BackwardsEngineer
curmudgeon
pretty good vid explaining market dynamics...
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VD,Ignore the idiotic sales pitch. But Nationwide UK housing was down more than 5%.
It's time to buy property in the UK, but there's a catch
With prices falling by more than 5% in the year to September, this could be the moment to invest in real estate.www.euronews.com
Blackstone REIT limits investor redemptions again in March
Blackstone Inc said on Monday it had again blocked withdrawals from its $70 billion real estate income trust in March as the private equity firm faced a flurry of redemption requests.www.reuters.com
Isn't Blackstone heavily invested in commercial real estate??? Shit meet fan......
Blackstone has limited investor redemption requests from its $68 billion real estate trust for high-net wealth investors for the eleventh consecutive month while the Federal Reserve pushes interest rates to two-decade highs, which has only sparked turmoil in regional banks earlier this year and an ongoing commercial real estate crisis.
According to a letter obtained by Bloomberg, Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust (BREIT) recorded investor outflows for September at $2.1 billion, or 28% less than what was requested to withdraw in August. The good news is that withdrawal requests are the lowest since October 2022.
However, BREIT only returned $625 million, or about 34% of what was requested - as the massive real estate trust continues to gate redemptions to prevent outflows. Last month was the 11th straight month of restrictions for BREIT.
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Leaked Lennar conference call saying that they've noted the big turn in the market and can't sell homes.
Real estate agents want 6% total to facilitate the transfer of what is the most significant thing most people own. Most of the agents out there barely have any experience and bring almost no value to the transaction.Hey VD,
Lennar shot themselves in the foot during the housing spike, only giving buying agents 1%. Agents in droves agreed to never deal with them again, myself included. Arrogant, demanding and totally non customer friendly... so in a word, no tears shed over their collective demise.
Wife and I have sold two homes; both without an agent.Real estate agents want 6% total to facilitate the transfer of what is the most significant thing most people own. Most of the agents out there barely have any experience and bring almost no value to the transaction.
Hopefully in a few years AI will take over the walking thru of the transaction process for the majority of transactions. I would say purchasing a new home is an area where an agent is least needed.
Parasites might need to find a new host....RIP
That is actually a pretty accurate summation.Real estate agents want 6% total to facilitate the transfer of what is the most significant thing most people own. Most of the agents out there barely have any experience and bring almost no value to the transaction.
Hopefully in a few years AI will take over the walking thru of the transaction process for the majority of transactions. I would say purchasing a new home is an area where an agent is least needed.
Parasites might need to find a new host....RIP
BJ,Real estate agents want 6% total to facilitate the transfer of what is the most significant thing most people own. Most of the agents out there barely have any experience and bring almost no value to the transaction.
Hopefully in a few years AI will take over the walking thru of the transaction process for the majority of transactions. I would say purchasing a new home is an area where an agent is least needed.
Parasites might need to find a new host....RIP
I agree, the decline is definitely coming. Once some new valuations hit the market people are going to wake up to the fact that lower prices are here. At 1st there will be reluctance but eventually people will realize it's time to get whatever they can.28 year low Mortgage applications. The real price decline has likely started. All those hold-outs saying but. but. but are gonna finally see what we've been saying will happen.
The appraisal, hired inspectors, and title attorney prevent all of your mentioned doom. You just proved my point. The agent has nothing to do with it. Other than possibly receiving kickbacks for referrals to those services thus increasing the price to their mark.BJ,
You really don't get it....
Yes, there are a whole bunch of agents that bring no value to the transaction, this period will weed through those pretty quickly. Making this no different than a hundred other professions, from welders to teachers to lawyers to doctors to railroad workers to farmers raising beef to car salesman to independent investors to restaurant servers to cab drivers up to and including politicians... our world is full of under performers pretending to all that and a bag of chips...
So yes, the entirety of the real estate/ homebuilding/ surveying/ home repair/ appraisal/ home inspection/ home lending industries are about to see enormous change. Frankly its long overdue...
But don't for a minute believe the average person can really excel in self representation, you give people way too much credit, especially on the buyer side where bidding the right price on a correctly structured contract is the only way to get the good properties. So the self represented either pay too much, buy the dogs of the market or win a good one by chance... 2 to 3% is a bargain to avoid issues like mold, concealed defect, title issues or frankly deals to good to be true.
All I can tell you is that real money people, those flying significantly above the collective pmbugs pay grade all use really, really good agents... remember you don't have error & omission insurance, you sell something and don't disclose you can spend 30 to 50k in legal fees just getting started. An agent I know had a seller not properly disclose a known issue, cost the seller 32k out of pocket on an under 300k deal (10+%), beyond what seller / buyer agents E&O carriers dished out!
