The Case-Shiller Index report for May 2014 for the 5-county San Francisco Metro Statistical Area was released yesterday, showing another small bump in home prices from April to May. The aggregate or total index is now up approximately 55% since the market recovery began in early 2012. The 5 counties covered by the index are San Francisco, Marin, San Mateo, Alameda and Contra Costa.

Our full report can be found here: http://www.paragon-re.com/Case_Shiller_Reflects_Accelerating_Home_Prices.

However, Case-Shiller also breaks out home price changes by price tier – low, middle and high – and each tier has experienced dramatically different trend lines since 2000. The low price tier – homes found mostly in Alameda and Contra Costa counties (though also other Bay Area counties not in the SF MSA, such as Solano, Sonoma and Napa) experienced a crazy bubble much larger than the other price tiers and subsequently experienced a much bigger crash due to foreclosures and short sales. The middle and high price tiers, which predominate in San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo, experienced much smaller bubbles and crashes. This is dramatically illustrated in the first graph below. ...  Additional Details

As hard as it might be to believe, in the 1980s you could buy property in Bernal Heights for next to nothing. A long period of decline and neglect had left the proud, working-class neighborhood in such a state that businesses and homeowners alike had fled, leaving boarded-up storefronts and empty Victorians in their wake. Even the Bank of America, which had kept a presence on Bernal’s Cortland Avenue for decades, considered moving out.

Today, such an exodus seems absurd, especially in a neighborhood recently called the country’s “hottest” by Redfin. Buyers now target Bernal Heights so often that neighborhood homes routinely sell for well over their asking price, sometimes after fierce bidding wars. Bernal Heights is well past its “low” point. ...  Additional Details

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What’s Behind San Francisco’s Real Estate Market? July 2014 This chart is a simplified, smoothed-out and approximate look at the last few real estate cycles in San Francisco, illustrating estimated percentage changes in home prices from successive peaks and bottoms … Continue reading →

There are still some in San Francisco who don’t know much about Bernal Heights, some who don’t even know where it is. Simply put, they need to get with the program. While Bernal has been around since the 1860s, three … Continue reading →