Dramatic Price Reductions Every Single Day — Every Hour
A report from The Real Deal on New York. “Westchester residents, many trying to avoid the hefty tax bill that 2018 promises, are finding themselves in an unforgiving buyers’ market. Prices in the county fell 18 percent in the second quarter of 2018, with homes asking between $1.5 million to $3 million faring the worst, according to Bloomberg. In Scarsdale alone, prices dipped 5 percent in the first six months of 2018, while Mamaroneck saw a 13 percent drop.”
“As a result, the number of homes for sale in Westchester has been increasing: in late June, inventory was up 5 percent compared to last year and, for homes priced between $2-2.5 million, listings were up 26 percent.”
“Buyers are feeling no sympathy for homeowners who bet on turning a neat profit when they decided to sell off their prestige address. Compass broker Angela Retelny says her clients tell her ‘Look, I’m not going to spend more than $35,000 in taxes.’ … Houses are just being dismissed, even though they’re superior homes, and they have to be reduced — because their taxes are just way too high for the price range.’”
“With buyers taking a hard line, sellers are being forced to bend, according to her. There are ‘dramatic price reductions every single day — every hour, pretty much,’ she told Bloomberg.”
‘Westchester residents, many trying to avoid the hefty tax bill that 2018 promises, are finding themselves in an unforgiving buyers’ market’
Eh, prices there have been dropping like a turd in a well for years.
‘Prices in the county fell 18 percent in the second quarter of 2018′
Where’s that new troll who insists prices aren’t dropping any where except “outliers” like New York City? Jeebus you just got here and you’ve got years worth of crow to choke down already!
If all the “real estate always goes up” trolls decide to attend the crow banquet, the world may soon run out of crow.
Well, there’s always rat kabob, roasted over a hobo stove or trashcan fire with an exquisite bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 or Ripple to wash it all down.
Don’t forget about the always-delicious roasted cockroach hors d’oeuvres.
Show up early to get a spot for your van down by the river.
I will take no greater joy in life than in watching a Realtor starve to death.
I don’t mean go on food stamps and eat ramen, I mean a 1932 Ukraine culling of the Realtors, let’s go full Stalin and watch these f*ckers die
Dude, that seems a little excessive….
Realtors add nothing, NOTHING, of value on either side of the transaction in a capitalist economy. Realtors are parasites, they are maggots, feeding on the bloated corpse that Bernanke killed and that Yellen kept trying to keep alive.
This isn’t the city-data forums here. We’re not too stupid to fall for Realtor lies.
Realtor is a symptom of a broader sickness, economically, and socially.
Realtor is the first symptom of economic genocide of a community, anywhere there are people suffering and dying, there is a Realtor.
It’s time to identify these Realtors as who they really are, they are Merchants Of Death.
Have bought and sold three houses so far. All of the realtors we used were competent and professional. Yes, there’s a lot of shady ones, but speaking personally, I’ve been satisfied with the ones we’ve dealt with and certainly don’t bear any ill will towards them - quite the contrary.
I grudgingly agree that most of the used home sellers we have worked with did their jobs competently. However, the last two experiences were unfavorable, including the arm-twisting to get us into a zero-interest loan just before the 2007 financial meltdown.
You just gotta understand one thing: Realtors ALWAYS work for the seller. Their financial interests only align with the seller and never with the buyer. They are both paid by the seller.
They are literally like every other salesperson who makes a commission when they sell a product.
You can think of realtors as orcas. You have the field agents (akin to ocean-traveling orcas) who bring in buyers from afar. And you have the listing agents who list the house (akin to orcas who live exclusively along coasts).
The model is deceptive, and designed to make the buyer believe that the “buyer’s agent” is working in the buyer’s financial interest.
Realtors are like anyone else - some are decent people, some are criminals (literally - in Maryland, felons can get Realtors licenses). And as in any sales situation, it is imperative the buyer understands how all parties are being paid.
Realtors are paid by the buyer. On paper, they’re paid by the seller.
“Realtors are parasites, they are maggots, feeding on the bloated corpse … they are Merchants Of Death.”
