Carol Lloyd of the SF Chron, in an insightful article, talks about her friends who are first time buyers with a big down payment and how they can’t find a house to buy in San Francisco. Carol talks about how her friend’s experience - actually being out there in the market, looking at houses, trying to find a house, making offers and still being unable to buy a house - is SO DIFFERENT than what most of the media would have you believe about the current market.
Insightfully in her tale of San Francisco’s two cities, Carol writes:
Far from the Nob Hills and Noe Valleys, the Pacific Heights and Outer Sunsets, there are neighborhoods stretching across the southern and eastern quadrant of the city that tourists have never heard of and many San Franciscans have never visited. And it is these areas - Portola, Ingleside, Ocean View, Mission Terrace, Outer Mission, Bayview, Excelsior - that have been hit hardest by the real estate downturn.
A local agent tells Carol: “For the whole city, the supply of homes is about 3.7 months,” he says referring to a common measurement for predicting how long it will take to sell the homes on the market. “But if you take out those (southeastern) neighborhoods, the supply is closer to two months. If you look only at the (southeastern) neighborhoods, the supply of homes is closer to 20 months.”
Why would one part of San Francisco experience the housing bust while other neighborhoods seem immune? “We really started to see it during the whole subprime mess,” adding that buyers have become more scarce in part because low-down-payment loans have become more difficult to obtain.
The agent continues: “The banks got much pickier. The people in Pacific Heights never had to lie for a loan - never had to do stated income, they have sizable down payments. But the people buying in the lower end of the market - up to, say, $700,000 - often had no-down-payments with adjustable loans.”
Indeed, an inordinate number of the single-family homes coming on the market in recent weeks are located in these neighborhoods. 77 percent of December’s SFNewsletter’s list of houses that have been on the market for more than 100 days come from these (southeastern lower -priced) neighborhoods. ”
This pattern of two markets is demonstarted again and again up and down the Peninsula.
Above about $800,000 market is strong.
Below $700,000; the market is weaker.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Median Real Estate Inventory in Oakland & Rockridge Jan 2007-2008 | Homes Across The Bridge // Jan 7, 2008 at 9:42 pm
[…] the Peninsula. As Arn Cenedela, a Coldwell Banker Realtor in Menlo Park wrote yesterday, The SF Chronicle finally gets a real estate article right ! “The market above about $800,000 market is strong. Below $700,000; the market is […]
2 Real Eatste is a very local Business // Jan 16, 2008 at 11:07 am
[…] http://sfpeninsulareguru.com/the-sf-chronicle-finally-gets-a-real-estate-article-right.html […]
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