What Used To Be A Nice-To-Have Is All Of A Sudden Becoming Must-Haves

A report from the Baltimore Banner. “Charles and Prince George’s counties, Maryland neighbors with intertwined histories, are the nation’s richest majority-Black counties, with median household incomes that exceed $100,000. Nowhere else comes close. Now President Donald Trump’s mass firings of federal workers are shaking the foundation of these suburban D.C. counties’ success: reliable, good-paying government jobs. About 1 in every 5 Black workers here is employed by the federal government. One of them was Connie Moore. She left the private sector in 2006, landed at the Department of Transportation and purchased a home with her fiancé in Accokeek, a community of Black professionals. After a promotion, Moore transitioned to the Department of Education. ‘This is going to be it for me,’ Moore said she thought at the time. ‘I want to stick with the federal government, get a good career and retire.’ Moore received a reduction-in-force notice in March. Her fiancé is also a government worker. If he loses his job, she said, she is not sure they can afford to remain in Prince George’s County. ‘I cannot believe that this is the federal government today,’ Moore said.”

“The current climate is already forcing some residents to make hard choices in the housing market. There were nearly 6,000 new listings in the greater D.C. area in March, according to Bright MLS. Inventory there is rising faster than in the broader mid-Atlantic, the report said. John Coller, a property manager and owner of Colonial Realty in Waldorf, said one of his tenants moved out of a Bryans Road home after losing a six-figure government job. Another left Waldorf to live with family near D.C. after Trump required remote employees to return to their offices. ‘It was a single mom, so her life changes when she has to commute,’ Coller said.”

Wall Street Journal. “Many Canadians are giving up their U.S. vacation homes, selling properties they have owned for decades in popular snowbird spots like Florida and Arizona, according to local real-estate agents. ‘The key word is ‘uncertainty,’ says Catherine Spino with Lyonsgate Realty in Boca Raton, Fla., where she has been a real-estate agent for nine years. Since January, she has seen twice as many Canadian clients list their homes compared with the usual amount this time of year—and a sharp decline in Canadians looking to buy homes in the area. On April 2, Spino received an email from a Canadian citizen who she was helping look for a second home in South Florida in the million-dollar range. He wrote: ‘I was seriously looking to buy a condo but now how he’s treating our beloved country Canada — I have decided to abandon the plans for now… Why would I spend my money here?'”

“In the greater Phoenix area, there has been a dramatic increase in Canadians selling their property, says Miles Zimbaluk, a real-state agent with HomeSmart in Scottsdale, Ariz. Such listings climbed to around 700 in January through March, up from around 100 at the same time last year, according to Zimbaluk’s review of tax records. He says he has also seen a 40% decline in the number of Canadians buying property in Arizona during that period. Clifford and Paulette Lawrick left Arizona after more than a decade of owning a second home in Chandler, about 22 miles southeast of Phoenix. Clifford, a 67-year-old retired CPA who describes himself as ‘right-leaning conservative,’ says political divisions with their neighbors escalated this year. People they’d known for a long time started telling them that the border between the U.S. and Canada ‘wasn’t where it should be,’ he says. ‘It made it difficult to hang out at the pool.’ The couple listed their 1,000-square-foot condo for $350,000 in February, sold it in a week and drove back to their home in Calgary, Alberta. Crossing the border was a huge relief, says Paulette.”

“In Arizona, Canadians own almost 20,000 residential properties, accounting for more than 90% of the properties owned by foreigners in the state, according to an analysis of tax data by Zimbaluk. Canadians made up 17% of the number of residential purchases by foreigners in Florida in 2024, the most of any foreign buyers, according to Florida Realtors, a trade association. An incident at a Walmart cemented Philippe Trudeau’s decision to sell his condo there in March and stop spending his winters in the U.S. The 50-year-old business owner from Montreal was speaking French when a stranger asked him, ‘What are you doing here?’ When he explained he had owned a home in Pompano Beach, Fla., since 2018, the man didn’t back off, Trudeau says. ‘He told me to go back home,’ says Trudeau. ‘He said, ‘We don’t need you here.’ After one day on the market, his two-bedroom, two-bathroom, 1,200-square-foot condo sold for $280,000. ‘I wanted just to get out of there,’ he says.”

