Lawyers representing families of victims and survivors of the condominium collapse in Surfside, Florida, last June have told a judge that they've reached a nearly $1 billion tentative settlement.

Harley S. Tropin is a lawyer representing the plaintiffs. He announced the settlement during a hearing on Wednesday before Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Michael Hanzman. Still pending final approval, the settlement involves insurance companies, developers of an adjacent building and other defendants.

“I’m shocked by this result — I think it’s fantastic,” Hanzman said. “This is a recovery that is far in excess of what I had anticipated.”

Earlier this year, Hanzman had approved an $83 million settlement to compensate people who suffered economic losses such as condominium units and personal property, the Associated Press reported.

The 12-story building called the Champlain Towers South condominium collapsed suddenly in the early-morning hours on June 24 and almost instantly destroyed dozens of individual condo units, burying victims under tons of rubble. Rescuers worked for weeks digging through mountains of concrete to find survivors, then later to recover the remains of those who died. A total of 98 people were killed.

Another fall for stocks on Friday had the S&P 500 flirting with a 20% drop from its peak set early this year, putting it within the grasp of what Wall Street calls a bear market.

The benchmark index was down 0.4% for the day in afternoon trading and on pace for its seventh straight losing week. Rising interest rates, high inflation, the war in Ukraine, and a slowdown in China's economy are all punishing stocks and raising fears about a possible U.S. recession. The last bear market was in 2020, an unusually brief downturn that sliced 34% off the S&P 500.

The index finished the week off with a 3 percent loss, which was its seventh straight weekly decline, the New York Times reported. It's the longest window of losses since 2001.

Surprisingly low earnings reports from Target and Walmart this week didn't help either which contributed to dragging the markets even lower. The New York Times points out that since World War II, recessions almost always follow bear markets.

Mortgage rates dropped for the second week in a row, notching the largest decline since December 2008.

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 5.30% in the week ending July 7, down from 5.70% the week before, according to Freddie Mac. That is still significantly higher than this time last year when it was 2.90%

Rates rose sharply at the start of the year, hitting a high of 5.81% in mid-June. But since then, economic concerns have pushed them lower. The 40 basis point fall offset some of the significant rate increases of May and June.

"Over the last two weeks, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage dropped by half a percent, as concerns about a potential recession continue to rise," said Sam Khater, Freddie Mac's chief economist.

But affording a home still remains a challenge. Mortgage rates are at their highest levels since the late 2000's and listing prices have grown by more than 8.5% year-over-year for 24 consecutive months, said Joel Berner, Realtor.com's senior economic research analyst.

If there's any silver lining for homebuyers, it's that more homes are hitting the market, he said. In June, active listings increased by the largest annual growth in the history of Realtor.com's data.

"With more homes on the market, sellers are being forced to compete on prices," he said. "Though the cost of financing a home remains high relative to recent years, buyers will have more chances to find homes in their price range as the undersupplied and overheated housing market starts to cool."

Higher rates are also tamping down demand among prospective buyers. Mortgage applications dropped 5.4% in the week ending July 1 from the week before, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

"Rates are still significantly higher than they were a year ago, which is why applications for home purchases and refinances remain depressed," said Joel Kan, MBA's associate vice president of economic and industry forecasting. "Purchase activity is hamstrung by ongoing affordability challenges and low inventory, and homeowners still have reduced incentive to apply for a refinance."

Buyers are finding it harder to buy homes as inflation takes a larger chunk of their income and the cost of borrowing has reduced their purchasing power.

A year ago, a buyer who put 20% down on a median-priced $390,000 home and financed the rest with a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage at an average rate of 2.90% had a monthly mortgage payment of $1,299, according to calculations from Freddie Mac.

Today, a homeowner buying the same priced house with an average rate of 5.30% would pay $1,733 a month in principal and interest. That's $434 more each month.

