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October 27, 2005

San Francisco, My Home Town

Inman Real Estate News - Inman Video: San Francisco 'hoods worth checking out

If you're the type of tourist who likes to see how the locals live in addition to visiting all the regular attractions, you'll find this guide to a few San Francisco neighborhoods useful. The Inman Stories crew has created neighborhood movies to capture the flavor of these San Francisco districts. Take a day to patrol these 'hoods where you'll no doubt find history, beauty, great people, unforgettable food and all the charm of a typical day in the city by the bay.
This stuff is great. Take a few moments to check out my hometown. Also, take a look at some popular hangouts. I was blogging from the Starbucks just off Union Square this afternoon, thanks to my EVDO card.

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Really

So you think San Francisco real estate is a lottery? Well, you're right. It is.

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October 26, 2005

Speaking of Tech-Savvy Realtors

Palm to Showcase Wireless Solutions to 30,000 Real Estate Professionals at the National Association of Realtors Show

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 26, 2005--Palm, Inc. (Nasdaq:PALM) will be demonstrating wireless real estate solutions to more than 30,000 real estate professionals at the National Association of Realtors (NAR) show, Oct. 28-31, at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. Palm's booth (No. 3223) will feature hands-on demonstrations of real estate solutions, such as the following:

-- Pocket Real Estate for wireless Multiple Listing Service (MLS) access;

-- Baynet for web-based listing alerts and prospecting tools;

-- Infinity Softworks for financial and loan calculators, including online access to the most current interest and treasury rates; and

-- Supra for electronic lockboxes.

If you're going to be at the NAR meet in San Francisco this weekend, be sure to check this out. If my schedule permits, I'm going to haul my wireless laptop (EVDO card, anywhere connectivity, broadband speed) down there and do some on-the-spot live-blogging of the festivities.

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October 25, 2005

Can't Repeal the Law of Gravity, Either

PCWorld.com - Intel Changes CPU Road Map

Intel has announced several changes to its road map for server processors, delaying its first dual-core Itanium 2 processor and replacing a future multicore Xeon processor with a new design that eliminates the performance penalty of shared connections to a chipset.

Montecito, the dual-core version of the Itanium 2 processor, will not be available in large volumes until the middle of next year, instead of the early part of next year as originally planned, said Scott McLaughlin, an Intel spokesperson, on Monday. While preliminary shipments of the processor are already under way, Intel decided to make a few changes to the chip in order to reach the company's standard for "production level quality," McLaughlin said, declining to specify the nature of the changes.

Doesn't matter. Moore's Law, like a lot of other exponential functions operating in our world today, will continue to act remorselessly.

Why "remorselessly?" Because the changes as we reach and then pass the knees of these exponential curves will be incredibly destructive to The Way Things Are. And a lot of people aren't going to like that even one little bit. Or byte.

Try to guess what real estate is going to look like twenty years down the road. If you've got any ideas, post'em here. I'm interested in seeing what you think.

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Drop In The Bucket

Real Estate Fraud Expert Ralph Roberts: 'Flipping Frenzy Is Just the Tip of a Billion Dollar Iceberg'

WARREN, Mich., Oct. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Quick, big profits hidden in complex transactions have made real estate fraud the crime of our time. Real estate fraud has grown to more than $1 billion annually, according to the FBI.
Which sounds awfully serious, doesn't it? Until you realize that the annual residential mortgage market is close to 2.5 trillion dollars.

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October 21, 2005

TIC Market Gets A Jump Start

Sky-high housing prices drive trend of shared ownership

That's why a bank's offer of individual mortgages to TIC buyers sent shivers of excitement and fear through the city this summer.

By making TICs less codependent and more like individually owned condominiums, the Bank of Marin's so-called fractionalized mortgages were designed to make the option attractive to more first-time buyers.

But the move, expected to be duplicated soon by other lenders, also has exacerbated suspicions among the city's powerful tenants lobby that the TIC tool is being used by developers to dump rent-controlled properties and get around San Francisco's strict condominium conversion limits.

TICs have been a feature of the local market for quite some time, for obvious reasons. This new form of mortgage, even with a variable rate and 25% down should be very popular.

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October 18, 2005

Turn Somebody In Today!

Assessor urges cash for reporting local tax cheats

City residents and others could earn up to $500,000 by turning in tax evaders under a program proposed Monday by San Francisco Assessor Phil Ting.

The “Real Estate Watchdog” program would target commercial property owners who have failed to report property sales, which trigger a property reassessment — hence higher taxes — and transfer taxes.

Snitch money! And just in time for Christmas shopping, too.