KOAA in Colorado. “The City of Pueblo wants to create more affordable homes, but not necessarily in a traditional sense. The housing department is working on fixing up abandoned houses and making them livable again. When driving through Pueblo, the boarded up, burned and abandoned homes are easy to spot. ‘We all know that we have a problem with vacant homes,’ said Melissa Cook, Housing Administrator for the City of Pueblo. ‘These homes have been vacant for decades, some of them up to 50 years. We have to tackle the properties before they become so neglected that they need to be demolished.’ Through site visits and inspections, Cook said they have identified over 230 homes across the city that can be rehabilitated.”

Boulder Reporting Lab in Colorado. “The Boulder City Council is exploring the idea of taxing homes that sit vacant for most of the year, a move aimed at unlocking more housing in a city with a shortage of supply. City officials estimate that as many as 4,000 of Boulder’s approximate 48,000 housing units are vacant, according to a May 2024 memo. That’s nearly equal to the city’s entire inventory of deed-restricted affordable housing. ‘Some of the code changes we’ve made to try and have more dwelling units really fall flat if we can’t get people into those dwelling units,’ Mayor Pro Tem Lauren Folkerts told Boulder Reporting Lab. ‘Buildings need to be for people. There are certainly more empty homes than there are homeless people in our community.'”

“Vacancy taxes have gained traction in some mountain and resort towns where affordable housing for local workers is scarce. But few places have successfully implemented them. In 2018, Oakland voters approved a tax of $3,000 to $6,000 on homes used fewer than 50 days per year. San Francisco voters passed a measure in 2022, but a judge later suspended it after landlords sued, arguing the tax violated the U.S. Constitution’s takings clause by effectively forcing them to rent out their property. That case is now under appeal. Other efforts have failed at the ballot box. Voters in Crested Butte rejected a proposed $2,500 tax on homes that sit empty for more than six consecutive months. And last year, voters in South Lake Tahoe shot down a similar proposal to impose a $3,000 to $6,000 tax on homes sitting vacant for more than six months a year.”

The San Francisco Chronicle. “Texas is building homes at a far faster pace than California. In fact, just two metropolitan areas in Texas — Dallas and Houston — approved more homes than the entire state of California in 2024, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The main reason comes down to a difference in cost, housing researchers say, pointing to eye-bugging headlines about affordable homes built for $1 million per unit. And a new report has an estimate that illustrates just how striking the comparison is. The RAND Corporation found that California’s production costs per rentable square foot — the size of apartment units and common areas — are 2.3 times the average cost in Texas. It takes an average of nearly two years longer to finish a multifamily project in California than it does in Texas, the report found.”

“In the Bay Area, it’s even worse. Here, per-square-foot costs among sampled cities are a whopping three times the Texas average for market-rate housing. All of those extra costs add up, Jason Ward, an author of the report explained. Part of the reason so much new housing in regions like the Bay Area are luxury apartments, he added, is that those are the only ones developers and their investors can justify building. San Francisco’s infamous housing shortage has kept the city’s rents among the highest in the nation, with its state senator, Scott Wiener, once calling its housing system ‘rotten to the core.’ ‘If you’re in San Francisco … the results of this report suggest it’s about as bad as Scott Wiener says it is,’ said Ward.”

The Union Tribune in California. “On Friday, Prebys Foundation purchased the 24-story office building at 401 B St., better known as Wells Fargo Plaza, for $40 million from longtime owner Irvine Company in an all-cash deal, Grant Oliphant, CEO of the Prebys Foundation, told the Union-Tribune. The Wells Fargo Plaza transaction, valued at around $80 per square foot, sets a new baseline market value in the B Street corridor. The decline of the corridor, brought on by pandemic-era lockdowns and the ensuing shift in workplace dynamics, has been further punctuated by tenants in the market downsizing their space needs. Office vacancy downtown has skyrocketed to 34.9% from 17.1% at the end of 2019, said Joshua Ohl, who is the senior director of market analytics for CoStar. ‘Downtown San Diego’s vacancy rate has climbed to its highest level on record in 2025, more than doubling since the onset of the pandemic,’ he said. ‘It’s probably closer to 50% when you factor in underutilized and vacant space that is not being marketed on the leasing market.'”

The Globe and Mail in Canada. “Windsor, Ont., and Detroit are separated by a strip of water and linked by a bridge, a tunnel and a history of social and economic ties. But U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs have opened a gulf between the two motor cities, leaving Windsor on the wrong side of a bitter split. Nowhere is the divide more evident than at Windsor’s Stellantis plant several blocks from the Detroit River. The company has paused production of the Chrysler Pacifica and Dodge Charger. Some 3,500 workers have been sent home for two weeks that end April 21, along with 2,000 workers laid off in the Windsor region’s parts supply chain, the Unifor union says. Auto jobs are good jobs, bringing wages of about $50 an hour with generous benefits and layoff top-ups. For Derek Gungle, getting hired at Stellantis 10 years ago was a stroke of luck. ‘They call it the auto lotto – it’s like winning the lottery,’ he says. ‘It’s one of the best working-class gigs in the city, and obviously the wages are amazing.'”

