real estate Archives - The Connecticut Star

China’s Real Estate Collapse Infecting Troubled American Sectors

February 10, 2024 Connecticut Star Staff

The crumbling Chinese real estate sector is starting to put properties around the world on the market at deep discounts, threatening debt-laden American commercial developers and the U.S. banks holding the loans, according to Bloomberg.

In a bid to pay off massive debts, Chinese real estate developers are having to offload a huge number of properties onto the global market, depressing prices even further for a sector that already has had borrowing cost hikes, causing a loss of $1 trillion in office property values, according to Bloomberg. The drop in property values hits American commercial real estate particularly hard due to the huge amount of debt the sector holds and the dwindling U.S. demand, with banks that hold the debt also fearing they may lose out on their investment.

Wall Street Investors Are Snatching Up Single-Family Homes and Taking Over the Rental Market

February 28, 2023 Admin

An ongoing shortage of housing will make it easier for banks and other Wall Street investors to take control of the market for single-family rental homes, National Association of Realtors Chief Economist Lawrence Yun told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Institutional investors, such as banks and other large investors, are on track to own 40 percent of single-family rentals in the U.S. by 2030, MetLife Investment Management predicted, according to CNBC. An ongoing shortage of single-family homes in the U.S. would normally limit growth potential for Wall Street firms looking to buy single-family rentals, but it is also making it easier for them to tighten their grip on the market, Yun told the DCNF.

Report: Hunter Biden Reached $40 Million Real Estate Deal with Russian Billionaire While Joe Biden Was Vice President

October 19, 2022October 18, 2022 Admin

In yet another revelation regarding the Biden family’s influence-peddling during Joe Biden’s vice presidential tenure, it has been reported that his son Hunter attained a Russian real estate deal worth $40 million back in 2012, while his father was still Vice President.

Breitbart reports that the deal was made between Hunter and Yelena Baturina, a Russian billionaire and the wife of the late former Mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov. The deal was made some time after Baturina had already paid a $3.5 million fee to Hunter’s real estate entity in exchange for access to the American business market. These details come from documents obtained by the Kazakhstani Initiative on Asset Recovery, an anti-corruption group, and were first reported by the Daily Mail on Monday.

Mortgage Rates Surpass Seven Percent for First Time in 20 Years

October 1, 2022September 30, 2022 Admin

Mortgages have hit their highest rates in decades, with the 30-year fixed interest mortgage rate surpassing 7% for the first time since 2002, according to the Mortgage News Daily (MND) index.

At 7.08%, the current fixed rate is a far cry from September 2021 rates of 2.86%, and has increased by nearly 2% since the end of August 2022, according to MND. Applications for home refinancing have dipped by 10.9% and new home buyer applications fell by 0.4% in September as interest rates continue to climb, Trading Economics reported.

Commentary: The Biden Bust Could be Coming to a Neighborhood Near You Soon

July 8, 2022 Admin

For many readers, the above title will conjure up memories of the 2008 housing crash caused by the proliferation of subprime mortgages and the subsequent tsunami of defaults. But a better corollary for the coming Biden bust is the Carter crash that occurred three decades earlier. During the final two years of Carter’s term, sales of existing and new homes collapsed because the Fed was forced to raise interest rates sharply to get double-digit inflation under control. This, in turn, produced double-digit mortgage rates that priced millions of potential buyers out of the market.

Buyers Need 40 Percent More Income to Buy a Home in Top Metro Areas: Report

May 16, 2022May 15, 2022 The Center Square

Demand for homes in certain areas of the country has caused supply to dwindle, prices to skyrocket and buyers needing nearly 50% more income than they would have last year to even enter top markets, according to a report by the real estate brokerage firm, Redfin.

“Housing is significantly less affordable than it was a year ago because the surge in housing costs has far outpaced the increase in wages, meaning many Americans are now priced out of homeownership,” Redfin Deputy Chief Economist Taylor Marr said.