billion (US$386 million) amid banks’ wary attitude towards the real estate market, according to the firm’s founder. ‘Many banks have looked down on the property market and kept on calling investors’ loans,’ said Jacinto Tong Man-Leung, the firm’s founder, vice-chairman and CEO. ‘As a result many investors are in a very bad financial situation and have to sell some of their properties at a price lower than the market price.’ As rental incomes sink and valuations shrink, more property owners are struggling to meet their debt obligations amid high rates, leading to a surge of distressed assets. In 2024, roughly three out of four property transactions were distressed sales, according to Reeves Yan, executive director and head of capital markets at CBRE.”

“It also appointed agents to sell two luxury residential sites on the south side of Hong Kong Island last month. Gale Well has also been seeking buyers for its 21-storey Austin Plaza in Tsim Sha Tsui at HK$880 million since January, as well as the 26-storey Butterfly on Morrison Boutique Hotel in Causeway Bay at HK$630 million since last November. ‘As rental incomes plummeted and were not enough to cover the interest, selling the properties was the solution,’ Tong said.”