“Austin Welzel, who has worked on the assembly line at the Windsor Stellantis plant for eight years, says the tariffs have spurred him to eat out less and put an end to his pastime of travelling to the U.S. This means no more NASCAR races at Michigan International Speedway. No more trips with his girlfriend. ‘We were looking for houses and then when the announcement came, it was kind of like, okay, well, now what?’ says Mr. Welzel, 27. ‘So, we kind of had to put those plans on hold, the searching for houses and starting our future, which sucked because, you know, we were looking forward to that.'”

The Canadian Press. “Experts say the Greater Toronto Area condo market is unlikely to awaken from its lull any time soon even as other major Canadian cities see somewhat more promising demand. ‘Sure, the rates have fallen … but it’s still not night and day difference,’ said Brendon Cowans, a sales representative for Toronto-based brokerage Property.ca. ‘There’s still a lot of things going on where it’s tough for people to get into the market. The dollar is not as strong, the money that people are making hasn’t increased significantly.’ Cowans said buyer preferences are shifting as a result. With so many options out there, he said people want more value if they’re going to opt for condo living over saving for a house.”

“‘They’re like, ‘Well, if I’m going to pay this, I want a bigger place, or I want the balcony to be a wraparound, I want this type of view,’ he said. ‘I mean, these things were always there, but some of them back in the day would be like, ‘Well, I’d be lucky if I got that.’ Now it’s more of a demand, like, ‘I must have this.’ What used to be a nice-to-have is all of a sudden becoming must-haves.’ ‘In Toronto, the fundamental problem is that a lot of that pre-construction activity was investor-owned. And what does the investor do now? They wanted to flip that at completion for an equity gain, but they can’t do that anymore … It’s a much tougher environment,’ said BMO senior economist Robert Kavcic. Vancouver broker Randy Ryalls said condo developers are recognizing the challenging economic environment and that ‘anything that doesn’t have to be built is not being built.'”

The Telegraph in the UK. “Second home owners up and down the country have been left reeling after being hit with double council tax bills this month. From April 1, over two thirds of town halls opted to take advantage of new powers, granted in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act, which allowed them to impose a 100pc council tax premium on second home owners. ‘I can’t afford to pay double the amount of council tax, and maintain my beautiful cottage,’ says Janet Gill, Dorset. ‘Over 23 years ago, I bought an unwanted, almost derelict Grade II-listed cottage. It is in a tourist ‘not-spot’ and has never been rented out. It had been on the market for nearly three years, and the property next door has been on the market for two. Now I’m paying the price for buying a house no one wanted.'”

From Business Today. “A 600-square-foot apartment in Mumbai costs 30 times the average annual income. A line, posted on Reddit, has hit a raw nerve among home buyers. ‘We laugh nervously, comparing prices over chai,’ the user wrote. ‘But the laughter dies when we glimpse the ledger of reality.’ In a thread that felt part confessional, part obituary, users unpacked the quiet despair of an entire generation that’s been priced out of the Indian dream. The data backs the sentiment. According to the National Housing Bank, housing affordability in India has hit a 15-year low. The national Price-to-Income (P2I) ratio stands at 11, meaning an average household would need 11 years of full income — or over 20 years of savings — to buy a modest home. That ratio now rivals New York City.”

“In Mumbai, the P2I ratio hits 14.3 — the worst in the country. Delhi sits at 10.1, while even so-called tech hubs like Bengaluru have breached affordability limits. Only Chennai, Ahmedabad, and Kolkata, with P2I ratios around 5.1, remain within the globally accepted benchmark of affordability. Meanwhile, the EMI-to-income ratio for low-income households has surged from 43% in 2020 to 62% in 2024, exceeding the 50% limit set by India’s banking sector. For many, this means loans are no longer even an option. Reddit users called it out for what it is: a system that favors wealth, not need. ‘30% of Indian real estate deals still involve unaccounted cash,’ one user pointed out. ‘We don’t have a real estate market — we have a black money vault.’ Reddit captured it best: ‘This isn’t a housing market. It’s a paradox — where homes are built, but not meant to be lived in.'”