San Francisco Out-Perfoms the Bay Area
According to DataQuick as reported in the SF Examiner, comparing October year over year sales (2007 to 2006), every other county in the Bay Area saw declines in volume of home sales between 28% and 54%.
SF County saw a decline of only 8.2% in volume of home sales, with an increase in median home sales price of 3.9%.
CBS news reports:
'Median home values were flat or declined in October compared to the year-ago period in Alameda, Contra Costa, Napa, Solano and Sonoma counties. They were up in Marin, Santa Clara, San Francisco and San Mateo counties.'
Will the sun continue to come out for San Francisco real estate? Good question. I of course have my theory's but no one knows for sure.
What I do know is that when I moved to Sydney, one of the things I missed most about home, were the foggy San Francisco days. It forces everyone to slow down just a little - everything gets a little more still and quiet and you never know what might emerge from just beyond your vision.
Hope you're out and about enjoying the fog this misty Saturday morning. I certainly intend to (300 emails behind or no...)
posted by Meredith Martin @ 8:47 AM
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Executive Summary
- There is no good news
- The last time this happened, the peak was not seen again for eight years
- Combined with inflation, San Francisco Bay Area house prices declined 8.3% versus one year ago
Conclusion
- Despite what your local realtor wants you to believe, house prices are coming down in the City as well and it is definitely not "always a great time to buy"
******
Rollover the little "10 Year" graph icon and see if you can spot the outlier and where you think it may go:
http://www.macromarkets.com/csi_housing/MSA/san_francisco.asp#1year
Or:
http://tinyurl.com/242dnp
******
ECONOMIC REPORT
Home prices falling everywhere: S&P
Down 4.5% nationally over past year, Case-Shiller says
By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch
http://www.marketwatch.com
Last Update: 11:42 AM ET Nov 27, 2007
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- U.S. home prices were falling in every region of the country in September, according to a closely watched index of home prices released Tuesday.
Home prices fell in September in all 20 major cities covered by the Case-Shiller price index, even in cities that had been holding up before the August freeze in mortgage markets, Standard & Poor's reported.
"There is no real positive news in today's data," said Robert Shiller, chief economist at MacroMarkets LLC, and the co-developer of the index. Shiller said it's nearly impossible to forecast when the market could turn around.
For the national Case-Shiller home price index, prices fell 1.7% in the third quarter compared with the second quarter, and were down a record 4.5% in the past year. It was the largest quarter-to-quarter price decline in the 20 years covered by the index.
For the first time in this housing cycle, prices in all 20 cities dropped from the previous month, with the biggest declines in the former bubble cities of Miami, Phoenix, San Diego, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Tampa.
For the 20 cities, prices fell a record 4.9% year-over-year. Meanwhile, prices were down 5.5% year-over-year in the original 10-city index, the largest drop in the 10-city index since 1991.
The last time prices fell so much, it took more than eight years for home prices to return to their peak level.
"We judge the recent decline in home prices to be the beginning of an extended decline," wrote Drew Matus, an economist for Lehman Bros., who said prices would probably fall 15% from peak to trough nationally.
"With supply overhang growing and mortgage financing tougher to obtain, home prices are going to soften considerably further in the quarters ahead," wrote Joshua Shapiro, chief economist for MFR.
The Case-Shiller index, which tracks multiple sales of the same homes, is considered by many observers to be the best gauge of national and metropolitan-area real-estate values.
Falling prices make it more difficult for homeowners to tap the equity in their homes or refinance their mortgages. Millions of homeowners who took out adjustable-rate loans in 2005 and 2006 face sharply higher mortgage payments this year and next, with foreclosures having already soared as the result of payment resets.
"It is surprising that the weaker housing market so far has had such a limited effect on U.S. household spending," wrote Gabriel Stein, an analyst for Lombard Street Research. "However, if house prices do continue to fall at their recent pace, it would be astonishing indeed if this did not badly hit consumer confidence and hence spending."
In a separate report, the Conference Board reported a sharp drop in the consumer confidence index in November, largely because of worries about the near-term outlook for energy prices and the stock market. See full story.
Plunging home prices will also be felt on Wall Street, where banks and other money managers have leveraged untold billions in complex securities based on increasingly risky mortgages.
Boom goes bust
Former boom towns in Florida and Southern California have now passed Detroit for the dubious honor of having the largest price declines in the past year. Prices are still up in the Pacific Northwest and in areas of the South, but they're rising at a slower pace.
Fifteen of the 20 cities tracked in the index have seen prices fall in the past year, led by Tampa, Fla., with an 11.1% decline, followed by Miami with a 10% loss and Detroit with a 9.3% loss. Indeed, eight of the 20 cities recorded their largest-ever year-over-year price declines in September.
On a year-over-year basis, prices were up in five cities, led by Seattle and Charlotte, N.C., with 4.7% increases. After adjusting for inflation of 3.7% in the past year, real prices were up in just two of 20 cities.
Here are the year-over-year nominal price changes for the 20 cities covered by the index:
Tampa, down 11.1%; Miami, down 10%; Detroit, down 9.6%: San Diego, down 9.6%; Las Vegas, down 9%; Phoenix, Ariz., down 8.8%; Los Angeles, down 7%; Washington, D.C., down 6.6%; San Francisco, down 4.6%; Minneapolis, down 4.5%; Cleveland, down 4%; New York, down 3.6%; Boston, down 3.2%; Chicago, down 2.5%; Denver, Colo., down 0.9%; Dallas, up 0.2%; Atlanta, up 0.4%; Portland, Ore., up 2.2%; Charlotte, up 4.7%; and Seattle, up 4.7%.
Rex Nutting is Washington bureau chief of MarketWatch.
Thanks for your comments Jack, love that you check in and that I'm comment worthy. Wow - long post.
Rather than address your facts and figures, I'll say two things.
1. NO WHERE ANYWHERE in this blog will you EVER EVER EVER hear me say now is a 'good time to buy'. Doesn't matter what the housing market is doing up or down. I've seen people lose money in real estate, in this city in both up and 'down' markets although by a large margin they are the exceptions and usually entail abnormal circumstances.
Believe it or not, there are people out there that need or want to buy, and they still are buying. Even today, we are seeing multiple offers - despite the dire warnings...which is not something realtors can manipulate although many of us would love to have that power - we dont.
2. Personally, I distrust forecasting predictions like anyone would distruct a realtor that says 'NOW is the time to buy.' God that gets up my nose. If a real estate agent EVER says that to you - fire them, same as I would fire a forecaster that pretended to be able to predict what the future holds based on past trends. I dont think any one forecasting can predict the true reason people buy or sell - consumer confidence.
You show me a graph that predicts that, then I'm going to start paying closer attention.
I am so sick and tired of these bay area real estate blogs saying that home prices are rising. That is such BS. Homes are sitting around forever, and price decreases are happening now in EVERY COUNTY including your beloved marin and san mateo.
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Can't we all just get along??
http://www.gregorygarver.com
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