patrick.net

You know it is just that damn simple! Last year my wife and I would pour over listings and try to figure out how to ’shoe horn’ our lives into them and now if it doesn’t fit like a glove, turn the page. Next!

Very true indeed.

Dinor,
I have to be realistic. I don't think me and my wife who make 85k combined will ever be able to afford any kind of home that would be close to what we would consider to our standards here, but I do firmly believe that the BA is now on the tipping point for severe reductions. I am glad I will be around to witness it.

Will there be demand for "luxury" apartments outside Google's orb of influence?

I remember 550 Moreland has rather spacious floorplans.

They claimed they will keep the property value up by managing this mixed unit in a A-1 level whatever that means.

Free steak sauce?

WW2,

Judge Schmells: "You know I'm no slouch myself"

Ty Webb: "Don't sell yourself short Judge, you're a tremendous slouch"

*From the movie "Caddyshack"

O.K then, would you admit that things are about to get as juicy as they are going to get in a long, long time?

Dinor,
I was never a fan of soap operas, but what we're about to see will be highly entertaining.

You got a “problem” with using a thread graphic, or what?

I am just lazy.

Mr. P,

Since you are admittedly "motivation-challenged" on the thread graphic subject (kudos for your honesty, btw), I have taken the liberty of procuring a topic-appropriate image on your behalf:

i.e., "Spring bounce" = "dead cat bounce"
Please post this at your leisure, sir. :-)

WW2,

Soap Opera? HD and LOW are already feeling the pinch. The only time I hear housing related stocks mentioned any more is for "candidates to short" lists!

"As the ARM Resets"

"The Young and the FB's"

"One Payment to Live"

"General Hysteria"

"Santa Barbara"

HARM, can you help me resample it to a smaller size. Thanks! :)

Peter P,

Click the "Edit" link (only visible to you) under the thread text on the main page.

Insert this line above your body text:

oops --my tags didn't post. Anyway, it looks like you got it already --thanks!

I know this is yesterday's news to those who follow Ben's blog daily, but the Sacramento Bee just coined a new term that absolutely *must* be added to our Housing Bubble Glossary:

http://www.sacbee.com/content/homes/re_news/story/14267623p-15079236c.html

"Repartments": Condo conversions that have been converted right back to apartments, leaving recent buyers completely screwed (and surrounded by JBRs).

"Like pennys in a pickle jar, so are the values of homes draining slowly away... in the homes of the housing bubble.." arg! I was never good at spur of the moment comedy..

Spring bounce topic and not yet one SFMLS troll comment? Quite frankly I sense a disturbing lack of work ethic on the part of our PRIME troll. Must be counting its equity.

Inventory situations in South Bay is bad, but we need to see more price reductions. Some new listings come out with outrageous pricing, the owner FBs must be extrapolating 04/05 pricing growth for another 5 years to reach the asking price.

One thing to watch on the way down is definitely inventory. When I was looking around in 93, South Bay inventory was not way up, it was bulging a bit but generally ok. Right now fringe towns like Gilroy and Morgan Hill, and even Evergreen inventory is getting ridiculous.

I think we should all add KBE to our names.

KB (Homes) Executive?

There might be a few more homes on the market in Noe Valley, but then again, there might not. According to the Noe Valley Voice, 12 homes sold in April this year, compared with 12 last year. Here are the nitty gritties from Alexander Clark's excellent newsletter:

Address Neighborhood BD BA SQFT $/SQFT Sold Date List $ Sold $ SP%LP
470 Day St Noe Valley 2 1 1805 $642.66 5/31/2006 $1,149,000 $1,160,000 100.96 %
4529 25th St Noe Valley 3 2 1400 $767.86 5/25/2006 $1,090,000 $1,075,000 98.62 %
1485 Sanchez St Noe Valley 5 2 1500 $600.00 5/22/2006 $799,000 $900,000 112.64 %
239 Valley St Noe Valley 2 1 1050 $856.19 5/24/2006 $899,000 $899,000 100.00 %
1606 Castro St Noe Valley 3 2.50 2461 $711.09 6/2/2006 $1,749,000 $1,750,000 100.06 %
76 Homestead Noe Valley 2 2 1800 $793.33 5/22/2006 $1,295,000 $1,428,000 110.27 %
3945 25th St Noe Valley 2 1 1128 $1,077.13 5/24/2006 $1,095,000 $1,215,000 110.96 %
4250 23rd St Noe Valley 5 3.50 3382 $709.64 5/12/2006 $2,149,000 $2,400,000 111.68 %
903 Sanchez St Noe Valley 3 2 1944 $694.44 6/2/2006 $1,250,000 $1,350,000 108.00 %
579 Elizabeth St Noe Valley 3 2.50 1945 $826.22 6/9/2006 $1,375,000 $1,607,000 116.87 %
766 27th St Noe Valley 3 2 1735 $1,037.46 5/25/2006 $1,500,000 $1,800,000 120.00 %
3739 26th St Noe Valley 3 1 1130 $902.65 5/12/2006 $1,020,000 $1,020,000 100.00 %
1519 Noe St Noe Valley 2 1 0 Infinity 6/5/2006 $799,000 $865,000 108.26 %
Average 3 1.9 1773 $801.60 $1,280,833 $1,383,667 107.51 %

