Sellers Seem To Want Last Year’s Prices And Buyers Want Next Year’s Prices

A report from Potomac Local News in Virginia. “The folks at the Fredericksburg Area Association of REALTORS just told Potomac Local News that home prices in our region hit an all-time high last month—even as sales slowed and homes took longer to sell. ‘As we’ve seen an influx of inventory available, the conversation with my sellers has shifted,’ states FAAR Board of Director Rachel Flynn. ‘We are discussing longer days on market to be expected and the need for flexibility and openness as we receive feedback.'”

From Realtor.com. “Perched on a prime piece of real estate on Miami’s picturesque Biscayne Bay waterfront, the Biscayne 21 condominium has been the subject of a legal tug-of-war between a developer intent on replacing the aging tower with luxury housing and a small group of residents determined to stop it. Despite facing pressure from the developer and real estate agents to sell, eight owners dug in their heels. ‘With the Florida Supreme Court, there’s no guarantee that they will hear a matter,’ attorney Glen H. Waldman, with the law firm Armstrong Teasdale, who represents the holdout condo owners,’ tells Realtor.com®. ‘It’s up to them, their discretion, whether they will hear this or not, and our expectation is they will not.’ According to Waldman, those who refused to part with their properties were motivated by a couple of interconnected considerations.”

“‘This is America. You pay for your home, you pay all your taxes, you pay your association fees, you pay your mortgage. You have a right to live there,’ says the plaintiffs’ attorney. ‘The problem is that the amount of money that Two Roads was offering—and this is the case in almost all termination cases— was far below what it would require for these people to relocate to another condominium on the water with a beautiful view like they had at Biscayne 21.'”

The Denver Gazette. “Following a report last week of declining prices in metro Denver, the Colorado Association of Realtors is tracking a similar drift in statewide data, according to its monthly Market Trends report. Despite the slower sales, the volume of active inventory remains well above the same time last year in most markets and product types. ‘This growing gap between supply and demand is making it easier for buyers to take their time and shop around — a clear sign the market has shifted,’ said agent Kelly Moye, who reports on The Boulder and Broomfield Counties markets for CAR. ‘Sellers seem to want last year’s prices and buyers want next year’s prices, and the disconnect is culminating in fewer sales.’ She added that sellers may be getting a false signal now from what agents refer to as the list-to-sales price ratio, which continues to show sellers getting most all of what they’ve asked for as a list price. ‘That doesn’t take into consideration the concessions sellers are paying to buyers to buy down their interest rate,’ Moye noted. ‘Sellers will need to cut prices to attract the serious buyers.'”

“Patrick Muldoon, who reports on the Colorado Springs market, reported that July proved to be a frustrating month for sellers. ‘What is normally a (good) summer selling season was lackluster at best,’ he reported. Muldoon said that buyers in the Springs area, where inventory climbed 21% over 2024’s level, have substantially more products to choose from. ‘But they didn’t show up to buy,’ he added. In La Plata County, where Durango agent Heather Erb reports, sales of condos and townhomes were down 56% during July over June. ‘We really did have an off-month,’ she told The Denver Gazette. Gunnison County and Crested Butte agent Molly Eldridge was another resort market analyst reporting variance between single-family and multifamily home performance. ‘Average prices in the larger area for residential properties are down, only 1% for condos and townhomes and 16% for single-family homes,’ she said. In Routt County and Steamboat Springs, single-family sales are up 5% year-to-date, while the median price has dropped almost 8% to just under $2 million, according to Steamboat-area agent Marci Valicenti.”

“Some of the lesser optimistic numbers from the resort markets were coming from Telluride and San Miguel County, where agent George Harvey reported sales down 24% year over year, off 34% from a 5-year July average. ‘While the luxury market still accounts for 86% of the residential dollar volume, it is showing signs of fatigue,’ Harvey said.”

The Los Angeles Times. “With California facing a critical housing shortage, accessory dwelling units now account for a significant portion of the state’s meager growth in new homes, data reviewed by The Times show. California has struggled to keep up with demand, increasing housing stock by only 0.84% in 2024, or 125,000 units. ADUs made up about one-fifth of those units, according to California Department of Finance data. Eric McGhee, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, said it’s hard to know whether new ADUs are being used to house people who wouldn’t otherwise be on the property, or whether they are just providing extra space for those already living there. As a result, it is likely that some ADUs do nothing to ease the housing shortage.”

“L.A. County is a hotbed for ADUs. A 2024 Times analysis showed the county permitted more accessory dwelling units per capita than any other county in the state. In a 2024 research project for UCLA’s Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, master’s student Miles Austin Cressy studied the western San Fernando Valley — where more than 7% of single-family residence parcels had been granted ADU permits. He found that ‘ADU prevalence correlates with lower-income, renter-occupied, and younger households, denser populations, and areas with higher concentrations of non-white residents and registered Democrats.’ Finally, the verdict: ‘ADUs are usually priced at or above market rates and so they have limited viability as a solution to the housing crisis,’ the report said. The cheap, abundant housing that Californians crave might not be found in the backyard.”

