Who’s Going To Blink First – Are Those Sellers Going To Capitulate To What The Market Is Actually Willing To Offer?

A report from the Salt Lake Tribune. “Even though homes are pricier in Utah than nearly anywhere else in the country, buyers do have some advantages, said Jeremy Holmgren, mortgage manager for Zions Bank. More available homes, longer times on the market and more moderate increases in housing prices, Holmgren explained, are giving homebuyers more power in the market. There’s a lot of motivation for sellers to offer buyers concessions, he said, often in the realm of $10,000 to $15,000 they can use to pay closing costs or buy down their interest rate. ‘Most of the contracts we see have some sort of a seller concession,’ Holmgren said. As of February, there were 14,084 homes on the market in Utah, according to Redfin. That’s 1,898 more homes than were on the market statewide last February and almost double the number of homes available three years ago. New construction permits are also down, Holmgren said, and that could point to ‘maybe a little bit less appetite to buy a new build.’ That means builders and owners who are selling are having to give concessions, he said, and builders are sitting on a lot of inventory.”

The Advocate in Louisiana. “New Orleans’ housing market, which has been in a slump since the end of the pandemic-era buying frenzy of the early 2020s, is showing little signs of improvement. For the third year in a row, total home sales were down in 2024 while new listings were up, according to the annual Economic Outlook and Real Estate Forecast report. ‘It’s definitely still a buyer’s market,’ Craig Mirambell, CEO of Mirambell Realty, said. ‘We’re a long way from the market during COVID, when you could expect a home to be sold the day after it came on the market.'”

The San Joaquin Valley Sun in California. “Two Fiji nationals living in Modesto were sentenced to prison for leading a multi-million dollar mortgage fraud scheme. Jyoteshna Karan, 52, was sentenced to three years and four months in prison, while Praveen Singh, 45, will spend two years behind bars. From 2006 to 2015, Karan and Singh made straw purchases and short sales of around 15 homes from Modesto to Sacramento. Once Karan and Singh acquired the homes, they allowed them to go into foreclosure and arranged for short sales with lenders. They then quickly flipped the homes to other people at market rates to reap significant profits, causing lenders to suffer over $3 million in losses. Court documents state that Karan and Singh were experienced real estate professionals who used unwitting participants, fabricated documents and shell companies to carry out their fraud scheme.”

“They used Singh’s mother as one of the straw purchasers and fabricated documents to make it appear as though the straw purchasers worked for their shell companies making six figure salaries. They also fabricated documents to make it appear as though the transactions were arm’s length to convince the lenders to go through with the deals.”

The San Francisco Chronicle. in California. “Brash New York developer Robert Rosania burst into San Francisco with a bang more than 20 years ago, buying up Parkmerced, the city’s biggest apartment community, and championing the redevelopment of a key Mission District site where he promised to build hundreds of luxury condos — a project that was infamously dubbed the ‘Monster in the Mission’ by opponents. In addition to the 3,221-unit Parkmerced community, Maximus Real Estate Partners, the S.F.-based development firm founded by the cigar-chomping, Champagne-collecting Rosania also spread its tentacles into the North Bay and East Bay. It bought 450-unit South Shore Alameda, the 186-unit Woodchase in San Leandro, and a 283-unit complex in Tiburon called The Cove.”

“A 2018 Maximus press-release claimed the company was the ‘fastest growing multifamily investment and development firm in the Bay Area,’ owning 6,000 units with another 7,000 in its development pipeline, which included an approved plan to redevelop Parkmerced, adding 5,800 units. But the redevelopment plan never materialized and, seven years later, Rosania’s empire appears to be unraveling. On Tuesday, the bond-rating firm Morningstar reported that Maximus had defaulted at its March maturity on a $210 million loan backed by the Cove at Tiburon, which could prompt a transfer to a special servicer. Expenses at the waterfront Marin complex, which underwent a $50 million renovation in 2018, have outpaced revenues by 16%, according to Morningstar.”

Washington City Papers. “North Carolina-based Red Oak Capital Holdings gave its first loan to D.C. slumlord Ali ‘Sam’ Razjooyan in 2020. The $2.8 million loan allowed him to purchase the 15-unit building at 4400 Hunt Pl. NE and convert the ‘market-rate apartments to affordable housing,’ according to Red Oak’s website. Over the next four years, Red Oak went on to approve six more loans for Razjooyan, totaling more than $40 million. As Red Oak repeatedly approved loans for Razjooyan and held him up as a poster boy of its success, back in D.C., he was neglecting properties, stiffing creditors, and abandoning low-income tenants in unlivable conditions. As Red Oak repeatedly approved loans for Razjooyan and held him up as a poster boy of its success, back in D.C., he was neglecting properties, stiffing creditors, and abandoning low-income tenants in unlivable conditions.”

“The company’s underwriting procedures ‘lacked rigor or were routinely ignored.’ Red Oak’s use of ‘outdated or compromised appraisals, inflated projections, or falsified documents’ were concerning for the whistleblower. Some rent rolls, which document the number of tenants at a given building and how much they paid in rent, were falsified ‘with assistance from Red Oak employees,’ the lawsuit alleges. In one instance, Red Oak CEO Gary Bechtel chastised the whistleblower for their attempts to verify a borrower’s liquidity, writing in an email referenced in the lawsuit, ‘we can’t let it impede our ability to actually process a loan.’ Many of the properties Razjooyan purchased with Red Oak’s help followed a similar pattern. Razjooyan would receive the loan, refinance it, and then end up in default for failure to repay. Most of those properties end up in foreclosure or bankruptcy.”

