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San Francisco Home Prices Fell for the First Time in Four Years in March

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Re: San Francisco Home Prices Fell for the First Time in Four Years in March

#151

Post by Mikeb85 »

heynk wrote: post #126
cbhl wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easier to become a naturalized Canadian for Chinese nationals, isn't it? Maybe the Chinese buying homes in the Canadian market are actually planning to move there and raise kids (as opposed to pure speculation in the US market).

Interesting thought - this NYT article suggests that many wealthy Chinese children are moving to and living in Vancouver. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/13/world/americas/canada-vanc...

The University of BC has an alternate name: University of Beautiful Cars.

http://universityofbeautifulcars.tumblr.com

You probably don't need me to tell you who owns them...

Re: San Francisco Home Prices Fell for the First Time in Four Years in March

#152

Post by epimetheus »

dabockster wrote: post #123
epimetheus wrote: post #14

A bit of an anecdote because the article mentions my town specifically - Tacoma: We put our house on the market Friday, April 8th, a bit below the "redfin estimate" - I saw it had gone live by 11am and we already had an interested party set up a viewing by 12pm. We showed the house 11 times by Monday morning and had 5 offers, some 12k above asking price. We accepted an offer by Tuesday (April 12). My head is still sp…

Another Tacoman on HN? People in Tacoma know about this website? Joking aside, you're in the Central District. Sales are hot north of I-5/SR-16 because a lot of the infrastructure up there is being rebuilt. South End is still a high poverty area with not a lot going on. In fact, the only major grocery store south of 56th anymore is the Fred Meyer on 72nd and Pacific Ave (not the best place to visit at night). As some…

Well, to be fair, H-Mart is a pretty enjoyable shopping experience, IMO, though I guess most would say it's not a "major" brand it does have 43 locations in the US. I agree though that South/East Tacoma is pretty bad in general.

Re: San Francisco Home Prices Fell for the First Time in Four Years in March

#153

Post by joncooper »

tmaly wrote: post #90
ryanSrich wrote: post #43

It's always hard to believe the numbers, but I trust Redfin since I used them to purchase my home. I think the problem is comparing what's turn key and not. For example they say: > Portland, OR had the nation’s highest price growth, rising 16.1% since last year to $325,000... The problem is you're fighting 100's of people for that one house in Portland that is livable at $325,000. Most houses that cheap need a ton of…

There is always going to be high demand for houses that are close to the large job centers. How strong that demand is will be partly influenced by the economy. The housing boom we saw in the mid 2000s was a bit of a fluke due to asset inflation that arose from the Feds ZIRP. One could argue that the current asset appreciation we are seeing from 2011 to present is another unintended consequence of the ZIRP.

I'd take it a step further and argue that asset appreciation was an intended outcome of ZIRP.

Re: San Francisco Home Prices Fell for the First Time in Four Years in March

#154

Post by zippy »

Cypher wrote: post #124
ChuckMcM wrote: post #115

Reaffirming once again that if "nobody can afford to buy them" the actual prices start coming down. A more interesting thing for me however was that owner occupied (which is to say the person buying the house lives there) has not been growing[1]. Instead third parties are buying the houses as investments and renting them. That is a really risky strategy in a place like SF with rent controls as the floor can fall out…

Even if houses are flat its still better to put your cash into one than the bank...

bank - liquid asset

house - illiquid, with maintenance, property tax, and insurance costs

Re: San Francisco Home Prices Fell for the First Time in Four Years in March

#155

Post by Apocryphon »

soperj wrote: post #91
jonnathanson wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"SF on the other hand is just seeing their ceiling come into play. Only so many people can justify raising a family and purchasing a home in The Bay. Why not change jobs to Seattle or Portland and make around the same money, but spend half on a house? I think that's what we're seeing. " It's more than just tech workers. SF real estate prices have been influenced significantly by foreign speculation (especially from C…

Why isn't this drying up in Canada then?

Isn't Vancouver and Toronto also easing towards correction?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-15/canadian-m...

