I’m Assuming It Was A Situation Where They Had To Sell, It Was Just Bad Timing

A report from Business Insider on Florida. “In Ocala, located an hour from the Gulf of Mexico coastline, real-estate agent Emily White worries about how the severity of this year’s storm will impact the snowbirds. ‘I’m praying the snowbirds come back this year. I need them to come back so I can get some of my listings sold, but we’ll see how it’s affected,’ White told Business Insider. ‘Will they come as hot and heavy as they did before these storms?’ Over a four-week period ending November 10, pending home sales dropped 15.2% in Ft. Lauderdale, 14% in Miami, 13.8% in West Palm Beach, 9.5% in Jacksonville, and 7.2% in Tampa. In Tampa, pending home sales actually fell as much as 32.2% during the month prior. “

The Bradenton Herald. “The Gulf of Mexico invaded thousands of homes on Florida’s west coast this year, and many will have to be gutted and rebuilt higher — some a full story off the ground. But it’s expensive and painful for the people who have to foot the bill, often without much financial help from the government. Experts say what happened in Fort Myers Beach is a warning for other governments just beginning the burdensome and lengthy rebuilding process. ‘As the floodplain manager for a community, part of your job is to protect the residents from themselves,’ said Del Schwalls, a Florida-based floodplain management consultant. ‘You have to fight the mindset of ‘it’ll never happen to me, it’ll never happen again. At some point in time, you’ve got to stop throwing good money after bad.'”

KLS-TV in Utah. “Homeowners in Bountiful are trying to figure out how to pay for a massive increase in their HOA fees. Residents at Orchard Corners Condominiums received a notice earlier this month from their homeowner association, informing them that their monthly fees could soon rise to more than $800, which is largely due to an increase in insurance costs. Douglas and Emily Horne were not happy to get that news. They bought their condo almost four years ago and like the community. They just don’t like the HOA fees. ‘Right now, it’s $385 a month,’ Emily Horne said. Utah law requires condo associations to maintain property insurance. ‘It’s a good thing to have. I want to have it,’ said Douglas Horne. ‘But $800 a month? That’s more than two-thirds (of) my mortgage payment.'”

“The Hornes worry about making ends meet right now – and what this means for the future. They have a two-bedroom condo but want to have more children. ‘It’s going to be really difficult for us to move when the listing’s going to say that we have an $800 HOA,’ Emily Horne said. ‘If that doubles, there’s no way we’re ever going to be able to ever move out of here.’ Her husband, Douglas Horne, echoed that. ‘I feel stuck,’ he said.”

The Washington Post. “It’s been more than three years since dozens of homeowners in Southeast D.C. were forced to evacuate new, crumbling condos they purchased with the help of a popular city government program, spurring D.C. to create a task force to help them. Yet 40 of the 46 homeowners are still without permanent housing as of this week, according to the D.C. Council, and several engineering reports have determined the property is unlivable. The sense of optimism for many of the homeowners that additional support would come was dashed Tuesday after the council passed an emergency bill to limit the city’s liability in the situation. And with their city rental assistance set to expire in January, some say they’ll have no choice but to return to the dilapidated River East at Grandview Condominiums on Talbert Street SE.”

“Terri Wright, a resident and employee in D.C.’s Office of the Attorney General, is among those worried she’ll have to go back to an unsafe unit. She can’t afford rent elsewhere, she said, and would rather risk living inside her condo than sleep in a car, even though the home’s windows don’t close all the way because of a sinking foundation. ‘They sent out information saying here’s this great program, we can help with housing, and we have funds to assist,’ Wright said. ‘I did everything I needed to do to become a homeowner. Yet here I am.’ ‘We’re facing homelessness in 30 days,’ said resident Koqwinda Chambers.”

From Realtor.com. “When a Colorado woman bought her dream home on a quiet, rural spot with a creek running through the backyard, she thought she hit the jackpot. Instead, she was soon dubbed the ‘Wicked Witch of the West’ by locals and had to fight the government for ownership. Taralyn Romero tells Realtor.com® she had her ‘American dream shattered and your rose-colored glasses punched off your face’ when local residents started crowding in her backyard to use the creek. Then, she was sued by Jefferson County commissioners for ownership of the land, claiming adverse possession, accretion, and public use via prescriptive easement.”

“In January 2021, Romero says she and her fiancé were ‘spit out into the housing crisis’ when their landlord decided to move into their rental. They decided to buy instead at a time when bidding wars were rampant. ‘It was chaos to even get in to see a house,’ she says. After a month searching for their forever home, they instantly fell in love with a five-bedroom home in Kittredge, CO, on less than an acre of land. Romero bid $840,000—$40,000 over the asking price—and later that night, the offer was accepted. Not long after Romero and her fiancé got the keys, they noticed a few people fishing in their backyard creek—which they initially considered no big deal. After all, their property wasn’t yet fenced, but they planned to put one up in the next few months. But before they could erect it, swarms of locals began to descend on the creek once school let out for summer. ‘I was like, ‘Why are 55 people bringing lawn chairs, coolers, snacks, and beach umbrellas into my backyard to hang out all day?’ Romero says.”

