It's existing homeowners with unrealistic price expectations.
Another article showing concern in the housing market- yet the author may have lacked critical thinking
- Thread starter GON
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Builders can currently build new homes way, way under sale price. For a long time they threw in a ton of upgrades for free, and would buy down the mortgage. The latter is supposed to show up in MLS since its affectively a reduction of the purchase price, but Fannie did a study a while back and found most were not.
So it would make sense that if those tactics are no longer working they just start lowering the sales price per square, in combination of sellers think there houses are still worth a premium.
Here are current rates north of the border. The terms are for the years before the mortagage is renegotiated. Amortizations typically start at 25 or 30 years. Enjoy.
So your taking out a loan with a fixed term - say 30 years - but the rate may or may not be fixed for 5 years.
If you fix your rate for 5 years, can you refinance again if the rate goes down? Maybe not worth it given the refi cast vs closing fees?
In Canada, there are no fixed term mortgages for 30 years.I believe the max is 10 years, and most common is five years. At the end of 5 years you renew at the new prevailing rates. You can also go variable and float with whatever the market rates are, potentially changing up or down each month. That actually worked out pretty good the last 20 years with some interest rates of less than 2 % .
Typically you are stuck with a certain rate for 5 years if you took the 5 year term, but you’ll get out of the rate at the end of the 5 years. Same with the last several years, those with a 5 year 2.6 % rate will enjoy that until the end of their 5 year term at which they will probably renew at 5%. It works both ways.
In Australia, that is
New home construction building, plumbing, electrical codes are far more stringent than they ever were. This goes for energy efficiency, air infiltration, and depending where you are wind resistance, such as hurricane also elevation above either seawater or freshwater.
Lot size is strictly a personal choice
Is it? 2 acre min is the norm around here, depending on the town. But in the 'burbs I'm sure those towns have different rules as they have various divisions with all the cookie cutter houses.
[Yes I agree that the codes are more stringent--my question is about lot size and features included. Granite countertops versus Formica.]
Yeah, it’s a big country and not all areas will be the same. Along the coastal Carolinas, I have to be honest I haven’t seen a new home offered for sale that had formica countertops.
Everything that we’ve seen has been granite or quartz from the production builders
We were among the first group of buyers inside of a new phase inside of a ginormous gated community. It is interesting. Our house came loaded with everything meaning there is nothing that we could’ve possibly added to the house, gourmet kitchen hardwood, upgraded cabinets, no carpeting whatsoever in the house, lighting package, electronics package for every conceivable item, fireplace everything.
I have noticed the new homes, come with nothing, I mean ZERO upgrades (even with the cheaper kitchens and appliances they still have nice granite in the next phase and the price of the houses are the same as what we paid last year. I guess the reason is they are selling as fast as they can build them so I guess there’s no incentive anymore and the price hasn’t gone down either.
It is disappointing to see
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1/4 acre lot is common here on new construction. If your mowing your side at the same time as your neighbors you need a flag man to direct traffic so you don't collide.
Upgrades cost builders nothing. In the old days it was pure margin for the builder. For example the difference between granite vs an engineered stone is few dollars a square. Appliances, etc the same. Most of the cost is labor anyway.
Biggest issue for builders is getting the workers to show up. If your building 20 houses on a street easier to get them to show up to the same place every day - scroll and replicate.
I will say however there are two giant mixed use developments that got approved in our county after many years deliberation. They started site prep around Christmas or before going like gangbusters, then both sort of stopped. Whenever I drive by I see a few trucks and workers doing something, but there obviously dragging there feet at this point. Maybe they hit the top for this area so are waiting a bit?
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It’s worse
It’s been speculated that the Zillow era housing market was operating as a monopoly for a while, this also expands into rentals
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/08/ai-price-algorithms-realpage/679405/
Basically everyone is quite nearly “forced” to auto price to any other properties that have raised prices in an effort to get blood from a turnip. I’ve already heard several people told to raise prices on a home that isn’t selling and to allow auto pricing to follow the market.
It appears the housing market rather sell fewer to keep prices high and if you’ve noticed properties that seem to bounce around on price often you can thank AI as it’s usually not a person doing the pricing bobbing up and down but more up.
One would think enough massive losses would start to make these schemes fail.
Ah well, my landlord raised my rent again despite rent falling in my area almost 15% due to several primary employers laying off.
I usually move every few years, not really looking forward to the gauntlet of 100% corporate landlords to choose from and 5 year waits for the couple of independents left.
