patrick.net

Is there data to back this up somewhere? For example, the average house square foot should have gone up in the recent year (bigger house = more expensive) if this is true, right?

Not necessarily. Better homes in better locations are more expensive.

You can also take a look at the asking price trend. If the median asking prices is going down while the median sale price is going up, you know the mix is changing.

@James,

Excellent question. We know the median price can be skewed in either direction (up or down) by a greater-than-average number of sales of either very high-end houses or low-end houses. It can also be skewed by lower-than-average sales volume (like we're seeing now), because each individual sale that gets recorded represents a larger fraction of total sales for a given area.

But the real question for us is, do the numbers really support the assumption that mostly high-end houses are selling, and skewing the median higher?

I'm pretty sure the OFHEO quarterly sales report is coming out soon (tomorrow?), and that it --unlike CAR's "median" stat-- mostly relies on same-house sales. In other words, while it's not perfect (excludes condo/townhouse/co-op sales) it is a little better at comparing apples to apples: http://www.ofheo.gov/HPIFAQ.asp

If anyone out there has some good stats/links on what the break-down is for houses that are selling now vs. previous years, please post them.

However, I do not expect prices to have come down significantly already. Core Bay Area is still a Frickin Fortress.

SF "area" also includes Santa Clara, Contra Costa, Solano, etc.

"Yeah, that usually happens when it hits the fan" LOL!

Watch out below, above and to the sides! Aw the hell with it, get coveralls and rubber boots!

Watch out below, above and to the sides! Aw the hell with it, get coveralls and rubber boots!

I would just leave the room.

I’m a little suspicious of www.housingtracker.net’s data. It claims that the current inventory of the SF area is 15639 and the data is taken from MLS listings. But if I go to mlslistings.com and choose the San Francisco, Alameda, and San Mateo counties, I see only 2778 listings available. Am I missing something here?

Feel free to email the guy - I've done it before. He's pretty friendly.

The phenomenon of falling house prices on the outskirts while prices of homes in the prestigious areas are stable has occurred in Sydney, Australia a couple of years ago based on news reports I have seen.

Anyone with more experience of the Australian housing market would care to explain why prices of the more expensive homes in Sydney remained stable.

Gavin,

Sydney is the financial centre of Australia, so the London/Manhattan effect applies (on a smaller scale, of course) to the more expensive houses.

Will someone please delete the pedophiles comments.

Will someone please delete the pedophiles comments.

HARM,

IIRC the Case-Schiller methodology used by S&P to obtain the prices for their traded futures is also based on repeat sales.

I would suggest this might be the most carefully measured/calibrated of all the house price indices, because S&P have a real monetary interest (trading volume) in it being an "honest measure".

Only applies to 10 cities, though.

From CR,

"The Q1 OFHEO HPI will be released on Thursday, May 31st."

ozajh and HARM,

I would tend to agree with all of you about the Case-Schiller and OFHEO indices as being most accurate, especially compared to the NAR and even the Census Bureau data. What I've always wondered about was the relatively small sample size resulting inaccurate representation of the "true" trend.

And BTW, the Case-Schiller index is decidely DOWN for SF.

Yeah, the data is accurate, but OFHEO numbers are based on conforming loans. I think the last time a conforming loan in the BA was written was in the last century.
Contra Costa (where they are making more land) data gets aggregated with SF data (where they are not building any more SFHs) in the San Francisco Case-Shiller Index. Obviously, it must be the sales in the boonies driving the SF Index down. BTW, the 10 city Case-Shiller Composite Index is "predicting" an approximately .5% drop per month for the next 6 months.

SP, prices are not necessarily falling... it's just that the realtor is getting hungry ;-) (fewer number of total sales, less pie to be divided)

GC

You are one sicko. Wasn't it enough when you drove out a bunch of our old regulars with your self-imagined cleverly hidden trolling? I'm not sure if you're a bona fide paedophile or just a jackass trying to stir shit up, but I filtered you out for 6 months before...

Randy,

Just erase and ignore. I don't like these random troll/cry-for-attention comments, but this blog seems to get past them.

Honestly, I can only think of one person that GC sort of drove out and saying more of my opinion on that matter is likely to get me in trouble.

I am following 5 homes in the Danville/Alamo area right now in different price ranges. None of them have sold in the past 2 months. The highest price home has dropped its price by $500,000. (not a typo) and another has dropped its price by $100,000. Inventory seems to be increasing.
Can you say S-L-O-W-D-O-W-N .

Honestly, I can only think of one person that GC sort of drove out and saying more of my opinion on that matter is likely to get me in trouble.

Hmm...

James Says:
I’m a little suspicious of www.housingtracker.net’s data. It claims that the current inventory of the SF area is 15639 and the data is taken from MLS listings.

It is odd that when you find a discrepancy between housingtracker data and your mlslisting search data, it is only housingtracker that you are suspicious of.

SP

[previous reply got cut off by mistake]
The housingtracker site includes condos also in the inventory. Did you include them in your search?

