It’s Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. “Since the end of the Great Recession, home prices in the Rochester area have pretty much gone in one direction: up. In the last several years, they’ve soared. But could that change soon? ‘I think there will be some adjustments, now that we see that overall prices are beginning to stabilize; knowing that, people may not be willing to grossly pay above list price,’ says Mike O’Connor, president-elect of GRAR. ‘I won’t say overpriced, because when you have multiple offers on a property, you have three or four people willing to pay that price, in my opinion that’s not overpaying for the property.'”

“‘Homes are sitting on the market longer, just lingering on the market,’ said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist. ‘The buyers have disappeared.'”

“Is York County heading toward another market crash? Twenty-six houses went to sale in the first three quarters of 2022, compared to 10 properties in first three quarters last year, according to data provided by the York County Sheriff’s office. While foreclosures might not be on the radar this year, local sheriff sales could increase, said Elle Hale, the president of the Realtors Association of York and Adams Counties. ‘This may be something that comes up in the near future because of all the people who are spending or buying homes at well over the asking price,’ Hale said. ‘That may catch up to them.'”

“Now, bidding wars have largely faded, inventories have loosened and the feeling of frothiness is gone. ‘The market is clearly turning,’ says NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun.”

“The bidding wars and frenzied atmosphere have ended thanks to more houses on the market for longer periods of time. Summit Sotheby’s reported that Park City is seeing homes on the market for an average of 80 days (a 50% increase from September 2021), 57 days in Snyderville (down 13%), and 43 days in Heber and Midway (up 30%). ‘There is definitely a doomsday theme happening within the news and concerns that our real estate market is crashing,’ said Julie Snyder, local realtor. ‘This is simply not the case in Park City and the surrounding areas. What happened over the past 2 ½ years was unprecedented. However, it was not sustainable. It was only a matter of time before we stopped seeing the amount of appreciation in values as quickly as we did. It is just that we were going at such a rapid pace that, in comparison, it feels like we are crashing, but we are merely slowing down to a healthier pace.'”

“Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors said that existing home sales have further to drop. ‘We are not yet at the bottom,’ as interest rates are still rising. California will see ‘sizable’ price drops of as much as 10%, he said.”

“Wake County home prices peaked in June at more than $493,000. Since then, median sales prices have sunk and houses are sitting on the market longer. Overall, Wake prices have decreased 5% since reaching their high in June. The combined Cary, Apex and Morrisville market has seen a 6.2% decline; the combined Knightdale, Wendell and Zebulon market has slipped by nearly 8%, as has the Garner market. John Wood, a Realtor with Re/Max United in Cary, noted that some sellers are reluctant to accept that the pandemic era housing boom is over. ‘We are having obstacles right now getting sellers to understand that our pricing is not the same as it was six months ago,’ he said.”

“‘Try negotiating down the sale price; now’s the time to make what would have been considered a lowball offer six months ago,’ continued Redfin Economics Research Lead Chen Zhao.”

“‘You know, anytime we see inflation and rates rise like this, I think you’ll get a little bit of seller fear going on, San Diego realtor Felicity Hunter said. ‘Now we’re seeing our buyers, you know, get their offers accepted, they don’t have to compete with 20 other people and all-cash offers.'”

“Among the country‘s largest 896 housing markets, 121 saw a home price decline between May and September. The markets getting rocked the hardest by the home price correction fall into one of two groups. The first group includes frothy markets like Austin (down 8.23%), Boise (down 6.35%), Colorado Springs (down 4.13%), and Phoenix (down 6.6%). Those markets, according to Moody’s Analytics, all became ‘significantly overvalued’ during the Pandemic Housing Boom. That’s beginning to change. Not long after spiking mortgage rates poured cold water on those markets, prices began to fall.”