The decline in mortgage rates this week follows recent volatility in the 10-year Treasury yield, which dropped below 2.8% in the first week of July after spending most of June above 3%.

While the Federal Reserve does not set the interest rates borrowers pay on mortgages directly, its actions influence them. Mortgage rates tend to track 10-year U.S. Treasury bonds. As investors see or anticipate rate hikes, they often sell government bonds, which sends yields higher and with it, mortgage rates.

In addition, continued fears that we are heading into a bear market have driven investors into safer, longer-term bonds, said Berner.

"This inversion might sound ominous, especially in the midst of sustained inflation that both markets and the Fed agree will likely require more fed funds rate hikes to tame, but it remains to be seen whether these market conditions will lead to increases in the unemployment rate or decreases in production that characterize a recession," he said.

The number of existing homes being sold in the U.S. dropped by nearly 20% in August 2022 compared to August 2021, according to a new report from National Association or Realtors.

The group said that there was a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.80 million homes sold, down from 5.99 million a year ago.

With the Federal Reserve raising interest rates again on Wednesday, it is expected sales of existing homes will continue to decline.

"The housing sector is the most sensitive to and experiences the most immediate impacts from the Federal Reserve's interest rate policy changes," said NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun. "The softness in home sales reflects this year's escalating mortgage rates. Nonetheless, homeowners are doing well with near nonexistent distressed property sales and home prices still higher than a year ago."

The NAR reported a 7.7% increase in median existing home prices from a year ago.

However, there is an indication that prices might be starting to cool. After reaching a peak of $413,800 in June, the median existing-home price in August was $389,500. The NAR noted that there is a seasonal trend of prices declining during the summer.

"In a sense, we're seeing a return to normalcy with the homebuying process as it relates to home inspections and appraisal contingencies, as those crazy bidding wars have essentially stopped," said NAR President Leslie Rouda Smith.

This week the National Association of Realtors reported that median existing-home sales went up at a pace of 15.4% on a year-over-year basis. The median home price for a home in January was $350,300. It was the highest median price on record for the month of January, as CNN reported.

In December, Zillow predicted that the 12-month rate of home price growth would drop by 11%, but then revised that forecast saying that 2022 would finish up 16.4%. Now the company is predicting that the year-over-year rate for growth of home prices could peak at 21.6% by May.

According to the National Association of Realtors, in 2021 around 25% of homes, that sold, had one offer, but 75% had more than one offer.

And even with the price hikes, buying a home may still be a smart move in 2022 for some. The trade publication Mortgage Reports said that buying a home could work for investors, given "how inflation will push rent prices higher."

Jess Kennedy, a co-founder and COO at Beeline said, "When you look at where the housing market is right now, you still see big gaps between available supply and demand. Until that demand is lowered due to rising rates, housing prices won’t go down."

Kennedy said, “As supply and demand come into line with one another, we will see a normalization of the market but I don’t anticipate that housing prices will come down – they just won’t continue to grow exponentially as they have in the past year. In the short term as buyers look to find a property before higher rates impact them, we could actually see home prices driven higher.”

By the end of January, for sale home inventory fell to an all-time low of 860,000, CNN reported. Which was down by 16.5% from last year.

As NAR reported, the current environment has become even tougher on first-time home buyers. These new buyers accounted for a smaller share of the market than before, at around 27% according to the REALTORS Confidence Index Survey.

The survey found that homebuying demand outpaced supply, and that caused properties to stay on the market for a shorter amount of days compared to a year ago. Last month houses averaged days on the market, compared with 21 days a year before that. The group said that 79% of property listings stayed on the market for less than a month.

Zillow will stop buying homes through Zillow Offers for the rest of the year, as the company's iBuying program goes from full speed to full stop.

The company announced on Monday it would not contract to buy any more homes in 2021 in order to work through the backlog of homes it has already bought.

