patrick.net

It had to happen. Prices can’t go upward sharply forever even in a strong economy, and ESPECIALLY not when interest rates are rising! Eventually, the market reaches a limit to what people can afford to pay.
I believe that’s what we are seeing here. There’s no less demand, just less ability out there to buy.

Instead of Jacuzzis and pools, yam gardens and face rotisseries are features!

Time to explore for more zoning options to control new building to "protect environment". This should protect all RE investments, including home.

Well, once you flipped all available RE up to the highest bidders, drove the price through the roof, you got to many bagholders who can't keep trading up anymore. It all their own undoing, it's just to underhanded and greedy like. It's not about getting people into affordable housing, which is what we need.

The rest finally realized they couldn't afford the monstrosity and traded down into something affordable.

The lion share, just rent.

Does this mean female real estate agents don't just give blow jobs at closing, but include full fledged orgies with clowns and midgets?

They'll find a way to make it all sound good and spur sales.

BUYERS MARKET

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/02/home-sellers-lower-prices-further-signaling-buyers-market.html

03-05-2019 Sharply Lower Prices Help Sell New Houses, But it’s Not Enough

Inventory continues to surge. Potential buyers move on.

Here is the good news: Lower prices stir sales. Clearly, homebuilders are motivated to move their inventory, and they’re making deals at lower prices. The median price of new single-family houses whose sales closed in December fell 7.2% from a year earlier, to $318,000, according to the Commerce Department this morning.

December’s 7.2% drop and November’s blistering 11.6% drop were the sharpest year-over-year declines since Housing Bust 1:



The new-house sales data, produced jointly by the Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, is very volatile. It is revised in the following months, often quite drastically. But despite the ups-and-downs in the monthly data, trends emerge.

The steep year-over-year price increases in prior years formed a multi-year boom in prices that has now outrun what the market can bear. The median price of new houses ballooned by about 55% from the range in 2011 and 2012 to the peak in November and December 2017 ($343,300), which exceeded by 31% the crazy bubble peak in March 2007, before it all came apart:



Sales of new houses, in terms of the seasonally adjusted annual rate, had plunged late last year. The year-over-year decline exceeded 15% in November. So in December, this seasonally adjusted annual rate of sales finally responded to lower prices and declined a little, instead of plunging. The year-over-year drop of 2.4%, to an annual rate of sales of 621,000, was the fourth month in a row of year-over-year declines – but a heck of a lot less bad than the double-digit plunges in the prior two months:



In terms of actual sales – not the seasonally adjusted annual rate of sales – homebuilders sold 44,000 houses in December, down 2.2% from December a year earlier. This was in the same range as October (43,000) and November (43,000).

In terms of the seasonally adjusted annual rate of sales — 621,000 in December — the chart below shows the dynamics over the past six years. Lower prices recently have started moving the needle, but not enough:



That the price declines have not moved the needle enough also shows up in the inventory of new houses for sale that just keeps on rising. In December, the supply surged 17% year-over-year to 344,000 houses, for a supply of 6.6 months at December’s rate of sales (up from 5.5 months a year earlier):



So it looks like homebuilders will have to sharpen their collective pencil in order to bring prices down to where the buyers are, and where that inventory for sale starts shrinking.

Homebuilders build and sell houses – that’s their business model. They cannot just not build and not sell houses. So they add inducements, such as free upgrades to the kitchen, and when that’s not enough they have to try to hit the price points where potential buyers turn into actual buyers. And they’re trying. But the market is fluid, and buyers move lower. And so there remains a lot of work to be done on the price front.

The San Francisco Bay Area and the Seattle metro lead with the biggest multi-month home-price drops since 2012; San Diego, Denver, Portland, Los Angeles all book declines. Prices in other metros have stalled. And a few eke out records.

https://wolfstreet.com/2019/03/05/sharply-lower-prices-help-sell-new-houses-but-its-not-enough/

Also Read: The Most Splendid Housing Bubbles in America Get Pricked. https://wolfstreet.com/2019/02/26/the-most-splendid-housing-bubble-in-america-deflate-february-2018/

Class-action lawsuit takes aim at buyer broker compensation rules - Home seller claims NAR, MLS providers have conspired in violation of anti-trust laws

A class-action lawsuit filed last week by a Minnesota home seller is taking aim at the big four multiple listing services that have transformed the real estate business.

The suit alleges that the National Association of Realtors has driven up costs to sellers and has stifled competition by requiring brokers to offer buyer broker compensation when listing a property on an MLS site.

Filed against the NAR, Realogy, HomeServices of America, RE/MAX and Keller Williams, the suit alleges that the MLS providers conspired with NAR to require sellers to pay buyer’s broker’s fees at inflated rates in violation of anti-trust laws.

“The conspiracy has saddled home sellers with a cost that would be borne by the buyer in a competitive market,” the complaint states. “Moreover, because most buyer brokers will not show homes to their clients where the seller is offering a lower buyer broker commission, or will show homes with higher commission offers first, sellers are incentivized when making the required blanket, non-negotiable offer to procure the buyer brokers’ cooperation by offering a high commission.”

The suit goes on to allege that the conspiracy has kept buyer brokers’ commissions in the 2.5-3% range despite their diminishing role in the transaction, as “a majority of homebuyers no longer locate prospective homes with the assistance of a broker, but rather independently through online services.”

The suit states that it will represent any sellers who paid a broker commission during the sale of their property in the last four years in areas covered by regional MLS sites, which includes sellers in Texas, Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio, Colorado, Michigan, Florida, Nevada, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Virginia, Utah and Washington, D.C.

https://www.housingwire.com/articles/48415-class-action-lawsuit-takes-aim-at-buyer-broker-compensation-rules