Cirios TrendsAsk CiriosDear Cirios: My wife and I own a condo in the city and are thinking about moving to Marin to start a family. We have a nice little nest egg to use for a down payment on a new house, so don’t necessarily need to sell our condo in order to buy in the suburbs. [...] State of the Markets – April 2012“What does your future hold?” For most young people, there may not be a single topic more mind numbingly boring than saving for retirement. In our immediate gratification world, planning for a future that may be decades away just doesn’t make it onto many to-do lists. Meanwhile, we are reading about and seeing firsthand what [...] State of the Markets – February 2012For being the year the world is supposed to end, 2012 has a lot of potential. After all, this is the year the housing market is supposed to hit bottom. Again. It’s also the year banks are finally supposed to unleash their bloated inventory of distressed properties onto the market. We’ve had the story before, [...] State of the Markets – January 201212 Housing Themes for 2012 As 2012 rumbles out of the gate, the US housing market correction enters its sixth year. By all accounts, it’s been the worst real estate slump in generations. But even this far into the cycle, housing bears continue to troll through data releases looking for ominous warnings that vindicate their [...] State of the Markets – December 2011Is 80 the new 60? Retirement A Distant Hope for Most Americans “More than three quarters of middle-class Americans [say] they don’t think they’ll be able to afford to retire until they’re 80.” – Recent Wells Fargo survey “Most investors for the next several years will be lucky to get a 5% return in their [...] Top 5: Bay Area Markets to Watch in 20122012 is sure to be another whacky ride in local real estate markets. And while we aren’t predicting runaway appreciation to kick in, certain cities seem poised for fundamental strength and continued improvement. These are five cities worth watching in the coming year, along with price trend graphs that shed some light into where we’ve [...] State of the Markets – November 2011Housing Ignored as Occupy Movement Takes Center Stage Last Wednesday, we learned that Europe’s leaders were prepared to make bold pledges, promising to end the financial crisis that’s been haunting the EU for almost 18 months. Over the weekend, investors shrugged, as if to say, “What’s new?” Indeed, not much material has changed since last [...] State of the Markets – October 2011Amidst a deluge of recent events that foretell a second round of financial crises, home price data has been oddly sanguine. In the past week, excerpts from headlines on HousingWire indicate that the housing market may actually be in better shape than the economy at large: “Phoenix home sales hit highest August level in [...] State of the Markets – September 2011An epidemic is loose in this country. And it’s getting worse, infecting all aspects of our economy. It’s as insidious as it is misunderstood, passed off by the mainstream press as just another economic benchmark to focus on, then immediately ignore. The name of this epidemic? Uncertainty. It’s really the only piece of economic data [...] San Francisco’s 5 Most Expensive CondosThey say the US real estate market sucks. They say housing is in for more pain. Not everyone is listening. Here are the top 5 highest priced San Francisco condo sales thus far in 2011, as measured by price per square foot. 765 Market St., #27A Sold for $7,200,000 or $2,170/sqft on May 10, 2011. [...] State of the Markets — August 2011When this month’s Cirios Trends goes to ‘print,’ we will be less than 24-hours from the looming August 2nd deadline for raising the US government’s debt ceiling or, by all accounts, suffer financial Armageddon. To try and estimate the market’s reaction to this event is, at this point, impossible. So with that, back to what [...] State of the Markets: July 6, 2011The US housing market has become downright schizophrenic. In the same week that the pending home sales report (measuring new signed purchase contracts) showed a pop in sales during May, mortgage applications dropped despite record low interest rates. Home prices in many areas have hit new lows since the market began correcting more than five [...] State of the Markets June 2011Its official: The housing market has reached a new low. According to the widely watched Case Shiller Home Price Index, home prices are now at the lowest point since the slump began some five years ago. Weighed down by foreclosures, sluggish hiring and a tight lending environment, the US housing market, we are told, is [...] State of the Market May 2011It’s Groundhog Day for Real Estate and it looks like the Market is seeing it’s shadow again. Two years on, the story is sounding awfully familiar. Late in the previous year, politics as usual led to a temporary foreclosure freeze lasting into early spring. In 2008 it was President Obama’s moratorium on repossessions, last year [...] State of the Market April 2011Housing data is getting ugly again. Or rather, housing data has been getting ugly for months but has been pushed to the bottom of the headline queue by, frankly, more important things. As the world learns to cope with ever more turbulence in the Middle East, the aftermath of the disaster(s) in Japan and rising [...] Cirios Trends – March 2011In this month’s Cirios Trends March 2011 Edition: State of the Markets: March 9, 2011 Will expensive oil torpedo real estate? Feature: A Primer on San Francisco Public Schools Making sense of the city’s wacky Lottery system. Redwood City: Best. Climate. Ever. (Also, a nice place to live) Diverse town offers insight into the future [...] The State of the Markets: March 9, 2011This post first appeared in: Cirios Trends – March 2011 Thus far, 2011 has been nothing if not newsworthy. Economic data, financial news and even foreclosure scandals have been supplanted as headline fodder by the historic events taking place in North Africa and the Middle East. It is an exciting, if not somewhat terrifying time [...] Feature: A Primer on San Francisco Public SchoolsThis post first appeared in: Cirios Trends – March 2011 Is the system for educating San Francisco’s children so arcane that even the city itself has given up explaining it? Sort of: The subject is so complex the San Francisco Unified School District’s (or SFUSD) own website contains a Frequently Asked Questions page that is [...] Redwood City: Best. Climate. Ever. (Also, a nice place to live.)This post first appeared in: Cirios Trends – March 2011 Redwood City’s official slogan, “Climate Best by Government Test,” is no joke: At the turn of the 20th century, the US Government found Redwood City to be at the center of one of the world’s three best climates (the others being the Canary Islands and [...] Cirios Trends — Special Edition: Four Real Estate Investment Themes for 2011In this month’s Cirios Trends — Special Edition: Four Real Estate Investment Themes for 2011: State of the Markets: The Year Ahead Cautious optimism. Multi-Family Properties: Have We Come Too Far, Too Fast? Apartment market heats up as investors look for deals. If You Fear Inflation, Should You Buy Real Estate? Does property really shield [...] The State of the Markets: The Year AheadThis post first appeared in: Cirios Trends – Special Edition: The Year Ahead I settled into the rigid chair, personal space all but non-existent in the crowded ballroom. The speaker rose, lights dimmed and a hush fell over the several hundred commercial real estate professionals attending the 2011 State of Real Estate Forum. The first [...] Multi-Family Properties: Have We Come Too Far, Too Fast?This post first appeared in: Cirios Trends – Special Edition: The Year Ahead While most of the positive press in 2010 surrounded the single family home market, perhaps no segment fared as well last year as apartments. Investors piled into multi-family properties for a host of reasons, which leaves the sector at a critical crossroads [...] If You Fear Inflation, Should You Buy Real Estate?This post first appeared in: Cirios Trends – Special Edition: The Year Ahead It often gets thrown around that owning real estate is a good “hedge” against inflation. That is, real estate prices will inherently rise under inflationary pressures. As far as conventional wisdom goes, this seems to be the case. But does this rising [...] Is Equity Sharing the New Way Forward in Housing Finance?This post first appeared in: Cirios Trends – Special Edition: The Year Ahead Since mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapsed in September 2008, housing experts and policy wonks alike have searched for a way forward with these two crucial pillars of the housing market. But each proposed solution, whether it includes a break [...] |