The Wall Street Journal. “Michael Barone, 80, is best known for the 40 years he spent as principal author of the Almanac of American Politics, which has been published every two years since 1972. Many immigrants, Mr. Barone suggests, saw their American Dream souring and voted accordingly. ‘Part of what we’re looking at is bad central city governance. This may also have had to do with the Covid restrictions that were in place, and the fact that most of these states—though notoriously not Florida—were really shut down by Covid ukases, as some critics might call them.’ In a nutshell, he says, ‘bad civic policies drove immigrants to Trump.'”

“Mr. Barone is particularly hard on California, which he describes as having ‘the most beautiful climate,’ ‘breathtaking scenery’ and ‘great cultural institutions’ and a terrible government. ‘How do you get people to leave paradise?’ he asks, then answers: crime, rampant vagrancy, the Covid nanny-state, bad public schools, high taxes and housing shortages caused by Nimbyism and environmentalist absolutism.”

The Globe and Mail in Canada. “993 Antler Dr., Unit 102, Penticton, B.C. Asking price: $699,000 (Sept. 14, 2024). Previous asking price: $1.025,000 (Sept. 7, 2022). Selling price: $679,000 (Oct. 21, 2024). Monthly maintenance fee: $346. Days on the market: 738. The listing price was adjusted and relisted with different realtors about a dozen times over a two-year period, says the buyers’ agent Richard Deacon. It was originally listed at a high price for more than a year. ‘The headline here is that the buyers pounced on an incredible opportunity,’ says Mr. Deacon. The sellers paid $899,990 plus GST for the new townhouse in May, 2022, then listed it a few months later for $1.025-million, he says. The unit needed some work despite being new, so it didn’t show well, which also hindered the sale, says Mr. Deacon. There were no competing offers, says the agent.”

“The sellers lost about 30 per cent of the home’s original value, says Mr. Deacon. ‘I’m assuming it was a situation where they had to sell. It was just bad timing.'”

The Associated Press. “Icelanders voted to elect a new parliament Saturday after disagreements over immigration, energy policy and the economy forced Prime Minister Bjarni Benediktsson to pull the plug on his coalition government and call an early election. ‘My expectation is like, something new (is) going to happen, hopefully,’ said Hörður Guðjónsson, voting in the capital, Reykjavik. ‘We always have had these old parties taking care of things. I hope we see the light now to come in with a younger people, new ideas.’ Iceland is also struggling to accommodate a rising number of asylum-seekers, creating tensions within the small, traditionally homogenous country. The number of immigrants seeking protection in Iceland jumped to more than 4,000 in each of the past three years, compared with a previous average of less than 1,000. Young people are struggling to get a foot on the housing ladder at a time when short-term vacation rentals have reduced the housing stock available for locals, Eva H. Önnudóttir, a professor of political science at the University of Iceland said. ‘The housing issue is becoming a big issue in Iceland,’ she said.”

Landlord Today. “A insurer claims that 70,000 additional homes are used as holiday homes in England and Wales, with seven particular areas seeing one in 10 properties now used as holiday lets. Schofields claims that around one in every 100 Londoners (1.1%) say they use a second address as a holiday home. Cornwall has the highest number of holiday homes (6,080), while South Hams (Devon) and Gwynedd (North Wales) have the most holiday homes in comparison to normal households in their areas. Using government data, the insurer says recent government clampdowns, including giving councils powers to raise local tax significantly, means many second homeowners are choosing to sell their holiday homes.”

“A spokesperson for the company, Phil Schofield, says: ‘The tax changes are already impacting the holiday property market, many towns and villages are slowly becoming ‘ghost towns’ as owners sell their holiday lets. The holiday letting industry should be supported to help ensure that tourist areas remain vibrant and thriving year-round. However, the recent tax changes, increased costs and a downturn in bookings have led to an oversupply of second homes being put up for sale in some areas.'”

The New Statesman. “Russia runs on oil. With most of its gas exports to Europe stopped by pipeline closures and sanctions, it has become an economy dependent on a single commodity, and while oil prices are high, money flows into the Russian current account. What scares the Russian central bank is the risk of a global financial slowdown that reduces consumer demand around the world, and therefore the price of the oil that is intrinsic to manufacturing and trade. That is exactly the world Trump is promising: a world of de-globalisation and trade barriers.”

“Russia has also been artificially inflating its housing market by subsidising mortgages, creating a dangerous housing bubble. Property prices in Russian cities have more than doubled since the Ukraine war began, but when this subsidy was withdrawn for most homebuyers in July, demand halved, leaving an unstable bubble that says Adnan Vatansever, reader in Russian Political Economy at King’s College London’s Russia Institute, ‘could lead, at some point, to a financial crash in Russia, if that bubble bursts.'”