Great news. San Francisco home prices rebound 5.9% during the 2nd quarter of 2009 as compared to Q1 2009. But, home prices are still down 22% from last year. That is, according to the recently released Case-Shiller Home Price Index Report.
There's a lot to the numbers so let's not taken any one figure at face-value. We are in for a long, slow recovery. Maybe. Of course, there are significant signs of stabilization and upswing in our local San Francisco real estate market.
San Francisco first time buyers and all potential home buyers with reasonably stable employment should realize that the time is now (or rather was then) so they better hop to it! If you are selling a starter home and have the funds to trade-up into something bigger or nicer, you are in especially good shape.
Then again, my personal real estate mantra is to buy when the time is right for you. If you buy a home in San Francisco and enjoy it as a home (rather than as a piggy-bank or lotto ticket), chances are that you'll do quite well over the long-run. Just ask someone who has owned their home for 10+ years...
Some interesting quote, factoids, etc from the recent media headlines:
Money.CNN: National home prices may be on the road to recovery.After three years of declines, home prices increased 2.9% in the three months ended June 30, according to the latest S&P/Case-Shiller report. That is the first quarter-over-quarter improvement in three years.
Prices in the national index are down 14.9% compared with the second quarter of 2008, the report said. But that is better than the record 19.1% decline that was set in the first three months of 2009.
"We're seeing some positive signs," says David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor's...
"This is great news; prices may be starting to grow again" said Pat Newport, a real estate analyst for IHS Global Insight. "Three independent sources, the National Association of Realtors, the Federal Housing Finance Agency and Case Shiller are showing price improvement."...
"The really important things [affecting home prices] are unemployment and momentum," said Shiller, who is a Yale economist. "We have momentum, which is very important, but we also have high unemployment."
And, he added, "the government has not yet handled the foreclosure problem."...
That leads Stuart Hoffman, the chief economist for PNC Financial Services Group (PNC, Fortune 500), to conclude that it's still a good time to be a buyer.
"Given the tremendous amount of inventory, nearly a year's worth," he said, "it should continue to be a buyer's market for a while."
Shiller, too, is relatively optimistic despite being cautious. "I have found that momentum matters," he said, "and this is a sudden break in [downward] momentum. The [market] psychology seems to be changing."
S&P Press Release: Home Prices on an Upswing in the Second Quarter of 2009 According to the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices
Jim Cramer Mad Money: (You know you love this guy!) In the general market, Cramer has specifically been more optimistic on housing this summer and suggests four new, creative ways to play a housing rebound.
Wall St. Journal: The people doing this (buying or thinking of buying a home) are employed, feel confident that they're not going to lose their jobs, and believe that while housing prices may fall a bit more the bottom is not too far away. Moreover, financing remains relatively cheap and, according to one lawyer I know in house-hunting mode, banks aren't as tight with mortgage lending as headlines indicate.