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I know of not one single company that is using this type of AI driven CMA. Its almost impossible to rely on this type of thing, pasrt of what you pay an agent for is because they know the market and price accordingly. It has been proven over and over that Zillow's price Zestimates are usually way off and in certain areas in can be as much as 7 to 10%. Now these AI programs might be getting better but any good agent will make the adjustements as needed and not use this garbage. Real estate is also a people business, I do not ever see the agents going away to be replaced by programs but what do I know.
Also note that Zillow is considered to be a real estate brokerage, they are not just a marketing platform like they started out to be. They get paid to funnel leads to agents and agents pay to get their listings pushed to the top of the search engines. If you want something unbiased, look towards Realtor.com or Homes.com.
Also note that Zillow is considered to be a real estate brokerage, they are not just a marketing platform like they started out to be. They get paid to funnel leads to agents and agents pay to get their listings pushed to the top of the search engines. If you want something unbiased, look towards Realtor.com or Homes.com.
Unfortunately not. They're all owned by huge companies that would rather go bankrupt and saved by another gov bailout than lower their prices.
So were replacing the NAR with Zillow? Might be OK - at least everyone can get access to Zillow. If your only in the real estate market once a decade you end up with the newest or worst realtor by definition.
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NO that is not it. Zillow is no different thanb say a ReMax in the eyes of DOJ and NAR. Realtor.com is always going to have a direct feed from all MLS data bases andit will be the most current. Realtor.com is no longer owned by NAR, it has been owned by Move since 2014 but their feeds are unfiltered and not listed according to who pays them the most.
NAR will eventually kill themselves off. There will be major brokerages and companies pulling away from NAR and creating their own organazations due the the mis-management of NAR and our dues. Look for major changes begining the 15th, that is when compensation will no longer be a gauranteed fee in MLS and sellers will no longer have to pay the cobroker fee's. All it is really going to do is shift the burden onto the buyers side and while total compensation might look to be reduced (because it is currently a sellers matric number), in may cases listing brokers will charge more because they will be the ones eventually working with the buyer as well.
Thats likely the very short term solution
MLS will ultimately be deemed a monopoly and will be tossed out. The data of listings and sales will be organized by data aggregator's and offered up for sale to anyone that wants the stream, which will be bought by traditional brokerages and AI driven models and likely some hybrids that do some variant in between.
I realize renting an apartment is wildly different than buying a home, however I hadn't rented an apartment in 20+ years but needed to do so for my daughter who is going to grad school. In the old days you brought all your info and sat while either the apartment agent or realtor sometimes if you were renting a house who filled out all your paperwork and ran various checks. So wife and I did a tour with a young girl, she showed us a model apartment and the amenities. We then viewed their website which did virtual tours of upcoming units with all the layouts and dimensions and showed exactly where they were located. We filled everything out online, uploaded our documents - it ran all the checks and we were sent a lease to execute - all online. We move the daughter in shortly.
Its coming to home sales faster than you think - simply because all the records are already digital - easy to implement. Realtors will still exist but will probably differ a lot between someone that is actually acting as a fiduciary consultant to their customer, to some that will be really not much more than tour guides, and the rates for each will vary dependent on services rendered.
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I don't think we will ever get rid of an MLS but think we will move towards a national listing system instead of the local boards. Most if not all of these data mining companies get their info from a MLS, yes they can strip the tax data but that is slow and not a uniform reporting method. Commercial has been this way forever, we do not and have never garuanteed buyers agents any compensation, sometimes we will offer it but its not an automatic. We also do not have a traditional MLS system because we tend to look at larger, regional, state and national properties and the currrent MLS moind think is still local. The MLS is soley designed as a method to aggregate the data so in its true form, it is the best thing out there. There culprits behind price fixing are the corporations and as much as they like to state that they do not charge X%, they do and their jr agents can only go so low without permission. Being in RE is not cheap so the discount brokers never really hang around very long and or do not offer a complete marketing program. The days of putting a sign up in the front yard and getting 10 buyers is for most of the country, over with. It will be interesting to see how the industry sorts itself out. I for one think there are too many residential agents, they are generally useless and have no skills. I can not tell you how many I have witnessed come and go in my 37 yrs.
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Condo's are a mess in FL now after the building in Miami collapsed due to structure failure. They now must have structural inspections as well as an audit of their reserves for future repairs. So, if its deemed that the building will require $1M in repairs in the next 10yrs, they have to increase HOA fees to pay for that, so and extra $100K per year worth of fee's.
GON
$150 Site Donor 2025
50 year old condo hi rise asking price of $368 per square feet. Might be reasonable to assume the building should be gutted to the concrete and rebuilt if owners expect to compete with new/newer condos in the area.
The posted price changes have less to do with changing home markets, but that this unit may not be so desirable.
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