The other day I was talking to a business-savvy fellow who has been looking to get into the real estate market since 2009. Back then, he recounted, everyone thought he was crazy to want to buy something. Ultimately he didn’t. Recently I introduced him to some clients of mine who were looking to partner up with someone on a “fixer” project. Surveying the $1 million prices “fixers” seem to be going for, he used the words “bubble” and “frothy” to describe what’s going on in SF right now. ...
The View from Space – 2010
Ken Rosen is a smart guy. He’s the co-chair of the Fisher Center of Real Estate and Urban Economics at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and the investment adviser of choice to some of the biggest players in real estate, from banks to insurance companies to REITS. Ken might not be able to appraise your house, but he could tell you how each sector of the real estate economy has fared anywhere in the country, and probably in many parts of the world.
Once or twice a year I spend the day in a windowless hotel conference room listening to Ken and some of the biggest heads in the real estate biz expounding on the state of real estate. These guys (and they are mostly guys) look at real estate through the lens of global macro-economics and finances. Want to know where interest rates are going? They study yield curves on T-Bills and monetary policy in the capitals of Europe. This is “the view from space.” ...
Noe Valley has its 24th Street shops and cutesy cafés. Cole Valley has, well, its Cole Street shops and cutesy cafés. The two neighborhoods have been engaged in a friendly battle for the hearts of San Francisco homeowners for as long as I can remember.
After doing a guest post on Noe Valley price trends at theFrontSteps a few weeks ago, Alex, tFS’s friendly editor, suggested that I do a side-by-side comparison of sales trends in Cole Valley and Noe Valley.
Great idea, I thought! Trouble is, Cole Valley sits within a tiny subdistrict of the MLS (see the pink area below?) and as a result, there very few transactions from month to month. ...
