It’s Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. “Kansas City area Realtors are looking ahead to the next few months in the housing market. ‘Six months ago, you can go to a seller, you can say, ‘Hey, throw me out your dream number and let’s go get it and it would work,’ he said. ‘With the rates rising, people aren’t able to offer $30,000 over for their homes anymore,’ said Realtor Jake Beckner.”

“‘We’re seeing more negotiations. We’re seeing price reductions,’ said Jeff Carson, director of Realtor Advocacy for the Kansas City Regional Association of Realtors. Carson said buyers have started to slip into the driver’s seat in negotiations. ‘Right now, sellers are starting to groan and that they should have jumped on to this sooner,’ he said.”

“Housing sales in Amarillo have decreased compared to the same time last year. Cindi Bulla, a board member of the Amarillo Association of Realtors, said 2021 was a blockbuster year, so the decline is expected. ‘Sales prices across Texas did increase 19.1 percent second quarter over second quarter,’ Bulla said. ‘The numbers and the volume that we were seeing in 2021 were unsustainable. We couldn’t do that year over year. You have to take ‘slowdown’ by comparison to probably the biggest, the most rapid paced marker we’ve ever seen – certainly in my career.'”

“DFW’s hot market might be cooling off. ‘There are certainly some buyers that may have been impacted by the changing mortgage rates and the amount of house they can afford,’ said Peter Winscott, the regional sales vice president at the real estate tech company Orchard. ‘However, there are also buyers who are seeing competition slow down a bit and may be experiencing buyer’s remorse around the fear that they are over-spending, particularly if they bid over asking to win the house.'”

“For the past couple years, the very heated Portland metro real estate market was unforgiving to buyers that didn’t have the perfect offer. However, the market has cooled slightly. Savvy buyers and sellers now are wise to understand and consider having such a contingency. Sellers are more motivated now to entertain one, especially if your home is market-ready, all spiffed up, and priced right to sell. Your contingent offer may be the best thing the Seller has seen. The worst thing they can say is ‘no.’ but they often say ‘yes’ instead.”

“As REALTORS in the Berkshire discuss local trends, a common conversation is how aware the buyers are of the shift in the market and the higher cost of home loans, while sellers are still thinking the market is where the sky was the limit on prices, favorable seller terms and quick cash closings.  ‘A lot of homeowners are still pricing homes based on the market of six months ago,’ says George Ratiu, manager of economic research for Realtor.com. ‘There is a gap between what homeowners are asking and what they’re getting.'”

“Rising supply in June led to drops in Ada County home prices, the Idaho Press previously reported. For example, RE/MAX Capital City Realtor Sheila Smith listed a condo for $315,000 this winter. Another comparable unit in the same building is for sale right now, but for $290,000, a drop of about $25,000 for similar units with the same number of bedrooms and square feet. Homes are sitting on the market for an average of 14-30 days, Smith said. But in an even market, houses may be on the market for 60-90 days, she said. ‘There’s this kind of jumping the gun, which I think that that is part of what we’re seeing,’ Smith said. ‘We’re seeing values drop because we’re doing all these price drops in reaction to this increased supply.'”

“Homebuilders’ sales are falling in the Las Vegas Valley and around the country as higher mortgage rates keep putting the brakes on the market. Over the past two months, some builders have started to slash their base asking prices ‘for the first time in a very long time,’ added Las Vegas-based Home Builders Research president, Andrew Smith. ‘After months of racing to put up homes in order to meet the red-hot housing market conditions, builders are suddenly seeing more and more contract cancellations, sellers of existing homes cutting prices and homes lingering on the market,’ said Nicole Bachaud, an economist with Zillow.”

“‘We’re seeing supply rise, demand come down. We’re seeing houses sit on the market longer. We’re finally seeing price reductions for the first time in a long time,’ Sara Coers, Associate director of IU’s Center for Real Estate Studies said. ‘I think we’re not going to slow down completely, but we’re going to come off the madness a little. They’re not going to get the absolute top dollar, they’re not going to get it in a day, and they’re maybe going to have to give things back.'”

“Is it safe to say housing has ‘crashed’ when Southern California’s homebuying pace drops by 25% in a year to the sixth-slowest June in the past 35 years? I’m bemused by how sensitive the real estate industry is over how springtime’s dramatic homebuying slowdown is described — even when few in the industry foresaw such rapid cooling. For example, ‘Even though we have seen sales decline, economists are still saying it is unlikely home prices will crash,’ says a recent newsletter from the Southwest Riverside County Association of Realtors.”

“I consulted Merriam-Webster’s trusty online dictionary, looking for what would serve as the ‘economic’ definition of a crash when used as a verb. It said: ‘to go to a lower level especially abruptly.’ And ponder synonyms for crash from Merriam-Webster: crater, decline, descend, dip, dive, drop, fall, lower, nose-dive, plummet, plunge, sink, skid, tumble.”

“In a nearly dormant real estate market, some sellers are confronting the revival of an anachronistic practice: Nervous buyers are making their offer to purchase a property conditional on the sale of the one they already own. Matthew Regan, a broker at Royal LePage Real Estate Services, saw a few buyers attach the clause during the market slowdown of 2018 but it disappeared when sales rallied again. In Oakville and Mississauga, where Mr. Regan concentrates much of his business, offers conditional on the sale of the purchaser’s property are rare today but starting to pop up, he says.”

