Buyers Are Really In The Driver’s Seat

A report from My 13 News in Florida. “Recently, the Orlando Regional Realtors Association reported that the average property on the market sits for about 76 days. Single-family homes sit 30-45 days on the market, but condos are sitting two to three times longer than that. Marisa Raines is a Community Association Manager with Genuine Management Services. She’s been managing condo building for more than three decades, and her company oversees about a dozen beachside condo buildings that are at least 40 years old. What current condo owners are currently seeing, she believes, was not only avoidable, but predictable following the Surfside collapse. ‘These boards that we have worked with over the years have kicked the can down the road,’ Raines said. ‘They were not properly funding their reserves.’ Before 2021, Raines said the average cost to insure a building was $90,000. Today is costs about $300,000. Building concrete restoration, which needs to be done to beachside condos every five to seven years, went from about $1 million to between $2-3 million.”

“According to Realtor.com, there are nearly 900 condos for sale in Daytona Beach. Realtor Ruben Orozco said the market needs time to adjust and correct itself. It also needs time for these buildings to be properly funded — a cost new buyers typically don’t want to be on the hook for. ‘For the next year or so you are going to see prices depressed in the condo market, simply for condo buildings that are of age,’ Orozco said. When it comes to beachside condos in Volusia County, Raines said the average monthly condo fee is somewhere between $800-$1,200 a month.”

San Marcos Daily News. “According to the 2025Q1 Central Texas Housing Report released by Unlock MLS, residential home sales across the Austin- Round Rock-San Marcos MSA declined to 6,698 listings, a 9.1% drop from the first quarter of 2024. During the same time frame, median sales price dipped 2.3% to $429,869 while housing inventory reached 5.3 months, moving the region closer into balanced housing market conditions. ‘We started the year with a continuation of similar trends that shaped the market in 2024,’ said Clare Knapp, Ph.D., housing economist for Unlock MLS and the Austin Board of REALTORS. ‘However, stubbornly high mortgage rates and a weaker local labor market weighed on buyer confidence, while many sellers remained reluctant to adjust pricing expectations. That squeeze on buyer power shaped much of the activity we saw in the first quarter, reinforcing the need for greater flexibility and balance on both sides of the transaction.'”

From Barron‘s. “In the Phoenix area, ‘buyers are really in the driver’s seat’ this spring, says Arizona real estate agent Wendy Herst. Inventory is accumulating as sellers seek top dollar for their listings—but there are fewer buyers willing to pay those prices. Last month, 22 of the 90 largest U.S. metropolitan areas tracked by Redfin had more homes for sale than they did in March 2019. Compare that to 2024, when nine metro areas had more homes on the market than they did in 2019. Texas and Florida still lead the nation in the number of metropolitan areas with inventory stacking up, the data show. There were seven Texas locales with more inventory than in 2019, led by the Austin metro area, which had a roughly 46% increase. Florida followed close behind, with six metros. But inventory is also rising in Colorado and Arizona markets: each state had two metros with more listings than in 2019.”

“Many buyers in the market today could notice more price declines, the Redfin data show. About half of the metros which had more available inventory in March than the same month in 2019 also had median prices lower than they were in 2024, the figures indicate. For example, Redfin’s median sale price in March was down 1.3% in Tucson, 1.4% in Dallas, and 2.6% in San Francisco. Prices fell as much as 7.4%, in Cape Coral, Fla., where listings were nearly 30% higher than they were in 2019. In the Phoenix area, where listings in March were 4.1% higher than the same month in 2019, prices are still rising. But some sellers are cutting listing prices and offering credits for big repairs, like roof replacements, says Herst, the Arizona agent. ‘Sellers have been very sticky in terms of lowering their prices—but we’re definitely starting to see it,’ she says.”

From CNN. “A few weeks ago, Los Angeles real estate agent Scott Price got the kind of call that’s only happened once before in his two-decade-long career: His buyer was backing out — just two days before closing. Price’s client, warned by his company that layoffs may be coming, no longer felt secure enough to make such a large purchase. Rather than take the risk, the buyer walked away from the home — and their 3% deposit. ‘This is not a common occurrence for me,’ Price said about the transaction falling through. ‘It was a very unusual event.'”

“Though deal cancellations may not be common for Price, they are happening more frequently around the US. In the four weeks between March 17 and April 13, more than 14% of all home purchase agreements in the US were canceled, according to data provided to CNN by Redfin. That’s the highest level for this time of year since 2020, when the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic froze the housing market. ‘First-time homebuyers have been a little more skittish,’ Maddy Mixter, a Realtor based in Tacoma, Washington, said. ‘I think there is anxiety around if the markets will rebound and that makes younger buyers even more hesitant to cash out stocks right now. I think, for the most part, people are kind of taking a step back or being really cautious in their moves in the real estate market,’ she added.”

