San Francisco population soars to new high! House prices to soar!
New jobs, houses spur S.F. population in 2007
Thousands of new technology industry and other professional jobs and a burst of new housing construction attracted more new residents to San Francisco in 2007 than in any year in nearly a decade and drove the city’s population to a new high of more than 824,000.The 12,284 arrivals were drawn to an estimated 10,000 new jobs and the city’s enduring panache - good weather, views, arts and culture, restaurants, and access to the outdoors.
But San Francisco still has some of the highest housing prices in the world and a long-standing housing shortage, so where will all these people live?
Congrats to San Francisco! I’m sure these people will find a place to live. They’ll just have to invest more in housing, thus helping to keep our economy vibrant and healthy.
Nothing indicates health of an economy like high housing prices!
Workforce observers say that computer-systems designers and people who perform other professional, scientific and technical services have seen San Francisco as a good job market in recent years. Meanwhile, technology companies such as Yahoo and Google have opened offices in the city in part to accommodate employees and clients who don’t want to commute to Silicon Valley.
“San Francisco has had a lot going for it for a long time, but some of those things matter more now than ever before,” said Jed Kolko, a California economy expert at the Public Policy Institute of California. “There’s a very educated and skilled workforce here, and it’s a place where a lot of people want to live.”
Compared to much of the United States, San Francisco’s economy is not dependent on housing development and therefore was not hurt by a loss of construction and other housing-related jobs that were lost elsewhere as part of the mortgage crisis, Kolko said.
Didn’t buy a place last year? Didn’t buy a place this year so far?
Guess what - you are about to be priced out forever my friends.
BTW, did you hear that CBS bought CNET for $1.75 billion? The money tap is open again. Cha-ching!!!!
May 15th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Okay, so I know these people who wanted to sell a place in non-RBA-land (trust me, very non RBA) and use the money as downpayment on a pied-a-terre in San Francisco (1 br condo) and continue to live & work down here in RBA.
Listed non-RBA property last October.
Made contigent offer on condo in SF last October (that house in non-RBA-land would sell)
didn’t sell
didn’t sell
didn’t sell
didn’t sell
They cut price severely and sold non-RBA property, probably back down to 2004 pricing.
Meanwhile cute little weekend pad sold to someone else.
Now they are -160K in their attempts to trade “up.” Don’t know how many people want to buy 2nd home in SF for nightlife etc but some of SF market is clearly cut out by trade-ups falling off the ladder. SF is even more unaffordable than RBA because people in RBA earn more.
May 15th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Well, it might not ever happen in the RBA, but troubles are already starting in the Hamptons —
TROUBLE IN LI PARADISE
FORECLOSURES LOOMING FOR THE HAMPTONS’ POSHEST PADS
By SELIM ALGAR
Socialite Janice Becker is facing foreclosure on her $5 million property on Wyandanch Lane in Southampton.
May 12, 2008 — Homeowners in the some of the toniest ZIP codes in the Hamptons are facing a frightening reality - they can’t afford to foot the bill for their high-priced homes, The Post has learned.
In the first three months of this year, banks have launched preliminary foreclosure actions - known as lis pendens proceedings - against a record 120 borrowers in East Hampton and Southampton towns.
Twenty percent of those borrowers live in homes that are worth more than $1 million, according to figures from the Suffolk County clerk.
And the list gets longer every week.
“This problem didn’t even exist before,” said John Brady, a broker with Coldwell Banker in East Hampton. “They used to pop up once in a while, and you wouldn’t even pay attention. Now you expect to see new ones every week.”
A total of 10 East End homes, including a massive Westhampton mansion, were foreclosed outright since the beginning of the year.
In addition, more than 800 East End homeowners - a mix of rich and middle-class people from Riverhead to Montauk - have been flagged by credit-monitoring companies this year for late payments.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/05122008/news/regionalnews/trouble_in_li_paradise_110497.htm
I know, burbed, , it’s probably just all those Bear Stearns losers…
May 15th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Good job predicting what I would say.
Besides, Hamptons are just full of Goldman Sachs people, Billy Joel, P Diddy and other nobodies who don’t add value to society.
Are there Google or Facebook or VMWare engineers? NO.
If they’re not in Web 2.0, or virtualization, they’re nothing.
May 15th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Are there Google or Facebook or VMWare engineers? NO.
If they’re not in Web 2.0, or virtualization, they’re nothing.
No wonder the people I wrote about (comment #1) didn’t get their SF property. By that definition, they’re nobodies too. Nobodies making more money than us somebodies.