Bay Area Home Prices Projected to Surge

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“Looking at 245 Bay Area ZIP codes, Zillow projects that 244 will see home values ratchet up by significant margins in 2013, with 27 ZIPs seeing double-digit appreciation…Popular San Francisco neighborhoods such as Noe Valley, the Castro, Twin Peaks, the Mission and Bernal Heights are poised for double-digit appreciation, along with Menlo Park, Larkspur, Palo Alto, Alameda and North Berkeley, Zillow predicts.”

The full article is here:

Districts 3 and 10, R.I.P.

The Excelsior, Bayview, Hunter’s Point, Oceanview, Ingleside:  these are some of the neighborhoods included in the San Francisco Association of Realtors’  MLS (Multiple Listing Service) Districts 3 and 10.  It’s been suggested here and elsewhere  that perhaps these non-“core” San Francisco neighborhoods have been pulling down San Francisco’s home prices disproportionately.  The theory, plausible enough, is that these more modestly-priced neighborhoods would be feeling the effects of the economic slowdown more than the tonier “core” neighborhoods, whose denizens’ bank accounts might provide a little more padding against hard times.
I recently published a chart that compared the percentage change of Districts 3 and 10 from their all-time highs to that of the city as a whole.  Some readers of theFrontSteps expressed an interest in seeing what the chart would look like if you excluded those districts from the data set for the city as a whole.  (Districts 3 and 10 make up over 20% of the city’s single family home sales for the 5 year period covered by the chart.)  I aim to please, so I ran the numbers again and here are the results.
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The chart confirms, once and for all, that however you want to cut it – with or without Districts 3 and 10 – home values for the the “core” San Francisco Districts have fallen almost as far as those for the outer Districts.  They just took a little longer to start falling, that’s all.

Bottom line:  We don’t have Districts 3 and 10 to kick around any more.  I’m going to start rolling out comparisons of specific districts and neighborhoods to the city as a whole (ie.  “All Districts”), starting with some that have supposedly weathered the market reasonably well.  I think you’ll find the results surprising.  I know I did.