If You’re In A Position You Have To Sell, You Have To Take What You Can Get

A report from Axios on Colorado. “Rising inventory and sluggish demand have left many Denver home sellers sitting on listings for months, with no buyers in sight. About 35% of Denver’s listings in April had been on the market for 60 days or longer without going under contract, per the latest Redfin data. As more homeowners with low mortgage rates have opted to sell, listings in Denver are piling up — many to the point of going ‘stale.’ ‘A huge pop of listings hit the market at the start of spring, and there weren’t enough buyers,’ said Matt Purdy, a Denver real estate agent.”

San Marcos Daily Record. “In May, new listings in the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos MSA rose 8.9% to 5,716 listings, increasing housing inventory to 5 months, 1 month more than May 2024, according to the latest Central Texas Housing Report released by Unlock MLS. At the same time, home sales dipped 3.8% to 3,021 sales, while the median sales price edged down 1.6% to $449,900. Clare Knapp, Ph.D., housing economist for Unlock MLS and the Austin Board of REALTORS , shared that the data reflects healthy market adjustments that could ultimately lead to more balanced conditions for buyers and sellers. ‘At some point, a slowing market can motivate sellers to adjust prices to better align with what buyers can afford. We’re seeing that dynamic begin to unfold in Central Texas.'”

From 25 News Now. “An Airbnb owner in Normal said the town is taking away a specific need for traveling families by banning a majority of short-term rentals, including hers. Liz Austin has owned a house on N. School St. for almost a year. She said she spent nearly $50,000 furnishing the three-bedroom, three-bathroom home she now calls ‘The Normal School House’ and transforming it into an Airbnb with a singular purpose. ‘We wanted that space where families could be together under one roof when they come to Normal, Illinois,’ said Austin. Monday night, the Normal Town Council voted 5-2 to ban short-term rentals (STRs). ‘I feel completely unseen by this town. Like I said, I was born and raised here, so I’m devastated,’ said Austin.”

The San Francisco Chronicle. “For the past two years, Silicon Valley home values have soared to record highs, with one of the country’s most expensive housing markets becoming even more so. But recently, that trend has begun to curve downward. The typical home value in Santa Clara County dipped from about $1.72 million in November to $1.69 million in May, according to Zillow. Other California counties have seen home values fall even further in the past six months. But the shift underscores how the cooling U.S. housing market is affecting even hypercompetitive regions such as the Bay Area. What’s happening in the South Bay is also occurring across California: More homes are for sale, but demand hasn’t kept up, making bidding wars less fierce. About 7,000 homes in Santa Clara County were put on the market from January to May this year, about 4% more than the same period last year, according to data from real estate brokerage Redfin. But the number of pending sales has dipped slightly.”

“The Bay Area saw a ‘very big increase’ in price cuts during spring, as has much of the U.S., said Patrick Carlisle, chief market analyst at Compass. The number of Bay Area listings with price reductions reached its highest May level in at least five years last month, he added. It’s not just the Bay Area’s tech hubs that are seeing home values start to level out. Contra Costa and Marin counties have also seen their values dip, while growth has flattened in much of the rest of the state.”

The Davis Vanguard. “On June 18, 2025, 17 members of the California Senate and 14 members of the California State Assembly wrote and signed a letter addressed to nine members of the California Republican Congressional Delegation in Washington, D.C. The letter urges these members to ask the president to stop targeting immigrants, who pay taxes and work hard, for deportation in Los Angeles and across California. The lawmakers argue that this targeting is significantly harmful to the economy. It states that one in four Californians are immigrants, totaling about 11 million people. Of that number, roughly 1.8 million are undocumented. Among those 1.8 million undocumented residents, 25 percent are homeowners.”

Philadelphia Citizen in Pennsylvania. “Philly’s record on new housing construction has been pretty middling. But we did have two well-above-average years of permitting activity in 2020 and 2021, most notably the River Wards neighborhoods where it created high vacancy. That temporary housing glut made building owners compete for tenants for the first time in many years, offering price concessions and other incentives. But more surprising were the number of landlords rolling out the red carpet for Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher recipients. The rent projections many developers pitched to lenders and investors to secure financing for their projects may not come to pass because of all the competition from other new buildings. This has many owners nervously eyeing the exits, looking to sell their projects.”

The Vancouver Sun in Canada. “Many people are trying to use housing to add to their fortunes in Canada. And while the quest for profit is hardly immoral, it’s leading to a host of unintended consequences, including the construction of cramped condos and rental units that many Vancouver and Toronto residents now cynically refer to as ‘dog crates.’ The fevered march of investors into Canada’s housing market — and the property development industry’s addiction to their cash — is paving the way for master bedrooms that can barely contain a queen-size bed. In addition to developers in the Vancouver and Toronto region becoming over-dependent on the marketing scheme known as pre-sales — in which buyers snap up properties not yet under construction. Investors now own three out of every 10 dwellings in Canada. More than half the condos built in the Toronto and Vancouver regions in the past decade have been bought by people who already own a home.”

