You Need To Change Your Attitude, You Need To Come Across As The Most Desperate Seller In The Market

A report from Yahoo Finance. “The Washington, D.C., metro area has long been one of the most cutthroat, expensive places to buy a home. Some signs of weakness are starting to emerge. Home showings are down, and sellers have become more amenable to price cuts. ‘I think [sellers] should list as soon as possible,’ said Dustin Fox, who leads the Fox Homes Team in Fairfax, Va. ‘I could be wrong, and your price could continue to go up, but that’s not what I’m seeing right now.’ Fox said he’s noticed an uptick in seller activity since DOGE-related cuts began. He’s recently listed homes on behalf of laid-off FBI agents and diversity, equity, and inclusion specialists. And he has seen buyers grow hesitant and opt to pause searches due to factors like uncertain job contract status or tariff fears.”

Fox 4 in Florida. “Between the assessments for adding city water up north, and a letter that says utility rates could increase in the Cape, again, people all over Cape Coral have told Fox 4’s Bella Line that they know people who are moving out of the city. Trevor Caldwell, a real estate agent, says many people have their homes on the market right now in Cape Coral. Caldwell says some of the homes he’s selling are taking a while to sell. ‘If you have a pending assessment, then you have another hurdle to selling your home, and right now you want as few hurdles as humanly possible to sell your property,’ said Caldwell. Caldwell says homes with a future assessment will have to factor that into their price tag. ‘They’re stuck between a rock and a hard spot, right? Because that is something that they will need to disclose that we’ve been notified of an assessment,’ said Caldwell.”

From CBS News. “Six months after Hurricane Helene hit Beth and Alex Brightman’s home in Hudson, Florida, the flood damage is still visible. Flood insurance only covered damage to the structure of their home, and homeowner’s insurance doesn’t cover contents lost from flooding. Flood insurance must be purchased separately, often from the federal government. FEMA estimates only 4% of homeowners across the country have flood insurance. As a result, they are using savings for repairs while living in a rental but still with a $2,500 monthly mortgage. About a month after hurricanes Helene and Milton hit the Southeast, nearly 60,000 homeowners fell behind on their mortgages, according to ICE Mortgage Technology. The forbearance option gave the Brightmans relief from their house payments for six months. ‘It’s been helpful, but then now it’s going to turn around and be a big bite,’ Beth said. That bite will be about $15,000, the total amount deferred that is now coming due all at once.”

KXAN in Texas. “The Redfin report said 62.4% of Austin homes sat on the market for 60 days or longer without going under contract in November. Realtor with Fathom Realty, Miriam Moorman, said several different factors could contribute to that situation. ‘Interest rates are still high. They just didn’t come down, like many people were hoping,’ Moorman said. Twelve Rivers Realty Owner Paul Smith, said a home’s price plays a major factor. ‘A home will sell within one day if it’s priced correctly,’ Smith said. ‘So ultimately, though, the thing is, is that a seller has to be willing to accept that price.’ Smith pointed to the construction boom that started during the pandemic. Austin metro at highest inventory of home listings since 2011, pushing median prices down. ‘Everything that we’re seeing right now that’s hitting the market is because of things that happened two to four years ago,’ Smith said.”

“Moorman said more homes were being built because people were going to remote work. ‘Now you see a lot of these people being called back to the office,’ Moorman said.”

New York Times. “On the night of the 2024 presidential election, Ken James, a retired engineer from Calgary, Alberta, was at his second home in Palm Springs, Calif., watching with dismay as the results rolled in. Mr. James, 68, called his wife back in Calgary. ‘If he gets back in, I’m selling,’ he recalled her saying of Donald Trump. Mr. James is among hundreds of thousands of Canadians, many of them snowbirds, who each year flock to Palm Springs. Though he and his wife love Palm Springs, Mr. James said that if the midterm elections don’t wrest some power from the Trump administration, they may weigh selling the home and moving someplace else. ‘I’ve got a son in Thailand,’ he said, ‘and he doesn’t deal with any of this stuff.'”

“In the city and surrounding Coachella Valley, they own about 7 percent of homes. Sheri Dettman, a real estate agent, said six of her clients selling their properties were Canadian, and all had cited the political climate in the United States as a reason. About a dozen other Canadian buyers, she added, had gotten cold feet in recent months. One of the sellers said that while he and his wife had planned to eventually sell their home in La Quinta, about 20 miles southeast of Palm Springs, the tariffs and other attacks on Canadians accelerated their decision. ‘It really drove it home that we needed to support our own economy, not support the economy of United States,’ said the seller, Malcolm, who asked to be identified only by first name because he feared retribution at the border.”

9 News in Colorado. “Average apartment rent prices in Denver have dropped for the first time in years, according to a new report from the Apartment Association of Metro Denver. This decrease coincides with a 7% vacancy rate — the highest the city has experienced in 15 years. ‘Over the past six months, I was looking at possibly moving out to a new place, and there was an absurd number of units available all over the city,’ said Devin Cordero, a renter who lives near Cheesman Park. The report attributes this shift to an increase in housing supply, with builders adding over 20,000 new apartments in the metro area over the past 12 months.”