SP

EBGuy said:
prices are not necessarily falling… it’s just that the realtor is getting hungry ;-) (fewer number of total sales, less pie to be divided)

Starving realtwhore or not, I would say prices _are_ falling. It will take a few weeks time for this to be undeniable.

SP

astrid,

Some things are worth standing up to. GC is the epitome of what jeopardizes internet freedom.

He is a coward who fancies himself an intellectual anarchist. If he's capable of disgusting Surfer-X, then he is clearly devoid of redeeming value.

The only reason I haven't moved to ban him thus far is in honoring our policy of being "tolerant" of trolls. That doesn't mean I have to be quiet about his shit, or that I have to allow it on my threads (this is Harm's thread).

DairyQueen

Danville and Alamo are in the Bay Area, California

Things are really slowing in Fremont as well. My wife and I have looked at two places in the past month. One has been dropped from 800 to 760. Listing agent called last Tuesday to say they received an offer and we'd have two days to get our offer in. 8 days later no pending sign posted. The other place listed for 720 has dropped to 700 - listing agent informed us of the drop by voicemail. My wife wondered how he got her phone number when we didn't leave our info at the open house. I informed her that he got it from his cell phone history log when we called to see when the open house would be.

DAiryQUeen Says:
DQ Reports Bay Area Prices up 3.8% YoY in April, 2007 from a year ago. Sorry, no implosion.

Yeah, these days that DQ "report" is sounding about as credible as a letter to the Penthouse Forum.

SP

Marin is up 8.8% only because of how statistics work.

Many less homes are selling here. More $2.5m homes are selling than $899K homes. No one is buying at the bottom end.

Hit the "average" button on your HP and you'll get a higher price, even while house-on-house prices are falling.

What can you get for $899K in PRIME Marin? I bet the bedroom to bathroom ratio would be severe.

GC: Your off-topic posts remind me of Casey Serin's blog---a plea for attention implemented with repeated "evidence" to trigger a response, followed by a feeble defense or weak agreement.

For all your ramblings on shoes, anal eroticism and your obession with the reversal of male and female roles, the truth is that you are either flamingly gay or you are not. Your sexual orientation probably has no bearing on what you post here. You post off-topic garbage for the negative attention value, not for any sort of peer affirmation. Just get on with it already. If you were really a handsome guy getting a lot of female attention in real life, you would have neither the time nor the inclination to dig for scorn and sympathy on a housing blog. Freud would cheerfully tell you that himself.

I went to the peninsula today and drove around Belmont, since I heard so much about the neighborhood and never got around to see what it is like.

Can someone please enlighten me if I drove in the bad parts of Belmont (foothill and up on the hills), because the whole place is littered with run-down homes with tiny lots. The view may be good, but I would absolutely hate my neighbors who don't seem to have enough money to maintain their lawn. There are a few updated house here and there, but it is far from what I am used to in the more universally posh areas of South Bay.

Parts of Sunnyvale, for example, looks working class, but it doesn't look poor. Parts of Belmont look POOR, it seems like the people staying in these supposedly million-dollar homes cannot even afford minimal maintenance.

Damn that. My post went into moderation. First one in many months. Probably not worth fishing out though.

You know I'm not a regular poster, but I read this blog a lot and have done for a couple of years now. I think GC should be banned and his comments above removed - they are not appropriate and I believe he made some other inappropriate comments in a couple of the other threads recently.

OO - you haven't been the otherside of the 101 then, close to the bay - there are some really run down pocket areas of Sunnyvale - although they were being regenerated - rather some had been bought and bulldozed.

Claire,

you are right, I almost forgot the commerical part of Sunnyvale. But I never hear from anyone exalting Sunnyvale as the "upscale" neighborhood, while I hear about Belmont as the jewel of the peninsula quite a few times, so I decided to check it out since I was traveling to the City today.

Maybe I missed the really posh parts of Belmont, but for the areas that I drove by, all I can say is, I am real happy that I don't live there.

GC seems to have urges he/she cannot control, which make him/her not able to fit in with most people.

OO

The nice neighborhoods are mostly up off of Ralston at the top of the hill before 280. To the North there are a couple of McMansion developments. In the homes ringing San Juan Canyon -- many of which are older homes with elders living there and thus looking unkempt -- there are some pockets of $1.5m-$2.0m homes with spectacular views and even acerage.

The other side of Ralston has the "prime" neighborhoods, nearly all of which have curb appeal. Caremark is what it's usually called; past and behind the middle school.

Belmont is not a "jewel". It is a nice little "bedroom community" that has managed to gentrify itself and contain the blight fairly well. Most people I knew with kids in Belmont loved the primary schools. Some used the middle school. Most resorted to private schools and avoided Carlmont HS.

Belmont is like San Carlos in many ways, just a bit more foothills-ish.

I'm encouraged to hear I'm not the only one who sees GC for the wretch he (I believe he's a he) is.

Randy H,

Our "intellectual anarchist" as you aptly termed him seems determined to test the precise limits of our tolerance here. So be it. I plan on ignoring him for now, as he seems to feed off the negative attention like a spoiled child. I could care less about Freud excerpts, but I did remove the "poop report" links.

Yeah, whatever...