Category: Market Trends

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It’s Now a Buyers’ Market for Higher End Homes and Condos

“Months’ Supply of Inventory,” or MSI, shows the theoretical number of months needed to “absorb” available homes for sale in a given month based on the number of homes going into contract in a given month. The shorter the time period, the stronger the market for sellers, leading to upward pricing pressure.  Longer time periods indicate slower absorption and a buyers’ market.

The chart below illustrates the dramatic difference in MSI for homes up to the median price ($1.3 million for houses, $1.1 million for condos) and in the next price segment higher, versus the luxury home segment, defined here as houses selling for $2,000,000+ and condos for $1,500,000+. (By this definition, luxury sales currently make up about 20% of San Francisco’s home sales.) ...  Additional Details

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The Autumn SF Real Estate Market Survey: “We are neither blind optimists, nor inveterate pessimists….”

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Our Chief Market Analyst, Patrick Carlisle, was recently quoted in a Vanity Fair article in the same paragraph as renowned economist John Maynard Keynes. The subject, a perennial one these days: whether the Silicon Valley, which now indisputably extends north at least as far as the new Salesforce Tower at 415 Mission Street, is in a bubble that’s about to pop. Of course, Keynes is long-dead, but we at Paragon are lucky to have our own resident guru sifting the tea leaves.

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Fewer, Smaller, Costlier: San Francisco Housing Trends

HouseJudging by the number of family rooms, bedrooms and bathrooms being shoe-horned into every Victorian-era attic and basement around town, you’d think that Homo Sapiens San Francisco is living much larger than his/her cousins of a hundred years ago.

It’s true that people a hundred years ago were smaller and had a lot less “things”  than 21st Century Human.  The challenge, for those that can afford it, is to find ways to squeeze extra space out of beautiful but functionally obsolescent homes that the  SF Dept.  of Building Inspection, in its infinite wisdom, is dead set against anyone demolishing.  Ever.  Never mind whether it’s a grand Victorian Dame or a sorry mid-century stucco box with no character and rotten innards. ...  Additional Details

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Bay Area Home Purchase vs. S&P 500

We recently put together an analysis comparing the comparative investment returns of buying a San Francisco Bay Area house, gold, Apple stock, an S&P 500 Index fund or putting money into a bank CD in January 2012 (Of Real Estate, Gold & Apple Stock). Not unreasonably, the issue arose regarding returns over a longer term. Now, whatever time period is used will always be fundamentally arbitrary, and different periods will often generate dramatically different results. Twenty years is a round number, which allows a nice mix of recessions, bubbles, crashes and recoveries to be encompassed within our inquiry. Continue reading →