It’s Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. “The Federal Reserve’s war on inflation and higher mortgage interest rates have hit Utah’s Wasatch Front housing market — hard. ‘Like a wall,’ said Steve Perry, CEO of the Salt Lake Board of Realtors. ‘It’s forced sellers to have to make adjustments.'”

“Today, an hour-by-hour glimpse into the working world of Chad, a power broker in southwestern Montana. 9 a.m. I am on the phone with a nervous seller trying to explain the latest crazy shift in real estate here. In the last few weeks, it’s like someone turned the tap off. Things in Montana went from absolutely insane to kind of dead! 3 p.m. I drive them past a few more options. There’s so much inventory that’s not moving. Night and day from this time last year. Some people were buying more than one property at a time, then deciding which one they wanted after they owned them both. Now, crickets. I don’t know why, exactly.”

“Home prices in Ada County dropped in the month of June, according to data from the Boise Regional REALTORS.And this trend looks like it may continue for the near future, said Boise Realtor Sheila Smith. ‘There is a dip, but mostly it is a lot of price dropping and the inventory is doubling,’ Smith said. According to Brent Hanson, CEO of City of Trees Real Estate at Keller Williams Realty Boise, a lot of this dip in prices came from builders adjusting their prices with the new interest rates. ‘They’re the first and fastest to make decisions when a market shifts,’ Hanson said.”

“Smith said the days of a bidder coming in and out-bidding the rest of the prospective homeowners by $50,000 in cash are over. In fact, she said what she is seeing as a listing agent is a lot of people who moved to the area during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic are now turning on their heels and leaving. ‘I have all these people that are moving back to California,’ she said.”

“Redfin described Sacramento and other inland markets as ‘pandemic boomtowns’ that are seeing dramatic turns. Local real estate analyst and appraiser Ryan Lundquist found similar evidence of a shift. Homes are staying on the market longer, the inventory of available homes on the market is spiking and the number of sales has dropped, he found. He said 43.7% of active listings last week in the region had a price reduction. There have been a lot of big price drops in the market; roughly 11% of listings had a reduction of more than $100,000, according to Lundquist.”

“The median price for a home in the four-county region stood at $610,000 in June, according to Lundquist’s data. That was a drop of $15,000 over May’s median price, an indication, Lundquist wrote, that ‘prices are softening.'”

“Austin Barron of Century 21 in Chico said noted that the average time homes are spending on the market has doubled over the last 6 months from about 7 days to 14 days. Century 21 alone has more than 160 homes currently listed for sale. Listings through Century 21 nearly tripled over the past six months. ‘We’re seeing a lot more listings that don’t even hit that statistic or do sell. They’re being withdrawn, they’re being canceled, their listings expire after three months, or they’re being taken off the market,’ Barron said.”

“Redfin reports show roughly 60,000 home purchases nationwide fell through in June. 24.5% of pending sales were cancelled in the Orlando Metro Area. ‘That is a lot of deals that didn’t go through where typically almost every deal was closing,’ said Shonn McCloud, a lead senior agent with Redfin. As more people back out of deals, more houses are becoming available, and buyers have more power to negotiate. ‘Now, they see that there is more homes on the market that are now competing with the homes that they are already under contract for,’ McCloud said.”

“In June, there were 19% more active listings on the market compared to a year earlier, according to Realtor.com. That’s the biggest annual increase since Realtor.com began tracking that metric in 2017. Austin, Texas saw a 145% surge in inventory on an annual basis last month. Be wary of unrealistic expectations, and don’t assume the days of multiples offers above asking price will continue. ‘Sellers have been shooting for the moon, but the people who are serious about selling need to come back down to reality,’ said Lindsay Neuren, a broker with Compass in Austin.”

“Keone Ball, president of the Realtors Association of Maui, said he, too, sees a normalization happening in the market. Ball said some prices are being reduced to match comparable properties, but ‘by no means are the prices going to drop out, especially on Maui, because our inventory is really low. I do see new listings coming on a lot and I think a lot of sellers think we’re still in the frenzy.'”

