The Housing Bubble Blog

A report from the Wall Street Journal on New York. "Amazon.com Inc.’s announcement that it is ditching plans for a corporate headquarters in New York City stunned real-estate speculators, developers and renters who had rushed into the Long Island City neighborhood to be near the new HQ2. Open...

It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "After two years of historic year-over-year home value jumps in the greater Nashville market, a cooling trend has taken hold. Sellers are dropping prices, buyers are getting more concessions and competition for properties has eased. Cities from coast...

A report from Bloomberg on New York. "Amazon.com Inc.’s decision to drop its expansion plans in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens plunged local real estate brokers into despair -- just months after the euphoria that followed the company’s announcement that it would open offices there and...

A report from the Mercury News in California. "In another sign that the Bay Area housing market is cooling, the number of homes for sale here has spiked  — signaling more options for buyers, and potentially lower prices. There were 43 percent more homes on the market last month in...

A report from ABC News in Australia. "Many people who bought properties in Sydney or Melbourne a year ago on 10 per cent deposits are facing the fact that their life savings have, for the moment at least, disappeared in falling home values, while crashing markets have devastated investors in...

A reort from the Wall Street Journal. "The mortgage-market slowdown is stirring up interest in a humdrum segment of American home lending: the rights to the arcane task of handling monthly payments. Sales of so-called mortgage-servicing rights jumped 14% in 2018 from a ear earlier, according to...

A report from the Daily Camera in Colorado. "The Boulder County housing market is slowing down. Single-family home sales fell about 23 percent and new listings grew more than 4. 2 percent. The median sales price for single-family homes in Boulder County dropped 2.7 percent to $535,000 last month...

A report from the Wall Street Journal on Dubai. "When the world’s tallest building opened here in 2010, a one-bedroom apartment with a view of the Persian Gulf sold for about $800,000. Four years later that apartment would fetch $1 million. Today, the same apartment at the Burj Khalifa goes for...

A report from the Dallas Morning News in Texas. "The North Texas housing market started 2019 in the dumps. Home sales were down 10 percent from January 2018, and sales prices fell in almost a dozen Dallas-area residential districts. The nosedive in the area's home market comes after several years...

A report from the Charlotte Observer in North Carolina. "Charlotte’s housing market got off to a slow start in 2019, and some experts say that the government shutdown is partially to blame. Data from Carolina Multiple Listing Services showed that home sales declined 9 percent in January from the...

A report from the Canadian Press. "One year ago, B.C. Finance Minister Carole James unveiled a set of tax measures designed to cool an overheated real estate market. She was vague about how to measure the success of her plan: 'Prices may be lower than they are currently,' she said at the time. 'I...

From WGLT on Illinois. "For years, Illinois State University has been knocking down old dorms and nudging its sophomores, junior, and seniors into off-campus apartments. Developers and landlords looking to make a buck responded by building more and more apartment buildings. But all that could soon...

A report from the Post Independent in Colorado. "Fewer homes are being bought, so there's a softening in the housing market. Since the 2008 Financial Crisis is still very much in living memory, many of us think we hear ominous music, a harbinger of a banking crisis that could trigger a new...

A report from the Denver Post in Colorado. "For at least five years, until last summer, home sellers had a firm upper hand in metro Denver, but the power dynamic is shifting. One sign of that — more sellers are having to accept offers below their original price. 'If you aren’t getting offers in the...

A report from Nine Finance in Australia. "A prominent Sydney real estate agent claims the property market is roaring back after a 'bloodbath' stretch. In 2017, Sydney's cosmopolitan hub had a median house prices sitting just under $1.2 million, comparatively the average property today is $955,000....

A report from KIRO in Washington. "A recent report from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service indicates that home prices in King County decreased year-over-year for the first time in seven years to start 2019. 'Is it normal? posited Windermere Real Estate Chief Economist Matthew Gardner. 'No,...

A weekend topic starting with Housing Wire. "Noel Christopher, senior vice president at Renters Warehouse, warned people not to buy into the hype over the imminent real estate crash. And while 'don’t buy into the hype' is good advice in general, it brings with it a bad side effect. It gives hype a...

It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "The median price per square foot in all but three of the 16 price groupings in Asheville was higher in 2018 than in 2017, per Mosaic. It ranges between $105 a square foot on listings below $100,000 — up almost 16 percent...

A report from the Seattle Times. "King County’s cooling housing market has turned downright chilly as prices have dropped to their lowest point in two years — with the median home now selling for $116,000 less than last spring. Even on a year-over-year basis, prices declined 3 percent — the first...

A report from the Wall Street Journal. "A strong economy helped lift commercial real-estate sales to near-record levels last year, and many investors are counting on low interest rates to keep sales going in 2019. Now the Federal Reserve’s announcement last week that it would keep interest rates...