It Was Dangerous, It Was Unsustainable, I Knew What Goes Up Must Come Down

It’s Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. “From Capitol Hill to the household of one federal worker who was laid off as part of job cuts, critics sounded off on the second Trump administration’s 100th day in office. Keri, who asked not to share her last name, worked at the Department of Commerce, which to her was a dream job. However, she lost that job last month. ‘When I got that email, you go through a wave. It’s like death. You go through a wave of sadness and fear, and anger. The world felt like it was pulled from under me because now I have to go and tell my family I don’t have a job and we’re going to lose health coverage,’ Keri said. ‘And how are we going to pay our mortgage and feed our kids?'”

“WPTV spoke to Maureen Evans, who moved to Martin County six years ago to be in paradise. But she’s noticed the real estate market is quite different from when she first bought her home in Palm City. Evans told WPTV’s Tyler Hatfield, while she isn’t looking to sell right now, if she were…’I’d probably wait,’ said Evans. Hatfield spoke with local real estate agent Kelley Decowski who said the buyer’s market is bringing prices for some homes down. There’s around 7,000 active listings on the Treasure Coast. For single-family homes, Martin, St. Lucie and Indian River counties have over six months of inventory. For townhomes and condos, each county has more than 10 months of inventory. For townhomes and condos, prices are down. Martin County seeing a 6% drop since 2024. With more choices, Decowski said buyers are the winners in this market. But Decowski said sellers don’t have to lose out if they are willing to negotiate, even at a lower price. ‘They can maximize their equity and sell their property before their equity shrinks more,’ said Decowski.”

“Following a slowing real estate market, Acadiana is showing signs of stabilization as we continue into spring and summer months. ‘This time of year, right now, we find it’s kinda what we’d call a buyer’s market,’ says Ken Simeral, president of the RAA. ‘There’s enough inventory right now where people, they have some choices, so they’re gonna get some deals from the sellers whether it’s a new construction or existing house. It’s not a seller’s market at this moment, but now is the time, people are looking, and people want to be settled in before September when kids go back to school. For sellers, don’t lose the buyer — you wanna keep the buyer — if you want to make some adjustments in your pricing, make some repairs, pay some closing costs, do it.'”

“There’s good news building for Arizonans who have been patiently waiting to enter the housing market. Valley realtor Jeff Sibbach reports there are more than 27,000 homes for sale in Arizona—an inventory he hasn’t seen in nearly 10 years. The realtor said supply is currently outpacing demand. Sibbach said sellers may have to consider lowering their prices if they don’t want to leave their house on the market for a long time; however, he understands sellers trying to capitalize on their equity with fears of recession. ‘If you buy a house and you have 10% equity because you put 10 down, you need to take cash out of that house and the price goes down 50k, you lost all of your equity,’ Sibbach said.”

“Most people would generally expect cities in California to top any real estate list because housing prices and demand are so high, but a recent analysis from Zillow is flipping the long-held expectation on its head. The list shows Sacramento dropped 10 slots from its 2024 ranking. ‘We are not surprised, we have felt it for a while,’ said realtor Susan Vallejo. It’s been tough for sellers, too. ‘We’re not seeing multiple offers. We’re not seeing many go over the list price,’ she said. ‘Rather than waiting for interest rates to come down, if you can afford to purchase a home now, purchase what you can afford, use this as your nest egg. Start building your own wealth now…If rates do drop, there’s always an opportunity to re-finance.'”

“Eight apartment buildings in Oakland were purchased for more than $60 million in a deal that suggests values for multifamily residential properties in the East Bay’s largest city are plunging. Bought for a combined $62.8 million, the buildings are located in the vicinity of Lake Merritt and Interstate 580, documents filed on April 29 with the Alameda County Recorder’s Office show. The sellers were affiliates controlled by Yat-Pang Au, an entrepreneur who is the founder and CEO of real estate firm Veritas Investments. At one point, Veritas was San Francisco’s largest apartment landlord — until a massive loan default and foreclosure torpedoed the company’s ownership of 60 apartment complexes with 2,149 units. The combined purchase price of $62.8 million for the eight apartment properties was 40.1% below their total assessed value of $104.8 million as of January 2024, according to estimates posted by the Alameda County Assessor’s Office.”

“Three years after the COVID-era real estate price bubble peaked, a quarter of homeowners who bought during the frenzy were still losing money if they sold in 2024, particularly in those communities just outside of the Greater Toronto Area. The highest median losses came from high-end cottages in Muskoka which dropped $240,000 in value. But the region with the largest share of sales that recorded losses was tiny Dufferin County, with a population of 66,000 people, with 29.9 per cent of sales losing money. ‘I’ve been in the business over 20 years, and never have I seen a market spike like I did in COVID,’ said Dave Grime, broker with Royal LePage RCR in Orangeville (a town that accounts for about half of Dufferin’s population). Mr. Grime said most of the buyers he dealt with during COVID were from much larger cities such as Brampton or Mississauga. ‘It was a mass exodus from the GTA; inventory was very low and they started throwing the money around up here like I could not believe. A 12-year-old townhouse in Orangeville selling for over $1-million? It was dangerous. It was unsustainable. I knew what goes up, must come down.'”

