The unlikely blame for a mansion’s lack of buyers, AREA’s first local chapter and a grim forecast on Los Angeles’ housing market. From the wild and wooly world of real estate, here are our Hits and Misses for the week of Jan. 20-24.
Miss: Ghosts on the Loose. Nicholas Sutton is not a fan of the Grammy- and Oscar-winning singer Adele. Earlier this week, Sutton blamed the chart-topper for preventing the sale of his English mansion known as Lock House because she mentioned in an interview that she found the property “quite scary” when she briefly rented it in 2012. “This comment negatively impacted future marketing efforts and continues to affect the property’s reputation to this day,” Sutton complained, adding he “actively tried to sell the property for about 14 years” and sought the help of prominent real estate agents, but to no avail. “The first tenant, Adele, stayed for six months and blighted the property saying it is haunted.” There was no comment from either Adele or whatever ectoplasmic tenants might currently be in residence at the estate.
Hit and Miss: Progress, Of Sorts. It has been a year since Jason Haber and Mauricio Umansky announced the launch of the American Real Estate Association (AREA) as a rival to the National Association of Realtors, and this week they announced the New York Residential Agent Continuum (NYRAC) has been merged into the organization as its first local chapter. “This marks a major step forward in strengthening our mission to serve and support real estate professionals across the industry,” said Haber and Umansky. This news deserves both a Hit and a Miss – a Hit for establishing a foothold in the nation’s biggest real estate market, but also a Miss because after a year we were expecting AREA to be much further along in terms of organization and activity.
Miss: What Trump Got Wrong. President Donald Trump used a speech before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to complain that interest rates are too high. “With oil prices going down, I’ll demand that interest rates drop immediately, and likewise they should be dropping all over the world,” Trump said. This would appear to set up a reprise of Trump’s contentious relationship with the Federal Reserve and its chairman, Jerome Powell, who previously ignored the president’s huffing and puffing that blasted central bank policymaking in the first Trump administration. With many economists predicting the Fed will pause rate cuts for most (if not all) of this year, Trump could be looking forward to 12 months of Fed-induced aggravation.
Hit: What Trump Got Right. Whereas the Biden administration sought to marginalize and malign the cryptocurrency sector, the Trump administration is acknowledging its importance and seeking a proper regulatory framework to accommodate it. The new Trump-era Securities and Exchange Commission announced this week it was launching a cryptocurrency task force that is “dedicated to developing a comprehensive and clear regulatory framework for crypto assets.” This will be especially helpful for the real estate world, where cryptocurrency is slowly permeating the realms of property purchasing and agent compensation. Hopefully, real estate leaders will make their voices heard when the task force begins seeking input.
Miss: Bad News from Los Angeles. First American Senior Commercial Real Estate Economist Xander Snyder offered a grim analysis of the property damage from the ongoing Los Angeles County wildfires. Snyder noted that “an estimated loss of between 17,000 and 24,000 housing units based on reports of destroyed structures. Given a total housing stock of approximately 1.5 million housing units in Los Angeles, this implies that between 1.1 and 1.6% of the housing stock has already been destroyed.” Snyder added: “The estimated number of housing units destroyed by the Los Angeles wildfires is approximately the same as the new supply delivered in 2022 and 2023 combined. Based on this analysis, Los Angeles has lost approximately two years’ worth of new housing supply.”
Hit: Good News for Los Angeles. The Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Opens Doors Foundation launched the MBA Opens Doors Disaster Relief Program this week. The program is designed to provide an additional $100,000 to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles to support the children and families impacted by the Southern California wildfires. MBA President and CEO Bob Broeksmit announced, “For families navigating the sudden loss of their homes, businesses, or jobs while caring for a sick or injured child, the Disaster Relief Program is a tangible reminder that when crises hit, the real estate finance industry is there to help.” Amen!
Phil Hall is editor of Weekly Real Estate News. He can be reached at [email protected].
Photo courtesy of Edmund Vitale