Have yer favorite beverage, & celebrate a po$$ible reduction of the fiend$.in.yer.mind$
5 killed when small plane crashes in California parking lot
Associated Press Associated Press. August 5, 2018
The plane is registered to the San Francisco-based real estate company Category III, according to an FAA database.
Realtors ALWAYS work for the seller.
And with minimal effort, at that. We sold back in 2006 in Westchester County, NY. Our realtor sent his clueless minions to show the house. Would it have been so much effort for them to read the listing? One parked herself on our couch and said since I don’t know anything about the place, I’ll let you show the prospective buyers around.
I agree with Macbeth’s posts. I felt like I was pulling one over on whoever bought the place. I knew from reading this blog that prices were going to drop. I felt sorry for the buyers, feeling like I was fleecing them - but I did it anyway. Recently I checked to see if the estimate for the house ever met the price they paid - thirteen years later it’s only $10K over on zillow, just in time for it to crash again.
As for renting since then - might be due to particular circumstances here in Las Vegas - if I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t. We’re due to for another, probably substantial increase for a mediocre property or the boot in December - again.
Did your wife leave you for a realtor or something? Good lord, man. Such ridiculously misplaced anger.
If you see a realtor in your neighborhood, lock the doors and call the authorities immediately.
Have a friend in Westchester. Nice town and good schools.
4 bedroom and 1.5 bath on 1/4 acre nothing too special.
Property taxes = $24,000 per year
it’s pension math
@Ben Jones
Not sure why you took my opinion so personal. I must have made you mad somehow. My apologies. I am no troll either, I hate the corrupt system just as much as you do, and would love to see it come crashing down. I hope you are right and I am wrong and this is the crashing peak for middle class housing prices. The central banks, mega corporations and governments, both state and federal, are destroying the bottom tier of the middle class with their ZIRP and inflation policies.
This article doesn’t prove my opinion wrong one bit. This is one of the outliers I mentioned “New York”. There are only a hand full of places you can find where there are price reductions, and even then only certain market segments.
If you think of New York as an outlier, then do you also assume that New York has absolutely no influence on other markets?
From the Financial Times, not exactly an outlier:
“We now know that the US housing market had been coming apart since the previous summer but there was still a strong market for risk assets. Too much cash seemed to be lying idle with not enough yield on offer.”
https://www.ft.com/content/a8e3a258-9648-11e8-b747-fb1e803ee64e
Article: “A copper-bottomed sign: why the metal is telling us to panic”
I don’t have time to spoon feed you troll. Here’s just one example of how wrong you are:
February 24, 2017
“The mansion on Fallen Leaf Road in the secluded Upper Rancho neighborhood of Arcadia has all the trappings a wealthy buyer from China could want. Yet two months after it was placed on the market, the house remains unsold. Not long ago, real estate like this would have been snapped up almost immediately. ‘It would have been gone in two weeks with multiple offers,’ said Dee Chou, the property’s listing agent.”
“Median home prices have dropped in Arcadia to $930,000 at the end of last year from about $1.1 million at the start of 2015. In San Marino, the median price for a home was $2.5 million as recently as the second quarter of last year before tapering to $2.2 million by the fourth quarter. Agents say the city is left with a surplus of luxury properties whose sellers could face pressure to reduce prices. One agent said her client had to drop his asking price for a property in Arcadia last summer to $8.3 million from $10 million because it drew no interest for three months. ‘All agents are crying that the money isn’t coming,’ said Sanne Lee, an agent for A + Realty & Mortgage in Rowland Heights.”
http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/?p=10006
Now I’m busy finding the next crater.
Here’s another…
Littleton, CO Housing Prces Crater 13% YOY As Denver Housing Recovery Begins
https://www.movoto.com/littleton-co/market-trends/
foobarbaz: his article doesn’t prove my opinion wrong one bit. This is one of the outliers I mentioned “New York”. There are only a hand full of places you can find where there are price reductions, and even then only certain market segments.
• We’re at or near peak debt: https://www.newyorkfed.org/microeconomics/hhdc.html
• Interest rates are rising.
• US central bank is tightening.
These are tidal forces which affect the housing market.