“Linda Horne is the former president of the Orangeville and District Real Estate Board. She said that younger agents are learning that they need different listing contracts for properties that sell at a loss. According to her, some of the COVID-era buyers may have been reckless because the money didn’t seem real. ‘It was ‘casino money’ – not real equity money,’ she said, referring to the eye-watering profits made by some GTA home sellers, who then took that windfall to shop in her area. ‘I sold a semi-detached at an outrageous price. The place was a dump and I told the lady at the time ‘You better love it,’ said Ms. Horne. ‘She sold a condo in Etobicoke. ‘Casino money.’ She didn’t care about overpaying. Now, she’s calling me and wants to move.'”

“‘People are still having COVID dreams: maybe their neighbour sold for $1.2-million but it was only worth $900,000,’ said Ross Hughes, a sales team leader with Royal LePage RCR, who says he has lost listings when a seller wants to go with an unrealistic price, only to hear that dream didn’t survive contact with reality. ‘They will list it with another agent, and the next thing you know, they are dropping [the asking price] down. It’s a big pill to swallow.'”

“The Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) has imposed two fines totaling 1.7 million euros on Achmea Real Estate for serious violations of the Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorist Financing Act (Wwft), the regulator announced Tuesday. The offenses reportedly occurred between 2018 and 2022, during the period when Achmea’s real estate arm operated under the name Syntrus Achmea Real Estate & Finance. At the time, the company managed investment funds and offered mortgage products. The AFM investigation found that Syntrus Achmea failed to report 11 unusual transactions to the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) on time, as required by Dutch law. In a written response, Achmea expressed regret over the violations: ‘We regret these errors. They should not have happened and are not consistent with the values and professional standards of the company.'”

“The Sudanese army’s recapture of more territories from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), including most recently the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, has been good news for tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees in Egypt, who started to pack up and return to their country. At the same time, the return of the Sudanese threatens economic prospects of property owners in Egypt. ‘The return of the Sudanese refugees to their country has deeply affected the local property market, paralysing it altogether,’ Adel al-Aswani, a real estate broker from Giza province, told The New Arab. ‘The demand is falling dramatically while real estate clients are making themselves scarce in a mysterious way,’ he added.”

“There are fears that the boom created by the increase in demand caused a bubble that will pop, which opens the door for a recession. Mustafa Kamal, a civil servant in his late forties, owns a flat in Faisal, a sprawling lower middle class and poor neighbourhood in Giza province, where tens of thousands of Sudanese and other African refugees live. The Sudanese tenants of his flat left the flat two months ago and returned to their country. Since then, Kamal has been putting his flat up for sale, but has not received any suitable purchase offers yet. ‘My flat was valued at 1.5 million (roughly $29,000) seven months ago,’ Kamal told TNA. ‘I have already reduced its price by 200,000 pounds (around $3,900) to be able to sell it, but this doesn’t seem to be enough to induce customers,’ he added.”

“Some 47% of apartment projects in Hanoi saw a decline in prices on the secondary market during the first quarter, reversing a trend seen in previous months. Property listing platform Batdongsan’s data also showed price declines at many projects. Prices have fallen by 2-6% year-on-year at some projects such as Hanoi Paragon, Mipec Rubik 360 and Master West Heights. Nguyen Hoai An, senior director at property consultancy CBRE Hanoi, said old apartment prices have jumped by 40% in the last two years, and there are no supporting factors to maintain such growth rate. Many sellers no longer dream of making large profits, and would not likely find buyers without discounting their prices, she added. Pham Duc Toan, CEO of developer EZ Property, said many apartment buyers are speculators aiming for quick profits. Having paid only 15-20% upfront, some lack the money to meet payment schedules and are compelled to offload their units, he added. The steady influx of new condo supply also heightens pressure to sell. Savills forecasts Hanoi would add 7,400 new units by year-end, mainly in suburban areas like Dong Anh, Hoai Duc and Hoang Mai.”

“Amid the ongoing policies to revitalize new towns such as the reconstruction of the first-generation new towns and public housing in the third-generation new towns, the second-generation new towns seem to be struggling to recover from the real estate market slump. An official from an A real estate agency in Wirye new town noted, ‘There were expectations regarding the opening of the Gyeonggi Provincial Express Railroad (GTX), but housing prices are still nearly 20% lower than when they were at their peak,’ and added, ‘While this is not only a problem for the second-generation new towns, inquiries about buying have significantly decreased as the market slump continues.'”

“Some parts of the country are setting house price records, while some still have prices 25 percent below their previous peaks, new data shows. Lower Hutt is the part of the country where house prices are furthest from their peak. There, values are still down 24.3 percent according to Cotality, formerly Corelogic, data. It is followed by Upper Hutt, down 23.6 percent, and Wellington City, down 23.4 percent. Waitakere is the part of Auckland still furthest from the peak, down 22.8 percent, but most of Auckland remains more than 20 percent down. With bank servicing rates, used to test whether buyers can afford a loan, falling below 7 percent, debt-to-income restrictions would become more important.”

“Mortgage broking firm Squirrel said that was the case in South Auckland particularly. ‘It’s mostly lower-income investors and migrants who struggle to verify income,’ founder John Bolton said. ‘The issue is more around income verification. In the past, banks could be a little bit flexible about income verification. Now that it is a strict rule, they need to follow it to the letter.'”