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Let's See What The Comparisons Look Like In January

Inman Real Estate News - Real estate sales slip for sixth straight month in S.F. region

Sales in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area dropped for the sixth month in a row in September, while median prices for the region dropped 0.5 percent from August to September, according to a real estate research firm.
The article goes on to say,
"The Bay Area real estate market seems to have settled into a steady state, with few indicators pointing to any upcoming change. Supply and demand seem stable. We are keeping an eye on rising mortgage interest rates which could slow things down somewhat before the end of the year," said Marshall Prentice, DataQuick president.

...Home sales dropped 17.9 percent in San Mateo County, 15.6 percent in Napa County, 12.9 percent in San Francisco County, 11.7 percent in Sonoma County, 9.1 percent in Alameda County, 6.1 percent in Santa Clara County, 1.8 percent in Solano and Marin counties, and 1.2 percent in Contra Costa County from September 2004 to September 2005, DataQuick reported.

Median home prices were up 24.9 percent in Sonoma County, 24.6 percent in Contra Costa County, 22.1 percent in Solano County, 20.6 percent in Alameda County and 20.1 percent in Napa county from September 2004 to September 2005. San Francisco County had the slightest Bay Area price increase at 7.8 percent during that period.

Never in the history of real estate sales have sales numbers steadily plummeted without pricing eventually following them on down. And to emphasize year-over-year pricing, when the baseline is pricing during the upward part of the price curve is deceptive, to say the least.

We'll see.

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October 17, 2005

Sure As Hell Can't Hurt

Curbed: Toll Brothers: Meet Your Friendly Neighborhood Builder

"When San Francisco gets so expensive that a rich person says: 'You know what? I don't want to pay that much, I'll go look at Chicago instead' - that's what has to stop it ultimately. But there's nothing in our model that says that ever has to happen. Every time we think that housing is ridiculously expensive in the U.S., we should go look at Europe and Asia. Even after 15 years of declines in Tokyo, it's still more expensive than living in Manhattan. There's no natural law that says U.S. housing prices have to stop here. None."
This is another view to keep in mind. There is so hellaciously much money swashing around the SF Bay area, and especially trying to find a home in SF itself, that interest rates may be meaningless to the City boom in particular. If you're paying cash upfront, you really don't give a damn about what the interest rates look like anyway.

And I've got 1000 pano-Bay-view market rate units going up across the street from my property. Yum.

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Cool!

Inman Real Estate News - Real estate tech company enables podcasting

A la mode, a real estate technology company, has launched a product for its real estate agent customers that allows them to podcast information about properties for sale.

Using a la mode's podcast technology, called Propertycast, the company's 7,500 agent customers can record and distribute audio files with property descriptions -- known as podcasts -- for home buyers and sellers to hear on their home computers or download to their iPods or other brands of portable digital audio players, the company announced today.

Podcasting hits the sales agents' arsenal. A word of caution: If you're going to do this, have somebody you trust listen to your voice and give you an honest evaluation, if you decide to record your own pods. Some people sound very off-putting on recordings. If you are one of them, find a friend or hire somebody who sounds welcoming and believable. Otherwise, you're just doing yourself and your clients more harm than good.

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October 16, 2005

Charting the Fall

MARKET TILTING TOWARD NORMAL / Those heady days of traffic jams outside open houses are gone. Inventory is increasing, and buyers have a better chance

Nielsen, who originally listed the 1,700 square-foot Novato townhouse for $799,000 before lowering it to $749,000, thinks rising interest rates and a sense of price fatigue are finally starting to take some starch out of the market. This week, the average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage hit 6.03 percent -- the first time it has been above 6 percent since March, according to mortgage titan Freddie Mac.

"Appreciation has been in the double digits for so long that at some point it just outstrips the ability for the vast majority of people to afford these homes," Nielsen said, noting that if the buyers of the Novato condo don't want his "neo-classic" Jaguar XJ6, they will get a credit for $2,500. "Earning power isn't keeping up, and it takes some time to correct."

"Price fatigue." "Affordability." These excuses are, quite frankly, self-deceptive hooey. Prices in the SF Bay area have been on a screaming rise for ten years, and the affordability index has ranged from the low to the high teens for the entire run. Only one thing has made the SF bubble possible: historically low real interest rates. That is ending, and with it will end the era of one point arms, creative financing, and all the other gimmicks that have served to put tens of thousands of people into homes and financing packages they won't be able to afford in the new interest rate climate.

Take a look at this long-term chart:


National Average Contract Mortgage Rate, 1963 - 2005

Eyeballing this, the formation looks like it might allow for one more shot at a "lower-low" bottom, but I wouldn't bet the, um, house on it.

