Weekly News (December 22, 2021)

This week’s Interest Rate (51st  Week)

(By Fairway Home Loan )

  

   30 yr fx(%)  15 yr fx(%) FHA(%) 10 yr Tr Y (%)
A year ago      2.582       2.125     2.625          0.918
A month ago      3.200       2.500     2.750          1.646
Last week      3.200       2.375     2.750          1.486
This week      3.125       2.375     2.750          1.487

 

   Prime Rate:3.0% / Ref IR: 0.00- 0.25% 

  • 3% Down payment for 1st home buyer is available.
  • 5% Down payment 2-4 units FHA program available
  • 15% Down payment 2 families -conventional program available.
  • Potential home buyer — Have a pre-approval first before the shop.  Now we have 48hour underwriting turn-around times for regular loans.
  • 2022 Conventional loan limit: Conforming SFR : $647,200.00/ Conforming high balance: $970,800.00 / Confirming 2 Family: $702,000/ Conforming High Balance: $1,053,000

 

“The Grand Three” Condo in Flushing finished the last building and started sales

(Korea Daily   12/22 )

  • 131-01 40th Rd, Queens, NY 11354. One of most attractive luxury development projects in NY area done by The Grand Skyview Parc finished the last building, located in the near of the Flushing Downtown. The amenities include 260,000 sf outside spaces for garden, swimming pool, basketball court, tennis courts, running track, gas BBQ grill, pets paly ground, etc. Indoor spaces include children paly ground, fitness center, spa, yoga place, table tennis, massage room, Grand club, etc.
  • Total 248 units, 14 stories, 3
  • Listed price : 1Br/1Bath, 668 sf : $830,888 ($1,243/sf),  3Br/3Bath, 1983 sf : $2.575M ($1,329/sf)

 

Blackstone Nears Deal For New York Skyscraper in Manhattan

(WSJ    12/18 )

  • Blackstone Inc. is in advanced talks to acquire a 49% stake in a new Manhattan office tower, One Manhattan West, in a deal that values the skyscraper at $2.85B, providing a shot of confidence for New York during tough times.
  • A venture led by Brookfield Asset Management could reach an agreement to sell the stake in One Manhattan West property to Blackstone in the next week, people familiar with the matter said.
  • A deal would be the latest sign that the COVID-19 pandemic and even the spread of the Omicron variant aren’t deterring investors from paying top dollar for most-modern and highest-quality office buildings.
  • Brookfield put One Manhattan West up for sale in September through a Cushman & Wakefield team led by Doug Harman and Adam Spies. The team represented Brookfield in its 2017 sale of 49% stake of its office tower at One Liberty Plaza – also to Blackstone – in a deal that valued that tower at over $1.5B.

 

Lower Manhattan will be surrounded by flood barrier

(Korea Times  12/15)

  • As one of ESCR ( East Side Coastal Resiliency) projects, lower Manhattan near battery Park will e surrounded by flood barrier and the project will cost $1.45B will be completed by 2026. The barrier will be 2.5 mile long and 16.5 feet high.
  • The project plan was initiated when Sandy hit the city and caused 44 death toll, injured 110,000 people and caused the total damage of $19B.

 

US to landlords, lenders: Heed pro-military housing rules

(Record     12/22)

  • The DOJ and CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) are warning mortgage servicers and landlords to heed meant to protect members of U.S. military against foreclosure, eviction and potential housing-related financial hardship during the pandemic. The move, announced Monday, comes as forbearance programs put in place in the early weeks of the pandemic last year to allow homeowners to hit pause on their mortgage payments set to expire at the end of the month.
  • DOJ is receiving complaints including being reported as delinquent borrowers for not making timely payments and being required to pay lump sim money to reinstate their home loans. DOJ and CFPB also remind mortgage services and landlords the legal protections that military tenants, including rules that make it possible for them to terminate their lease early.

 

Rents Set to Rose Again in 2020

(WSJ   12/22 )

  • After apartment rents shot through the roof this year, landlords look poised to reap record profits in the next. Rental building owners have benefited from unusually strong apartment demand during the pandemic. New household formation, delayed during early lockdowns, led to a surge in new leases.
  • Meanwhile, the priciest housing market in history forced many would-be buyers to keep renting.
  • Asking rents were up nearly 20% for the 12-month period ended in November, according to a report from real0estate website Realtor.com.
  • Analysts expect these many months of supercharged rent increases will really start to make the difference on landlord balance sheets in 2020. Green Street, a commercial real-estate analytic provider, projects record profit growth next year for publicly traded landlords. That estimated 13.5% increase in net operating income is expected to outpace the office, retail, lodging and student housing sectors, green Street said.
  • Housing analysts say new apartment supply would ease the climb in rents, but supply-chain issues have delayed some construction projects. Even so, there are signs that more apartment will come on line in the next couple of years.

