28% of San Francisco homes on sale have had price cut – San Francisco Business Times:
28% of San Francisco homes on sale have had price cut – San Francisco Business Times:
More than a quarter of homes listed for sale in San Francisco have had their asking prices cut in the last year, with a whopping $66.1 million in total price reductions for the city.According to real estate business Trulia Inc., 28 percent of listed homes in San Francisco have had their prices cut in the last year. That puts San Francisco at No. 27 on a list of the top 50 U.S. cities ranked by percentage of homes that have been discounted.
Minneapolis ranks No. 1, at 39 percent, and Milwaukee No. 2, at 37 percent.
San Francisco’s the highest California city on the list, ahead of No. 34 Los Angeles (26 percent) and No. 37 Sacramento (24 percent).
Locally, Oakland ranks No. 43, with 23 percent of listed homes being offered for less, and San Jose comes in at No. 46, with 20 percent.
Fresno is No. 50, with 17 percent of its listed homes discounted.
Ok folks, this is way not cool. Let’s remember:
I know it can be frustrating sometimes, but we really must band together to keep our housing prices high. First it’s a 1% discount, the next thing you know we’ll be giving away houses. How will we ever compete with Manhattan effectively if we don’t work together as a team.
Here’s an idea – for next Friday, Black Friday – let’s all do the opposite and hike our asking prices by 15%. That way, we can start a virtuous cycle of everyone trying to raise their prices faster than their neighbor, instead of a vicious cycle.
Together, we can do it!
November 22nd, 2009 at 9:48 am
You can dooooooo it!!!!
November 22nd, 2009 at 9:56 am
Palo Altans are already trying to help.
November 22nd, 2009 at 11:17 am
Another 28% have managed to keep it off the record, and another 28% are in “hidden inventory”.
November 22nd, 2009 at 8:54 pm
The pictures in that listing are awesome Herve Estater. It looks like they had quite a party in the kitchen. Someone even left their shirt hanging on the oven.
November 22nd, 2009 at 9:48 pm
It looks like they had quite a party in the kitchen.
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10 Things Your Real Estate Broker Will Not Tell You: “Your open house is really a party for me.”
November 23rd, 2009 at 7:47 am
I’ll be the first to mention the story that – Oh boy! Home sales were up up up! But… the prices were down from last year as well as last month. It’ll be interesting to see what will happen now that all the government incentives are all dried up.
November 23rd, 2009 at 8:34 am
uh, bob? The government incentives were extended and expanded.
http://sanfordherald.com/pages/full_story/push?article-HOME+MATTERS-+A+reprieve+for+all+the+procrastinators%20&id=4673449&instance=latest_articles
November 23rd, 2009 at 9:31 am
Say it ain’t so. Somehow I figured that all those banks, lending companies, and housing related industries wouldn’t be able to resist pressuring the government into artificially propping up housing values. Only problem is: How do you sell houses to unemployed people? These incentives were created to compensate for the problem of foreclosures related to defaulting loans. But now that another leg has been kicked out from under housing in the form of rising unemployment, these incentives will likely not make any difference. Besides- those prices are still falling so even though homes have sold, the housing market is not exactly recovering.
November 23rd, 2009 at 10:14 am
“How do you sell houses to unemployed people?”
How foolish the real estate agent or developer that targets the unemployed population!
If I were a real estate agent, I would make sure to sell primarily to employed people!
November 23rd, 2009 at 10:22 am
Guess I should re-phrase that to ask how you can grow the housing market if 12-18% of the local population no longer works. People that don’t have sufficient incomes don’t usually buy houses. Especially really expensive ones.
November 23rd, 2009 at 10:28 am
One big test will come next April after the Fed stops purchasing mortgage-backed securities, which they have been doing to keep mortgage rates artificially low. That should push rates to around 6%, which in turn should shave another 10-15% off of prices based on affordability. Combine with this the ever-increasing number of Option ARMs resetting, the jobless recovery, and flat or decreasing salaries, and you can see that prices still have a long way to fall, particularly in CA, home of the Option ARM and 12% unemployment.
November 23rd, 2009 at 10:51 am
The other thing I wonder is that even now, banks do not have to report all of their assets. There was a change in Mark-to-market reporting. Basically, it allowed banks to pick the assets they wanted to report. Despite owning 100’s of billions of dollars in now-worthless toxic loans, these are not reported at all. That’s how banks have been able to turn around and claim they’ve made a profit when in fact they are still deeply underwater. Eventually these assets will come into play. My guess is that banks have been buying time in the form of pressuring the government to pass tax cut after tax cut in the hopes of artificially inflating a new bubble. I doubt that will happen. If it doesn’t then the piper will ultimately have to be paid.
November 23rd, 2009 at 11:44 am
How do you sell houses to unemployed people?
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You don’t need to. There are investors who have interest in buying all properties. They will buy with a hope that
- market will turnaround and double digit appreciation will come back pretty soon.
- they will be able to flip their properties to now-unemployed people when they get employed (and it is going to happen pretty soon).