Now take a look at thirty years worth of fixed versus ARMs.


30-Year FRM Rates 1971 - 2005

The ARMs have already bottomed and started up. This is not good news for the mortgage fuel that has powered the last gasp of the bubble. And, of course, as people bail out of ARMs and start to chase fixed rates, you'll see those rates go up as well. When the two lines finally intersect, it will be time to take a hard look at your financing arrangements, because that point will mark the switchover from a virtuous to a vicious cycle in the real estate markets.

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October 15, 2005

Real Estate Classifieds Up For Grabs?

Newspaper ad growth sluggish; strength in classifieds

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - This week's round of newspaper company earnings reveals an industry still plagued by mediocre print advertising growth, though help-wanted and real estate classified ads remain strong, fueled by online usage.

Overall, third-quarter newspaper revenue at the five major publishers that reported this week was up 4%. That figure was partially bolstered by gains from recently-acquired properties and other items.

Classified revenue was generally strong, thanks to real estate and employment ads. "Help-wanted has sort of carried the publishers so far this year," said Jim Goss, analyst at Barrington Research in Chicago.

On the other hand, more and more agents are using the ever-growing and much cheaper online options like Craigslist.

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Not Reassuring

AP Wire | 10/14/2005 | Many chasing housing deals for investment

LOS ANGELES - While many would-be homebuyers have been scared off by dire housing market predictions, Debbie Harris has taken out mortgages on five homes in the past 18 months. She's among a growing number of fledgling real estate investors around the country using equity earned in overheated housing markets to stake their claims to rental property in more affordable areas.

The investors say there's no reason to fear the housing market will collapse - although each purchase increases their risks of losing money if prices do take a dive.

"My husband believes there is," said Harris, who runs two cell phone stores. "He's thinking five houses is enough. I'm thinking, no, it's not."

Sorry, but this is a classic example of what is called a "bubble mentality." In essence, it says, "What has happened to every bubble in financial history will not happen this time, because this time things are different."

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Uh Oh

Boomers Clamor for Help Investing Retirement Funds in Real Estate; Discover How at the First Ever National Symposium on Self-Directed IRAs

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 14, 2005--Once a fraction of the $3.7 trillion IRA market, self-directed IRAs are now the fastest growing segment. Roughly 75% of new retirees roll their 401K retirement accounts into IRAs they control and can diversify beyond stocks and bonds.

"Most of this country's wealth is in real estate and small business ownership," says Tom Anderson, founder of PENSCO Trust Company, the only US firm dedicated to the administration and custody of self-directed IRAs. "And investors over 40 are clamoring for the tax benefits of holding their tangible assets in IRA accounts."

Angry investors ask, "Why didn't my CPA tell me?"

Actually, this could be a scary notion. Boomers took a huge whupping in stocks during the dot.bust, and now they want to shovel what's left into a possible real estate bubble? And for those already in, how fast will they head for the exits if this bubble starts to collapse, and what will that mean for the market? Nothing good, I'm afraid.

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October 14, 2005

Something To Keep In Mind

Investor's Business Daily: Bust In Nation's Housing Sector Could Hit Freddie, Fannie Hard

In this cycle, home prices have continued to climb even in regions that suffered widespread job losses, such as the San Francisco Bay Area after the tech bubble burst in 2000.

Meanwhile, an 80% rise in average home prices since 1997 means many owners have substantial equity in their houses. Homeowners struggling with payments are more likely to sell and avoid foreclosure than those with little equity.

"It's rare that a homeowner would default on their loan if they have home equity," said Freddie Mac chief economist Frank Nothaft.

I plucked this nugget from a much longer article, (which you should read in its entirety) because of its applicability to the SF Bay Area. It's true. If you bought your house more than 18 months ago, you very likely have several hundred thousand dollars in equity that is, for you, the equivalent of finding money in a brown paper bag on the street.

If you get the notion you might lose it all, wouldn't you sell in a heartbeat in order to stick as much of it in your pocket as you could, and then ride out as much of the crash as possible before re-entering the market?

Do you think that sort of "perverse" incentive might speed up a price collapse in the SF Bay area?

Remember: If you have a nice, solid 30 year fixed at a great interest rate, and you plan to live in your home for the next twenty years, none of this means anything to you, nor should it. But if you got into a place on a one-point ARM and some iffy secondary financing with the idea you'd flip in five years anyway, what do you think you will do if the market starts to slide in a big way?

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October 13, 2005

Third Time Is the Unlucky Charm?

Mortgage Rates Are on the Rise

According to Freddie Mac, the U.S. housing agency which sells guarantees for home loans, this week's 6.03 percent for 30-year mortgages is the second highest level of the year. Thirty-year rates were at 6.04 percent in the March 31 week.

