It’s The Ending Of The Boom
A report from Nine News in Australia. “The Reserve Bank, regulators and the government have got their wish. Property prices in the white-hot Sydney property market are starting to recede. The problem now for those regulators - and for first home buyers and others who are keen to get into the market - is how much further the market has to fall, before it settles. Like a puddle, if you don’t know how deep it is, you don’t want to jump in. What Australia does not want, does not need, is a housing price collapse. That would trigger unemployment and possibly the first recession in more than 26 years. What Australia needs is for the regulators to be right in their judgment: that they can quietly take the steam out of the market, without triggering a bust.”
From Domain News. “John Okgrolic, a train guard who lives in the western suburbs, is one Sydney property investor who has already anticipated a shift in the market. Worried about future price falls, he is now planning to sell his investment property in Cronulla, which he has held for 15 years. ‘We’re at the top of the market … I’m jumping ship before it hits the iceberg and sinks,’ Mr Okgrolic said. ‘When house prices have grown so fast compared to wages growth, you know something is wrong. You’d have to be blind and drunk to not see a fall in prices coming.’”
“Domain Group chief economist Andrew Wilson said the quarterly fall in prices were unsurprising, pointing to lacklustre auction clearance rates and a crackdown on investors from the banking regulator, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority. ‘The market has flattened. It’s the ending of the boom,’ Dr Wilson said.”
From News.com.au. “New housing figures showed median unit prices have been dipping in areas such as the inner west and Sydney’s south over recent months following a mass exodus of investors from the market. Price falls were the largest for apartments in the council area of Leichhardt and the Botany area in Sydney’s south. Unit prices in Leichhardt suburb Lilyfield dropped 25 per cent over the three months, while in neighbouring suburbs Rozelle and Annandale the falls were 8-10 per cent.”
“All these areas are nearby a number of major unit developments, which have increased the selection of homes available to buyers. Real Estate Institute of NSW president John Cunningham said the changed conditions were allowing buyers to be pickier. ‘If they don’t’ see value, they don’t buy,’ he said. ‘That’s a very different situation from last year when people were concerned they’d miss out unless they bought something quickly.’”
From The New Daily. “Last Saturday I oversaw the auction of my grandmother’s house in a south-western suburb of Sydney. And it was not the exuberant fireworks display I was hoping for. The word ‘fizzer’ comes closer to the mark. At first, things looked promising. A healthy troupe of (what looked like) bidders turned up and poked about the place – measuring doorways, peering into cupboards, making sure the toilets flushed – before congregating in the backyard.”
“At the advertised time, the auctioneer strutted onto the lawn and delivered his spiel. After puffing the old place up until you wondered why the Queen herself hadn’t snapped it up pre-auction, he asked for an opening bid. Silence. ‘Did I mention how quiet the neighbourhood is?’ he cracked.”
“A lacklustre titter or two, then more silence. Finally, after an excruciating lull, a furtive voice piped up with an opening offer. It was well below the reserve, but it was a start. Peaking out from behind the dining room curtains, I rubbed my mitts together and waited for the bidding war to begin. Nothing. One bid was all we got. One bid! So much for the exuberant Sydney property market.”
“House price growth in Sydney has been astronomical, and wildly out of step with the rest of the economy. This growth has made a lot of people wealthy. But it has burdened others with absurd levels of debts, and shut yet more out of the housing market altogether. So, while it may be a bit disappointing for homeowners who are coming to the market just as the party is ending, the fact is this is a cooling that absolutely had to happen. As long as it is a gentle cooling (which so far it has been) and not a crash, it should be welcomed.”
“As for my grandmother’s house: eventually the auctioneer and her real estate agent managed, in private, to talk that one furtive bidder up to the reserve price. A bit disappointing perhaps; but, still, it was a much better price than you’d get for the same property anywhere else in Australia – not to mention a 7000 per cent return on what my grandparents paid for the place 50 years ago.”
Burley, ID Housing Prices Crater 13% YOY
https://www.zillow.com/burley-id/home-values/
‘What Australia does not want, does not need, is a housing price collapse’
‘So, while it may be a bit disappointing for homeowners who are coming to the market just as the party is ending, the fact is this is a cooling that absolutely had to happen. As long as it is a gentle cooling (which so far it has been) and not a crash, it should be welcomed’
https://grief.com/the-five-stages-of-grief/
‘As long as it is a gentle cooling (which so far it has been)’
‘following a mass exodus of investors from the market. Price falls were the largest for apartments in the council area of Leichhardt and the Botany area in Sydney’s south. Unit prices in Leichhardt suburb Lilyfield dropped 25 per cent over the three months, while in neighbouring suburbs Rozelle and Annandale the falls were 8-10 per cent’
Sounds like an a$$ pounding to me.
