The Housing Bubble Blog

A report from Bisnow. "Acquisition opportunities for multifamily investors in 2017 have been slim as a record amount of capital flowed into the debt and equity space. While our investors have their eye on value-add, Class-A multifamily may be in a bubble. 'There's just too much supply,' AMLI...

A report from the Huffington Post. "Foreclosure starts have begun to edge up in some of the nation’s hottest housing markets. Nearly a quarter of the nation’s large metro areas saw upticks in foreclosure starts, the point when banks take the first step to foreclose on a delinquent home loan, in the...

A report from the Toronto Star in Canada. "During a preliminary budget presentation at Toronto City Hall on Thursday, city manager Peter Wallace tried again to warn us about the threat posed by betting everything on the health of the real estate market. If anything, the costs for the city could go...

A report from Multi-Housing News on Washington. "Alex Henderson, who leads Grosvenor’s Puget Sound Co-Investment team, foresees renewed interest in development, given the potential oversupply of rental product and undersupply of for-sale product in the area. Henderson: 'To my knowledge, there are...

A weekend topic on central planning and the housing bubble, starting with Bloomberg. "Central bankers are starting to see promising results from one of the recent additions to their monetary policy toolbox. Lending curbs to stem financial risk — so-called macroprudential limits — have helped slow...

It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "Realtors are expecting overall home sales in Idaho to expand by 3 to 5 percent in 2018. The housing market is growing, and Ross Farr, a mortgage lender at Zions Bank, says the shortage of houses compared to the demand for them is expected to...

A report from the Orlando Sentinel in Florida. "Jonathan Barr thought living at the Paramount on Lake Eola would be a dream come true. He estimates spending about $200,000 in custom cabinets, lighting, flooring and other treatments for the downtown Orlando home he bought in 2006. But this past...

A report from Wharton. "St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank president James Bullard joined Wharton finance professor Jeremy Siegel recently, along with Jeremy Schwartz, research director at WisdomTree, for a wide-ranging conversation about the future of interest rates, inflation, the state of the...

A report from Inman News. "When sellers get multiple offers on their home, my practice is to email every offer to the seller as it comes in, and then I prepare a multiple offer spreadsheet so that they can compare offers side-by-side. I recently met with sellers to go over multiple offers and came...

A report from the Daily Journal in California. "Cold weather brings a cooling effect to a local rental market which real estate experts believe will remain considerably less expensive than the astronomical rates reached in recent years. Rent for a one-bedroom unit in San Mateo last month floated...

A weekend topic starting with the Richmond Times Dispatch. "Hot, Hot, Hot, accurately describes the current state of the commercial real estate market. The ongoing strength in the sector can be attributed to cheap and available capital. The conduit market, which was written off for dead two years...

A weekend topic starting with this piece by Ben Phillips, a Principal Research Fellow at the Centre for Social Research and Methods at ANU. "One of the great mysteries in Australia is how and why did Sydney house prices get so high? A common explanation is that Sydney housing supply is just not...

It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "For close to a year, investors have been locked in an epic fight to hold onto their units in a 1990s Miami Beach condo-hotel, amid claims they owe $9.4 million in unpaid assessments. Between December 13, 2016 and October 9, Port Orange,...

A report from the Malay Mail Online in Malaysia. "Haphazard construction of new property without regard for market forces was the reason for the existing oversupply of real estate, said an industry group. The Association of Valuers, Property Managers, Estate Agents and Property Consultants in the...

A report from the D Magazine in Texas. "If you’re a Realtor, your expanding waistline has already told you there’s something going on in the apartment world. Almost any day of the week, some apartment complex is hosting lunch for Realtors and apartment referral agents. The goal isn’t Christmas...

A report from the Press Democrat in California. "The rebuilding of fire-damaged structures in the North Coast would take over 6,000 construction workers three years to accomplish, an economist told business leaders in Santa Rosa. Attracting and housing so many workers will be hard, but the county’s...

A report from Mortgage News Daily. "Housing activity in the third quarter of 2017 is described as 'continuing its rough patch' in Fannie Mae's latest edition of Economic Developments. The company's economists say that activity pulled back across the board during the quarter. Leading indicators...

A weekend topic starting with a piece by Matt Barrie with Craig Tindale. "I recently watched the federal Treasurer Scott Morrison proudly proclaim that Australia was in 'surprisingly good shape.' Indeed, Australia has just snatched the world record from the Netherlands, achieving its 104th quarter...

It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "A full-floor, 6,240-square-foot penthouse at Midtown billionaires’ bunker One57 recently sold at a foreclosure auction for $36 million. That number is 29 percent lower than the original $50.9 million price shelled out by Nigerian businessman...

A report from Kamloops This Week in Canada. "Federal authorities have loosened incoming rules for new homebuyers who sign deals this year, allowing them to qualify under current mortgage rules. The issue was highlighted by the Canadian Home Builders Association, which said as many as 20,000...