Hmm, not sure how that is going to come out after formatting. Anyway, the bottom line is $801/sq ft (compared to $750/sq ft last year) and the average home going for 107% of asking. So 5% YoY appreciation, which is way down but still doesn't qualify as actually flat yet. Just for grins, I tried zillowing all those properties and found that zillow actually did a pretty good job on them: 4 estimates were too low, 3 were too high and one was on the mark ($1 off actually). The odd thing was that zillow tended to be too high on the smaller properties and too low on the larger ones. Who the heck would pay $2.35M to live in Noe Valley?!?! The amount of money still sloshing around just astonishes me sometimes.

brightc asked,

If there is no crash, there’s at least a 20% correction in the Bay Area housing market. Is that wishful thinking, or it’s entirely a plausible scenario?

brightc, this is what I am predicting and that puts me as the one of the most bullish regular posters here. So I think pretty much all of us would consider that plausible.

Sorry Sir Fur, is that trollalishious enough for you? I am not trying to troll, just present objective data. Obtained from a Realtwhore though, so take it for what that is worth.

How do you guys make those little trademark (TM) symbols anyway? Do you cut and paste them?

newsfreak Says:
Imagine if we still communicated by pidgeons ferrying little notes back and forth or the Pony Express.
One must admit Gutenburg is not honored enough.

and don't forget to thank Al Gore for inventing the Internet...

Wow, Noe Valley is $800/sqft? Must be a nice place.

Then I guess San Mateo is not that bad at $600/sqft.

Different Sean, do you sleep at all?

have a read of this:

http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/boeb/boeb03.htm

sirs were pretty disposable in days of old when knights were bold, unfortunate occupational hazard...

Different Sean, do you sleep at all?

i'm back! :P

Went to that site PeterP put up

I did not put up the site. I merely pointed a link to it. :)

1 home for every 94 people is on the market. A ratio unmatched in any other market.

Well, don't we have 1 agent for every 52 people in California?

People seem to be bullish on Merced because of the new UC, as if every entering freshman must buy a house.

Oh, this is my kind of thread !

Bay Area inventory is up - WAY up from the beginning of the year, when I started tracking. This week I noticed a nice jump in ZipRealty site. Maybe they don't update regularly. My last weeks post about Evergreen, the inventory was 348. It's 364 now. That area is extremely over-rated.

The prices are not down yet from 2005 levels. The fringe areas are seeing gains from 2005 getting eroded. But the prices have not crashed in Phoenix and Sacramento yet. So it's still some time for BA.

The fall is going to be verrrry interesting. We will see YOY -ve numbers and a huge inventory. By that time even SJ Merc News will have a pessimistic article.

It's going to be THE FALL !

Don't you just love when they tell you how desperate they are to sell? :evil:

I already made him an offer for $200K.....but not a buck over that! :)

It's madness I tell you, madness. First came the lack of abiding hope, an eerie quiet, and now look there's a FOR SALE sign on every lawn. It was a deafening lack of sound. "Burn them to the ground!" is what I yelled to no avail and now look how many there are surrounding us. Sure, we're on the edge of a precipice, every realtor hearing voices, having visions, every realtor vomiting blood and telling us it's time to buy, hell, buy two. We tried the tactic of the despairing weblog, the strategy of the "real estate is dead" networking and I ask you right here, right now, who will YOU hurt when the change comes over you?

Just found out on Zillow that a rather crappy 3BR 1960s rancher in my immediate neighbourhood (West SJ) sold for $1,217,000 six weeks ago, $200k above asking. This house was always one of the less well maintained houses on the street. They put lipstick on the pig before putting it up for sale: new sod lawn and a new paint job, and it worked.
The mind boggles. No one seems to live in it so far, though?!