“Most of these investor units have been sold, bought, and often flipped through pre-sale contracts. Veteran Vancouver architect Brian Palmquist said one of the many downsides of investors buying so many dwellings is they become fixated on snagging small units in towers because they believe that is where they will get the best bang for their buck. That is why a glut of 450-sq.-ft. studio or one-bedroom units have been built in high-rise towers across the Vancouver and Toronto regions. As Palmquist said, investors tend to calculate they can get a better return on two 450-sq.-ft. dwellings than they can on one 900-sq.-ft. apartment. The problem is some of the bedrooms in these so-called ‘compact’ units aren’t even big enough for a decent sized bed, let alone two bedside tables and a dresser. Some ‘living rooms’ contain just a love seat and a coffee table. And almost all of these units are in high-rises, of which there are now more than 1,500 across Metro Vancouver. Palmquist has been involved in large-scale high-rise marketing campaigns in which he has witnessed buyers scoop up small pre-sale apartments solely on the basis of their cost. ‘They were coming into the neighbourhood with their hand calculators and buying whatever unit was cheapest per square foot,’ he said. ‘They didn’t care if it was poorly designed.’ All in all, many different decisions, most based on the love of money, have put Vancouver and Toronto areas into their plight.”

Castanet in Canada. “A former registered submortgage broker, who was sentenced in February to a four-year prison term after exchanging gunfire with police, has been fined $35,000 for submitting fraudulent mortgage applications through his ex-wife. According to a B.C. Financial Services Authority consent order published on May 28, Siavash Ahmadi agreed to pay a $35,000 administrative penalty as well as $3,500 to the regulator for investigation costs. This comes after he admitted to submitting ‘misleading information, including altered income tax statements’ to lenders in support of eight mortgage applications ‘when he ought to have known that the documents were altered and therefore did not represent the true income of the borrowers,’ according to the order.”

“He in turn registered submortgage broker Ksenia Ivanova, his wife at the time, who became directly involved in his applications. Her registration was revoked for at least 10 years after admitting through a consent order that she worked with unregistered submortgage broker Jay Kanth Chaudhary on at least 11 mortgage applications ‘when she knew or ought to have known that the documents and information were not genuine.’ The regulator described the extent of Ivanova’s altered financial and income documents as ‘significant,’ noting by way of one example that one borrower’s income information was inflated by approximately $298,000 in one year. Ivanova is among dozens of brokers and real estate agents who arranged mortgages through Chaudhary, a so-called ‘shadow’ broker who the regulator alleged arranged upwards of $511 million of mortgage loans with lenders based on falsified records. But nearly eight years after the regulator launched an investigation into this alleged mortgage fraud network, no criminal charges have been laid, BIV confirmed with provincial and Crown prosecutors last March.”

From The Standard. “House prices in inner London fell for six consecutive months this spring as the housing market in the core of the capital has become increasingly dislocated from the rest of the UK. Nearly £30,000 (4.4 per cent) was wiped off the value of homes in London’s most central boroughs from Hackney to Southwark and Greenwich to Wandsworth between September and March, according to the latest Land Registry figures. ‘There are a unique set of pressures in inner London,’ says Lucian Cook, head of residential research for Savills. ‘There is a lot of debt used in areas such as Wandsworth to acquire such expensive homes and the cost of debt has gone up. ‘In addition, these households are more susceptible to negative sentiment around VAT on private school fees and more widely they expect the tax burden to go up in the autumn.'”

“Tough selling conditions get more acute closer to the centre. ‘There are more discretionary second homeowners who will not sell if they aren’t going to get their target price,’ says Liam Monaghan of LCP Private Office, meaning negotiations are painful and protracted. Monaghan references an apartment in Westminster that was put on sale in 2021 for £1.15 million by a disillusioned landlord. The price came down gradually until he finally accepted an offer of £900,000. There are discounts to be had according to Jonathan Brandling-Harris of the House Collective in Mayfair, Knightsbridge, Belgravia and Kensington. He has seen reductions of up to 20 per cent in these parts.”

News.com.au in Australia. “Owners in a Sydney apartment building blindsided by eye-watering special levies of up to $220,000 to replace dangerous flammable cladding say they have been ‘failed’ at all levels and left facing ruinous out-of-pocket costs. Ferres Wang, 43, purchased her one-bedroom unit in Pyrmont’s Harbour Mill Apartments off the plan in 2012 for $580,000. Five years on from the initial fire safety order from the City of Sydney, and nearly two years after entering a contract with a cladding remediation firm, the multimillion-dollar works have stalled. The builder, Hitech Remedial, has identified additional scope that will more than double its initial contract. Ms Wang said the huge additional cost has left residents stunned.”

“‘On average, each owner here is now facing a $70,000 to $220,000 levy, and we’ve been warned that even more variations are coming next year,’ said Ms Wang, who will be on the hook for $70,000 for her 60 square metre apartment if the variation is approved. For penthouse owners, the bill will be up to $220,000. ‘One is retired, he [told me] this is their entire life savings,’ Ms Wang said. ‘For me this really is hardship.’ Around 30 per cent of owners live in the building, and Ms Wang said meetings to approve the remediation budgets were only attended by around 30 people. ‘More than 100 owners, they don’t know, don’t care or are Chinese investors overseas,’ she said.”

“Strata lawyer Amanda Farmer said since the closure of Project Remediate to new applications, owners had largely been left on their own. ‘In my experience that is usually what most buildings are opting for because they’re finding most owners don’t have the cash funds. Having a strata loan on the books then impacts the value of everybody’s investment. Purchasers looking to buy [will knock the price down], Farmer said. Ms Farmer said many owners were being forced to simply sell. ‘That is sometimes the only option, and as I said it’s a really difficult decision because you’re going to be taking a hit on your sale price,’ she said. ‘If you’re in a position you have to sell, you have to take what you can get. I’m definitely seeing more of that.'”