People Don’t Have The Benefit Of The Value Of Their Home Going Up To Try To Get Out

A report from Gulf Coast News. “After years of record-breaking price growth, Florida’s once-sizzling housing market is beginning to lose heat. Realtor Sue Christiano, with Engle Volkers Realty, has witnessed the shift firsthand. ‘I had one property that was on the market for 10 months and it didn’t sell,’ Christiano said. ‘We got offers, but they were all low-ball.’ A major factor contributing to the slowdown is ballooning inventory. Lee County currently has more than 17,000 homes for sale. Collier County has over 9,000 listings, and Charlotte County adds more than 5,800 to the mix. Despite the drop in demand and home values, Christiano doesn’t believe this is a repeat of the 2006–2007 housing bubble. ‘There is no bubble,’ she said. ‘I think the key word is correction.'”

Mansion Global. “A bill that could ease Florida’s looming condo crisis has been awaiting Gov. Ron DeSantis’s signature for more than a month. But to condo owners hoping the law, if passed, will turn around the state’s sagging market, experts say: Don’t hold your breath. These special assessments can range anywhere from $25,000 to $400,000—more than many of these units are worth—according to Craig Studnicky, CEO of brokerage ISG World. ‘The new law promised to ease up the financing of the special assessments,’ Studnicky said. ‘But in my opinion it’s not going to matter much.’ In his estimation, only one in five of the 20,000 condo units are on solid financial ground, what realtors are calling ‘white list’ buildings. Real estate attorney Joe Hernandez of Miami-based Bilzin Sumberg, an expert in condo law, agrees that there are thousands of buildings that are ‘financially infeasible,’ as in their value doesn’t justify the cost to repair them, even if one could come up with the funds. ‘If an association is really distressed, in other words, if there’s a significant percentage of the unit owners that cannot pay, it’s very unlikely they’re going to get a loan because the whole basis for repayment of the loan is that the owners can pay their assessments,’ said Hernandez.”

Honolulu Civil Beat in Hawaii. “In the wake of the 2023 Maui wildfires, our island’s housing crisis has reached a critical point. In response, county officials propose phasing out approximately 7,000 short-term rentals by 2026. The proposed STR phase-out could deliver a serious blow to Maui’s economy. Many of these units were never built to support long-term residential use. They’re typically small, one-bedroom or studio condos, with limited storage, outdoor space, and parking. Additionally, high carrying costs — including mortgage payments, HOA dues, maintenance, and taxes — can easily top $6,000, far beyond what most local families can afford in rent. In short, these properties are unlikely to reenter the market in a way that substantially benefits local residents.”

The Seattle Times in Washington. “The latest sign of the Seattle area’s sluggish housing market? A relative glut of homes sat on the market in May, typically the height of Seattle-area homebuying season. Demand for town homes and condos is especially weak — ‘dead in the water at the moment,’ said Seattle Compass agent Ryan Palardy. ‘Ever since the tariffs went into effect, and everything that’s been downstream of that, they just don’t feel inclined to take a risk on a house that’s going to cost them twice as much as they’re paying in rent at a nice spot right now.’ The median King County condo sold for nearly $570,000 in May, down 4% from a year earlier.”

The Los Angeles Times in California. “Los Angeles County fire victims have filed lawsuits against three large home insurers alleging they were systematically underinsured, leaving them without enough money to replace or rebuild their homes after the Jan. 7 blazes. ‘These families paid their premiums, trusted their insurers, and did everything right,’ said attorney Gregory L. Bentley in a statement. ‘But when disaster struck, they learned their coverage was little more than an illusion. These companies promised peace of mind, but instead left their members stranded, homeless, and hopeless.’ The lead plaintiffs in the USAA lawsuit, Ethan and Marijana Alexander, had a 2,135-square-foot, four-bedroom, three-bathroom near-custom home on Bienveneda Avenue in Pacific Palisades that they bought in 2018, according to the lawsuit. The home had $584,000 in dwelling coverage and a 25% home protection endorsement of $146,000, the lawsuit states. Even with the additional coverage, the complaint alleges the couple don’t have adequate insurance to rebuild, with USAA calculating the cost at $342 per square foot and the couple receiving estimates at more than $850-to-$1,000 per square foot, the lawsuit states.”

Philadelphia Inquirer in Pennsylvania. “A Philadelphia-area real estate broker and a local title agency are facing a lawsuit by a lender, who alleges that they helped a developer client inflate the value of his properties so he could obtain a multimillion-dollar loan that ultimately defaulted. The lender, California-based Genesis Capital LLC, alleges that Surety Abstract and Keller Williams Philadelphia conspired with developer Travis Robert-Ritter in ‘a lengthy and extensive loan fraud scheme.’ Genesis gave Robert-Ritter millions of dollars in loans, then lost nearly $10 million when Robert-Ritter’s real estate development business collapsed, the lender’s complaint says. The lawsuit said Robert-Ritter’s business “purchased cheap single-family homes in Philadelphia with the help of Keller Williams and Surety Abstract and rehabilitated them into, among other things, three-unit rentals. To get loans to finance that business, the lawsuit alleged, Robert-Ritter got help from Surety Abstract and Keller Williams to make it appear as if several properties, which he bought for $28,000 to $70,000 each, sold a short time later for around $350,000 per home.”

