We’re Seeing Price Reductions Across The Board Because Buyers Just Don’t See The Value

A report from WBIR TV. “Changes by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development can impact thousands of potential homebuyers across Tennessee and millions across the country. In a letter to the Federal Housing Administration from HUD in March, the government agency announced there will be changes to who qualifies for an FHA-insured mortgage based on its updated residency requirements to align with the Trump Administration’s policies. Lane Gonzalez is a loan officer with Eustis Mortgage. He said FHA is one of the many loan programs offered in the United States and it’s one of the most popular. ‘One of the reasons why FHA is so popular is because it only requires a 580 credit score in order to qualify,’ Gonzalez said. The shift went into effect on May 25, 2025. The policy change now only allows U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, such as green card holders, to access the program.”

“The change leaves non-permanent residents without access to a home loan through the FHA. This includes people with work or student visas, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients and others. ‘This is impacting families,’ Gonzalez said. ‘They’re at the precipice of buying their own home and the rug gets pulled out from under them.'”

Treasure Coast Newspapers. “It’s arguably a buyer’s market for condominiums and townhomes on the Treasure Coast. So why are prospective buyers not jumping at the opportunity to own a slice of high-rise paradise? In the midst of Florida’s ‘condo crisis’ — a confluence of rising insurance rates, market uncertainty and new state inspection regulations — the total number of Treasure Coast condominium and townhome units listed on the market is about 64% greater than five years ago, during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a TCPalm analysis of local Realtor data. The Treasure Coast condo market now is ‘roughly’ half as bad as it was during 2008 recession levels, said Jonathan Lickstein, president of Broward, Palm Beaches & St. Lucie Realtors. ‘Condos are moving slow as molasses.’ Indian River, St. Lucie and Martin counties each has seen increasing inventory. All three Treasure Coast counties leaned more toward a buyer’s market for condos and townhomes since last year: Martin: 9.8 months of inventory in April, up from 6.4 in April 2024. St. Lucie: 11.8, up from 7.6 in April 2024. Indian River: 14.1, up from 8.9 in April.”

Islander News in Florida. “It looks like Key Biscayne’s real estate outlook has trended toward a buyer’s market, according to several experts in the know. According to Redfin, the median sale price of a home (all types) on the island was $1.34 million in April, down 12.7% over last year. In comparison, the median sale of homes sold in April 2023 hit $2.4 million, the highest mark since April 2020. The median sale price per square foot was $819 this past April, down 14.8% from a year ago. Rocket mortgage said, ‘If you’re buying a home in Key Biscayne, you may be able to get a good deal — 88.9% of homes here sold below asking price last month.’ 5-bedroom properties dipped a whopping 29.4%, going from $6.1 million in April 2024 to $4.3 million when listed in April this year. When it came to the condo market, Redfin found the median sale price on Key Biscayne was $1 million, 35.4% less than a year ago.”

The Boston Globe in Massachusetts. “Put yourself in the shoes of a first-time home buyer. After several competitive open houses, you come across a beautiful antique Colonial for sale in Dedham, built in 1801. Is this a house you’re going to put in an offer? The answer, increasingly, is no. ‘Antiques aren’t for the faint of heart,’ said Pamela Bathen, a broker associate with Oak Realty in Ashland. ‘Antique homes clearly need to be puttered with, because they’re 200 years old. They can be hard to sell, and I get it. If you’re two software engineers who leave for work at 6:30 in the morning and get home at 5:30 at night, you don’t want to putter with your house.’ Millennials entered the market and started prioritizing living in walkable downtowns, where many antique homes were built. They continued buying antiques through the pandemic, but now the market has changed. ‘Inventory is up 20 percent,’ said Dana Bull, a real estate advisor with Compass in Marblehead, explaining buyers have more choices. ‘People are going back to really thinking, ‘Do I actually want an antique?'”

