They Spent Quite A Bit Of Money When They Bought It And They’re Desperate

It’s Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. “Condo owners across the state are scrambling to sell to avoid rising insurance rates and special assessments, but buyers aren’t biting. Sales are down nearly 15% compared to last year. That’s according to April data from Florida Realtors. The outlook is even bleaker in the Tampa Bay metro area, where sales fell 20%. ‘People are waiting on pins and needles to see what the next budget is going to look like, what the next assessment will be,’ said Dimitri Karides, a broker associate with Sand Key Realty in Clearwater Beach. ‘Sellers are realizing they might want to spend their money elsewhere.’ Cash-strapped owners are dumping their homes on the market and some are even selling at a loss. The median sales price is now $335,000, a 6% drop from last year and a drop of more than 16% from April 2021, before the Surfside disaster. Though owners now have more time to assess their options, Karides said many will still be priced out by rising costs and forced to sell. ‘I don’t think it changes the market dynamics,’ he said. ‘Someone is going to have to pay, there’s no way around it.'”

“There are more houses to buy in Bastrop County than last year, which has led to a price drop in the median sales amount, according to recent data from Unlock MLS and the Austin Board of Realtors. In the Bastrop-area ZIP code of 78602, the sale of 45 houses in April went for a median of $359,000, down 3.1%. The months of available inventory in Smithville more than tripled to an ample 18.7 months.”

“The Utah housing market is shifting again. Houses are sitting on the market longer, and buyers are taking their time. ‘There are more listings on the market right now than at any other time in the last six years,’ said Tiffany Kennard, a broker at Edge Real Estate. ‘It’s a buyer’s market right now. There’s more to choose from, so it’s taking longer for homes to go under contract.’ In April of this year, Utah had more than 17,000 homes on the market which is up from just over 11,000 in April of last year, according to Redfin. Kennard says that if homes do not get attention within the first two weeks, sellers will sometimes have to drop prices significantly. ‘If we don’t have showings in seven to fourteen days, depending on the price point, we’re making a major price adjustment,’ said Dejan Eskic, senior research fellow at the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute said.”

“The real-estate market in May continued to experience significant growth in housing inventory across Northwest Multiple Listing Service’s 26-county coverage area, including in King and Snohomish counties, NWMLS said Wednesday. The six counties with the highest increases in active inventory were Clallam, up 72.5%; Snohomish, up 64.1%; Ferry, up 59.1%; King, up 57.7%; Grant, up 53.3%; and Adams, up 52.3%. Even with that, sales growth did not keep pace. ‘Relative to the previous month, the number of active listings increased by 3,851 (from 14,459 in April 2025), while the number of closed sales increased by only 580 (from 5,887 in April 2025),’ Steven Bourassa, director of the Washington Center for Real Estate Research, said in the release. ‘In other words, listings increased by nearly six and a half times the growth in the number of sales.’ On the pricing side in King County, the median sales price of single-family homes and condos combined was $865,000, down 2.8% from May 2024. For homes only, the median settled at $989,000, down 1.2%. Condos’ median was $569,000, down 4.2%. On the county’s pricey Eastside, the median was just more than $1.6 million, down 3.9%. The Eastside’s highest-priced market, Bellevue west of Interstate 405, had a median of $3.2 million, down 7%. In Snohomish County, the combined median was $785,000, flat with May 2024. Single-family homes priced at a median of $833,000, up 0.6%. Condos sold for $489,975, down 12.1%.”

“Personal politics aside, Silicon Valley luxury real estate agents had eagerly anticipated a ‘Trump bump.’ ‘Those first two weeks were phenomenal after Inauguration Day,’ said Joe Velasco, a real estate agent who operates in the Peninsula and South Bay. But that optimism has dimmed. One realtor said it has been the slowest spring buying season since the 2008 recession. ‘Tech executives are extremely skittish,’ said Velasco, who typically works with C-suite buyers from the so-called Magnificent 7 companies, which include Meta, Nvidia, and Apple. In the two days after Trump’s tariff announcement, the Magnificent 7 lost more than $1 trillion in market capitalization. Usually, his clients have 1.5 to three times the price of the home they plan to purchase in stock. But now that their portfolios are seesawing — a few told Velasco they’d lost 30%-40% of their portfolio value — tech executives are pulling back on their offers. ‘They are very skittish to write a full-price offer or anything above asking price,’ Velasco said, ‘And people who don’t need to sell are holding on.'”