“Robert-Ritter turned to Keller Williams to make sure the ‘fake sales’ would be listed in public real estate databases, Genesis’ complaint alleged. Using a list of ‘fraudulent sales’ provided by Robert-Ritter in 2022, the lawsuit alleges, an appraiser for Genesis valued the developer’s 39 properties at more than $13 million. In reality, Genesis alleged, Robert-Ritter bought the properties at an average price of about $66,000 per home. Genesis lent him $9.6 million based on the appraisal, the complaint said. Robert-Ritter stopped making payments to Genesis in July 2023 and defaulted on the loans, the complaint said, and the 39 properties ultimately sold for less than $2 million in February 2024.”

Bisnow New York. “Shorenstein Properties’ increasing difficulties with one of its New York City office towers could end up driving losses for bondholders who bought debt on the building that had been considered ultrasafe just a few years ago. The top-rated class of the CMBS loan backed by the family firm’s 1407 Broadway, a 43-story, 1.1M SF property, was downgraded by Fitch Ratings on Wednesday. The credit ratings agency warned that the property’s declining value could drive a big loss on the mortgage. Shorenstein acquired the Class-A tower in 2015, securing a $350M CMBS loan from Barclays in 2019 after the building was valued at $510M. The securitized debt was split into six classes, and Fitch gave the $187M Class-A certificates a AAA rating — higher than even U.S. Treasury bonds. The tower is now valued at just $120M following a new appraisal. Shorenstein and the loan’s special servicer, Torchlight Loan Services, have been in workout discussions even after the previous special servicer, Mount Street, filed a preforeclosure suit against the landlord last spring. But while the negotiations have been ongoing, they haven’t been trending in the right direction, per Fitch, which could hit the holders of the Class-A bonds. ‘Full recovery is unlikely,’ the ratings agency wrote in its downgrade assessment.”

CBC News in Canada. “Had things gone according to plan, Joe Racanelli and his wife would have long been settled in their new fifth floor condo in Burnaby and enjoying beautiful views of the North Shore mountains. Instead, the retired couple and former painting business owners can only look at the big hole in the ground on Hastings Street that’s now up for sale and wonder when they’ll get their presale deposit of $170,000 back, after the Siena at the Heights failed to get off the ground. ‘[The developer] said there were labour disputes with the original contractor,’ Racanelli said. ‘They extended the outside date to September 16, 2026. We kept waiting on that because we really wanted it to succeed. But now it’s dead in the water.’ In addition there are nine builders’ liens against the property amounting to $2.48 million. Fifty-nine ‘other creditors’ are owed a cumulative $1.64 million from the failed project. ‘It’s been frustrating and worrying,’ he said. ‘What if it takes another two or three years for this to be sold? I mean, the property is definitely not going ahead. We should get our money back.'”

London Free Press in Canada. “The number of power-of-sale listings in London is creeping up, local industry watchers say, just as a new report shows the number of homeowners falling behind on their mortgage payments rose by more than 30 per cent in the past year. Rebecca Oakes, vice-president of advanced analytics at Equifax Canad said the main factor behind the increase in default in payments is the higher interest rate at which many homeowners are renewing their mortgages. That’s especially true for those who bought their properties at the peak of the market during the COVID-19 years, when interest rates were at 0.25 per cent. The average resale price of a London-area home in May was $656,432 – down from a 2022 peak of about $822,000.”

“That’s left some homeowners ‘upside down on their equity,’ Kathy Amess, a real estate agent at Blue Forest Realty Inc. said, though current power-of-sale numbers still don’t match the 2008 financial crisis. ‘There’s always people that have financial problems or those who overextend themselves on major purchases,’ she added. ‘The difference between the last few years . . . is that the property values were increasing, so if someone was in a bad financial position and couldn’t afford their payment, they could put their house on the market and sell it, pay off their mortgage, pay off whatever else they needed to, and move on. Now, in a flat market, people don’t have the benefit of the value of their home going up to try to get out of those things.'”

“Austin Titus, a real estate broker with Century 21 First Canadian Corp., said he’s also noticed an uptick in power-of-sale listings. He pointed to one especially vulnerable group: those who signed mortgages with so-called B lenders as a way to break into the market and were hoping to build some equity and get a better deal with a more traditional lender at the time of renewal. ‘The reason why people go typically with B lenders is often they’re self-employed, have bad credit, or they’re not able to get great income documents but have the cash,’ Titus said.”