The Housing Bubble Blog

A report from the Real Deal on Florida. "The co-founder of a blockchain company paid $5.2 million for a unit at Regalia in Sunny Isles Beach, well under its previous trade price. The 5.5K sf unit last sold for for about $7M in 2014." The Gainesville Sun in Florida. "Hundreds joined in the hearing...

A weekend topic starting with Eugene Weekly in Oregon. "The Eugene City Council heard a range of testimony in favor of and against a proposed ordinance requiring short term rental (STR) operators to obtain a business license. Mike Grudzien, who identified as a U.S. Marine Corp veteran and owner of...

A report from CBS New York. "As New Yorkers flee the city amid the coronavirus pandemic, parts of the city’s real estate market are rife with empty apartments. CBS2’s Jessica Moore reports the industry is dealing with nearly record low numbers of new condo and co-op sales. Apartment purchases for...

It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "The Corcoran Group Founder and Shark on ABC’s Shark Tank Barbara Corcoran joins Yahoo Finance’s Zack Guzman to break down her latest outlook on real estate amid the coronavirus. Corcoran: You're going to have a phenomenal housing year. Prices are...

A report from CBC News in Canada. "The days of cut-throat competition in Toronto for an affordable rental unit — or any unit, for that matter — are gone, at least for now. Pauline Lierman, director of market research for Urbanation, says the change in the rental market is unprecedented, and the...

A report from National Mortgage Professional. "Close to 70% of home sellers are willing to accept a lower purchase price just to reach the closing point, according to a new LendingTree survey. This comes as the coronavirus has made it difficult for folks to sell their homes and those who are most...

A report from CTV News in Canada. "Vancouver rents have been falling since the start of the COVID-19 crisis, and are down by as much as 15 per cent for some types of apartments, according to data pulled from Craigslist. David Hutniak, the CEO of LandlordBC, is now lobbying for the B.C. government...

A report from CNBC. "As the United States continues to face record unemployment due to the coronavirus pandemic, 30% of Americans missed their housing payments in June, according to Apartment List. That’s up from 24% who missed their payment just two months earlier in April and about on par with...

A report from Mortgage Professional America. "The Federal Housing Finance Agency on Monday warned Congress that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could not withstand a serious economic downturn and asked for the authority to develop more stringent capital standards for the GSEs. FHFA Director Mark...

A report from the Huffington Post on Canada. "Rental rates across Canada have fallen for three straight months and are down 7.8 per cent, on average, from before the pandemic, rental site Rentals.ca reported this week. Larger cities have been hit particularly hard. Rents per square foot have...

A report from the Commercial Observer on New York. "The Real Estate Board of New York, the powerful real estate lobbying firm, laid off staff and slashed executives’ salaries because of a decrease in membership dues caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the organization confirmed. REBNY cut about 10...

A report from the Wall Street Journal on New York. "The coronavirus lockdown has frozen Manhattan’s luxury real-estate market, with the volume of deals slowing to a trickle over the past three months. But one developer said he’s seeing signs of life on—of all places—Billionaires’ Row in Manhattan....

A report from Daily Mail Australia. "Rents for inner Sydney apartments have been slashed by up to $400 a week as desperate landlords grapple with a shrinking pool of tenants and rising vacancies. Housing experts say the current rental market is a 'tenant's dream' following the coronavirus crisis as...

A weekend topic from the Wall Street Journal. "When Donald Trump won the presidential election in 2016, Chinese leaders were stunned. They had focused on the prospect of a Hillary Clinton victory. They immediately put out feelers to their oldest and most reliable allies in Washington—big business...

A report from The Real Deal on New York. "Exactly one year ago, New York’s real estate industry was facing a crisis. The legislature had just agreed to a tenant-friendly upheaval of rent regulation. 'It used to be that investors clamored for the rent-stabilized units in a building because of the...

It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "In the city of Los Angeles, where Greta Arceneaux’s property is, tenants who have been impacted by the virus will have up to 12 months from the end of the city’s emergency declaration to repay their back-rent without late fees. 'My retirement is...

A report from Seattle PI in Washington. "The median home price for closed sales in King County dropped month over month, from $650,000 to $627,000. 'I don’t think anyone should be surprised that home prices in King County took a ‘breather’ in May,' said Matthew Gardner, chief economist at...

A report from Global News in Canada. "'Starting really around March 11, the second week of March, pretty much everything on the calendar through spring and the summertime, June 15th really, evaporated overnight,' said AirDNA CEO Scott Shatford, adding that Nova Scotia’s trends are consistent with...

A report from Forbes. "What surprised Brian Carberry, Apartmentguide’s managing editor who crunched the numbers was, 'some of the areas with significant rent decreases were located near more expensive major cities.' Apartmentguide looked at annual average price declines on one-bedroom nationwide....

A report from CBC News in Canada. "Owners of condo units in Fort McMurray's troubled Hillview Park complex are worried about paying their bills after being hit with special assessments of up to $76,000. It's the third special assessment charged to owners since the complex burned to the ground in...