“Spencer Hsu, a Palo Alto-based real estate agent whose clientele is predominantly tech workers, said he’s noticed prospective buyers on work visas like H-1Bs becoming uneasy about putting down deeper roots, given the Trump administration’s heightened scrutiny of high-skilled legal immigrants. ‘They’re fearful their visas might not get renewed or they might lose their jobs, which means their immigration status is jeopardized,’ said Hsu.”

“The 188 West St. James residential towers in downtown San Jose were bought through a fast-track foreclosure proceeding, according to documents filed on Tuesday at the Santa Clara County Recorder’s Office. Machine Investment Group, acting through an affiliate, paid $181.9 million for the housing highrises, an amount that matches the unpaid debt for the property, county real estate records show. China-based Z&L Properties, acting through an affiliate, had been the owner and developer of the two towers. The affiliate lost its ownership when a $330 million loan that an affiliate of Mack Real Estate Credit Strategies provided in 2019 to finance the property was transferred to Machine Investment Group’s affiliate on Tuesday. The $181.9 million that Machine Investment’s affiliate paid was 44.9% below the $330 million loan that went into default and eventually led to the streamlined deed in lieu of foreclosure process. The transaction ends a long-running ordeal for the West St. James towers that has stretched over about eight years.”

“Empty office buildings and declining property values are threatening Boston’s financial future — to the tune of a projected $1.7 billion loss in tax revenue over the next few years, according to a new report released Thursday by the Boston Policy Institute. Evan Horowitz, executive director of the Tufts University’s Center for State Policy Analysis, which co-published the report, said the new projections are ‘much worse’ than initially anticipated. ‘Things are not getting better,’ Horowitz told WBUR’s Newscast. ‘Offices remain empty. Their valuations continue to fall. We think they’ll fall further than we thought.’ The assessed value for all of Boston’s office buildings fell 9% in fiscal year 2025 — a one-year dip reminiscent of the 2008 financial crisis and 2000 dot-com bubble burst, according to the report. This could amount to a decline in property values of 35% to 45% through 2029, the report said. Some Boston office buildings have already sold at 50% to 70% discounts over the last year, the analysis found.”

“According to the London and St. Thomas Association of Realtors (LSTAR), home sales were down significantly in May compared to the same month last year. Mike Hattim is a mortgage broker with Dominion Lending Centres. ‘I think that’s the biggest struggle for people is that they’ve spent so much on their homes years before that now they don’t have enough room to drop the prices,’ he said. He’s already seeing sellers taking a bit of a haircut in an effort move property. ‘I know one person right now that’s going to lose about $150,000 on their home. They spent quite a bit of money when they bought it and they’re desperate, they had purchased another home, and they didn’t have much of a choice. Now, thankfully, that loss is mostly equity that they would have wanted to take out.’ Hattim added, ‘They were still had enough to cover their mortgage but, unfortunately, they’re losing money. And I think that’s going to be the case for a lot of people.'”

“Real estate in the Greater Toronto Area has entered correction territory. ‘Certainly, the first quarter of 2025, we anticipated a stronger real estate market, but the geopolitical situation and certainly the tariff climate paused the market in a way that we hadn’t anticipated. So, I would say that we’re in a market correction,’ said Cailey Heaps, the CEO of Heaps Estrin Team. Following two consecutive Interest rate pauses from the Bank of Canada, Heaps said interest rate fatigue has permeated the Toronto real estate market. ‘Buyers are sort of tired of talking about it. They know that it’s more affordable now, we understand that housing in general is more affordable in Toronto. So, it used to be that interest rates were part of my daily vernacular, and that’s definitely changed,’ she said. ‘The condominium market is certainly challenging. There’s so much inventory in the city. There’s over 30,000 active listings in the Toronto Real Estate Board right now,’ she said adding that it is currently a ‘difficult market.'”

“The median dwelling value for the whole of New Zealand was $818,132 in May. The national median value is now 16.3% lower than its January 2022 peak. ‘Anybody who was anticipating a sharp or widespread increase in property values as we got further into 2025 continues to be disappointed,’ Cotality Chief Property Economist Kelvin Davidson said. ‘Lower mortgage rates are clearly going to be bolstering households’ confidence as well as their wallets, and there were clear signs of higher loan-to-value and debt-to-income ratio lending activity in the latest Reserve Bank figures,’ he said. But Davidson also warned it wasn’t one way traffic. ‘Housing isn’t necessarily affordable in absolute terms, while the economy and labour market remain subdued too,’ he said.”