Does this all imply a crater? No, IMO. But it should start shaking out speculative demand, if (and I think when) prices flatten for a period of time (how long? After the huge WWII runup, Case Shiller shows prices steadily declining for 20 years - and that IMO almost certainly without today’s speculative aspect). How that plays out will be important.
We’ve seen the world’s central bank playbooks in times of economic softness: inject money into the FIRE sector and drop interest rates.
(Side note: the central bank plus the GSEs are part of the same syringe, which injects money into the FIRE sector. Other countries don’t have the GSE component but they have the same syringe in the same/similar vein).
Will they do it again? I think yes but not because it was a successful policy (see wages + labor market participation + white ‘deaths of despair’ rates) but because influential people are deciding how to slice the purchasing power pie, and they are going to make sure their interests are taken care of first.
Will they do it again as enthusiastically as Greenspan/Bernanke/Yellen? I don’t know about that. This policy does have side effects, namely I think it allows Congress + President to ignore the root causes of the malaise and encourages populism. Letting a central bank inject money into the FIRE sector clouds the elites view, as they and their donors/associates are all doing great, their cities gentrify and their world looks good. But eventually, stresses build up and earthquakes occur to release that stress - politically.
But, Congress, the President’s and the Fed’s first inclination is to protect the FIRE sector. So I think they’ll act on that emotion in some way, perhaps not as overtly as has happened in the past.
Anyway, that’s my free Internet opinion anyway, YMMV.
A good free internet opinion, in my opinion
Judging by Powell’s refusal to raise rates by even 1/4% when growth is over 4%, the Fed is aware of the precariousness of the current economy.
It’s like they are walking on a sheet of ice and they hear the cracking as it begins to buckle. Their solution is to carry liquid nitrogen and spray right in front of them. It allows more forward movement but as soon as they stop spraying, crackle crackle, boom.
Predicting a housing collapse (or any asset class collapse) requires knowledge of the Feds playbook. It looks like the playbook has 50 pages and they all say “PRINT.”
Liquidity growth must create the ability to service previous debt. There really is no plan B.
I’ll probably go to metaphor hell for over use, but I have one more.
We are a steam boat that has run out of fuel. The only stop gap is to begin burning parts of the ship, until the ship is no more…
Allen, TX Housing Prices Crater 8% YOY As Dallas Area Housing Recovery Begins
https://www.movoto.com/allen-tx/market-trends/
‘Buyers are feeling no sympathy for homeowners who bet on turning a neat profit when they decided to sell off their prestige address’
come·up·pance
ˌkəmˈəpəns/
nouninformal
noun: comeuppance; plural noun: comeuppances; noun: come-uppance; plural noun: come-uppances
-a punishment or fate that someone deserves.
-”he got his comeuppance”
-synonyms: just deserts, just punishment, due, retribution, requital, what’s coming to one
-”the bad guys always get their comeuppance in the final scene”
‘‘Look, I’m not going to spend more than $35,000 in taxes.’ … Houses are just being dismissed, even though they’re superior homes, and they have to be reduced — because their taxes are just way too high for the price range.’
See, this is the solution. Slash the price 80-90% - Voila! Lower taxes. Jeebus knows you city slickers can afford it. You’re always telling everybody how rich you are.
Buyers are feeling no sympathy for homeowners
Womp, womp
Newbs and lurkers, read closely. We’ve been following this for over a decade now. Don’t be Caitlyn Vestal in Portland. Don’t be the castrated husband in the “Suzanne researched it” commercial.
Millennials, newly married, new parents, don’t get sucked into this trap of lifetime debt enslavement. We were here, in 2005-2008 and beyond, before you were old enough to realize that your only future in life was being groomed to become mortgage debt slaves.
Rent. Save your money. Don’t buy a house you can’t afford for the Instagram likes. Is it really that complicated? Or as a generation are you really that stupid? If the latter, I wish upon you every semblance of poverty and misery you’ve brought upon yourselves.
Since Apple released the smartphone in summer 2007, every archived piece of economic and financial history has been available to you at your fingertips, yet you choose willful ignorance, because social media.
