Real Data SF

Woke up this morning to NPR announcing that new home sales were the lowest they’d been in 15 years.  The housing market is already in a double dip, with some additional price declines  on the horizon, though we’re near the bottom.  As for the broader economy, we’re skating awfully close, but nobody really knows yet [...]

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A couple of months ago (gasp!) I promised to post my favorite charts from the UC Berkeley Fisher School of Real Estate and Urban Economics’ symposium on the state of the market.   I then got swamped working on my own development project up in Windsor, north of Santa Rosa, and all my blogging came to [...]

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Among the scions of the real estate industry presenting at the Fisher Conference (see my previous post) was none other than Frank Nothaft, Chief Economist and Vice President of Freddie Mac.  He had a doozy of a slide set.  Here’s one my favorites.  More to follow.

The chart shows that nominal (ie. not inflation-adjusted) prices hadn’t [...]

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Just back from the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economic’s semi-annual symposium on all things real estate.  (FCREUE is the real estate department within UC Berkeley’s Haas Business School.)
Ken Rosen is the Center’s oft-quoted co-chair and quietly advises real estate investment funds with over $300 million in assets.  Most of the time these [...]

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Back in the still-uncertain days of September 09, every market pundit had his or her own letter for what shape the recovery would take. I blogged about Ben Bernanke’s “U,” Liz Ann Sonders‘ “V,” and Nouriel Roubini’s “W” here. Though one could argue the jury is still out, I think it’s fair to say that [...]

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Last week, Case-Shiller released January data for its closely watched national housing index.  Nationally, things are looking up – well, make that flat.  And that’s good news. In the wonderfully backward language of the report, the index’s year over year rate of decline “improved.”  Basically, we are back to where housing values were a year [...]

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In an article entitled Great Time to Buy (Famous Last Words), last Sunday’s New York Times took a swipe at perennially optimistic real estate agents who have never seen a time that wasn’t a good time to buy a house.  Fair enough.  Self-interest and magical thinking are not limited to the real estate profession.
For the [...]

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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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