Stars and Stripes. “A mortgage bailout program that has kept more than 15,000 veterans facing foreclosure from losing their homes would be scaled back or ended under legislation sponsored by the chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee’s subpanel on economic opportunity. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., has introduced legislation to cap the number of direct loans that the Department of Veterans Affairs can repurchase at 250 through the Veterans Affairs Servicing Program for delinquent agency-backed home loans. Called VASP, the program is described as a last-resort option offered by the VA to borrowers in financial distress after they have exhausted other means through commercial lenders to stop foreclosures, according to the agency. Under the terms of the program, the VA purchases delinquent loans and modifies them.”

“There are about 81,000 active-duty service members or veterans who have missed three or more payments on their VA mortgages, which would make them eligible for the program. Under the program, the VA purchases delinquent loans from commercial mortgage servicers and lowers the interest rate to 2.5%. The VA then adds the mortgage to its own portfolio of direct loans. Van Orden said he believes the mortgage bailout program could turn into an entitlement for veterans who are homeowners. He said the program could entice veterans to fall behind on mortgage payments intentionally to qualify for the lower interest rate. ‘My focus is to ensure that veterans remain in their homes whenever possible,’ Van Orden said. ‘But I am concerned that this program could evolve into a financial burden of billions of dollars in bailouts that fall on the shoulders of taxpayers.'”

The Vancouver Sun. “Nationalism is fashionable again in Canada now that the federal election is underway and the tariff wars of U.S. President Donald Trump pose a threat to our economic well-being. But there was a time, very recently, when behaving nationalistically about Canadian housing was condemned as dangerous and defenders of those left out of the housing market were dismissed as xenophobic and reactionary. The story of this type of Canadian nationalism, which aims to make it possible for young, working Canadians to have a chance at affordable housing, is spelled out in a new study by B.C. housing experts Joshua Gordon, David Ley and Andy Yan.”

“They rebut big players in the Canadian development industry and their allies, whom they dub the ‘growth machine.’ These powerful forces are often guilty of ‘playing the race card’ as an ‘ideological tactic’ to stop the public from realizing how offshore capital and wealthy immigrants have contributed to astronomical house prices in Canada, say the authors. The new paper compiles data showing foreign capital has indeed been a dramatic factor in raising B.C. housing values, a fact they say is often ‘celebrated behind closed doors by the real estate industry.’ Their paper frequently quotes business speeches by Vancouver condo marketer Bob Rennie, including when he told an audience of developers that buyers from Mainland China were at one point responsible for 90 per cent of the homes sold for more than $2 million on the west side of Vancouver.”

“The authors readily acknowledge the ‘growth machine’ opposes such policy ideas: It would rather continue to ‘instrumentalize charges of racism to support neo-liberal agendas’ and maximize profits.'”

Newstalk New Zealand. “Property sales have reached the highest point in years – but the number of unsold homes is at a record high. Barfoot & Thompson has revealed March was a record month for house sales, but unsold stock numbers have been climbing, with 5300 places unsold in January and 5900 in February but 6200 last month. Property investment expert Ed McKnight says vendors aren’t willing to take risks at this point. ‘It’s a bit of a game of who’s going to blink first – are those sellers going to capitulate to what the market is actually willing to offer?'”

ABC News in Australia. “Inspired Homes, which has been under fire for months over unfinished projects dating back to 2020, has gone into voluntary administration. The company’s collapse means he and other customers with incomplete homes can access home indemnity insurance payments of up to $200,000 to hire a new building company to complete their houses. For Andrew Scott, who also signed up to build a home in December 2020, the decision was a relief. He said he no longer wanted to live in the house, but it was a chance eventually to move on from the property he had been paying a mortgage on for five years. He said there had been no work on the property since August last year.”

“‘It’s been used as a rubbish tip pretty much for the last six months,’ he said. ‘It’s at technical lock-up [stage], but unfortunately it looks like a bit of a bomb site. The doors are in, the windows are in, but the garage door’s not on and the place has just been filled up with rubbish from surrounding construction. It’s pretty devastating.’ Mr Scott said he moved back to Queensland to live with his parents as he was unable to afford rent and his mortgage on a house he could not live in. He was keen to finish the house and sell it as soon as possible. ‘Unfortunately, because I signed up with a First Home Owners Grant in 2020, I’m obligated to finish the house and live in it,’ he said. ‘Move into it, do my six months and then get out.'”

Agence France-Presse. “Debt-laden Chinese property giant Vanke reported annual losses of 49.5 billion yuan ($6.8 billion) on Monday, citing falling sales and shrinking profit margins despite Beijing’s attempts to revive the housing market. Vanke said 2024 was an ‘exceptionally challenging year’ in a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange and apologized for ‘distress caused… due to the significant decline in sales, substantial losses and pressure on our liquidity.'”

“Beijing has in recent years grappled with a prolonged crisis in the country’s vast real estate sector, once a key pillar of the economy but now beset with sprawling debt. Vanke said on Monday that it ‘failed to break free from expansion inertia of high debt, high turnover and high leverage in a timely manner, which led to problems’ such as aggressive investment and overexpansion. Last year marked Vanke’s first annual loss since it was listed in 1991, and the magnitude exceeded the firm’s January estimate of $6.2 billion. The company said it will face a concentrated repayment of its public debts this year, ‘further intensifying the liquidity pressure.'”