For many years, San Francisco has been known for its love of the blues. The Festival will feature two main stages, a merchant marketplace, arts and crafts, gourmet food booths, a large family area, cafe seating areas, and much more.
Click here for more information!
Typically, after a multi-years’ downturn such as occurred in the early eighties and the early nineties and such as we’re just coming out of now, when the market turns, appreciation goes into its own multi-year climb. Even though the market went absolutely crazy in 1996, and despite the bubble popping in 2008, people who bought then have seen 120% appreciation in home value (much less the vastly larger return on their initial down-payment investment, not to mention the huge tax benefits — and that it was an investment that also was a home).
Though the absolutely best time recently to buy in San Francisco, in retrospect, was in 2010-2011, we are still just past the cusp of the bottom of the market. Historically, that is a very good time to buy.
Please note that in the below Case-Shiller chart, the graph is not proportional to the time period from 1988 to 2000: those 12 years show up as much shorter than the 12 years from 2000 to 2012.
Listed at $885,000 in November 2008, this little Noe Valley fixer at 4209 24th Street sold for $896,000 in 31 days.
Two and half years later, the owners finally got their demolition permit. It only took a few hours for the little box of ticky-tacky to come a-tumblin’ down. Here’s what it looked like. Continue reading “That Rare Thing: A San Francisco Demolition”
San Francisco’s most expensive neighborhood? In 2010, Pacific Heights beat out Sea Cliff by a long shot with a median price home costing a cool $3.5 million. (And after witnessing the tsunami in Japan, people may be willing to pay even more for commanding the heights.) Continue reading “Price-Shopping San Francisco’s Neighborhoods”
After nearly two years of sharp declines, Noe Valley single family home prices recovered smartly in 2010. Not enough, however, for anyone to claim that Noe Valley is somehow immune from market forces affecting the rest of San Francisco. As of December 2010, Noe Valley home prices were still down 20% from their all-time highs, almost exactly the same as prices for homes city-wide.
Here’s the chart (double click): Continue reading “Noe Valley Back Smartly in 2010”
In my last post, I included a chart that showed both single family homes and condos stuck in relatively narrow price ranges over the last 18 months or so. At the end of 2010 the median price of a single family home ($744,000) was about $80,000 more than that for a condo/TIC.
But that doesn’t tell us anything about “value.” Now, let me count the ways we could argue about what “value” means, but I think we’d agree that how each property type has weathered the market battering over the last few years has to be relevant. Take a look at this table: Continue reading “What’s A Better Value in San Francisco, A Condo or a Home? (Part 2)”
Courtesy of my gentle reader, JC, a moment of levity (click to enlarge):
As an Aussie born and bred, I take umbrage at my homeland being represented by a beer as mediocre as Fosters, but at least we’re on the map.
Thanks JC!
For the quarter century (gulp!) that I’ve been involved in real estate, the conventional wisdom has always been that condo values generally do worse in down markets than homes. Why? To be honest, I’m not sure, but I think it’s because it’s easier to overbuild the condo market than the single family home market. It goes back to that famous quote: “Buy land – they aren’t making any more of it.” Just take a look at Miami, Chicago – or downtown San Francisco. One new high-rise can hold hundreds of condos in the sky. Try building just one new home in SF, let alone hundreds – it aint happening.Of course, more supply + less demand in a down market means prices fall. Has that been the case in San Francisco?
I looked at percentage change from all time highs for condos and single family homes (sfd’s) since January 2003 and here are the results for the city as a whole.
Until June 2008, condo and home prices were in lock-step in terms of price appreciation and decline. Thereafter, homes fell first and further. (Do I hear a lithp?) In March 2009, the delta between condos and home prices was a whopping 13%. Since then, however, home prices have recovered smartly: as of June, homes are about 4.5% further off their all-time highs than condos.
What does this all mean? First of all, I wouldn’t take too much consolation just yet in the upward spike in both condo and home prices since the beginning of the year. If you take a look at the chart, this happens every Jan/Feb when people start buying out of the winter doldrums. I wouldn’t predict a bottom until we see what happens this winter.
Secondly, given the woeful condition of the economy and the credit markets, together with the fact that San Francisco is not a badly overbuilt housing market, it sort of makes sense that condos are holding their value relatively well as people are finding themselves priced out of more expensive single family homes.
Still, the current delta of only $100,000 between median condo and median home prices seems rather small. If people are just begging to know what the historical average is, let me know and I’ll find out.