Millennials are the worst generation in human history.
Apt 401, while I generally agree with every thought you’ve ever had and every post you’ve ever written, I must dispute your contention that Millennials are the worst generation in human history. That dubious distinction belongs to the Boomers, whose fecklessness, self-absorbtion, and utter disregard for future generations has made them, hands down, the most worthless generation these shores have ever raised up.
Granted, Millennials are on track to take this crown away, but I know far more Millennials than Boomers who have seen the light and become awake and aware, whereas most Boomers are going to be obstinately worthless to their dying day.
This is true….Boomers are pretty much Perma-bulls, and will destroy the country just to maintain their “spot” at the trough. They inherited the greatest country in the world, at the greatest time imaginable…and pissed it all away.
Shameful
I will have to say that I don’t know which group is worse, Boomers or the Snowflake Millennials. Both are atrocious. Us Gen-Xers got the shaft, sandwiched in between these useless mouthbreathers.
By the way, there are wonderful people in both generations, it’s just that there’s a lot of rot, too.
Blaming someone else won’t help a thing. People of every age should join the fight against decay and corruption. Don’t buy things you cannot pay for yet.
I don’t disagree with you BlueSkye, but I do want to add that the boomers have been buying things they cannot pay for in terms of government for a very long time. And now everyone that comes afterwards is stuck with a massive debt to GDP. They got a lot more than they paid for, because it wasn’t financed by taxes. And now the next generation is going to pay a lot more, and get a lot less. So much for solidarity.
We have yet to see what the next generation will do. Grandmother said “they’ll have to live like we did.”
I’ve done what I could for many years to starve the bankers.
Good on you Blue. To some degree the next generation is constrained by the generations that came before, and they still have control of the government. This is crazy to me. It’s as one person at the table is ordering for everyone else right before they are about to bounce. I think inter-generational conflict is really going to heat up in the next 10-20 years.
Everyone is worried about free stuff from democratic socialists like Ocasio-Cortez, but it was the farmers who just got $12B last week and the boomers are going to get far more in social security and medicare than they pay in.
There are many good individuals of every cohort, so it’s unfair to stereotype everyone. But the generations coming of age now are the first in quite a long time who are likely to have a worse standard of living than their parents. That says a lot.
Seeing lots of price reduced listing in coastal Orange County..
Same here in San Diego. The crash is well underway.
Harrison, NY Housing Prices Crater 13% YOY As Metro NY Housing Correction Expands To Westchester County
https://www.movoto.com/harrison-ny/market-trends/
Another day, another popping bubble is announced.
The Financial Times
California Public Employees’ Retirement System
US pension fund suffers big losses on forestry land
Red ink at Calpers could run into hundreds of millions of dollars
These two videos are worth viewing for every Californian:
Pensions and the CalPERS Time Bomb
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP9ki8u33Mc
Meet the retirees of CalPers Pension crisis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF8QZ9dF1s0
after raising the retirement age from the 50s to the late 60’s the real battle will be back dating contracts so govnics under age 45 will have to work longer. an IL judge killed it in their state. Better start making noise is yours.
ROPER poll has 77% wanting govnics to work til age 68.
Compass broker Angela Retelny says her clients tell her ‘Look, I’m not going to spend more than $35,000 in taxes.’ … Houses are just being dismissed, even though they’re superior homes, and they have to be reduced — because their taxes are just way too high for the price range.’
Houses, being illiquid assets, are low-hanging fruit for the tax man. As the Free Sh!t Army grows in size and militancy, electing more far-left “progressives,” so-called “redistribution of the wealth” in the form of property taxes to fund state and municipal party machine patronage and graft rackets is going to reach extortionate proportions.
Forward!
‘low-hanging fruit for the tax man’
I’m going to object to this. For decades, the REIC has turned housing into a tax shelter for rich people. And these states that have high prices and high property taxes got a free ride at the expense over every other state that doesn’t. We’ve got a federal government that basically has a monopoly in housing loans, way over subsidizing California, Hawaii, etc with gigantic loan caps because they’re well, way too expensive! Oh and second homes. They get subsidized loans and tax shelter too because we all know it’s every rich persons right to get government gravy for a shack in Tahoe they use once a year while 65% of them are empty. Jeebus, what’s wrong with cracking up this enormous scam?