The "iBuyer" model used by Zillow and other real estate companies entails purchasing homes directly from sellers and then re-listing the properties after doing minor work. But thanks to the shortage of labor and materials, Zillow can't close, renovate and resell the homes fast enough.

"We're operating within a labor- and supply-constrained economy inside a competitive real estate market, especially in the construction, renovation and closing spaces," said Jeremy Wacksman, Zillow's chief operating officer, in a statement.

"Pausing new contracts will enable us to focus on sellers already under contract with us and our current home inventory," Wacksman said.

Zillow will still market and sell the homes it has acquired through Zillow Offers, which has been on a purchasing tear this year. It bought 3,805 homes in the second quarter -- a record high for the company and more than double the number of homes bought in the first quarter, according to a note to company shareholders.

Zillow, known for its online real estate listings, introduced an iBuyer program, Zillow Offers, in 2018 and now operates in 25 cities. Like other iBuyers -- such as Opendoor, RedfinNow and Offerpad -- Zillow Offers uses data and algorithms about the property and the market to make a cash offer on an off-market home and buys directly from the homeowner.

IBuyers appeal to home sellers because closings can take place anywhere from seven to 90 days after the contract is signed and can provide some certainty and control over the sale of their home without the hassle of finding an agent and prepping the house for market. According to Zillow, the fee to the seller for Zillow Offers averages 5% but can vary based on market conditions.

Home purchases by iBuyers now account for about 1% of the market, according to a report from Zillow. The share is still a tiny part of the whole market but shows tremendous growth over the past few years as the iBuyer share in some cities, like Phoenix, Atlanta or Charlotte, North Carolina, now tops 5%.

Zillow wasn't alone among iBuyers in buying a lot of homes this year. IBuyers bought more houses, at higher prices, in the second quarter of this year than in any other quarter, according to research from Mike DelPrete, an independent real estate technology strategist and scholar in residence at the University of Colorado Boulder. That has surprised some skeptics who did not think the iBuyer model would be appealing to home sellers in a hot market.

His research suggests that sellers are drawn to the certainty and ease of iBuying and the market conditions fueled its growth.

Zillow's move to halt purchases is surprising, he said, particularly because it is so sudden.

"iBuyers have access to a tremendous amount of data, they can see months into the future and plan their inventory," said DelPrete. "So the fact that Zillow didn't see this coming and wasn't able to make adjustments before it had to resort to an iBuying lockdown is pretty surprising."

This shift, he said, demonstrates how difficult this business model is to scale up. Large iBuyers need to be skilled at both managing billions of dollars in capital, but also the logistical specifics of prepping a home for sale, down to drywall and painting and closing deals.

"There is only so much that technology can do," said DelPrete. "At the end of the day, you need people to process a lot of transactions."

However, the halt appears to be a Zillow-specific problem, not an iBuyer industry problem, DelPrete said.

"Zillow just kept barreling down and now they've hit this wall," he said.

This is not the situation a growth-focused company wants to be in, he said.

"If you're trying to be number one in the market, slamming on the brakes is one of the worst things you can do," said DelPrete. "You want to make some adjustments before you get to that point -- slow down, switch gears. This is not the preferred outcome for Zillow."

Open Door, the leading iBuyer ahead of Zillow at a distant second, said in a statement it is still open for business.

The days of ultra-cheap mortgages could be numbered, as rates rose back above the 3% mark last week.

The average interest rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rose to 3.05% in the week ending Oct. 14, according to Freddie Mac, the highest rate since April. The 15-year fixed-rate mortgage rose to 2.3%.

After falling steadily during the first year of the pandemic, rates reached a record low at the beginning of 2021, with 30-year mortgages at 2.65%. They rose through the spring to as high as 3.18% in April before falling again and settling in just under 3% for most of the summer.

Now rates are expected to continue to gradually rise again, said Sam Khater, Freddie Mac's chief economist, as inflationary pressure builds because of the ongoing pandemic and tightening monetary policy.

While rates are still historically low, home prices continue to hover near record highs.