Arizona’s Family. “Across the country, home sellers are dropping prices, and Arizona is leading the way. According to Realtor.com, 28% of listings in Arizona saw a price reduction in April, which was significantly above the national average of 18%. ‘Sellers have been over-enthusiastic about their pricing, and because there haven’t been a lot of comparable sales, the agents are sometimes like, ‘OK, let’s try it.’ And then as we get into it and we’re not seeing a lot of showings, or we’re seeing showings but no offers, that’s telling us it’s overpriced,’ said Sindy Ready, president of Arizona Association of Realtors. ‘The reality is it’s not the agent and it’s not the seller that sets the prices. It’s the market and what the buyer will pay.’ One of Ready’s recent listings in central Phoenix is getting a new roof installed this week. ‘We’re going to close on this is week, and we are just below $700,000,’ she said. It’s about $50,000 less than the original price.”

“Even sellers with seemingly competitive prices are making cuts. ‘We’re priced $50,000 below the comparable sales in the neighborhood, which is great, but buyers aren’t offering that right now,’ said Melissa Bailey, the listing agent for a four-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath home in Gilbert. It’s been on the market for a few months, and the sellers have reduced the price by about $70,000. ‘It doesn’t matter whether it’s a $300,000 house in Maricopa or a $2 million house in Gilbert, we’re seeing price reductions across the board because buyers just don’t see the value in homes right now,’ Bailey said.”

The Pioneer in California. “The real estate market in our corner of Contra Costa County is undergoing a noticeable shift this spring. After years of rapid growth and intense competition for buyers with limited inventory, we’re now seeing signs of a more balanced market emerging. Some properties are selling quickly – often still receiving multiple offers, especially if they’re competitively priced and move-in ready. Others, meanwhile, are lingering on the market longer and undergoing price reductions to attract attention. This mix of activity suggests we are transitioning from a seller’s market toward one that offers more opportunities for both buyers and sellers. It’s no longer enough to simply list a property and expect immediate results; strategic pricing, preparation and strong marketing are more important than ever.”

From KSTP. “Layoff notices will start going out to some state workers this weekend, as key budget bills have yet to be passed and signed into law. ‘It makes me feel very worried,’ said Megan Dayton, a demographer in the Minnesota Department of Administration. ‘Both myself and my husband are employed by the State of Minnesota, so we would both receive layoff notices, which means care for our kids and paying for our house and car becomes very uncertain.’ Dayton is also president of the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees, or MAPE, a union representing 18,000 government workers in Minnesota. ‘There’s a lot of fear, a lot of uncertainty, a lot of frustration,’ Dayton said.”

KBZK in Montana. “With apartment complexes rising all over Bozeman, it might seem like there’s no end to the city’s housing demand. But take a closer look, and you’ll see a surprising trend: some of those new units are sitting empty. ‘Our current vacancy rate is 12.5% within Bozeman city limits,’ said Casey Rose, a commercial real estate broker at Sterling CRE Advisors in Bozeman. That may not sound alarming on its own, but in a small market like Bozeman, it’s a major shift. Rose explained that a healthy vacancy rate typically sits around 5%, a level he described as the ‘homeostasis’ of the rental market. ‘There are still over 3,000 units in the planning pipeline. We would anticipate that a lot of those projects would not be moving forward due to the current vacancy rates,’ Rose explained. Rose says that Bozeman’s market is especially sensitive to changes like this. In larger cities like Los Angeles, it might take 50,000 units to swing the vacancy rate by five percent. In Bozeman? Just 300. According to Rose, Bozeman’s housing landscape has shifted over the past year, from a landlord’s market to a tenant’s market.”

CBC News in Canada. “Real estate broker Nanda Puchimada, who recently helped a client buy in Hamilton, said price drops are consistent across the GTA, but vary by housing type. ‘The steepest declines are in high-end detached homes,’ he said. ‘Properties over $1.5 million have seen the biggest hits, while condos and townhouses have dipped more modestly.’ Meanwhile, inventory is rising. ‘Hamilton has seen a 30 to 35 per cent jump in listings,’ said Puchimada. ‘A lot of that is due to upcoming mortgage renewals. Owners who locked in low rates a few years ago are now facing much higher payments.'”

