“A buyer who agreed to pay $53.5 million for two penthouse condominiums in New York’s Plaza Hotel sued developer El-Ad Properties NY LLC for fraud, seeking a refund of his $10.7 million deposit and more than $20 million in damages.
The lawsuit, filed Sept. 5 in New York State Supreme Court, is one of the highest-profile examples of the mushrooming legal actions by condo buyers throughout the country because of the collapse of home values. Until recently, Manhattan’s luxury-condo market was relatively unscathed by the crisis, but it is beginning to show signs of stress.” (more…)
Florida is one of the hardest hit states when it comes a gargantuan amount of stalled and undersold condominiums, leading to the state’s huge real estate bubble burst. Now condominium buyers that may have entered at the peak are trying to get out from under these sinking condo complexes, but with little success. (more…)
Not only are homeowners in Western states dealing with the rising possibility or even fight against wildfires, they are also fighting insurance companies and their ever-increasing requirements for fire insurance. “The situation is reminiscent of recent trends on the East and Golf coasts, where millions of homeowners lost coverage because of insurers’ worries about rising property losses from hurricanes. Unlike in the East, however, few Western homeowners have been forced into their states’ high-risk pools, officials say. Instead, many homeowners living in hazardous areas face fewer choices in residential coverage and are being told to fire-safe their homes.” (more…)
Not a surprise, the developers of a 1,230 unit apartment building in Manhattan’s Harlem district may default on the $225 million mortgage it holds. If it does it will mark “one of the housing bust’s largest collapses of a New York City residential development.” (more…)
Cities in Ohio leads the pack: Youngstown, Canton, Dayton, and Cleveland suffering the most from the real estate crisis. (more…)
Foreclosures and short sales have been one of the leading reasons behind falling home prices, which have been an increasing worry over the past couple years. “Banks price homes to sell,” said Patrick Newport, real estate economic with Global Insight, a forecasting firm. “When demand for home drops, ordinary sellers will take their homes off the market, let them sit or reduce their prices in small increments. But banks will slash prices to where the homes will sell quickly.” This combined with suffering economic conditions results in a lack of homebuyers with people either not “wealthy” enough to buy a home or too scared altogether. (more…)
We’ve seen it everywhere else: the consequences of a real estate market crisis. But Manhattan seemed to be the one place that was in its own little world. Not anymore. Sales records show that the sale of new and existing properties in New York is beginning to fall and the real estate market in the Big Apple is beginning to soften.
Despite falling sales numbers, it appears that the median price range for highly-sought after units in the city are still on the rise. High-end apartments and condos, new and existing, are still rising in comparison to the sales prices of last year. (more…)
“U.S. home prices tumbled in April at the fastest rate since a widely followed index was begun in 2000 with all 20 metropolitan areas surveyed posting annual declines for the first time. The Standard & Poor’s / Case-Shiller home price index of 20 cities fell by 15.3 percent in April versus a year ago, according to Tuesday’s report. Prices nationwide are at levels not seen since August 2004. The narrower 10-city index declined 16.3 percent in April, its biggest decline in its more than two-decade history.
Meanwhile, a report from the office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight said U.S. home prices fell 4.6 percent in April from the same month last year, when the index peaked. That marked the biggest decline ever in the agency’s monthly index which dates back to January 1991.” (more…)
Could this be the time to buy yourself some new real estate? With new home sales continuing to fall and new home prices decreasing in order to stimulate more activity, this may just be the right time to enter what seems to be a real estate depression.
Although prices have been falling, sales records have been plummeting, foreclosures have been rising, it appears that we’re not at the bottom just yet. Give it another year and then we might just start seeing a comeback with our economy.
(more…)
Finally some good news! And do we ever need it…
Provided by CNN
“Harvard report finds immigration, other demographic trends will fuel housing demand over the next decade” (more…)