"Many potential homebuyers are staying on the sidelines due to high home price growth," Khater said. "Rising mortgage rates combined with growing home prices make affordability more challenging for potential homebuyers."

Refinancing is becoming less appealing to homeowners as rates rise, with the share of refinances dropping last week according to a weekly survey from the Mortgage Bankers Association.

"We continue to expect weakening refinance activity as rates move higher and borrowers see less of a rate incentive," said Joel Kan, MBA's associate vice president of economic and industry forecasting.

But purchase applications went up, according to the MBA, suggesting that homebuyers are pushing on.

Financing costs remain favorable for most homebuyers, offering first-time buyers a strong incentive to keep looking, said George Ratiu, Realtor.com's manager of economic research.

"Halfway through October, the number of homes for sale has improved compared to the overheated first half of this year, leading to slower price growth," he said. "It seems that buyers and sellers are finally taking a step back from the pandemic-induced stampede of the past year to regain their footing and reassess their next steps."

DENVER, Co. — While a spotlight has been shown on the affordable housing supply crisis, experts say how we got here has been a decades-long journey.

"There simply aren’t enough homes for anyone who wants to buy them," said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin.

Supply and demand are causing home prices to skyrocket this year. The average home price is up 13.2%. That’s already a record, but in other spots around the country, it’s worse. The average home price for Phoenix rose 23.5%, Salt Lake City and Denver rose around 20%.

"We got into this mess, partly because in the last decade there were fewer homes built, but in any decade, going back to the 1960s and even before then, we were falling behind on building entry-level homes. Back in the 1980s, about 40% of new construction homes were entry-level. And now, that's down in just single digits," said Fairweather.

A few factors have gone into the lack of entry-level homes, one of them being that construction slowed down to a halt during the great recession, which impacted supply, and now entry-level homes are not being built, because demand has driven up the price of land.

"If a developer wants to buy a piece of land, they want to put the most luxurious building on it so they can recoup the expense of just acquiring that land," she said.

Another factor is zoning laws. Many neighborhoods in cities across America, where land is pricey, are zoned for single-family homes. The power to change that lies on the hyper-local level, but that has proven to be a contentious issue.

"It's very easy for a group of homeowners to rally together, to get a multifamily zoning block. They can show at the town hall meetings and they have vested interest in keeping their property values high. Even if that goes against the community interest and keeping housing affordable. So it's a very hard problem," said Fairweather.

Jonathan Cappelli is an affordable housing advocate in Colorado. He says 37% of all single-family homes in the state are rentals, not owned by the families living in them.

"We're seeing that trend just increase," he said.

Like Fairweather, he agrees that one solution would be to change zoning laws to add more apartments and condos that families looking to buy their first home can afford.

"Density is really synonymous with equity right now," said Cappelli. "If you're against making room for low to moderate income people in your community, then you're kind of taking the ladder that you climb to get to where you are and you're kicking it out for the next year."

He says the best solution is for policies to become more affordable and equitable and that communities need to recognize and embrace that.

With homeownership tied to wealth building, experts and advocates alike say that while it wasn’t our decision to end up in a low housing supply, it’s up to local government and citizens to help fix it.

Related video above: Massachusetts real estate market cooling down, but prices remain high

Everett Benyard thought he was finally in a strong enough financial position to purchase his first home earlier this year. He'd saved money by living with his parents for a time and secured a higher-paying job in 2020.

But the 30-year-old San Diego corrections officer has struggled to compete in one of the country's hottest real estate markets, where the median home price on single-family houses reached $860,000 in July, according to the California Association of Realtors.

"I was just getting outbid, outbid big," Benyard told CNN Business during a recent phone interview. "I went and saw many different places. ... I would go see something and the day after, it would be off the market."

Benyard is one of many Black Americans who are being disproportionately priced out of pandemic-fueled housing boom.