The San Francisco Chronicle in California. “More homes are for sale in the Bay Area. But buyers aren’t biting. In March, about 1,300 new homes — including condominiums and small multifamily buildings — hit the market in the San Francisco metropolitan area, according to real estate company Redfin, which defines the area as San Francisco and San Mateo counties. But only 780 homes changed their status that month to ‘pending,’ meaning an offer was accepted. That was the largest March gap for the San Francisco metro area since at least 2012, the earliest year for which Redfin has data. With mortgage rates still high and many economists warning a recession could be on the horizon, some sellers — even in the Bay Area — have had to cut prices to make a deal. ‘Buyers are out there,’ said Allison Fortini Crawford, a San Francisco and Marin County Realtor with Sotheby’s International Realty. ‘But they are very picky. They are nervous and hesitant because we do have the stock market on a yo-yo.'”

“The good news for buyers is that some sellers are more willing to cut prices, especially if they need to move quickly. Redfin data shows that 20% of homes for sale in the San Francisco metro area had a price drop in March — lower compared with the 30% in California overall, but up slightly from the 17% in 2024.”

Deverite in Colorado. “Now may be the time for Denver’s apartment residents to ask for a break on rent. After years of landlords having the upper hand, the Denver metro has become a renter’s market, according to the Apartment Association of Metro Denver, a landlord advocacy group. The metro vacancy rate – the percentage of empty apartments on the market — is higher than at any time in the past 15 years: 7 percent. There are a total of 440,521 rentable units on the market. Nearly 31,000 apartments were unoccupied on a given day. Most often, vacant units are waiting for their next tenant. ‘What happens when vacancy gets over 6 percent is that apartment communities become much less aggressive when it comes to raising rent,’ explained Cary Bruteig of Apartment Insights. ‘Apartment communities are reacting by lowering rents.’ Downtown Denver has seen a glut of new construction, and that’s contributing to higher vacancy rates in the city center. As construction boomed, the metro saw more than 6,000 new units come on the market in the first quarter of 2025 and nearly 21,000 in the previous 12 months. The metro covers Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas and Jefferson counties.”

Bisnow Chicago in Illinois. “When Woodcrest Capital bought a steeply discounted office property in the Chicago suburb of Lincolnshire earlier this month, the deal terms were dramatic enough to raise eyebrows. The Texas-based family office scooped up the roughly 800K SF fully vacant 4 Overlook Park office complex for just $6.2M, or about $7 per SF, in an all-cash purchase. A little over a decade ago, VEREIT dropped $148M for the same site. If the near-96% price drop didn’t capture commercial real estate’s attention, the company’s leasing strategy did: Woodcrest is offering some tenants up to five years of free rent and rates as low as $5 per SF for others. ‘We want to offer something that the market has either never heard of, or they haven’t heard of it in decades,’ said Michael Roy, the company’s president of property management. ‘We said, ‘Man, this thing’s going to trade at an incredible value, and we want to be the one to pick it up.’ Other landlords ‘don’t make money if they lease it out at $5 [per SF], but we will,’ Roy said.”

Blog TO in Canada. “The Ontario housing market is in a dire state… Like the Toronto Maple Leafs’ chances of winning the Stanley Cup kind of dire. Recent data shows that almost no one is buying houses, even if they are really nice. And while Toronto has definitely seen the effects of this market downturn, the rest of Ontario might be having an even worse time of things. This six-bedroom, 10-bathroom mansion with over 10,000 square feet of living space in Caledon is stunning. It’s sitting on almost 10 acres of land and is a one-of-a-kind architectural masterpiece. And yet, despite all it has going for it, the house just slashed its asking price from $8,000,000 to $4,999,000. Plus, there was also a brief period of time it was listed for only $1, which is a notorious tactic realtors use to try to get bidding going, and even that didn’t work. In short, it wouldn’t be surprising if this house took a major loss or sat on the market for a while before selling.”

CBC News in Canada. “Nearly two years after a catastrophic wildfire tore through the Lake Okanagan Resort near West Kelowna, B.C., dozens of homeowners say they’ve been left in limbo — unable to rebuild and frustrated by what they call a lack of government support. Before it was destroyed by the McDougall Creek wildfire in August 2023, the 74-acre resort, located about 20 kilometres outside the city, was both a vacation destination and a year-round community. Several of the buildings on the property were condominiums with dozens of apartments either owned by Lake Okanagan Resort or by individual owners, either as investment properties or, in the case of Maria Hart, her primary residence.”