Just look at the EPA property featured on Burbed last week. According to Zillow, 2002 sale price is $402K and current zestimate is $358K. Don’t you think that an invenstor can buy this property for $171K and sell it for $400K next year? If you don’t think so, you are a doom-and-gloom pessimist who failed to get “pulse of the market”.
November 23rd, 2009 at 11:58 am
On t he topic of unemployment, more news from California:
Another California crisis: Unemployment fund facing $7.4 billion deficit
All the three options just sound perfect. We’re all clear for take-off.
November 23rd, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Clearly we have to make it MUCH more painful for employers to eliminate a position. (Right, Unreal Alex?)
P.S. Nobody mention that some may choose to do business in another state, okay? Which actually raises an interesting question – how to unemployment taxes (on businesses) compare in CA to other states?
November 23rd, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Clearly we have to make it MUCH more painful for employers to eliminate a position.
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That’s where the sliver-lining. CEOs/CFOs in private firms are not dumb. They already started doing the cost-benefit analysis of laying off employees vs keeping them employed and hiring new employees. They will figure that it is less expensive to hire people than paying higher tax. They simply won’t allow tax to go up. To achieve this, they will start hiring people. Just wait for the sudden fury of hiring and California unemployment rate going down from 12% to 0%. As a side effect of this, home price will start going up too. Don’t wait for that moment and get price out forever.
November 23rd, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Pralay, I predict it’ll go down to -2%. Just like with voting: there’ll be more employed people than there are people. You know, for tax reasons.
November 23rd, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Don’t forget to take “over-employment” into account. If you balance out, the real unemployment rate of Real Bay Area is going to be -8.888888888%. Lots of lucky 8.
November 23rd, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Just read the article Pralay posted – our f*cked up state government is at it again:
Earlier this decade, the Legislature increased unemployment benefits, which at the time were among the nation’s most meager. But a proposal to raise employer contributions to fund that expansion failed because it required a two-thirds vote.
Employers pay unemployment taxes only on the first $7,000 each worker earns. That makes California’s cap on taxable wages the lowest in the nation, officials say, and it means the state doesn’t save enough money in good times to weather significant downturns.
Why didn’t they write the legislation to say IF the tax increase passed, THEN the benefits would be increased??
November 23rd, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Bringing the discussion back to housing inventory and price cuts, here are my observations for Redwood city.
The image below shows the 94061, 94062 and 94063 zip codes in Redwood city. The first zip code is the moderately prices areas of Redwood city between El Camino Real and Interstate 280. The 94062 zip code includes Woodside and the higher priced areas. The 94063 zip code has the lowest priced homes between highway 101 and El Camino Real
http://www.flickr.com/photos/34699369@N04/4129284858/
The housing market in these zip codes have fared very differently. The lowest priced zip code has seen falling inventory over the last two years while the higher priced areas have rising inventory as seen in the the graph below
http://www.flickr.com/photos/34699369@N04/4129284864/
Another indicator that the market in the lowest priced zip code has gone back to normal is that the sales are currently above average for this decade. The higher priced zip codes currently have sales far below normal levels in the 2000s. See the graph below
http://www.flickr.com/photos/34699369@N04/4129284868/
November 23rd, 2009 at 9:05 pm
More party news:
Real estate bust opens doors for parties at vacant houses
November 23rd, 2009 at 9:23 pm
while the higher priced areas have rising inventory as seen in the the graph below
…
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The higher priced zip codes currently have sales far below normal levels in the 2000s.
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That’s simply impossible. There is “TOTALLY no inventory right now”. And “professional realtor” from Coldwell Banker is saying “multiple offers are becoming quite common”. Based on these two facts, how do you explain that inventory is rising and sale volume is dropping in higher priced areas? Your data is simply incorrect.
BTW, probably you started thinking that SV Shopper is looking for cheap 1 bedroom condo in East Palo Alto (lower priced areas where inventory is dropping). Stop right there. His wife is big on education. He even defined his requirement.
November 23rd, 2009 at 10:01 pm
Pralay: It’s plenty obvious that your dad’s wife is not very big on education
November 23rd, 2009 at 10:17 pm
Pralay: It’s plenty obvious that your dad’s wife is not very big on education
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No, she wasn’t. The only wife in this world is “big on education” is someone whose husband drives NYC Yellow cab on Madison Ave.
November 23rd, 2009 at 10:31 pm
Is she literate?
November 23rd, 2009 at 10:41 pm
Is she literate?
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You mean SV Shopper’s wife? I don’t think so. That’s why she need a “big on education” title from her husband.
November 23rd, 2009 at 11:30 pm
I have found that the people who are “big on education” typically aren’t very educated themselves. As a result, they don’t tend to really know what “education” means. This causes them to be easily mislead and generally results in a situation which is less to their pecuniary advantage.
Your mileage may vary.
November 24th, 2009 at 6:16 am
pecuniary. anon, you are quite pedantic. me likey
November 24th, 2009 at 11:40 am
Why thank you, non-unreal Alex.
November 24th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
get a room