“Ali Wolf, chief economist at Zonda, spoke to ‘Marketplace’ host Amy Scott. Scott: You talk to builders, you know, constantly, and I’ve seen some of your tweets. They’ve used words like ‘evaporate’ to describe what’s happened with their markets. How much has their business shifted? Are you seeing prices drop? Are builders actually cutting their prices and offering other incentives, the kind of thing that was kind of unheard of a few months ago? Wolf: This is a very complicated question…But to directly answer your question, 11% of builders have, at this point, dropped their prices.”

“The average price of high-end condominium units in Phnom Penh plummeted by 19.15% y-o-y (inflation-adjusted) to USD 2,633 per sq. m. in Q1 2022, far worse than the previous year’s 4.51% decline. On a quarterly basis, high-end condo prices fell 5.76% in Q1 2022, also in inflation-adjusted terms. Phnom Penh’s apartment market has been cooling recently mainly due to the oversupply of apartments in the city, according to local real estate experts. It is expected that 2022 will see additional completions of 13,000 condo units, according to CBRE Cambodia.”

“Residents of Sydney’s damaged Mascot Towers have reached an out-of-court settlement with the developer of the building next door they allege caused catastrophic damage to their homes.The confidential settlement with Aland Developments has been reached three years after the residents were forced to evacuate due to serious structural cracks in the south Sydney building. ‘The owners of Mascot Towers have been through enormous emotional and financial strain since the evacuation,’ said Scott Higgins, who represented the owners’ corporation. ‘They have ongoing strata levies that they can’t avoid and yet they can’t move back in or sell their units until all the rectification works have been done. They all just want to get on with their lives and put it all in their rearview mirror.'”

“Former UBS Group AG economist Jonathan Anderson once called it ‘the most important sector in the universe.’ More than a decade on, Chinese property is again grabbing the attention of global investors – this time for all the wrong reasons. ‘Property has been getting steadily worse the whole time; prices, sales, starts, all terrible,’ said Craig Botham, chief China economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics in London. ‘The chronic deterioration has now taken another step. It was always going to hit the financial sector eventually, given the prevalence of collateral in loan books with large real estate portions.'”

“‘The whole pyramid is collapsing now,’ said Anne Stevenson-Yang, co-founder of J Capital Research. ‘What’s different is that things are worse now because of the Evergrande crisis a year ago, which is spreading its tentacles throughout the Chinese economy.'”

“One of Canada’s largest banks is calling the housing market’s time of death — 10am Wednesday July 13, 2022. That’s basically the message from a BMO Capital Markets note to investors on Friday morning. Canadian housing affordability was already stretched to the limit, requiring price cuts to keep moving . Add this week’s rate hike, and mortgage payments are now past the late 80s — Canada’s most extreme bubble. It resulted in real estate prices stagnating for nearly two decades afterwards. Today’s environment is much worse.”

“‘Even after deflating mortgage payments to account for income growth over the decades, the ‘real’ mortgage payment will eclipse those seen at the height of the late-1980s market,’ said BMO senior economist Robert Kavcic . ‘That is, of course, unless home prices continue to decline. And they are…'”

“The Bank of Canada’s surprise jumbo interest rate hike this week has jolted highly indebted consumers, who took out large mortgages during the pandemic, but were less prepared for the sharp rise in borrowing costs. ‘I am distraught,’ said Udit Kumar, who bought a suburban Toronto home this spring. The rate on his variable mortgage has already jumped from 1.84% to 3.4% in just a few months.’We now find ourselves in a situation where the value of our houses might be going down and the mortgages are going up,’ he said.”

“With social media full of people lamenting their suddenly supersized payments and plunging home values, real estate agents say Wednesday’s 100-bp hike has cast another chill over Canada’s already cooling housing market. ‘Everybody just freezes when this happens,’ said Dan Plowman, who owns a real estate agency in Durham, a suburban area east of Toronto. The average selling price in the Toronto area dropped 14.1% in June from February’s peak.”