Before the pandemic, the Black homeownership rate in America was slowly but steadily rising — a small but significant economic bright spot against a backdrop of racial inequality. Then the pandemic slammed the brakes on that upward trend, even as homeownership among White Americans continued to climb.

"It's just so competitive in this market right now," Benyard said. "The prices are extremely high."

San Diego's 'significant disparity'

A recent analysis by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, showed that the nation's Black homeownership rate stood at just over 44% at the end of last year, virtually unchanged from the same point in 2019. The homeownership rate for White Americans increased to 74.5% from 73.7% over the same period.

"Homeownership among African Americans grew more slowly than it did for White households during the pandemic, despite historically low mortgage interest rates," the study authors wrote. "Simply put, Black households faced more obstacles to becoming and staying homeowners because they had less money to fall back on."

That disparity is on display in Benyard's home city of San Diego. Like many communities known for their desirable weather and relative affordability compared with their bigger metropolitan neighbors, San Diego has been inundated in the past year with wealthy tech-industry homebuyers, according to officials from the nonprofit San Diego Foundation.

Although San Diego County real estate is far more expensive than the national average, it's a bargain compared with typical homes in San Francisco, where Zillow data show the typical home price rose to more than $1.5 million in July.

The trend is hurting all aspiring first-time homebuyers from the area, nonprofit officials said, but the group fears it's exacerbating racial wealth inequality in the city. According to a Redfin study, 61% of White households in San Diego owned their own homes in 2018, compared with just 30% of Black households.

"There is clearly a significant disparity there," San Diego Foundation vice president of community impact Pamela Gray Payton told CNN Business. "It's hard to get into the market if you're not already in the market."

The pandemic's skewed impact

Black Americans are overrepresented in low-wage service sector jobs that have been disproportionately hit by pandemic layoffs. Black Americans also tend to carry a higher burden of student loan debt, earn less money and have less savings on average when compared to their White counterparts.

In its study, the think tank notes the nation's history of redlining and mortgage lending discrimination has contributed to Black households having less wealth on average than the general population, making it less likely that Black millennials and Gen Zers can rely on their parents to help them purchase their first home.

"It's just emblematic of the confluence, the coming together of many different economic pressure points for people of color," said Christian Weller, one of the study's authors and a senior fellow of economic policy at the Center for American Progress.

"They're losing their jobs sooner than White people. They're out of a job longer," Weller added. "They have fewer savings, which means they have less money for a down payment. Things can spiral out of control very quickly, especially for African American homeowners."

Nearly a quarter of all homebuyers today are all-cash purchasers who aren't utilizing mortgage loans, according to Jessica Lautz, vice president of demographics and behavioral insights at the National Association of Realtors, who says the current market favors wealthier Americans who tend to be White.

Between April and July of last year, 82% of Americans who purchased homes were White, according to a study by the National Association of Realtors. Just 9% were Hispanic, 8% were Asian and 5% were Black, according to the group's researchers.

"It's a small section of the economy who is able to pay all cash for property and wave appraisals," Lautz told CNN Business. "We do see a very large share of them are White individuals."

Help for prospective homebuyers

Benyard, the corrections officer, recently received a major helping hand in his homebuying search.

In July, the Urban League of San Diego County, a local division of the national civil rights group, informed Benyard that he was chosen to receive one of several down payment assistance grants through the group's new Black Homebuyer Program.

Qualifying Black residents of San Diego County who meet the program's income, employment and credit requirements and complete the Urban League's homebuying training course can receive more than $70,000 in grant assistance toward the purchase of a home.

Urban League of San Diego County COO Al Abdallah says the "first-of-its kind" program is designed to address the city's racial wealth gap by helping Black residents who are qualified to own a home, but need help competing with wealthier buyers.

"This is going to help them get across the finish line," Abdallah told CNN Business. "You can work as hard as you want, but it is very difficult if not impossible to save $70,000 to put down on a home."