The Globe and Mail. “A number of red lights are flashing across the dashboard of Canada’s consumer credit market, according to Equifax. On everything from credit cards to mortgages, a growing share of borrowers is increasingly struggling to make their monthly debt payments, the numbers suggest. Signs of strain are particularly acute among young people and those living in Ontario, with missed payments rising even as many consumers are cutting back on spending, the data suggest. A shaky labour market may also help to explain why Ontario has emerged as what the report dubbed ‘a hotspot for financial stress in Canada.'”

“Even before U.S. tariffs began hitting employment in Ontario’s manufacturing sector in April, the province already had the highest jobless rate in Canada, along with Prince Edward Island. Ontario is also at the forefront of Canada’s current wave of mortgage renewals, a treacherous moment for many financially overstretched borrowers. Scores of homeowners who bought properties in the pandemic housing boom are now facing loan renewals at higher interest rates, which is sending some households over their financial tipping point, said Rebecca Oakes, vice-president of advanced analytics at Equifax Canada . For mortgage debt in Ontario, the severe delinquency rate rose to 0.24 per cent in the first quarter of the year, a hefty 72-per-cent increase since the same period in 2024, the data show. Across Canada, mortgage delinquency levels have risen to the highest they’ve been since the period around 2016 and 2017, shortly before Ottawa introduced mortgage stress tests, a stricter way of vetting mortgage applicants’ finances to prevent overborrowing. Those rules caused the number of missed mortgage payments to drop and remain lower for years, Ms. Oakes said. But now mortgage delinquencies have crept back up even with the stress test in place, she noted. ‘That is not yet showing signs of levelling off to any degree. So that’s where we are particularly concerned,’ she added.”

The Sydney Morning Herald in Australia. “Sonja Boric never thought she and her family would be involved in a landmark legal action. She and a family member are part of a group of 30 investors who have taken legal action in the Supreme Court of Victoria against Lion Property Group. She says they joined the action because her family member, a retiree in his late 60s, is concerned about the fate of the money he invested – most of his retirement savings – in the property developer and investment manager. The action seeks to learn more about what has happened to the money invested in a scheme believed to have raised between $140 million and $200 million from 350 investors since 2018.”

“The investor group has alleged in court that Lion may have misused their money. Some of the development projects they invested in have faced delays of up to five years, and some are yet to start at all. The court has already heard there are concerns that Lion’s projects operated like a Ponzi scheme. Court documents reveal the investors have also accused Lion and its managers – the charismatic John Sader and award-winning mortgage broker Garry Pesochinsky – of misleading investors and running unregistered managed investment schemes for as many as 18 different investment projects.”

“Soon news travelled through Lion’s investors about the sale of one of the handful of projects fully completed through the scheme. Named the Zenith, it was an immaculate renovation of a historic home in one of Brisbane’s best suburbs, Hamilton, and had sold for $10 million – but Lion had not distributed the majority of the money to the investors in that syndicate, the court has heard. Then it acknowledged it had made payments to some, but not all, investors in the project on a ‘progressive’ basis, it is alleged. Around this point, panic set in for many of Lion’s customers.”

“Worse still, land titles for the properties included as exhibits to the affidavit allegedly showed Lion had taken out millions of dollars of additional mortgages, in some cases up to three, over the development sites. Some of these new undisclosed mortgages allegedly had interest rates of up to 30 per cent a year. On top of this, Lion had then failed to repay some of the mortgages and the lender had taken possession of the property, it is alleged in the affidavit. Last week, one of those sites in Brighton was sold to new owners. Lion confirmed in response to this masthead’s inquiries that another two properties had also been sold as mortgagee in possession.”

“In court in April, counsel for the investors, Justin Graham, KC, described Lion’s projects as a Ponzi scheme. ‘On examination of the defendant’s business model and the materials they’ve so far denied to show us, the defendant’s projects are being operated as a giant Ponzi scheme,’ Graham said. ‘It is riddled with conflicts, and money and assets are being used hither and thither for wherever it is needed in the group in order to stave off the most pressing creditors.’ Shaun Newberry is also seeking answers about the fate of his wife’s investment in one of Lion’s syndicates. ‘I just want accountability,’ he says, adding that he is worried the scheme will go ‘belly up’– a live prospect given Lion’s own court admission of concerns around its solvency.”