Real Data SF

The View from Space – 2010
Ken Rosen is a smart guy.  He’s the co-chair of the Fisher Center of Real Estate and Urban Economics at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and the investment adviser of choice to some of the biggest players in real estate, from banks to insurance companies to REITS. [...]

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George may have left office a year ago, but there appears to be a growing consensus that the likely shape of the recovery will be a “W.”  How appropriate, if you believe that we are reaping the bitter fruit of his administration’s policies.
A front page article in the Business Section of last Wednesday’s New York [...]

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The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported yesterday that existing home sales in October rose to their highest level in more than two years.  Nationally, sales were up 10.1% over September and up 23.5% year over year.
Most of the increase in sales, however, was not in the western region, where sales were  only up 1.6% [...]

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That was the title of an October 27 article in the New York Times, and, as one of my readers and clients pointed out, it’s what I’ve been tentatively suggesting as a possible scenario for this winter. See here, for example.
And, ironically, the gloomy head-line announced yet another “positive” month of data from the Case-Shiller [...]

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At the end of last month, the media was full of Case-Shiller’s upbeat report on the national housing market for July 2009, its most recent reporting month. Three months of improving sales “continue to support an indication of stabilization in national real estate values,” according to the September Report.
Here’s the chart, by the way, which [...]

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Does anyone really know what’s going on?  Despite the gloom and doom of my recent posts (Waiting for the Other Sheep to Drop, Alphabet Soup:  What Shape will the Recovery Take?), the latest publication of the Conference Board’s Leading Economic Index (LEI) on Tuesday trumpets:  “Fifth Consecutive Increase!”  The LEI is supposed to predict economic [...]

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On the anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ demise and the near-collapse of global markets, it seems appropriate to take a step back from our little corner of heaven for a wider view.
Given where we were a year ago, the world seems to have heaved a huge, if cautious, sigh of relief.  During the chill days of [...]

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Ken Rosen, Chair of the Fisher School For Urban Economics over at UC Berkeley, has good news for San Francisco home owners.  “The recent rise in home prices and sales activity lead us to believe that the worst part of the correction in home prices is behind us and that housing market conditions are showing [...]

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Case-Shiller published its closely watched indices yesterday.  Hooray! The broadest CS index shows that the rate of decline in the nation’s largest housing markets has reversed in recent months.  Now we’re only going down 16% year over year instead of 20%.
They also point out that we are now back to 2003 values, which also holds [...]

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Saturday’s NY Times proclaims “A Gloomy Outlook for Home Sales’ Big Season.” The headliner, by the way, was “Job Losses Hint at Vast Remaking of U.S. Economy.” Is it really any wonder we have difficulty sleeping a’ nights?
Here are some of the cheery highlights:

One out of every seven apartments and houses in the US [...]

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