Re: San Francisco Home Prices Fell for the First Time in Four Years in March

#156

Post by gorkemyurt »

scurvy wrote: post #106
gorkemyurt wrote: post #102

Developers are finally building in SF.. http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/201... http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2016/04/san-franciscos-hu... This is very good news, my prediction is that this wave of supply is going to reduce the prices for a while. There is actually still a lot of space in SOMA/Mission Bay/Central Waterfront to build. New construction is all going to be condos rather than…

There's huge swaths of single family homes in SF; just not in the areas of soul-less high rise hotel/condos that young tech people seem to prefer. You do realize there's a Costco in Soma right? It's swamped with people. I go, and I live in Russian Hill. I agree with the rest of your statement, but they're only building in a very small part of SF and catering to a narrow demographic. Soma 1br condo prices can implode,…

Yep I agree about RH and Pacific Heights. I don't think its a small part of SF, that's the thing.. Central Waterfront and Mission Bay has so much potential.

http://www.pier70sf.com http://missionrock.org http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/201...

Central SOMA up north and hunters point in the south, eastern neighborhoods will add 50k+ residents to SF in the next 10 years

http://208.121.200.84/ftp/files/Citywide/Central_Corridor/Ce...

Re: San Francisco Home Prices Fell for the First Time in Four Years in March

#157

Post by [deleted] »

gigawhat wrote: post #146

Weirdly, I own a house and think I'd be better off if prices fell-- fell a lot. I bought a few years ago and would be happy if prices uniformly dropped to those levels. Why? I want a 50% bigger/nicer house in the same area. But bigger/nicer houses have increased in price proportionally to mine. So the gap in absolute dollars between what I have and what I want has expanded quite a bit. My income has increased, but no…

[deleted]

Re: San Francisco Home Prices Fell for the First Time in Four Years in March

#158

Post by turnip1979 »

jonnathanson wrote: post #94
soperj wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why isn't this drying up in Canada then?

I know basically nothing about the Canadian market, or the various factors (regulatory, tax-related, currency-driven, or otherwise) that might make it more or less attractive to foreign investment than the market in SF. I also know very little about which types of foreign buyers consider Canadian real estate attractive. Since I'm admittedly pretty ignorant of that market, I honestly can't say. The best I can tell you…

My hypothesis is that the China/hk dollar peg is to blame.

Edit: to clarify, the Chinese yuan and hkd are pegged to the USD. The recent strength of the USD has caused problems for China ...some people thing the peg will fail. If you are one of these people and you have lots of cash in China, you want to move the money out of the country and into a different asset class. The recent weakness of the Canadian dollar has made parking money in Canada very reasonable via buying of property. As a poor Canadian who owns no property, I'm pretty much outpriced of the real estate market in the city where I was raised .. with the exception of a condo ...those are being unconstru ted at an unbelievable pace. People I meet seem to own 2-3 condos a piece. Everyone thinks they'll just rent them out. I think we are almost guaranteed to have a condo collapse in the near future.

Re: San Francisco Home Prices Fell for the First Time in Four Years in March

#159

Post by tormeh »

gigawhat wrote: post #146

Weirdly, I own a house and think I'd be better off if prices fell-- fell a lot. I bought a few years ago and would be happy if prices uniformly dropped to those levels. Why? I want a 50% bigger/nicer house in the same area. But bigger/nicer houses have increased in price proportionally to mine. So the gap in absolute dollars between what I have and what I want has expanded quite a bit. My income has increased, but no…

The more expensive a property is, the less its price falls in bad times. Rich people are rarely forced to sell. It's a different market basically disconnected from the rest. I don't know what kind of house you want, but there's a nonlinearity there that might be important.

Re: San Francisco Home Prices Fell for the First Time in Four Years in March

#160

Post by massysett »

tortilla wrote: post #52
ryanSrich wrote: post #43

It's always hard to believe the numbers, but I trust Redfin since I used them to purchase my home. I think the problem is comparing what's turn key and not. For example they say: > Portland, OR had the nation’s highest price growth, rising 16.1% since last year to $325,000... The problem is you're fighting 100's of people for that one house in Portland that is livable at $325,000. Most houses that cheap need a ton of…

A bit off topic, but how was your experience with Redfin? I'm thinking of using them.

I bought with Redfin and my agent was fantastic. She worked much harder to close deals than did the full-commission agents working the sales (we made offers on two properties before closing on the third.)

However Redfin is not for you if you want an agent driving you around, suggesting "maybe you should look at this house," giving you inside tips like "oh, my friend at another brokerage has a great house that will be listed tomorrow," etc. Redfin is good if you don't mind driving the shopping process and you just want someone to close out the deal.

I can say that I saw a lot of really crappy agents selling houses. Most agents I saw absolutely do not deserve whatever commission they get. I do not think Redfin is as good as the best traditional agent. However I do think an average Redfin agent is probably much better than an average traditional agent.

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