“Now Hart and other condo owners say they are stuck and unable to rebuild until basic utilities like water and electricity, which the resort provided to their buildings before the fire, are restored to the property. ‘It seems a bit like we’re forgotten,’ Hart said. Today, Lake Okanagan Resort sits eerily quiet. Only one hotel building stands, surrounded by industrial fencing. The fire reduced several other condominium and chalet buildings on the resort property to their foundations. According to strata council member Heather Ormiston, the resort stopped responding to the strata’s emails and phone calls months ago, leaving her and other condo owners in the dark. ‘Extremely frustrating is actually an understatement,’ said Ormiston. ‘They seem to use all kinds of stall tactics.'”

“In the meantime, Maria Hart and other condo owners are paying mortgages and strata fees on homes that no longer exist. ‘I feel like I’m in limbo. I’m not sure if I should try and find another place in Kelowna or if I should go to greener pastures or what I should do,’ Hart said. ‘Friends and family ask me, ‘What are your plans?’ I don’t know. Can I move back into my home? Is it going to be rebuilt … ever? I don’t know.'”

From Shafaq News. “Iraq’s real estate market has slowed considerably over recent months, with lower housing demand, fewer sales, and stagnant prices spreading across the capital and beyond. Industry professionals and economists point to a mixture of financial, regulatory, and political challenges that have cooled down what was once a bustling sector. Compounding the uncertainty are recent banking measures requiring that all property sales above 100 million Iraqi dinars (about $68 thousand) be processed through official bank channels. According to economist Nasser al-Kinani, the dynamic that had long fuelled Baghdad’s property boom has flipped. ‘For several years, demand sharply outpaced supply, allowing prices to surge,’ he observed during an exchange with Shafaq News. ‘Now that dynamic has reversed. There are more sellers than buyers, and that has flattened price growth, even reversed it in some districts.'”

“In many areas of the capital, homes that once commanded $5,000 per square meter now sit with no offers or face bids well below expectations. The market imbalance isn’t just theoretical, it’s reshaping livelihoods. Construction activity, often a reliable source of daily income for many, has slowed dramatically. Nazar Hammadi, a 35-year-old laborer from al-Furat, has been struggling to find work. ‘In the last two months, I’ve barely worked. Only a few days here and there,’ he shared. Even the WhatsApp groups once used to find gigs have fallen silent. Aya Yahya, a Baghdad resident, had reached an agreement with a buyer to sell her home. But after learning that the deal would need to be processed through a bank, she withdrew. ‘We had agreed on a price, and the buyer was ready. But once I found out about the banking process, I walked away. People remember what happened in Lebanon. No one wants to be stuck like that, unable to touch their money,’ she remarked.”

The Ziraat Times. “In recent months, Kashmir’s commercial real estate sector, especially the hotel and guest house segment, has witnessed an alarming trend: a glut of properties on sale with very few takers. Every day, new listings flood the market — hotels, resorts, guest houses — yet genuine buyers remain scarce. This growing mismatch between supply and demand signals deep distress in the sector and raises serious concerns about the economic undercurrents affecting Kashmir’s fragile post-pandemic recovery. At the heart of this problem lies a combination of over-leveraging and unrealistic expectations.”

“Policymakers must recognize that a wave of loan defaults and foreclosures could not only devastate individual livelihoods but also destabilize the broader banking system in J&K. At the same time, a word of caution is essential for potential investors. While distressed assets might seem like bargains, the larger market risks — unpredictable tourism patterns, political sensitivities, and oversupply — must be carefully weighed. A blind rush to snap up such properties without realistic business planning could create a secondary crisis.”

The Freeman. “As the global trade or tariff war rages on, the uncertainty mounts. Sadly, it is driven solely by one person’s mood and rhetoric. Well, by the guy named Donald Trump. We can mirror this from how stock exchanges or bourses (globally) react. However, if we must talk about uncertainty, it should be the country’s real estate industry. To recall, as POGOs were on the rise, the demand for condominiums in Metro Manila surged. Thus, developers responded correspondingly. Now that they are gone, we are seeing a lot of units empty. According, to Colliers Philippines, ‘Metro Manila’s condominium oversupply reached a record high last year, with unsold units expected to take over eight years to be fully absorbed by the market.'”

“That ‘unsold units surged by 77% in 2024 to P158 billion worth of inventory, up from P89.6 billion in 2023,’ Colliers Philippines Director and Head of Research Joey Roi H. Bondoc said during a briefing earlier this year. That ‘at the current market absorption rate, it would take up to 8.2 years, or 98 months, for these units to be sold, compared to just 3.2 years in 2023,’ he added. Indeed, that ‘Metro Manila’s overall residential vacancy rate reached 23.9%,’ as reported, is a fact. So, is there a glut? Yes, for condominiums in Metro Manila (including high-end units) priced way above P2,000,000 per unit.”