D1 and D7 are pretty darn fascinating…

Area 6 to me is the most interesting. People will complain about the “sample size” for condos. But if you factor in TICs and Loft condos too, for area 6, it’s 26(’06) to 21 (’07)YoY with increases in both $psqft and sale price for ’07. If you include SFRs and 2-4 units, it’s 31 (’06) to 36 with ’07 showing big price gains across the board again. Something has happened in the last couple years for area 6. People definitely like it more than they used to.

I think the big thing Area 6 has going for it is the central location. If you are in generally good health you can easily walk to ALOT of pretty cool places from there, i.e. Upper Haight, Lower Haight, Hayes Valley, Cole Valley, Duboce, Fillmore corridor, Clement St, and of course the up-and-coming Divis corridor. The big thing against it is the projects. Some parts of 6 are impacted by the latter more than others though.

It is also not too bad for commuting out of the city. Fell/Oak with the timed stop lights make getting to 80 or 101 fairly straight forward outside of the rogue double-parker. And if traffic sucks that direction and you need to get to the East Bay (as my wife does every morning) the GG Bridge is app the same distance as the Bay and the traffic is always better.

Area 9 is SOMA right? I think a lot of it is mix. People are buying more and more expensive places (so i guess prices/sqft is also going up). Look at The Millenium towers at $950-$1000/sqft with $700/month HOAs. People are eating those up.

For those of you who are retired, or don’t need to work, I highly recommend you come up to Squaw tomorrow or this weekend. The conditions are absolutely PHENOMENAL!!!

I love Tahoe :)

Missionite – How long have you been renting? I feel your frustration. If you’re a homeowner, you care about price. if you’re a realtor, you care about volume indeed.

heya missionite,

you may be right about DOM for some percentage of these; what, maybe 10%? the fact is there is not enough inventory on the northside and when something does come up it pretty much flies off the shelf.

my experience in ’07; 4 multi-unit properties bid on, between 10 and 20% overbid and i lost out on all 4 to others willing to pay more (lots more).

Paco,

These figures are for condos, not multi-unit properties. Multi-unit properties are quite hot right now, as you would expect given the current market conditions (increasing acceptance of TIC, rising rents etc.). I saw your post on Socketsite as well, so I’m familiar with your story. And there’s no doubt that quality housing in good locations continues to sell well. I’m not addressing your anecdotes. I’m merely pointing out the obvious: declining sales volume is bad for realtors as a whole, and is much worse then declining prices. If I was a realtor, I would be very concerned about volume.

Re: “sellers and realtors getting increasingly desperate”

At some point the tide turns, one direction or another. You can’t have rising prices and declining sales volume forever. If sales volume keeps consistently declining, then at some point there will be some owners who will have to sell for any number of reasons, and the only way to close a sale in a timely manner will be to reduce the price. If this happens enough, and the price reductions are deep enough, a feedback effect then kicks in when buyers as a whole realize prices are going down, and grow more reluctant to buy, not wanting to gamble their life savings on a depreciating asset. And that’s how a down cycle gets rolling. And indeed in some neighborhoods this is clearly already happening (sucks to be a seller in the Excelsior right now). But there is downward price momentum in a lot of neighborhoods right now, and some would surprise you. For some examples see my post here:

http://submedian.blogspot.com/2008/01/whats-diff.html

I don’t have a clue as to what percentage of DOM is being manipulated and I don’t think anyone else does either, but let’s take your 10% at face value. And let’s say that the average DOM for a house that has been manipulated is roughly double that of the stated average DOM. That’s enough to result in a 9% decrease in the DOM for all eight districts (3-10). But I think it’s really much worse then that, and I’ll give you an anecdote of my own. A good friend sold a nice house recently (not in November) in a desirable part of D4. Rather then put it on the MLS right away, the agent shopped it around within his network for about a month and a half, both before my friend had moved, and for about two weeks while it was getting dressed up for sale. After already lining up a buyer, he then put it on the MLS where it was up there for all of a day until the deal closed, resulting in a DOM of 1 day. There were 4 houses sold in D4 in November. If they all averaged 50 days like last year, then my friend’s realtors little maneuver (which took 42 days of selling to accomplish) would have the effect of bringing the average DOM for the entire district down to 13 days. The district looks like a winner, the realtor looks like a winner, and the rest of us are left with a very misleading picture. That’s why I don’t even bother to look at DOM stats anymore. They are meaningless. Since the MLS started allowing resets, there’s even less oversight then there used to be, so the number is simply devoid of value as a useful metric.

BTW I am not saying that realtors and sellers are neccesarily desparate right this second in all districts, rather I am saying that as volume continues to decline, there will be increasing incentive to make the properties as marketable as possible. Results will vary depending on the neighborhood, the seller, and the realtor.

And as far as defining SF, I don’t know how else to define it except as the 10 districts within city limits, so I’m not sure what you mean? Are you suggesting we should only define SF as neighborhoods that are still selling well? If you are trying to point out that some neighborhoods are doing better then others you can do that without having to kick the Excelsior out of the city!

District7,

I don’t have a dog in this particular fight. I got kids, so I’m not in the market for a condo and never will be. I am in the market for a SFH however, and I can buy an ok one right now (got the cash, and outstanding credit history), but I’m sitting out for the time being. It just doesn’t make sense right now. I am not a bitter renter, in fact at the moment, I am quite happy being a renter, and really don’t want to change that situation for the time being.

btw i never called anyone a bitter renter.

i don’t agree on dom being irrelevant. at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how long you are on the market. all the matters is if you got your price. how can you ignore that? less places to compete with means less supply means higher prices. your logic just doesn’t jive with me.