The Globe and Mail in Canada. “28 Linden St., No. 1705, Toronto. Asking price: $828,000 (April 2025). Selling price: $800,000 (June 2025). These downsizing buyers spent six weeks this spring touring more than a dozen two-bedroom units in different neighbourhoods across Toronto, starting around Yonge Street and Eglinton Avenue and working south towards St. James Town. They settled on this 840-square-foot unit in a modern high-rise that rises above the heritage-designated James Cooper House at Sherbourne Street, just south of Bloor Street East. Negotiations trimmed $28,000 off the asking price. ‘[Units in this building] used to go for $1.1-million or $1.2-million,’ said buyer’s agent Ira Jelinek. ‘Prices peaked in February, 2022, so they’ve been going down since.'”

The National Post. “If housing costs too much, there must not be enough supply. That’s Ottawa’s simple take on the affordable housing crisis in Canada. And their simple solution? Impose policy. But, asks Patrick Condon, professor of urban design at the University of British Columbia: What if the feds are wrong? If increased density delivered affordability, he counters, Vancouver would be cheap by now. And what does the current glut of unsold small condo units in glass towers — in places like Toronto and Hamilton — tell us about Ottawa’s theory? ‘I think I’m considered a bit of a bête noire around here on the policy side,’ Patrick acknowledges, in a recent video conversation. ‘Certainly the B.C. provincial policies have moved in a very opposite direction to the ones that I’ve been recommending,’ he says with a grimace.”

“‘As the authorized use of land is increased,’ Patrick elaborates, ‘the value of the land is going up and up and up, and it, unfortunately, goes up more or less in measure to what the market is allowing for that built price. That’s what’s so tragic about it, about the whole thing,’ he contends, ‘the policy makers are saying (and I think many of them actually believe it), that this will help the community and it’s actually harming the community. It’s really helping the land speculators.’ Vancouver has tripled the number of housing units since the 1960s, Patrick reports. ‘We tripled the density. We tripled the number of housing units within the same footprint,’ he reports, ‘and as a reward for our heroic efforts, we have the highest home prices, when measured against average regional incomes of any place in North America, and the third highest home prices in the world.'”

Estate Agent Today in the UK. “The prime London property market is more split than it has been since Brexit, research suggests. Analysis by Knight Frank found that average prices fell 3% in prime central London (PCL) in the year to July, blamed on doubts around the Government’s treatment of wealthy foreign investors. Average prices in PCL are 20% below their last peak in August 2015, which compares to an equivalent decline in POL of 7% since mid-2016. Tom Bill, head of UK residential research for Knight Frank, said: ‘It is still a buyer’s market across most of the capital due to high levels of supply. An overhang from the stamp duty cliff edge, decisions put off due to last year’s general election and a growing number of landlords selling up are among the causes.'”

From I 24 News. “Israel’s housing market recorded its weakest June in more than two decades, with sales plunging amid ongoing conflict and tighter financing conditions. According to figures released Sunday by the Finance Ministry’s chief economist, just 5,844 homes were sold nationwide in June, a 29% drop compared to the same month in 2024 and down 13% from May. The ministry said this is the lowest sales figure for June since the early 2000s. The steepest decline came in new housing transactions. Only 1,954 newly built units were sold last month, marking a 46% year-on-year fall.”

From News.com.au. “Buying your own home is sold to most of us as the Aussie dream, but one woman has claimed purchasing her first property was the worst financial decision she’s ever made. Nicole Sherwin bought a small apartment in Melbourne in 2019. At the time, she felt relieved that she’d managed to crack Australia’s incredibly tough property market. She feared that if she didn’t buy in 2019, the property market would keep increasing and she’d miss out forever. ‘I felt like I needed to do it,’ she told news.com.au. Within a few short years though, Ms Sherwin was locked in a financial nightmare, and her apartment became more of a liability than investment. ‘I was pregnant, and once you have a baby and you’re on maternity leave, I knew it’d be harder. I figured it was now or never,’ she said. ‘We got to the point where we outgrew it,’ she explained.”

“The family decided to become rent investors. They rented out the apartment and then rented a bigger place to live, but this strategy didn’t work out because the property was negatively geared. ‘I got a tenant in and figured we’d be rent investors but that only works when properties appreciate and it wasn’t appreciating,’ she said. The apartment’s value had been decreasing because other apartment blocks were built around it after they purchased in 2019, and suddenly supply outweighed demand. The body corporate fees also went up by $200 a month. ‘My home loan had gone from 2 per cent to 6.8 per cent. Homeownership was hell for me,’ she said. The apartment finally sold this year for $30,000 less than Ms Sherwin paid for it. By the time the sale went through, the mum-of-two believes she lost around $65,000 all up. The $65,000 figure factors in the cost of maintaining an apartment that was losing value. ‘By the end I was just accepting of it,’ she said. Ms Sherwin claimed that she’s heard from plenty of friends and acquaintances who have made the same mistake, bought near the CBD to avoid the ‘outer suburbs’ and watched in horror as their property decreased in value.”

From Chosun Biz. “The Chinese real estate developer Evergrande, which triggered a real estate crisis in China, will have its listing canceled on the 25th. Following a court liquidation order, creditors have begun claiming debts, and shareholders face the risk of total loss. In this context, major Chinese real estate developers similar to Evergrande are sequentially receiving liquidation orders from the courts, following in Evergrande’s footsteps. Evergrande had extremely limited liquidity and resources, and its business activities were virtually halted, and it could not find an appropriate restructuring plan. Christy Hung, an economist with Bloomberg Intelligence (BI), noted, ‘Evergrande shareholders are highly likely to face the possibility of total loss,’ and ‘considering the massive claims of creditors who have priority over shareholders in the repayment hierarchy, shareholders are facing substantial risk of receiving nothing back.'”