All You Can Do Is Keep Reducing The Price Until It Moves, And That’s What The Value Is

It’s Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. “It was a dream, but a Citrus Springs home is now Frank Sherrill’s nightmare. ‘I need flooring. I need all the baseboards put in. All the framing for the doors,’ he said of the unfinished home on Vespero Street. On April 30, Van Der Valk Construction filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Now, Sherrill’s dream home is officially an unfinished money pit, filled with most of his retirement savings. Sherrill is not alone. In Inverness Village 4, the recent bankruptcy has also left dozens of home buyers in limbo, including Dyandria Darel. ‘I’m devastated,’ she said. ‘It’s not only a retirement home, it was virtually my entire life savings. I have no money now. I’m going to be — I’m going to be — I don’t even want to think about it.'”

“Leaders of Honolulu’s vacation rental enforcement program say they will show no mercy on illegal operators, despite an emotional plea from a man trying to save his family’s home from foreclosure. Wednesday afternoon California resident Anson Lee testified at the Honolulu City Council against a resolution that would allow city lawyers to foreclose on the house his family owns in Alewa Heights, which accumulated nearly a million dollars in fines for illegal short-term rentals. ‘My mom was from Hong Kong,’ he said. ‘We came here, we were very poor, and she worked hard to get this house for us, and just to lose it just like this is not worth it.’ Lee said other operators should learn from his mistakes. ‘If you are doing vacation rental, please comply because I didn’t and that’s why I am paying the price,’ he said.”

“In New York City, housing-court justice isn’t blind. But some tenants treat these policies as a license to stop paying rent, dragging landlords into interminable legal disputes. Ilona Itskov, who owns a three-unit home in Brooklyn, is just one of many New Yorkers trapped in the city’s housing court hell. For more than five years, she claims to have endured two ‘nightmare’ tenants, who refused to pay rent and lodged hundreds of false reports. Kat Agostini, of Jamaica, Queens, inherited a small family house after her mother’s passing. She has now found herself in a similar drawn-out legal battle, seeking to evict her sister and sister’s boyfriend from the second floor-unit of her home. Her most realistic option now, she believes, is to sell the house at ‘a massively undervalued price’ and move to Long Island. ‘I feel so failed by a city I’d like to think I’ve supported,” Agostini said. ‘I’m a proud New Yorker . . . and I feel let down by it.'”

“For many Texans, owning a house on Galveston Island is a dream. However, many now find themselves underwater. Galveston is what realtors are calling an ‘oversaturated market.’ In other words, it’s a paradise for buyers. ‘We’ve never seen this amount of inventory sitting for this amount of time,’ said Realtor Shelby Forbert. ‘Homes are sitting six, seven, eight, nine months on the market.’ Forbert takes potential buyers on a tour of one of her Galveston listings, located on Jamaica Beach. This four-bedroom beach house has been on the market for six months. It has been completely flipped, and the brand-new furnishings are included in the sales price. ‘I just brought this home down. It was listed at $650,000, and now it’s at $499,000. So, we’re just waiting it out,’ Forbert said. ‘Airbnb landlords are suffering because there are so many homes to choose from, and they’re being put up for Airbnb all at once,’ Forbert said. ‘Before, there were very few, and now it’s every other home probably.'”

“Forbert says it’s hard to predict how the situation will unfold. ‘At the end of the day, the market will tell you what the house is worth,’ she said. This means motivated sellers must meet motivated buyers to make a deal. ‘All you can do is keep reducing the price until it moves, and that’s what the value is,’ Forbert said.”