“The second group are high-cost tech hubs like San Francisco (down 7.88%), San Jose (down 10.59%), and Seattle (3.93%). Those markets got hit by a double whammy: Not only are their high-end real estate markets more rate-sensitive, but so are their tech sectors. When Fortune coined the term Pandemic Housing Boom, we did so knowing that if the boom ended in a bust we’d have to relabel it a Pandemic Housing Bubble or Pandemic Housing Bust. We even set a criteria for it: Any market that sees a greater than 10% peak-to-trough decline, gets the Pandemic Housing Bubble label.”

“So far, just San Jose (down 10.59%) has received our Pandemic Housing Bubble label. However, other markets are getting close. In total, 19 regional housing markets notched a home price decline greater than 5% between May and September. That includes Western markets like Santa Cruz, Calif. (down 7.51%) and Boulder (down 7.46%).”

“The Fitzgerald family should be ecstatic — they’ve finally achieved their lifelong ambition of owning a horse farm. But a mortgage mishap has turned their dream into a nightmare. In early June, the couple fell in love with a 17-acre farm a few hours north of Calgary. They had an existing mortgage with Scotiabank, on which they still wed roughly $370,000, but had heard that the bank wasn’t adept at handling acreages. Instead, they got pre-approved for a new mortgage at a local credit union. The Fitzgeralds approached Scotiabank to break their pre-existing mortgage.”

“The second appraisal came in at $20,000 less than the price of the home, a value that Scotiabank said was ‘workable.’ With such a significant discrepancy between the appraisals, though, CMHC settled in the middle, with the Fitzgeralds on the hook for the remaining $70,000. When all was said and done, the couple was left with less than $10,000 from the sale of their home — not nearly enough for farm equipment, new furniture, or even movers. ‘We had a gun to our head at that point. We’d already made arrangements to move up there with two kids and nine animals,’ the Fitzgeralds said. ‘We didn’t have a backup plan. It was this place or no place, even though it was going to financially wipe us out. They destroyed our life for a learning opportunity. We should be happy. We have our dream property. But we’ve been crying the entire time we’ve been living here. If we knew this was going to happen, we would have walked away,’ they said. ‘This has been hell.'”

“Estate agents across the UK have seen a steep reduction in interest and offers from potential homebuyers in the past few weeks. Luke Gidney, managing director at the Leeds-based estate agency HOP, told i that demand from buyers had fallen significantly since the end of last month, describing the state of the market as ‘a real mess.’ ‘Back in April we would list a property for sale and we would normally have to cap the viewings round about 30 viewings, because there were too many people that wanted to view it. We’d list the property and within an hour the phone would just be off the hook. Now it’s totally the opposite. We’re sometimes scratching our heads thinking ‘we’ve just listed the property and the phone hasn’t rung yet, what’s going on?’ he said.”

“A ‘neglected‘ terrace could end being one of the hottest bargains in Sydney’s flat property market. An unflattering photo of the back yard on the advertising hoarding for three-bedroom terrace 18 Turner Street, Redfern is what greets passers-by when they encounter this classic ‘renovator’s delight’. ‘Given state of property there’s no point in trying to hide it,’ said selling agent Hayden Richards, of Ray White Touma Group.”

“But with a buyer’s guide of ‘just’ $1million for the large block, walking distance from the city its looks are unlikely to worry potential buyers. Redfern’s median house price remains an eye-watering $1.75million. The ‘neglected’ terrace goes under the hammer on November 5. Overall, house prices in inner-city Redfern have plummeted 11.8 per cent – a massive $315,772 – since April, in line with the downward trends across the city.”

“You’d be hard-pressed to find a more efficient way of losing money over the last two years than investing in real estate startups when they went public. Venture-backed real estate companies that went public in the last two years have lost an average of 85% of their debut value, according to an analysis by Crunchbase. The losses from these companies — which include Opendoor, WeWork, Compass, loanDepot and Vacasa — total more than $42B. None of them have gained value from their opening price.”

“Opendoor saw a 42% drop in value in homes it sold in August 2022, and the company paid $62M to the Federal Trade Commission for misleading home sellers. But private investors haven’t been deterred so far this year, according to Crunchbase, pumping some $4.6B of seed capital into growth-stage U.S. startups tied to real estate.”