These Westchester shacks are probably empty 95%+ of the time. Boo hoo.
I have no issue with using taxes to discourage, and punish, speculation and economic parasitism. I would slap punitive taxes on vacant “investment” homes and absentee landlords or banks who let their properties or foreclosures become eyesores. I’d also slap a Tobin (transaction) tax on Wall Street to halt trading (and market manipulation) by high-frequency trading algos, which now comprise 70% of market volume. As far as the oligarchs who have been using their control of the Republicrat duopoly to write the tax code so they pay a pittance on their ill-gotten gains, let’s just say I would re-write the tax code to curb their rapacious looting of the 99% and reckless speculation backstopped by the Fed and taxpayers.
We aren’t talking about what you or I would do to the tax code. This specific tax change slightly cut (didn’t eliminate) a tax shelter that greatly favored rich people in high tax states. It doesn’t hurt middle class, it does pound shack gamblers with vacation houses that as the article says “bet on turning a neat profit when they decided to sell off their prestige address”.
Why buy a giant shack in Westchester when you can rent it for the week you’ll be there unless you were speculating?
Waiter, another round of a$$-poundings for our friends in New York. And send some more crow to those trolls.
NY= rampant appraisal fraud
I’m all for eliminating tax shelters for the wealthy and making them pay their fair share, as well as punishing speculation that hurts the middle and working classes or poses systemic risks to the financial system.
I also think Zimbabwe Ben, Yellen the Felon, TurboTax Timmy Geithner, and the rest of their ilk should be serving out life sentences in the Florence, Colorado Supermax, along with every congress critter who voted for TARP.
Nailed it Ben.
All you need to do is make all bids and asks good for 1 second ONE feakin second and all that High frequency stuff almost goes away on its own….plus 1/10 cent a share tax to pay for the watchdogs and fine those who violate the rules.
“They get subsidized loans and tax shelter too because we all know it’s every rich persons right to get government gravy for a shack in Tahoe they use once a year while 65% of them are empty. Jeebus, what’s wrong with cracking up this enormous scam?”
What’s wrong is that the very people responsible for cracking it up are the ones benefiting from it. CONgress doesn’t do chit when it might affect their own standard of living.
after the local and state gov make retire,emt at 66 w a 401k type plan I’ll agree. Otherwise not.
Thanks, Ben. I know lots of people want to get rid of the GSE’s, but that’s a pretty big leap and could shock the system. But how difficult would it be to simply limit ALL government housing cheese to primary occupied residence only? For your primary residence you get tax breaks, 3.5% down FHA, and Fannie-guaranteed loan. For any other residence, you’re on your own.
<i.There are ‘dramatic price reductions every single day — every hour, pretty much,’ she told Bloomberg.”
This being the case, why should anyone be in any rush to buy an overpriced shack (or catch a falling knife)?
Deflation: The scariest word of all for debt donkeys who massively overextended themselves to get on that property ladder.
https://www.scmp.com/property/hong-kong-china/article/2158347/hong-kong-home-prices-face-deflation-trend-end-year
Hitler finds out he’s an FB.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNmcf4Y3lGM
“Hitler Downfall parodies: 25 worth watching - Telegraph”
“Subtitled parodies of Adolf Hitler’s last days in the Berlin bunker, as depicted in the 2004 Second World War film Downfall, have become one of the web’s most enduring memes.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/6262709/Hitler-Downfall-parodies-25-worth-watching.html
My new favorite Hitler downfall:
Hitler’s short position in Tesla is ruined:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkvYvk8vxuw
Best Hitler parody, ever! There are very few elements of the first wave of Housing Bubble collapse that it misses.
I am going to have to stitch up my sides
Ready or not, here come the rising Treasury yields, at least according to JPMorgan.
