71–80 of 199 posts
It's worth noting that patrick was among the few active bloggers that noticed the housing bubble early. Ben at the thehousingbubbleblog, calculatedrisk were two others. Folks that were paying attention and shorted the banks made some money. But of course: this time is different, broken clock, and , etc etc.
Some very solid points about the market in general, but I wonder how several of these points (particularly the points about oversupply, baby boomers, etc.) apply to places like SF or Manhattan. SF, in particular, seems to be extremely young (though that could be observational bias on my part), well-monied, in sharp undersupply of housing, with rent matching or in some cases exceeding the cost of a mortgage. Historica…
A tepid Twitter IPO right on the back of Facebook's might convince people to start looking to places with higher growth potential. Anywhere Google takes its Fiber is a good bet. I don't know about a bust, but things can only go so high before people with money and ambition start looking elsewhere.
This... is not as true as you think it is, even here in Silicon valley.
If I could get $50/month/resident out of any of the reasonable-sized condos around here, I could easily give everyone gigabit Ethernet.
Problem is? even here in the heart of silicon valley, most people don't give a shit. Faster than wi-fi doesn't matter.
Hell, even you and me... I talk about bandwidth being important, but surewest has had fiber to the home in Sacramento for some time now... fast and very cheap. Do you see me moving to Sacramento? No, screw that.
I mean, it's a cool project, and I wish google luck, but the fiber itself isn't going to move real-estate markets.
Some very solid points about the market in general, but I wonder how several of these points (particularly the points about oversupply, baby boomers, etc.) apply to places like SF or Manhattan. SF, in particular, seems to be extremely young (though that could be observational bias on my part), well-monied, in sharp undersupply of housing, with rent matching or in some cases exceeding the cost of a mortgage. Historica…
> But it's conceivable that SF basically becomes the Mahattan of the Bay Area, a playground for the rich, while everyone else gets pushed into the outlying boroughs and beyond. In such a scenario, where money is little object to the buyers determined to own in SF, what happens to pricing? I lived in Manhattan and in SF now and I would say, yah, I can see that. Already though, the 'boroughs' are being pushed further o…
Yeah, above certain pricing tiers ($1M+ listings), the city seems to be catering to the young and monied without family concerns.
I saw a 1BR / 1 BA in mid-Market listed at $1.39M a few months ago. I thought to myself, how much higher could that ever really go? It's a freaking 1 bedroom. Sure enough, it sold at over-asking, all cash, to what a realtor friend of mine assured me was a twentysomething buyer. Probably Facebook money.
On a semi-related note, these days it seems as if developers are making a serious attempt to gentrify the Tenderloin. Lots of new luxury boutique buildings going up or being converted there. There's a $5M+ penthouse in the heart of the 'Loin for sale right now. And I guess it makes sense, in a way. Provided gentrification can push all the homeless out of the area, it's really centrally located and convenient for people who work in the financial district or general Market / Union Square area.
To your point, though: where do all the homeless people go? They seem to be getting pushed further and further south, especially now that SOMA (South Beach in particular) is the most expensive neighborhood in the city. And if the 'Loin turns posh, what the f- happens to all of them there?
I don't know the US housing market very well but I think anybody discussing the national market as a whole is talking through their hat. Different areas are massively different and are going to react differently to stimuli like rate changes.
In many places, homes available to rent are not and will never be comparable in quality to homes available to purchase.
Nor can you customize rented property to suit your needs more precisely. Want to run ethernet to every room? convert one room into a gym, or a recording studio? Add more space? Not your property, so not your call. Nor can you guarantee that a rental property will continue to be available at a cost you can afford for a long time. Your landlord may elect not to offer a lease renewal. And if you have kids in school, or…
When I read this, I can feel the pull of confirmation bias pushing me to nod my head in agreement, but my skeptical side longs for more citation. The author makes many claims of fact in this article, but offers no citations to back them up. For example: > Because there is a huge glut of empty new houses. Builders are being forced to drop prices even faster than owners, because builders must sell to keep their busines…
As we are on the topic, which percentage of your salary going to pay up rent would you consider "sane"? Edit: I mean post tax. It's a cultural thing, in Italy we don't ever consider the gross salaries.
Broadly speaking, I consider numbers up to ~20% sane. Much beyond that starts to seem ill-advised (but personal preferences are important here, too).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plus renting is basically flushing your money away each money opposed to building equity in something over time.
+1. I live in an extremely rural community where you can afford to buy a 3 bedroom home for under $100k. If you can put 20% down on a 15 year loan and pay it off in 12 years, then yes, buying is much better than renting. If you're 25 years old, from the age of 37 to retirement you've just earned almost 30 years of free living (with the exception of taxes, utilities, etc.).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A tepid Twitter IPO right on the back of Facebook's might convince people to start looking to places with higher growth potential. Anywhere Google takes its Fiber is a good bet. I don't know about a bust, but things can only go so high before people with money and ambition start looking elsewhere.
>Anywhere Google takes its Fiber is a good bet. This... is not as true as you think it is, even here in Silicon valley. If I could get $50/month/resident out of any of the reasonable-sized condos around here, I could easily give everyone gigabit Ethernet. Problem is? even here in the heart of silicon valley, most people don't give a shit. Faster than wi-fi doesn't matter. Hell, even you and me... I talk about bandwid…