Friday, December 7, 2007

Buy? Sell? Rent? Answer my question, jerk!



Sorry for the vulgarity, but this is one of my fave sports moments when John McEnroe yelled this at the chair umpire way back when....

So where do you stand? Are you a happy buyer, seller, or renter of San Francisco/Bay Area real estate right now? If you want to know my take on this, keep reading. If not, keep reading. Let me start with the wonderful notion that afflicts many desirable areas: "Real estate can never go down here - everyone wants to live here and they always will." Over time, sure - this may hold true. But for market timers and true followers there are times this is simply not true. The next several years is one of those times. San Francisco is holding up rather well thus far but that has been mostly a supply issue at this point, whereas Oakland and the other parts of the Bay Area are starting to implode. Terms such as "short sale" and "foreclosure" and "lender approval" are already running rampant there. San Francisco will follow suit in coming years. Like I said.... where do you stand? I wanna hear from you....

5 comments:

D Gordon said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Biz Girl said...

i am a happy owner. i bought mine for 465k in 2003, and I think right now i could rent it for 3k/month or more, which is more than my mortgage. In today's market, I couldn't even afford to rent my own place....so thank goodness I own it!

D Gordon said...

Yes - any of us who bought in 2003 in SF are very happy campers. Do you wish you sold in 2005 when things peaked? Or are you happy holding on to it for the long haul?

Anonymous said...

embed the youtube post! easy to do!

D Gordon said...

video embedded, chris! thx