EconomicsSoMa vs. Nob Hill: Where would you buy? By Andrew Jeffery I had an interesting conversation this morning about relative performance in different San Francisco neighborhoods during and after the housing bubble burst. Conventional wisdom would lead one to believe that SoMa, the fringier and “overdeveloped” part of San Francisco would have performed better than Nob Hill, which is much more established as [...] 5 Reasons Why the Housing Market Will Not Crash (Again)This post first appeared on Minyanville. Three years of wrong predictions notwithstanding, perma-bears are emerging from a winter’s hibernation with tall tales of another impending collapse in home prices. They could not be more wrong. For pundits, academics, bloggers and others who get their market “color” from crunching numbers and poring over 50-page long analyst [...] Ask 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 [...] Is California Bucking the Trend, or Living in a Bubble? From HousingWire, these two headlines tell quite a story … As mentioned below, California — San Francisco in particular — continue to write their economic story. Crunching Bay Area Multifamily Sales DataChewing through some multifamily sales data this morning, I compiled these simple charts to break down 2011 sales into price buckets. No real surprises here, other than to highlight that by both sale price and unit count, $1-3 million buildings dominant the apartment building space in the Bay Area. If you take out one large [...] 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, [...] Homeownership at Any CostHow the National Association of Realtors Convinced Taxpayers to Subsidize the American Dream By Andrew Jeffery (Published by FT Press, in conjunction with Minyanville.com) Wall Street has been occupied. Mortgage brokers shut down. Bankers, vilified. Even struggling homeowners, behind on their mortgages, receive scant pity as they are forcefully removed from their homes. But what [...] 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 [...] US Foreclosure Policy Contradicts ItselfSo, let me get this straight — the Massachusetts Attorney General is suing some of the biggest banks for wrongful foreclosures in its state. Fine, we’ve heard that before. And since the ability to foreclose for non-payment is essential to a lender securing its interest in a property, Ally Bank announced this weekend that they have stopped buying [...] Can Foreign Buyers Save the Housing Market?This post first appeared on Minyanville. The United States may be in danger of losing its status as “the land of opportunity,” but depressed prices have been attracting foreign buyers ever since the housing market went off the rails. Now, Washington wants to make it even easier for overseas investors to park cash in American [...] Real Estate Investors Hungry, Even as Economy StumblesThis post first appeared on Minyanville. Despite reporting largely what we already knew, last Friday’s downbeat jobs report has so-called housing market experts running scared. Investors, on the other hand, are licking their chops. Housing economists awoke smugly Friday morning (July 8), eager for the monthly jobs report to affirm their views on the future [...] Got Oil?Snaps to the folks at oilprice.com for this visualization of our dependence on fossil fuels. And thanks to @kevindepew from Minyanville for the tip. Please Enable Javascript for this Oil Price widget to work Is the Mortgage Interest Deduction Doomed?This post first appeared on Minyanville. It doesn’t make nearly the headline fodder as revolution in Egypt (or Wisconsin), but the fate of the mortgage interest deduction, or MID, is a hot topic in housing finance circles this budget season. And while eliminating the MID may sound like a popular, hard-line approach to expensive government [...] 10 Reasons to Be Bullish on HousingThis piece first appeared on Minyanville. Almost five full years into the housing downturn, it’s still cool to be bearish on real estate. But cool isn’t always right: Despite headwinds such as looming shadow inventory, a lackluster job market, and geopolitical instability, there are plenty of reasons why rose-colored glasses may be the real estate [...] 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 [...] 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 [...] Cirios Trends — Special Edition: 2010 Real Estate RoundupIn this month’s Cirios Trends — Special Edition: 2010 Real Estate Roundup, check out: State of the Markets: Year in Review Despite headwinds, opportunities abound. Foreclosure-Gate: What the Hell Is (Was) Going On? Shoddy paperwork ensnares country’s biggest lenders. Around the Bay: Big Bites from 2010 News that made the front page. Bay Area home [...] The State of the Markets: Year in ReviewThis post first appeared in: Cirios Trends – Special Edition: 2010 Real Estate Roundup In February of this year, we wrote: “while many risks still remain for the housing market, we believe the time for being pessimistic about real estate is finished. That’s not to say there won’t be more price declines, more foreclosures, more [...] Foreclosure-Gate: What the Hell Is (Was) Going On?This post first appeared in: Cirios Trends – Special Edition: 2010 Real Estate Roundup A 2010 housing market recap would be incomplete without a rundown of what has become known as “Foreclosure-Gate,” a foray into the procedural minutiae of distressed mortgage servicing. In September of this year – in the midst of the crucial mid-term [...] Around the Bay: Big Bites from 2010This post first appeared in: Cirios Trends – Special Edition: 2010 Real Estate Roundup Spring 2010: Financial Crisis Goes Greek Believe it or not, Greece’s national debt is larger than its economy. Sound implausible? The United States’ national debt is also larger than its economy (but that’s another story). Years of uncontrolled spending, cheap debt [...] Cirios Trends – September 2010In this month’s Cirios Trends: Finding Real Estate Opportunities, check out: The State of the Markets – September 15, 2010 Housing is dead. Or is it? Feature: What To Do with Fannie and Freddie? Mortgage giants are propping up the housing market, but at what cost? Around the Bay: Local News Bites Goings on that [...] The State of the Markets – 9/15/2010This post first appeared in the September edition of: Cirios Trends: In Search of Real Estate Opportunities In a financial landscape marred with uncertainty, there is one constant, one thing that “everyone” knows: Housing is in trouble. And while the bears certainly have ammunition to support their pessimistic case, history tells us that when everyone [...] Feature: What To Do With Fannie and Freddie?This post first appeared in the September edition of: Cirios Trends: In Search of Real Estate Opportunities Every couple months, the trials and tribulations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (collectively known as the Government Sponsored Enterprises, or GSEs), appear on the national radar. This typically happens around earnings season, when staggering loss numbers are [...] |