May 20th’s WSJ Personal Journal has an article entitled, “Where Home Prices Are Holding Up”
“…Consider the San Francisco Bay area. Overall, prices there slid 17% in the 12 months through February…and were down 8% over the 1st 2 months of 2008 alone, making it one of the worse-performing metro areas in teh country, according to the S&P/Cas Shiller Home Price Indices.
Yet prices within the city of San Francisco are up 0.3% over the 1st quarter of 2008, according to DataQuick…
For today’s buyers, all this means that shopping for housing bargains is increasingly complicated.”
What this means to me is know your local market. In San Francisco, this means knowing your local neighborhood’s market and the market for the type of housing you desire.
For example, Bernal Height’s housing market is different from Alamo Square’s which is different from Noe Valley’s. Adding another layer, the condo market is not the TIC market is not the single family home market is not the loft market. You get my drift?
Look local, think local, know local. Understand how macroeconomic issues affect us because they do, but also understand that what Bay Area statistics tell you is not going to be all that helpful when you are making an offer or putting your home on the market.
We’re always happy to email 6 months of homes for sale and homes sold for any specific neighborhood and type of property so you can know the true micro-market. Or, we can publish the results here on the blog for the world to see. (I wish! )