The Baltimore Banner in Maryland. “A judge on Thursday forced the construction arm of the Baltimore real estate development company Chasen Cos. into bankruptcy. In a one-page order, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Nancy V. Alquist granted a petition from Sandy Spring Bank, Southland Insulators of Maryland Inc. and Ferguson Enterprises Inc. to place Chasen Construction LLC into involuntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Neither Chasen Construction nor its namesake founder, Brandon Chasen, responded to the legal action. Baltimore’s flashiest developer wanted to expand nationally. Now he’s rethinking everything. Chasen Cos. owns about 2,000 housing units across Maryland, Virginia and Florida, Chasen and co-founder Paul Davis said in a previous interview, with the vast majority in Baltimore.”

From Global News. “Are condos still a good investment? According to a new survey by Rates.ca, about 30 per cent of Canadians say condos, once seen as a good investment, no longer hold that same appeal. The survey of 1,568 Canadians also found that just 11 per cent say they would buy a condo as an investment, while 57 per cent said they would not buy a condominium for any reason. ‘Investor confidence has definitely softened,’ Kevin Wong, a mortgage agent at Swivel Mortgage Group Inc. in Ontario, said in the report. ‘Some of my investor clients are selling properties and reallocating their funds to other investments, like the stock market or high-growth regions like Alberta.’ Rates.ca notes that high inventory levels are also pushing prices down, meaning while buyers might have an easier time getting into the condo market, sellers may be grappling with oversupply. According to Statistics Canada, two in five condo apartments in five provinces, including Ontario and British Columbia, were used as an investment property between 2016 and 2020.”

The Sun in the UK. “When Wendy Green bought a shared ownership two-bed flat she had no idea it would turn into a financial nightmare. But twenty years later the 48-year-old says she is trapped with hardly any disposable income due to soaring service charges and rent costs. The policies and procedures manager, who lives with her retired husband in southeast London, has seen her home’s service charges skyrocket from £1,000 a year to an eye-watering £6,100. The increased costs have left her and her husband with just £250 a month in disposable income between them. Wendy told The Sun that when she bought her share in the property, she put down a deposit of £10,000 for an £81,000 share. At the time she was paying service charges of roughly £75 to £80 a month. Her home had been valued at £280,000 – although within months it had dropped to £230,000.”

“She said shared ownership had seemed like the ‘best option’ and it was ‘what we could afford’ at the time as she didn’t have a large deposit to put down. ‘But we didn’t realise that we’d be in this position in 20 years’ time,’ she said. ‘I thought we’d be able to buy within about 10 years… but I’m never going to be able to own my own home. I’m going to be renting after I retire.’ Wendy says she feels trapped in her home because if she were to sell her share, she wouldn’t get much equity. She adds: ‘When I think about it, I don’t know that I would make any money [from a sale].'”

One Roof in New Zealand. “Homeowners selling their homes in a swamped market may need to change their attitudes, price expectations and their marketing campaign, agents have told OneRoof. Buyers have the choice of more than 44,000 residential properties on OneRoof. Even with the glut of homes on the market, vendors are still looking to sell, with new listings in the first 15 days of April up 6% on the same period last year. Ray White Manukau co-owner Tom Rawson recently gave some brutal advice to a relative who hadn’t sold their plaster home after four months on the market.”

“The homeowner had initially told his agent that he would hold onto the house if he didn’t find a buyer because he didn’t want to appear desperate to sell. In reality, he was desperate because he had already bought another property, Rawson said. ‘I was like, ‘You need to change your attitude. You need to come across as the most desperate seller in the market. You need to ring your agent up and tell him you need to have it gone in two weeks. You need to tell him to ignore what you said before and that you will take less than what you said.’”

The Wall Street Journal. “About a fifth of China’s goods exports to the U.S. have a high dependency on the U.S., Oxford Economics found. At stake are about 10 million to 20 million jobs in China geared toward making products for American consumers, according to Goldman Sachs estimates. Also on the line is the health of the world’s second-largest economy. Many Chinese manufacturers have little choice but to find new overseas markets for their goods, since they face brutal competition and a stagnating economy at home. China’s leaders said they plan to boost domestic consumption and support tariff-hit sectors, and some e-commerce companies such as JD.com have announced initiatives to help exporters transition to the local market.”

“But demand from households and businesses in China is weak. After an epic property-market collapse and slowing economic growth, Chinese people are saving more and spending less. Consumer prices have flatlined, factory-gate prices have fallen for more than two years and imports have declined, a reflection of how tepid domestic spending is in China. Some Chinese factory owners at the Jakarta trade fair said a portion of their production has already been suspended, and are bracing for a further slowdown in orders. They are now on the hunt for new customers—and Indonesia, with its robust manufacturing sector and consumer market of around 280 million people, looks promising.”

“Martin Sutanto, sales and marketing director for Indonesian fabric producer Fabriku, is worried about competing with a potential deluge of cheap goods from China if manufacturers there divert exports to Indonesia. Countries in Asia, Latin America and Europe have filed trade complaints against Chinese exporters that have sold cut-rate products in those markets. ‘If China’s product floods the Indonesia market, that’s going to be hard for us,’ he said.”