This week is also the third time this year mortgage rates are above 6 percent - an important psychological level. When rates were below 6 percent, this helped spur home buying and refinancings of home loans that allowed Americans to spend their way out of the most recent economic downturn.

Unfortunately, when prices are in a discernible trend, either up or down, breaking a significant barrier for a third time usually means that barrier is toast.

I doubt we see rates below six percent for a good while now. Next question: How long do the "funny mortgage loan" folks hold out?

UPDATE: There is one line of thought that thinks this is good short term news for the mortgage market, as people scramble to get into new arrangments to ride out the long haul. Could be something to that, too.

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Figuring It Out

The CEPR Housing Cost Calculator

This is an interesting little online widget that will allow you to compute the cost of owning a home versus renting it in several different areas of the country, over several different time periods. Some of the shorter term calculations for the SF Bay area look pretty horrible right now.

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It Would Certainly Take Care of Those Pesky Real Estate Bubbles, Though

Mortgage deduction on block?

President Bush's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform is likely to propose next week a change in the deduction for home-mortgage interest that, if adopted by Congress, would have a drastic impact on the Bay Area and other regions with high housing prices.

Today, a married couple filing jointly can deduct interest on up to $1 million in mortgage debt.

In a meeting Tuesday, the panel agreed to recommend lowering that limit, perhaps to the maximum mortgage that can be guaranteed by the Federal Housing Administration.

Yet another example of why these panels are mostly a waste of time. Anybody who thinks mortgage deductions are going to be slashed is too politically naive to be offering recommendations about much of anything.

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The Shipyard

This is a shot taken out of my upstairs bedroom window at some very fresh holes in the ground directly across the street from my back patio. This is all that is left of old navy officer's housing that had stood for more than seventy years - until yesterday.

This is the most tangible evidence yet that development on more than a thousand new housing units - the majority market rate - is proceeding apace. Needless to say, this will very likely have a drastic upward effect on housing prices in the immediate neighborhood, which are greatly depressed as compared to other SF 'hoods. It is uncertain just yet as to what sort of commercial and retail facilities will be a part of the redevelopment. Most of my neighbors - and me - are holding our breaths, hoping for a real supermarket, a Safeway or an Albertsons, given that our district doesn't have a single major grocery outlet anywhere inside its boundaries.

You can still buy properties within a block or so of this redevelopment area for under 400k. I don't know if that will hold for long once the new housing actually starts going into the ground, though.

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October 12, 2005

Brave New World

John Cook's Venture Blog - Zooming in on real estate listings

Online aerial maps are changing the way people look for new homes. Kirkland-based HouseValues Inc. entered the game today with a free service called HomePages.

As my story points out today, HouseValues is one of a number of entrants in this emerging category. Others include Seattle-based Redfin -- backed by Madrona Venture Group -- and San Francisco-based Trulia -- a Stanford University project with undisclosed investors.

And then there is Seattle-based Zillow -- the mysterious online real estate project founded by former Expedia Chief Executive Rich Barton.

There are some very interesting links here. One of the real problems that we as real estate agents have these days is trying to keep up with the new sales technologies that threaten to overwhelm us. The only thing that changes faster than our inventory is the ways we have to manage and sell it.

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October 10, 2005

Must Be Something I Ate

I just realized that I've put up two very optimistic posts in a row. Wow! What's wrong with me?

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Hotter Than Ever

Startups roaring back to old tech hotbed - Top Stories - MSNBC.com

Two years after selling his blogging startup to Google, Evan Williams is back. And so is SoMa.

The 33-year-old entrepreneur has moved on to his newest passion, podcasting. But not far: At Brannan and Second streets, his new company's location is just three blocks from his old one, both of them smack in the heart of the South of Market district known as SoMa.

"Roaring" is no exaggeration. I'm in this neighborhood several times a week, and the transformation from the graveyard it was two years ago to the hustle-bustle-busy place it is today is one of the more shocking aspects of the tech recovery. New faces, new biz, new eateries, it's almost as if the dot.bomb never exploded here. There's even some burgeoning geek-yup nightlife, and a throbbing Apple store. In fact, if you're in the market for some old Victorian houses that have been converted into rentals, this wouldn't be a bad area to check out.

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October 09, 2005

Grampy, Can I Have A Down Payment, Please?

Wharton prof sees nothing but blue skies ahead

It's always nice to get a point of view from outside the Bay Area echo chamber, and last week it was wisecracking Wharton real estate Professor Peter Linneman who delivered the goods at a NAI BT Commercial industry breakfast in San Francisco.