“Mr. Regan says the pace of sales in London tends to lag the Greater Toronto Area by six to eight weeks, and sellers are more likely to be receptive to such a condition in areas where their property has been sitting for a long time. ‘This might be the first offer they’ve seen.'”

“In the first half of 2022, 8,644 owner-occupied apartments were sold in Denmark, down a third from 2021’s tally of 12,947 flats sold by that time. ‘Now it is starting to be more of a buyer’s market, where sellers also have to realise that if they want to sell they have to lower the prices,’ said Mira Lie Nielsen, housing economist at Nykredit, one of Denmark’s major banks and the country’s largest mortgage lender. A further slowing down can be expected in 2023 and 2024, she predicted. ‘There will now be a number of years with falling prices on the apartments market,’ she said.”

“New Zealand’s housing market lost $40 billion of value over the first half of this year, new data from Corelogic shows. The country’s average residential property value is now $1.018 million. There were mortgages secured against 20% of that value. ‘The sharp post-Covid upswing in values has now given way to a firm correction, and the falls already seen to date have been spread across most geographical areas and price brackets. It’s possible the national average property value will ultimately drop by -10% to -15% by the middle of 2023, which broadly suggests we’re potentially halfway through this correction in both duration and scale,’ said Corelogic chief property economist Kelvin Davidson. Davidson said it had been more than a decade since there had been a similar drop in sales activity.”

“‘In the coming five to six years … the chance that housing prices outperform inflation is actually very, very low,’ said Chau Kwong-wing, chair professor of real estate at the University of Hong Kong. ‘The important issue here is that the increase in property prices is from 2009, as a result of quantitative easing, and that is going to end. That means there will be much less money flowing around looking for investment.'”

“An economist in China, who requested anonymity due to fear of reprisal, told VOA Mandarin that real estate companies have never been regulated. ‘When the economy is good, with the continuous expansion, most of the properties can be delivered. But when the economy is not good, it becomes a bit like a Ponzi scheme. If there is no follow-up funding, they will not able to complete construction,’ she said.”

“Sydney house prices fell 2.7 per cent to a median of $1,552,015 million in the June quarter, Domain’s latest house price data, published on Thursday, showed. That is the steepest drop since March 2019 and takes the median house price below the March 2022 price peak. Domain chief of research and economics Dr Nicola Powell said house prices fell almost five times faster than unit prices in the June quarter. ‘What was clear over the June quarter for Sydney was [that] the downturn gathered momentum, and not only did it gather momentum it also spread geographically,’ Powell said.”

“The pricier parts of Sydney, closer to the CBD, were leading the way. The median house price in the North Sydney and Hornsby region recorded the largest fall, down 8.4 per cent at $2.72 million. That was followed by the inner west, where the median fell 8.3 per cent to $2.2 million. But the downturn has begun to catch on in areas further from the city. ‘There are fewer people and less urgency. The FOMO that was driving the market last year is gone. Now people are scared of overpaying,’ Laing+Simmons chief executive Leanne Pilkington said.”

“Millennials have reacted with a mixture of consternation and good humor to reports of an avocado oversupply in Australia. The soft textured fruit has been synonymous with millennials, a byword for the generation that reached adulthood in the early 21st century, ever since Australian millionaire Tim Gurner put his ability to purchase property at a young age down to his aversion to avocados. Speaking on the subject of the younger generations during an interview with 60 Minutes Australia, Gurner claimed: ‘When I was trying to buy my first home, I wasn’t trying to buy smashed avocado for $19 and 4 coffees at $4 each.'”

“The comments were made in the context that Gurner was explaining he worked hard for his success and made sacrifices rather than waste money on short-term enjoyment. Millennials have been reacting with a combination of tongue-in-cheek confusion and fury at the fact they are now being asked to eat more avocados after being previously told it was the reason they were failing to climb the property ladder. Comic book illustrator Elliot Baggott was among those who struggled to contain his delight at this turn of events, tweeting: ‘Well, well, well. Look who’s come crawling back.'”

“Author Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò also reveled in this turn of events. ‘While Boomers were partying in their homes with affordable mortgages, we studied the avocado toast,’ he wrote. ‘And now that the crates are full and the barbarians are at the gates they have the nerve to ask us for help?’ Coder Aditya Mukerjee dubbed it ‘the ‘millenials are overspending on avocado toast’ to ‘millenials are killing avocado toast’ pipeline’ while Twitter user Glamazonjay wrote: ‘Y’all told us avocado toast was dropping our credit score.'”

“Tom Gara, a writer joked: ‘Avocado glut just as housing prices begin to cool off? This is an obvious millennial trap, don’t fall for it.’ Fellow journalist Emily Zanotti added: ‘The time has come, Millennials. Avocado toast to save the world.’ There were memes and gifs alongside the humorous astonishment. It quickly went viral with many millennials viewing it as archetypal of the out-of-touch attitude of the previous ‘boomer generation,’ who grew up at a time when housing was relatively cheap and still believe younger generations can afford property through disciplined spending.”

“Elsewhere, GrimAvenue said ‘This is the kind of crisis I was meant for’ with LOTNorm reflecting how ‘Our whole lives are measured in whether we’re buying too many avocados or too few avocados.’ Meanwhile an exasperated danglinghemmie simply asked: ‘DO WE GET THE AVOCADO TOAST OR NOT?'”