The house across the street (about the same size and age) went up for sale two weeks ago at (get this) $1,388,000, and the open houses so far were *busy*. I think folks had to stay outside at times because the inside was packed. Mostly South Asian families in brand new, rather expensive cars. No sale yet.

On the other hand, I think none of the houses for sale on my 6 mile bike commute through Saratoga and Campbell has actually sold in the last two months. Some just went off the market, most are still for sale. And every couple of days, new signs come up, plus there's lots of new construction that will come online soon.

And here's the kicker.
A few streets down, someone had rebuilt a 1960s rancher to the point where I actually liked it. 5BR, 3000sf, very tastefully done. It was on sale for $1,688,000 for about three months. No price reductions and a lonely realtor spending lots of unproductive hours at the open houses. Then the sign disappeared three weeks ago. No "SOLD", nothing. I thought the listing expired, but Zillow says it was sold on 5/26 for $975,000.

So, six weeks ago, houses go for 20% above asking, and three weeks ago, it's 40% below?!??

@Unalloyed,

Huh?

Would it be bad karma to send an email (profane of course) to the McDebtor in allah’s post?

Yes. Bad karma. Do not do it.

Girgl,

volatility before the stock market crash :-)

Girgl,

just curious, is your school district in Cupertino? Which high school it feeds into? That might explain the busy season 6 weeks ago, I am seeing the same thing with good school districts.

So great that The Dubya himself made a surprise trip to Iraq - such a surprise that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki didn’t know about it until five minutes before they met.

Nothing says “Dignity” like having the POTUS sneaking around to prove how well things are going and how much the Iraqis love us.

it's a shame he is not popular in iraq the way david hasselhoff is in germany. what is the Hoff getting right that Dubya isn't?

HARM,

I've been a huge fan of "Earl, the Dead Cat" ever since Goodyear issued a "death warrant" in National Lampoon circa 1976. I recall "Earl" even came with his own certified death certificate? Even dead cats need love!

The Housing Bubble Glossary would be making a grave error by not including "Repartments" in it's stable of descriptive terms. Already it feels as natural as saying "uh-partment" with the added satisfaction that some FB specuvestor only collects about 1/3 his PITI. I move for a second!

Lady La La,

While I am grateful for the title of "Wizard of Rains" alas, I am unworthy. The title of Wizard implies that one has powers and if I had one iota I would make it STOP! Perhaps Duke of Drizzle would be more appropriate?

Three houses that were pending in around my hood just went back up for sale. One of them is this utterly crappy, rundown excuse of a house. The asking price, though high, is still way cheaper than the avg home in the area. 530k. But it is now also back up for sale. I saw the owner frantically ripping up carpet through the open door. I kinda want this guy to sell his house. He's this older poor guy driving a beat up truck. Looks like he's never had any money to speak of, so out of all the people that really don'y need 600k extra, he could use it.
But... screw it.. we young folks need our chance at something too, so the sooner it all falls apart, the better.

Saying "no" to bullcrap deals is a start!

One of the reasons we may be seeing inventory log jams in the BA (and elsewhere) is that people are actually stopping to think! It wasn't long ago folks were custom building their "dream house" BEFORE even listing their existing home! People that were "transferring" would make buying a new house their FIRST priority in a list of about 40 things that need to happen to have a successful transition. Anyone here remember when the husband would move out first, get an apartment or hotel before flying the wife out to find a suitable rental home in the kids new school district and get everybody "settled in" to their new surroundings and making sure the job worked out BEFORE buying a home?

Well it seems now "the home" is more of a priority than making sure the job works out and that everybody likes the area. Now that euphoria of easy money has worn off people are re-visiting the "checklist". I mean what's next? Will the "leap before you look" crowd demand that the negative equity from their former home be rolled into their new loan like when they trade in their car?

John M,

You know, I'm not sure if I was being flippant or not there b/c obviously the new lender would be reluctant to loan more than the house is worth. Oh wait a minute, we've been doing that for at least the last five years!

Where there's a will, there's a way and given the current state of finances I can't rule anything out! I'd also heard that a senior treas. dept. official (Emil Henry) speaking at a RE "round table" told attendees not to expect the treas. to bail out fannie/freddie! I found that frankly, shocking.

John M,

"We will remove firewood from under the cauldron" (Bloomberg article)

What can I say? Wisdom of the ages.