CLEVELAND — The era of home buyers writing a letter to sellers in an effort to sway their decision appears to be over.

Oregon recently passed a new law effective in 2022 which bans buyers from sending letters to sellers as a way to influence their decision.

The law is the latest shift in an ever-changing real estate landscape, where buyers are offering to waive inspections, cover appraisal gaps and make an offer sight-unseen.

Seth Task, President of Ohio Realtors, explained that while buyers would like to compliment a seller on their fenced-in yard for children to grow or a spacious living room for Christmas morning, those comments could present problems.

He says he no longer accepts "love letters" from buyers and encourages other realtors to do the same to avoid any possible discrimination.

"If a decision is made based on the letter versus other letters, it's clearly a fair housing issue," Task said.

Callahan & Krol

Scripps station WEWS in Cleveland spoke with several realtors in Northeast Ohio, who all explained they're seeing about 25% of sellers' agents no longer accept love letters, compared to almost none about a year ago.

"We were recommending letters for a really long time," Task said. "You're trying to pull on heartstrings on the seller. You're trying to relate in some capacity. This heartfelt letter might put you over the top. Maybe a seller takes $2,000 less because they like your letter."

Fair housing regulations at the federal, state and local levels currently prohibit discrimination in housing because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, ancestry, national origin, disability, military status, sexual orientation and gender identity.

"It's incredibly difficult if not impossible to write a love letter and not mention at least one of those protected classes," Task said.

Tanesha Hunter serves as the director of education and outreach for the Fair Housing Center for Rights & Research. She points to penalties such as fines in the tens of thousands of dollars for sellers who discriminate.

Agents could also lose their licenses because of fair housing violations, she said.

"We believe that over 30,000 incidents of housing discrimination occur in our region [every year] but go unreported," she said. "Instead of writing these love letters and talking about personal items, talk about your enthusiasm for the features of the property. You love the fireplace; you love the backyard; you love the kitchen."

WEWS reached out to Ohio's Department of Commerce and the Real Estate & Licensing Department about the matter. A spokesperson said while they have not dealt with any specific cases of these kinds of letters being deemed as discriminatory, it is something on their radar.

This story was originally published by Clay LePard on Scripps station WEWS in Cleveland.

If you're looking for a new place to call home and something a little more eccentric, look no further than this medieval property in southern Indiana.

Yes, you read that right. Medieval. This castle, with a price tag of $400,000, is on the market and you can find it in Charlestown, Indiana.

The castle was actually built in 1997, so there isn't any significant history associated with it. It's also a bit of a fixer-upper if you're looking for some projects to get into while calling this medieval abode your new home.

According to the Zillow listing, the castle only has two bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms. It does have a 10-car garage and the property itself is just under 8 acres. The castle is spread out over 1 acre.

"In the kitchen, you will have access to the stairs that lead downstairs to the office and extra half bath and a large room for storage, or could be made into additional living area," the Zillow listing reads.

The large room also has two hidden entrances that lead to a bar area and a garage. Outside the garage, there is a concrete courtyard that is secured by the walls of the castle and a cat walk that goes around the top.

The castle is listed by Schuler Bauer Real Estate Services and also recently has been making the rounds on social media after being featured on the Instagram account "Zillow Gone Wild."

The castle still appears to be up for grabs and tours can be done in-person or by video chat. Click here for more information on Zillow.

Posted at 5:27 PM, May 21, 2021

and last updated 2021-05-21 17:44:28-04

This week on the Hear Cincinnati podcast, host Brian Niesz is joined by community reporter Lucy May, senior real-time editor Pat LaFleur and senior manager of enterprise/investigative Meghan Goth to discuss the latest cicada news, a project creating homeownership opportunities, the secret informant in a Cincinnati bribery case and more.

Following the panel, John Matarese joins the podcast to discuss Cincinnati's hot real estate market and the resulting pressure on renters.

Listen to this episode in the podcast player above.

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