Sprinkling his presentation with well-timed barbs about the Best Place on Earth -- "Here, you call the Ten Commandments the Seven Interesting Suggestions and Three Wild-Ass Ideas" -- Linneman told the real estate suits why he believes there is no national housing bubble and why commercial property is still undervalued, despite the run-up in prices.

According to Linneman's analysis, the combined supply and demand effects of the housing market -- low interest rates, rising incomes, population growth and modest home construction -- is almost statistically equal to the rise in home prices, meaning that the market is not out of whack but in equilibrium.

This is an interesting viewpoint, and does bring up an issue I haven't addressed before: the effects of generational wealth transfer. I know that a lot of Bay Area real estate people have, on occasion, muttered, (if only to themselves) "Where is the money coming from?" and Linneman provides an answer that isn't often mentioned: It's coming from grampaw and grandma. Especially in the Asian community, which as a group is the source of the majority of the City's home buyers.

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October 07, 2005

Not Many Tears For This One

MercuryNews.com | 10/06/2005 | Inquest confirms death of longtime con artist who got his start in S.J.

Ever since his funeral nearly five months ago, two lingering mysteries swirled around Peter Louis Rowland, the ``dashingly dubious'' con man who started his life of charm and deceit as a student at Bellarmine College Prep.
There are more than a few San Francisco big names who are quite happy to hear that real estate (and other) scam artist Rowland is worm food.

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Things to Keep In Mind

Reuters Business Channel | Reuters.com

Home prices across California have more than doubled since late 2001, increasing pressure on home buyers, who needed a minimum household income of $133,800 to buy a home at the August median price of $568,890, the California Association of Realtors said in its report.

That meant that only 14 percent of households could afford the typical home, down from 18 percent a year earlier, and the lowest level since records began in 1989, the report said.


... August's affordability reading matched a record low 14 percent recorded in early 1989, shortly before a downturn in property prices that began in mid-1991.

... Just under a third of mortgages initiated or refinanced in California this year have interest-only components, compared with 1.4 percent in 2000, according to LoanPerformance, a unit of data provider First American Corp.

History teaches us that this sort of situation does not, cannot, and will not go on forever. There will be an adjustment. The two big questions are always the same: When? How much?

I'll take a stab: Within the next twelve months. Twenty-thirty percent in the SF Bay Area.

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Cleanup In Aisle Two

Grocery store woes / Buyers eye Albertson's Inc., hurt by discount, upscale stores

The ground may be shifting under the Bay Area grocery business.

Albertson's Inc., one of Northern California's biggest grocers and the second-largest national chain, has hired two Wall Street firms to conduct an auction of the $9.2 billion company. Four bidding groups have already surfaced, including private-equity real estate partnerships and a European retailer.

Meanwhile, 20 Ralphs, Cala and Bell stores in San Francisco and the North Bay are reportedly on the block, with other Bay Area grocers said to be interested in taking over some of those properties.

Supermarkets may be closing all over the Bay Area, and we can't even get one to open up in the Bayview-Hunter's Point neighborhood where I live. The reason is obvious, of course: High crime rates in the area would dictate the necessity of much higher security costs, not to mention the endless demands of local "activists" for the operators to pay unreasonably high wages to unqualified employees. Still, I - and a lot of others - would be willing to pay a little more in order to avoid having to drive miles to get to a Safeway, a Cala, or an Albertsons. As for people who don't have cars, public transit is a terrible option, unless you want to spend a couple hours a day buying groceries a bag or two at a time. This situation - the lack of basic shopping amenities - is of course a major reason why real estate prices are so depressed in this area, as compared to other areas in the City.

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October 04, 2005

The Best Kind

ESPN.com - GOLF - Rudy: San Francisco treats

Spend one day in San Francisco and you'll ask yourself two questions: How could any sane person want to live anywhere else, and how can the people who do live here possibly afford it? Even with the soft economy and dot-com bust in nearby Silicon Valley, San Francisco sets the gold standard for real estate, and it's easy to see why. This is one of the world's most beautiful cities, from the sweeping views of the bay and the Marin Headlands to the multimillion-dollar mansions balanced precariously on the sloped streets of Pacific Heights.
On the other hand...free publicity!

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Not the Best of All Possible News

Real Estate Slowdown Spreads To Other, Fast-Growing Markets - The Tech

For-sale listings have also swelled throughout California, according to the California Association of Realtors. In just the San Francisco area, they have increased 16 percent in the last year, according to Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage.
And here's the rub. It doesn't matter why the properties are coming onto the market, just that they are. And the more that come on and sit, the more other nervous buyers will take that as a sign the market has peaked, and it's time to get out now.

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