A gentle cooling. Bahahahahahaha.
Take away the price run up and you take away the incentive that powered the price run up.
There ain’t gonna be anything gentle about the resultant cooling.
Stay tuned (and you might as well cook up some popcorn while you’re at it).
Sydney has had tough traffic for the last 25 years from my experience - now its downright miserable. Maybe Angelenos and Bay Aryans will scoff but the allure of the big city just aint there for normal people.
Keep paying those insane prices though if it will make you feel better!
The transportation systems in large cities are a failed model.
Ever been to Singapore, Bangkok, Hong Kong or Taipei?
Oh, yeah, Bangkok — takes an hour to go a block during Friday rush hour! Yeah!!!!
Yeah - bubbles always end in a “gentle cooling”
Lol
“‘You’d have to be blind and drunk to not see a fall in prices coming.’”
And stupid, he forgot stupid.
We used to call them carpetbaggers.
Many of these flooded homeowners cannot make an informed decision and have to make such a quick decision on their largest investment.
And still have to find a place to live.
+++++++
Distressed Investors Are Already Buying Houston Homes for 40 Cents on the Dollar - Flooded homes, big money, and hard choices.
Prashant Gopal - Bloomberg - October 12, 2017
Schild stops by a ranch-style house where 74-year-old Paul Matlock lives with his wife, disabled from multiple sclerosis. Matlock is desperate to leave and is considering Schild’s offer of $120,000—half the home’s value three weeks earlier. A half-dozen other investors have made offers, one as low as $55,000. “The whole thing makes me feel like there’s a bunch of vultures sitting on my back fence,” Matlock says. “They’re waiting for the dead body to fall over.”
The cycle begins with small-time investors such as Schild, who’s bought more than 30 waterlogged houses for an average $175,000 apiece. Then Wall Street swoops in. Gary Beasley, former chief executive officer of Waypoint Homes, also sees an opportunity. He’s pitching private equity firms and pension funds on the potential profit in buying flooded homes, repairing them, and renting them back to homeowners.
Others take a less rosy view. “What worries me is people making pretty dramatic decisions without the education to figure out what the alternatives are and without looking at the situation rationally,” says Andrea Heuson, a finance professor at the University of Miami who specializes in mortgages. Some of those considering Beasley’s strategy don’t want to be named for fear of looking like catastrophe profiteers, Beasley says.
Back in Houston, Schild joins more than 1,100 real estate investors drinking beer, eating catfish, and swapping investment tales at the Redneck Country Club, a music hall. A giant bar is decorated with pictures of guns, mounted deer heads, and a chandelier made of Lone Star beer bottles.
The crowd is assembling for a monthly meeting convened by Eddie Gant, a real estate investor who specializes in “hard money lending”—offering short-term, high-interest-rate loans to house flippers and landlords. The topic is flooded houses. Standing in front of a giant American flag, Gant, 55, his head shaved and gleaming, wears a neon green shirt and black caiman-skin cowboy boots. “You wanna make some money?” he calls out to the cheering audience. “Be careful—you better buy low.”
One of Schild’s prospects is Joseph Hernandez, a disabled U.S. Army veteran married to a housekeeper. The couple are living in a hotel and saving money by eating only two meals a day. Schild has made them a painful offer. If they walk away from their two-bedroom house, worth $127,000 before Hurricane Harvey, Schild will pick up the mortgage payments, paying nothing else. Although he says he sympathizes with the Hernandezes’ plight, he thinks the offer is fair because he figures the home is now worth less than its $65,000 mortgage.
Hernandez is in a bind. He didn’t buy flood insurance because his house wasn’t in a high-risk area. He can’t afford to rebuild, and he’s been told he’s eligible for only $23,000 in federal assistance. If he turns over the deed, he’s looking at losing the entire $60,000 in equity he had before the flood. “It’s blurry, what’s coming,” he says. “We’ll probably have to sell to an investor, and that’s not good. We were forced out.”
Preying on the vulnerable…they must be very proud
Isn’t there a fellow veteran contractor out there who can help?
$23,000 is enough to fix a home to a livable standard if only the first floor was flooded. Rip out dry wall, mold remediation, new floors/walls new HVAC and a cheap Home Depot kitchen.
$23,000 could easily cover that and also have a nice profit for the contractor.
++++++
He can’t afford to rebuild, and he’s been told he’s eligible for only $23,000 in federal assistance. If he turns over the deed,
Disgusting cretins.
Screwing over a blind and disabled Army Vet for a small profit. God Bless America.
“Kick ‘em when they’re up, kick ‘em when they’re down”.
-Don Henley.