All the above assumes that your measuring tool, the dollar, is still going to continue its existence.It's probably already been said here but real estate isn't going to move for now. Forced sales like divorce or job relocations will happen but that's about it. No one is going to trade that 3-4% mortgage for a 7-8% mortgage willingly.
I also find it interesting that people are complaining about a 7.5% mortgage rate when I actually have never known any less less than that in the 90's and mid 2000's. Just seemed normal to me. Last mortgage payment was 2005. Rents on average around the Col OH area are 2k a month plus so not sure why someone couldn't come up with a little more to buy a home. Obviously in demand areas like DC are pushing north of 4k a month for rents now.
I do agree that something needs to be done though. The bankers are thieves. They showed their true colors when they got a taxpayer bailout for 700 billion, breathed a sigh of relief and then wrote themselves bonus checks for a job well done.
So what's all this real estate really worth? My guess is about 10 cents on the dollar. Take away the 30 year mortgage and make people pay cash and that's about what it would work out too. maybe less even. 10 years ago a mortgage was 5 years. Now the front loaded interest heavy mortgages we have today have the 1st 5 years almost all interest. This way when you get up and move or get divorced and go to buy another home you get to do that all over again. It's such a rigged system in favor of the bankers that it is unimaginable how they could ever lose money.
I would propose that every mortgage have a clause in it explaining that the US debt load is barely sustainable and in the event of a debt collapse that the homes value could drop by as much as 90% from what people paid for them.
This debt based system is quickly running out of steam. That 2% annual mandate that congress has on the federal reserve was fine when the average pay was 4k annually or less in many cases. But nowadays a worker making 100 k annually who gets a 2% raise is getting another 2k a year. If it keeps pace with inflation that's fine but what happens when it doesn't or at certain times in ones career that 2% annual pay increase pushes someone into a higher tax bracket. That higher tax bracket negates the pay increases. IMO we have reached the maximum capacity for the balloon to be inflated and from here on out the air needs to be let out. I suspect that for many of us, this is it. We will never see prices as high as they are right now, ever again. The air in this bubble could take a decade or more to be let out.
BF,The appraisal, hired inspectors, and title attorney prevent all of your mentioned doom. You just proved my point. The agent has nothing to do with it. Other than possibly receiving kickbacks for referrals to those services thus increasing the price to their mark.
All the above don't even add up to near the cost of the scamming schlep carting around the poor suckers in their car that want 6% for basically nothing.
I know where I fit in with the "real money people" and I can assure you that most have a total disdain for agents, in common transactions, and only use specialty agents for unique deals. A new home builder certainly doesn't need to pay 3% for some ripoff artist to cart a buyer over to look at a market competitive deal. The buyers will find that builder all on their own.
I guess we just have to agree to disagree on this.
Sales of previously owned homes dropped 2% in September from August to a seasonally adjusted, annualized rate of 3.96 million units, according to the National Association of Realtors. Sales were 15.4% compared with September 2022.
This is the slowest sales pace since October 2010, during the Great Recession, when the market was in the midst of a foreclosure crisis. As a comparison, just two years ago, when mortgage rates hovered around 3%, home sales were running at a 6.6 million pace. The average rate on the 30-year fixed today is right around 8%, according to Mortgage News Daily.
"As has been the case throughout this year, limited inventory and low housing affordability continue to hamper home sales," said Lawrence Yun, NAR's chief economist. ...
I have 3 oceanfront condos for sale now. Just got a recent double of insurance, but taxes can only go up 10% annually. I am accepting any reasonable offer and will try to ride it out.
To sell new houses in this 8%-mortgage environment, homebuilders – whose stocks have gotten battered since August – have resorted to mortgage-rate buydowns through their own mortgage companies. Earnings calls are now all about those buydowns and their costs, including PulteGroup’s earnings call yesterday which is currently buying down 30-year 8% fixed-rate mortgages permanently to 5.75%.
That incentive works in selling houses; but costs are steep. We’ll get to the earnings call in a moment, but keep that in mind as we walk through the figures on new house sales, prices, and inventories.
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The GAO recommends that agencies reassess their respective needs, using "benchmarks…that account for greater levels of telework." It also notes that there is a "unique opportunity to reconsider the federal government's real property portfolio."
Getting rid of unused real estate could also have positive effects outside of federal balance sheets. "In the local economy, unneeded properties and land could be put to productive use," the report notes. "Selling a federal building to the private sector also can increase the local tax base, as federal buildings are generally exempt from local taxes."
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