The Housing Bubble Blog

An update on Canada and Australia: CBC News. "If real estate is a lottery draw, Toronto-area homeowner Marni Blouin won the jackpot. Blouin and her husband purchased their modest detached home in Scarborough, Ont., 12 years ago for $238,000. In early April, they listed it for sale at $629,000,...

A report from the Colorado Real Estate Journal. "There will be stunning views from Shea Properties’ 28-story apartment building in the middle of downtown Denver, but the most interesting view may be from the street. Passers-by of the high-end apartments on Curtis Street will look up to see people...

A report from the Star Tribune in Minnesota. "Mike Petefish already has the planter hooked up to his tractor in his farm yard, staged next to field cultivators and semis that can haul massive fertilizer tanks and large bins with conveyor belts called seed tenders. Petefish, who farms 5,000 acres...

A report from CBC News in Canada. "Toronto's real estate market 'defies all odds,' but government officials should proceed cautiously when deciding how to cool it down, says a real estate agent. 'To be honest, I just hope they really think about it and go slow, with a very relaxed approach,' said...

A report from the Columbus Dispatch in Ohio. "Homebuyers aren’t the only ones combing central Ohio for real-estate deals. In the past three years, investment firms searching for bargains outside the nation’s largest cities have paid more than $1.2 billion for 145 central Ohio complexes containing...

A report from the Gulf News. "It used to be that every year at this resurrectionary season — the blossom out, the sunshine warmer, the grass greener — a thought would rise from the tomb where it had lain buried since the previous autumn: should we live elsewhere? Perhaps all that reading Country...

It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "Last week, Lynn Courtney’s struggle to find a new place to call home finally came to an end when she bought a 1,300-square-foot home near Arlington High School. But she only got to call it hers after agreeing to pay $141,000 — $11,000 more than the...

A report from the Atlanta Journal Constitution in Georgia. "Let this rattle around in your mind for a second: some 'premium' two-bedroom apartments in one of metro Atlanta’s hottest new live-work-play-shop oases rent for more than $5,000 a month. In Alpharetta. Deep in the burbs of north Fulton....

A report from the Washington Post. "Cash-out refinancings, which were wildly popular during the housing boom years and which contributed to the severity of the crash, are on the rise again. National mortgage investor Freddie Mac reports that 45 percent of all home-loan refinancings in the final...

A report from the Business News Network in Canada. "More than half of the country believes home prices will never fall, according to a new poll from CIBC. Despite lofty valuations in the Toronto and Vancouver housing markets, 54 per cent of respondents to the CIBC poll say housing prices will rise...

A report from The Real Deal on Florida. "The Related Group has shut down its Auberge Residences & Spa Miami project and returned buyers’ deposits amid a sluggish condo market, sources told The Real Deal. Related launched the development in February 2016, just as sales were slowing in Miami’s...

A report from the Courier Mail in Australia. "The problems in Australia’s overheated housing market are only partly the well-documented stresses related to rising prices, affordability and soaring household debt. This is actually a product of the countervailing market, regulatory and political...

The first of two weekend topics on the realization of a housing bubble. Macleans, "In mid-March, Elijah Joseph attended the Toronto Real Estate Wealth Expo, a jungle of real estate gurus and their 15,000 disciples who paid up to $500 per ticket, only to be told to invest in what is actually one of...

It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "A Manhattan landlord was busted Thursday for lying on paperwork to score a multimillion-dollar loan for a rental property on the Lower East Side, authorities said. Dean Galasso submitted phony documents to Investors Bank to obtain a $5,025,000...

A report from Multi-Housing News. "More than 11,000 new apartment units are under construction in Northern New Jersey, including 4,800 in Hudson County municipalities Jersey City and Hoboken alone, Yardi Matrix data shows. But the biggest impediment to rent growth in the area is the abundant amount...

A report from Bloomberg on Turkey. "Turkey’s banks are issuing mortgages at a loss as the government prioritizes revival of the housing market to spur growth. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose opposition to high interest rates is well known, began calling on commercial banks in August last year...

A report from Curbed New York. "The first quarter market reports are in, affirming a report released last week that found the resale market is strong throughout the city. Jonathan Miller, who crunches the numbers for Douglas Elliman’s report, believes one big reason the resale activity increased...

A report from Reuters on Australia. "In their struggle to cool red-hot property prices in Australia's big cities, authorities are ratcheting up measures that could dent the whole market but avoiding more targeted steps that have had some success in New Zealand and China. Australian regulators first...

A report from the Daily Herald in Utah. "In Utah County, the housing market is not being able to keep up with demand, according to Wayne Parker, Provo’s chief administrative officer. 'There is a housing shortage along the entire Wasatch Front,' Parker said. 'A lot of investors are buying up homes...

A report from the Wall Street Journal. "Robin Manthie and her husband have been looking for their first home in Minneapolis since last May. They thought this spring would bring a flood of inventory, making their search easier. But by most measures it is getting tougher. Ms. Manthie, a 33-year-old...