“Signia by Hilton San Jose, the South Bay city’s largest hotel, was seized by its lender in a foreclosure that priced the tower at a fraction of its value, a sign that lodging woes still haunt the city’s downtown. BrightSpire Capital, acting through an affiliate, took ownership in a foreclosure that placed an $80 million value on the 541-room hotel – 41% less than the $134 million loan that the affiliate provided. The foreclosure may end a long-running fight by the hotel’s prior owner, a group headed up by Bay Area business executive Sam Hirbod, to keep the hotel from falling to its lender. ‘I lost 30 years of my life equity in there,’ Hirbod said in an interview with this news organization. ‘All $180 million that we put into the hotel that I had earned over 30 years of hard work is gone.’ A growing number of hotels in the region have suffered foreclosures, plunging property values, loan defaults and even abrupt closures. The problems are particularly acute in San Francisco and East Bay cities such as Oakland.”

“The condo market meltdown in Canada’s largest cities is showing no signs of fading. Experts say the market has shifted significantly over the past few months, as supply soars and demand disappears. ‘We’re pretty much at a recession in the condo market,’ said Robert Kavcic, senior economist at Bank of Montreal. The downturn is concentrated in Toronto and across southern Ontario, and to a lesser extent Vancouver, he explained. Real estate agent Sean Miller said in Toronto, unsold condos are piling up. ‘We’ve got seven months of inventory, which is insane, and we just don’t have the buyers to absorb it,’ he said. ‘We haven’t seen that much inventory in 20 years. If you’re a seller and you don’t have something that’s amazing, it’s tricky and you’ve got to be realistic,’ he said.”

“Steve Saretsky, a Realtor with Oakland Realty in Vancouver, says there’s a sea of inventory in areas like Surrey and Burnaby. ‘It’s where you’ve had a lot of investment and speculation, a lot of price growth, and now just people looking to exit. Thousands of investors also face steep losses, as presale condos purchased a few years ago are worth less than their original value. Saretsky said in Vancouver, there are projects that pre-sold for $2,500 per square foot, but appraisals are now coming in at $1,900 per square foot. ‘A cohort of investors will be scarred for a long time. They’re gonna say, you know what? I’m never buying an investment condo again,’ he said.”

“A major West Country developer has strenuously denied using accounting tricks to avoid paying creditors associated with a housing development in Bruton. In the face of a £4.6m loss on the site, the Bristol-based company has been accused by Landhouse of ‘phoenixing’ its accounts – a manoeuvre which enables companies to avoid paying creditors by transferring assets from one company to another. Acorn has strongly denied that any phoenixing took place, confirming it will bear the full brunt of this financial loss and is committed to delivering the remaining homes within the site – as well as another development elsewhere in the town. Robin Squire, Acorn’s regional managing director said: ‘Phase one is in administration, with a loss of £4.6m.’ He also stated that Acorn was expected to make a loss on every phase of the development, on top of the £4.6m it had already lost on phase one.”

“A stalled housing development in Elsies River has become the subject of a legal dispute and growing frustration among residents, as court documents reveal a messy fallout between a Cape Town contractor and a developer over an incomplete R126 million project. Years later, the site remains abandoned and partially built, as the two parties battle over financial guarantees and allegations of fraud and non-performance. Elsies River ward councillor Christopher Jordaan said the situation is a major missed opportunity for the area. ‘We have massive overcrowding and so many backyard dwellers. Why doesn’t the City step in?’ he asked. ‘At the moment it’s abandoned—some windows are broken—and there’s growing concern it could become a crime hotspot.'”

“Cotality, formerly Corelogic, has released its latest Pain and Gain report, which shows the gains and losses being made by sellers around the country. Of the main centres, Auckland had the highest proportion of losses, at 14.2%. Wellington was next at 10.9%, then Hamilton at 10.3%. But 17.9% investor sales in Hamilton were for a loss. Whangārei had the most losses of the smaller centres, with 16.2% of properties selling for less than the vendor paid. People were more likely to lose money on apartments. While just 8.4% of houses resold for a loss, 32.8% of apartments did. The median apartment loss was $63,000, compared to $49,000 for houses. Chief property economist Kelvin Davidson said the large number of listings on the market meant buyers had the ‘upper hand’ when it came to price negotiations. ‘Some vendors are simply having no choice but to take a deal below what they originally paid, especially if they’ve only owned the property for a short period of time.'”