Markets
Jamie Dimon Warns of 5% Treasury Yields
By Cormac Mullen and Joanna Ossinger
August 5, 2018, 6:07 PM PDT
JPMorgan CEO sees potential for 10-year yield to reach 5%
Says current bull market could run for 2 or 3 more years
Jamie Dimon Photographer: Giulia Marchi/Bloomberg
Not content with a previous warning investors should brace for U.S. yields of 4 percent, Jamie Dimon went one further at the weekend, suggesting 5 percent was a distinct possibility.
The JPMorgan Chase & Co. chief executive officer said Saturday people should be prepared to deal with the benchmark 10-year bond yield at 5 percent or higher.
“I think rates should be 4 percent today,” Dimon said Saturday at the Aspen Institute’s 25th Annual Summer Celebration Gala. “You better be prepared to deal with rates 5 percent or higher - it’s a higher probability than most people think.”
…
all these broker dealers keep coming out with all these scare tactics to get people to short the market. Then the buyback desks kick their @sses. Its been going on for years. They have this totally rigged.
They need the wall of worry.
I would think a 5% drop in prices would make inventory double.
It did here. 1990-92
06 - 11
Kirkland WA Housing Prices Freefall 7% YOY Mortgage Meltdown Accelerates
https://www.movoto.com/kirkland-wa/market-trends/
The tanking Chinese Yuan means Chinese developers (and FBs) who took out dollar-denominated loans are going to struggle to service those debts as the Yuan continues its depreciation vs. the dollar.
https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/2158412/chinese-property-developers-squeezed-weaker-yuan-rising-cost
I would love to offload some risk assets onto u so you can be the bagholder.
UK’s biggest RE agency is circling the drain.
https://wolfstreet.com/2018/08/03/uk-housing-downturn-pushes-biggest-real-estate-agency-with-10000-employees-to-brink-shares-collapse/
“Countrywide, the UK’s largest real-estate services group with over 10,000 employees in 900 locations, saw its shares plunge over 60% on Thursday …”
Because?
“… the company asked investors to pony up £140 million of emergency funds to save it from collapsing under the weight of its own debt.”
Bahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
“At one point the shares were down over 70%. On Friday they fell a further 14%.”
I like to think of this as a good start.
“In the last three months, the stock has crumbled 86%, from £1.10 a share in early May to £0.15 on Friday. The firm’s market cap has plunged to a paltry £37 million — little more than the average house price on Britain’s most expensive street, Kensington Palace Gardens in London.”
😁
“The company, which owns 50 agency brands, including high street agency brands such as Hamptons International, Bairstow Eves and Bridgfords, attempted to raise £250 million in May by issuing bonds. If offered price the five-year notes at a yield of 8%, but potential investors said they would have to have at least 9%, according to the FT.”
Nine-percent. Check.
“The bond was supposed to pay off a revolving line of credit, and there would have been some left over to decorate the balance sheet with a little cash. But the effort was scuttled.”
“Decorate the balance sheet”; I like the way that was put.
“Now, it hopes to stave off collapse by raising £140 million — more than three times its current market cap — through a heavily discounted share placing and open offer later this month.”
Lots of luck with that. But then again with the entire planet populated with billions of dummies and with the appropriate application of an ample supply of lipstick these pukes just may be able to pull it off.
Stay tuned.
In corporate terms, debt is an easy way to get profit now for the executives, and the costs are borne long term by the workers and society.
Example: https://www.thenation.com/article/toys-r-us-workers-take-private-equity-barons-ashamed/
“UK’s biggest RE agency is circling the drain.”
Haha… there goes the coffee machine.
Nah, the closers still left there will just make it off limits to everyone else.
Just watched Stath Lets Flats, British show about a realtor. Had its funny moments, but a bit cringy.
Also - new kids on the block:
There are goats on the loose in Idaho and they’re eating everything
Honolulu, Hawaii Housing Prices Crater 8% YOY As Crashing China Economy Slams Pacific States
https://www.zillow.com/honolulu-hi-96813/home-values/
*Select price from dropdown menu on first chart
Massive Miami Worldcenter
Who lives in all of those condos? How can anyone live in that congested mess?? Owners from over 50 countries? What do they do just flit to the Miami box in the sky every once in while?
**shakes my head**