The Housing Bubble Blog

A report from This Garden Island on Hawaii. "The real estate market on Kauai remained relatively strong through the first half of 2019, but overall sales figures across the island are down from this time last year, and the market could be in for a substantial downturn, Realtors said." "'We are at...

An editorial from Savannah Morning News. "This summer marks 10 years from the end of the worst recession since the Great Depression. In the years before the recession, those of us who warned of looming dangers were often dismissed as uninformed cynics, but we had the numbers on our side. The signs...

A report from the Toronto Star in Canada. "The number of newer rental apartments in the GTA that are empty and ready for new tenants is at its highest level since a leading real-estate consulting firm started keeping track in 2015. According to Urbanation’s survey of purpose-built apartments...

A report from The Daily Camera in Colorado. "Housing markets around the state are beginning to cool down, and Boulder County is no exception, according to the Colorado Association of Realtors. Statewide, median prices for single-family homes slipped just under 1% to $407,000 and also were down 1.6%...

It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "Buyers looking for discounts had the best chance of finding one them of the Shinnecock Canal in Hampton Bays, where the share of price cuts was the highest in the Hamptons at 62%. Montauk also offered discounts as well — more than 1 in 3 (39%) of...

A report from KTVN in Nevada. "Reno's Midtown area continues to grow. More housing options have become available in recent weeks. 'It was a little slow for about a month, and now the last two weeks we've had a major uptick,' said Timothy O'Brien, a Realtor with Dickson Realty. 'So I've gone from...

A report from Nine News in Australia. "A new report by the Housing Industry Association revealed home affordability is at its best since 1999. However, Nine Finance Editor, Ross Greenwood, urges caution. 'Bear in mind it’s the housing industry telling us this, they have a vested interest. They want...

A report from Michigan Live. "An Ann Arbor condo development just up the street from the University of Michigan Hospital is on hold after the developer had trouble pre-selling units. 'Morningside has ceased Nine99 Condominium marketing due to insufficient pre-sales,' said Ron Mucha of the...

A report from the Globe and Mail in Canada. "Foreign buying has dropped dramatically in the Vancouver region’s real estate market three years after British Columbia introduced a tax that targets international purchases, a policy move that has helped drive down prices. The proportion of foreign...

A report from RNZ. "As many as 1000 Kiwi forestry workers could be left without jobs after a sudden drop in the price of logs. New Zealand logs are reportedly piling up on wharves in China, which is seeing a glut in supply. Darrin Collett of Woodbank Trading has been riding the ups and downs of the...

A report from the Seattle Times in Washington. "In June, the median home price in Seattle fell to $781,000, a 3.9% drop from June of 2018, according to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. In King County overall, median prices dropped by 2.3% in June from the same period last year, to $695,000....

A report from the Wall Street Journal on China. "When she was a teenager in the 1970s, Zhou Xiaoguang peddled trinkets city to city and slept on trains, a formative chapter in her creation of the world’s largest costume jeweler, Neoglory Holdings Group Co. Leveraging her empire of baubles, China’s...

A report from Forbes. "In a recent survey, 39% of renters said they believed they would need to put down more than 20% to secure a mortgage. In reality, the median down payment on a mortgage in 2017 was just 5%. What accounts for this misunderstanding? For one, low down payments are a relatively...

A weekend topic starting with the Financial Times. "Viewed from Bangalore, the purchase of a newly built three-bedroom apartment in London for more than £1.4m (S$2.4m) seemed like a safe investment bet. As Shonu Bhandari considered the purchase two years ago, agents told him he could expect the...

A report from the Journal Gazette in Indiana. "Students choosing to live on campus at Purdue University Fort Wayne this all could pay less than expected due to higher than anticipated demand. Filling beds had been a challenge since the last of the buildings opened in 2010, school officials have...

It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "I was not surprised to hear housing prices have fallen for the first time in something like a decade. I could have hazarded a guess that was the case based on nothing more than the aggressive selling and house flipping I have watched in my...

A report from the Orange County Register in California. "Lake Forest will get 144 new townhomes with prices starting under $600,000. Silveroak is Landsea Homes’s latest addition to its 543-home IronRidge community in Portola Hills. Landsea says pricing will start from the high-$500,000s, 'a very...

What's your mid-year housing bubble predictions? From six months ago: "In Q1, house prices start lapping the 2018 conventional loan limit increases. As a result, we will start seeing YOY price declines in larger markets. The increase in loan limits in 2019 will help some secondary cities continue...

A report from the Bay Area Newsgroup in California. "Seventy-year-old Jeanine Fetterly’s dream since 1976 was to have her children build themselves a home on on a lot that she bought down the street from her house. But after the passage of Oakland’s Measure W last year, which put a $6,000 tax on...

A report from the Denver Post in Colorado. "Listings continued to flow into metro Denver’s housing market last month, according to the Denver Metro Association of Realtors. Despite lower borrowing costs, buyers fell short when it came to absorbing the new inventory, even for the most affordable...