The greater fool still exists.
This one bidder KNEW they were the ONLY bidder.
I would have told the sellers they have 5 minutes to take my offer or it goes down by 5%.
And when I walk out the door it goes down by another 10%
++++
“As for my grandmother’s house: eventually the auctioneer and her real estate agent managed, in private, to talk that one furtive bidder up to the reserve price.
That’s how my wife and I bargain - every offer is less than the previous offer. It’s almost too much fun.
LOWbaLL
Realtors are liars.
Distressed Home Investors are worse
Yep
wall street has used and abused short sellers for years. once you start to believe in the recovery then you will get sh@t thrown in your face.
Money Money Money guess who’s in charge????
https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2017/10/11/start-spreading-the-news-nyc-mayor-de-blasio-paid-city-employees-2b-for-33-million-overtime-hours/#6642735d8dac
DJT thinks a rising stock market erase the national debt. This guy sure is delusional.
obama added more to the debt than ALL other previous administration COMBINED and accounting for inflation.
That is how low the obama standard is.
And PS - one of his kids interns for a serial rapist. Because of his “connections” made during his administration. And no, not at the Clintons.
A little interesting historical facts on the budget:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals
Pay special attention to Table 1.3. A new president inherits the economy from the previous president. I do think Obama was a poor president, but the added debt seems to come from the previous administration. Based solely on the budget, Obama did fairly well given the fact that he inherited the Great Recession.
The real problem with Obama is that he got out of the Recession with money printing that resulted in asset bubbles and fake compassion for the poor to give out free stuffs that only fattened a few industry and did not touch the real problems. Consequently, the lives of little people have gotten worse and worse. If he should be blamed, it should be on his policies, not on the debt. The debt itself is a result of an epic failure of Bush administration.
Now that Trump inherited this shaky economy, let us see how he fares. If he magically pulls us out of the coming recession pretty quickly without dire side effects, he will be by far the best president in decades. I highly doubt he would be able to, though.
Yes. I get it.
Nothing is obama’s fault.
Eight years of power.
Ignoring laws he didn’t like.
Making up laws he wished he had.
Using the government to go after political enemies.
A filibuster proof democrat Senate.
A democrat super majority in the house.
Nothing is obama’s fault. Especially the massive debt.
“The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion dollars for the first 42 presidents — number 43 added $4 trillion dollars by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion dollars of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.”
- Barack Obama, Fargo, ND, July 3, 2008
No, I am not saying nothing is Obama’s fault. He can be blamed for most of things we are currently experiencing. Just not the debt. We observe a decreasing trend in deficit under the past two democratic presidents.
Now that the republicans are in charge, the general tendency seems to be, hey forget about the deficit! Let us cut taxes to boost the economy! The magic trickle down will happen!
Let us see how it really turns out. We have seen the true face of the Dems during Obama years. Now is the time to see the true face of the GOP. We should stop fighting Dems vs the GOP. This is not a sports game. We should closely watch who really cares about the country.
Ben, how about you running for the next president. I will be more than happy to cast my vote for you.
“Obama is that he got out of the Recession”
We’re still in recession and have been throughout the disastrous Obama years.
Now that Trump inherited this shaky economy, let us see how he fares. If he magically pulls us out of the coming recession pretty quickly without dire side effects, he will be by far the best president in decades. I highly doubt he would be able to, though.
There is no magic except more of the same. BUT…as hated as he is by so many, it seems like if they were ever going to take the bitter medicine and try to get back to something sustainable he would be the perfect fall guy for them to blame it all on. Perfect as he may be for that, there seems to be no appetite to take the medicine though. So maybe we all go down together except for those that can fly to pre-purchased ranches in South America.
‘DJT thinks a rising stock market erase the national debt’
You gotta link for that?
‘DJT thinks a rising stock market erase the national debt’
You gotta link for that?
Yes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grD_IINiH9c
Devens, MA Housing Prices Crater 14% YOY
http://www.movoto.com/devens-ma/market-trends/
you need to keep risk assets propped up to keep folks chasing the carrot in front of their nose and keep faith in the debt based system.
A nation of dummys.
Yes indeed.
The type that even a military education couldn’t convince them that they need flood insurance even if it isn’t mandatory.
He had the same chances as his neighbor who isn’t selling.
Too much weight put on the
Vet status.
Vets knew the job was dangerous when they took it.
A disabled oil worker is no less than a disabled vet.
But ‘vet’ makes the unthinking think even less.
Every Friday the 13th is followed by a Saturday.
Decatur, TX Housing Prices Crater 7% YOY
https://www.zillow.com/decatur-tx/home-values/
Hello, Realtor, my old friend
You’ve come to lie to me again