Median prices almost always conceal large disparities in the prices of the underlying individual sales – this is particularly true for larger cities: in San Francisco for example, median house prices by neighborhood range from $465,000 to $4,000,000, and there … Continue reading →
San Francisco Neighborhoods Hit New Peak Values
Paragon Market Report, June 2013 New highs in home prices have not yet been reached in every San Francisco neighborhood, but the majority has either regained the value lost since the 2008 market meltdown, or now exceeded the previous high … Continue reading →
San Francisco & Bay Area Home Values – in Maps
May 2013 Update Below are 3 maps delineating recent median home sales prices and/or average dollar per square foot values for San Francisco neighborhoods and communities around the Bay Area. These statistics are generalities which may fluctuate for a variety … Continue reading →
March Newsletter: What Costs How Much Where in San Francisco
San Francisco Home Values by Neighborhood & Bedroom Count The March 2013 Paragon Market We’ve just completed our semiannual review of SF house and condo values by average and median prices, average size and average dollar per square foot for … Continue reading →
Bay Area Home Prices Projected to Surge
“Looking at 245 Bay Area ZIP codes, Zillow projects that 244 will see home values ratchet up by significant margins in 2013, with 27 ZIPs seeing double-digit appreciation…Popular San Francisco neighborhoods such as Noe Valley, the Castro, Twin Peaks, … Continue reading →
San Francisco Market is Stuck
July 2012 Market Update If you wish, you may jump straight to the market charts. The SF real estate market is stuck. Stuck in high gear: huge buyer demand + the lowest interest rates in history + extremely low inventory … Continue reading →
Maybe it’s time to buy that first house….
That’s what New York Times journalist Ron Lieber discusses in Saturday’s Business Section. You can find a copy of the article here. Of course, nobody really knows where the real estate market is headed but Lieber suggests that now could be a good time to buy. Here are a few of the takeaways:
- First-time home-buyers presumably have the down-payment sitting in the bank, so they can benefit from the drop in home values without having to worry about selling their own home in a depressed market to raise the downpayment.
- Mortgage interest rates are currently pretty low by historical standards and could go lower if the federal government decides to try to drive them lower. If you can lock in a low rate for 30 years, that seems pretty smart.
- The best deals may be in “new” housing, where developers are desperate to get out from under bloated inventories. Those inventories, however, are falling as construction of new projects has come to a halt. With winter being a traditionally slow time to move houses, now may be a particularly good time to buy.
Along these lines, a loan officer recently told me that he’d heard of a downtown high-rise condo that was listed for $1.1 million and was sold by the developer for $770,000 — just enough to pay off the loan amount attributable to the unit. ...