 

Millennials Power Housing Market

(WSJ    12/12)

  • Moving form renting to owning, generation is likely to bolster demand for years. For years, conventional wisdom held that millennials, born from 1981 to 1996, would become the generation that largely spurned home-ownership. Instead, since 2019, when they surpassed the baby boomers to become the largest living adult generation in the U.S., they have reached a housing milestone, accounting for more than half of all home-purchase loan application last year.
  • The generation’s growing appetite for homeownership is a major reason why many economists forecast home-buying demand is likely to remain strong for years to come.
  • The homeownership rate for white households is projected to continue to exceed the homeownership rate in the next two decades, according to the Urban Institute. But the number of white homeowner households will decrease between 2020 and 2040 while net increase in homeowner households will be nonwhite.
  • Latino homeownership in the U.S. is growing at a record pace. The number of Hispanic homeowners rose by more than 700,000 to nearly 9M last year.

 

Stocks decline On Fresh Pandemic Worries

(WSJ    12/21)

  • Major U.S. stock indexes declined for the third consecutive trading session on Monday, as the fast-spreading Omicron variant of Covid-19 spurred fears that new lockdowns could derail the sputtering global economic recovery.
  • The Dow fell 433.28 points, or 1.2%, to 34932.16, adding to its losses after a 1.5% drop on Friday. The S&P 500 slid 52.62 points, or 1.1%, to 4568.02. The Nasdaq Composite slumped 188.74 points, or 1.2%, to 14980.94.
  • Covid-19 cases are climbing in New York and other part of U.S., while more countries have adopted travel bans or restricted business activities to combat the virus. The Omicron variant caused more than 70% of recent Covid-19 cases in the U.S., the CDC said, highlighting its dramatic increase in infectiousness compared to earlier versions of the virus.
  • “We’re really seeing Omicron spread like wildfire, and it’s weighing on sentiment,” said Esty Dwek, chief investment officer at Flowbank. “ You’re seeing lockdowns instigated in Europe. You’re seeing more and more restrictions and the number of cases is going up so much that even if it’s less severe, it could lead to more hospitalizations.”

(WSJ  12/22)

  • Stocks rebound after 3 days of drops. Stocks climbed Tuesday, resuming the seesaw action that has become the market’s signature since the emergence of the Omicron Covid-19 variant.

 

New U.S. Cases Are 73% Omicron

   (WSJ  12/21 )

  • The CDC said Monday that Omicron had overtaken the Delta variant of the coronavirus in U.S. and accounted for an estimated 73% of infections for the week ended Dec. 18, while the CDC’s updated data showed Omicron had caused some 13% of recent infections in the week of through Dec.11.
  • In many part of the U.S. Omicron now makes up more than 90% of cases, the CDC said.
  • The variant has spread rapidly in the U.S. and has reached at least 89 nations since being identified in south Africa last month.
  • New York state reported a record number of Covid-19 infections for the fourth consecutive day on Monday, when officials said 23,391 people had tested positive for the virus. Just over 4,000 people were hospitalized around the state, compared with peak levels of almost 19,000 in April of 2020.
  • Salim Abdool Karim, a clinical infectious-disease epidemiologist in South Africa, said hospital admission rates in the country’s Omicron wave are much lower than during the previous Delta and Beta waves. Among those patients being admitted to the hospital, fewer are requiring ventilation, ICU care or dying, he said.
  • Other infectious-disease experts and epidemiologists said it is still early to tell whether Omicron causes less sever disease. They also worry that Omicron’s ascent on the U.S. is taking filling up with patients infected with Delta variant.

(WSJ 12/22)

  • The Biden admin is preparing to distribute 500M free at-home Covid-19 testing kits to American and deploy military doctors and nurses to overburdened hospitals this winter, as the Omicron variant becomes the dominant from of the virus in the U.S.
  • You need to test when you have symptoms including sore throat, cough, runny nose, or fever.

 

Others/Tech News: Motional (a joint venture between “HyunDai and “Aptiv”) will  start self-driving food delivery early next year in the Santa Monica area

   ( Korea Times 12/20)   Hyundai will use “Ionic5” and Uber will join as an operation partner.   

                                 

 


 

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