Testimonials for Blog

The Best and Worst Case Forecast for US Real Estate in 2024

  According to the latest update of its forecast for the year, the investment bank expects home prices in the U.S. to fall on average by 3 percent across the country. “We think we are poised for an improvement in affordability that we have only seen a handful of times over the past ~35 years,” Morgan Stanley wrote in the report shared with investors. As of October 31, the latest data available on Zillow, the average home price in the U.S. was $346,653, up 1.8 percent from a year prior. According to several analysts, the pick-up in home prices is

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Bay Area Rentals See a Long Awaited Drop in Rents

Last month, one-bedroom apartments in Oakland experienced a significant decline in rental prices at a 7.2% drop compared to the previous year, marking the most substantial drop among the 100 largest cities in the United States, according to data from Apartment List. The median rent for a one-bedroom unit in Oakland stood at $1,430 in September, the city’s lowest rental rate since at least 2017, and more than $100 lower than the rental price for last year. The price drop extended to the broader San Francisco metropolitan area, where there was a smaller year-over-year decrease of 4.3%, putting median rents

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Berkeley Home Values Hit the Summer Blues

  According to recent data, the typical value of a Berkeley home plummeted by a staggering $183,052, resulting in an 11.31 percent decline. This downward trend is part of a broader cooling trend affecting real estate in several California cities, and the Bay Area, in particular, has been the hardest hit, claiming the top four spots for the most dramatic drops in home values nationwide. In this blog post, we’ll explore the factors contributing to this decline, its implications for homeowners and prospective buyers, and the measures being taken to address the situation. A Cooling Trend Across California: Berkeley is

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Areas in the US with the Fastest Increasing and Decreasing Home Prices

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, home prices have been fluctuating nonstop. With many employees transitioning to remote work, people suddenly were able to move to different parts of the country, as they no longer had to worry about living near their office. Some opted to move out of major cities to the suburbs, and others chose to buy homes near beaches and in locales with warmer temperatures. Because of this, some U.S. home prices have skyrocketed, while others have been rapidly decreasing. The team looked at data from the National Association of Realtors to see where home prices

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A Softening Bay Area Economy, but a Robust Rental Market!

  The Bay Area economy is facing an uphill battle with rising interest rates, rising inflation and a soft real estate market. Most homeowners that are attempting to sell their homes are experiencing longer than usual days on the market, lowball offers and frustration on where the market is heading. It appears that more bad news may be coming as inflation may not be an easy tiger for the Federal Reserve to tame. US unemployment is near an all time low and there are reports that predict more interest rate hikes may be needed to reduce consumer spending and inflation.

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Why High Income Renters are Staying Put

  A high income is an increasingly weak opponent for the supply strain and sapped spending power plaguing the U.S. housing market. The number of households renting while making $150,000 or more per year has skyrocketed in recent years, according to the Wall Street Journal. Five-year estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau show the share of renters increased to 3 million, an 87 percent from 2016 to 2021.     The median income for the 44 million households renting in 2021 was $71,000. The biggest surge of high-income rental households came in Austin. Those households in the Texas capital increased

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Bay Area Median Rent Price Shows Slight Decrease

San Francisco and the rest of the Bay Area saw apartment rents fall in January at a higher rate than the national average, another sign of a slowing Bay Area economy that could be hurt further by mass tech layoffs. San Francisco median rents fell 1.1% to $2,174 per month compared to December, one of the biggest drops in the country. Metro area rents are down 5% compared to March 2020 when the pandemic started, making San Francisco and San Jose the only two metro areas with more than 1 million people that have rents that are below pre-pandemic levels.

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Bay Area Real Estate Index Shows Downward Trend

The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index for single-family home values within the San Francisco Metropolitan Area – which includes the East Bay, North Bay and Peninsula – ticked down another 1.8 percent this past December and is now 4.2 percent lower than at the end of 2021, representing the largest year-over-year drop for the index over a decade.  In fact, the “San Francisco” index has actually dropped over 16 percent since last May and the decline is accelerating, none of which should catch any plugged-in readers, other than the most obstinate, by surprise.     At a more granular level, the index

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How Higher Mortgage Rates are Affecting Bay Area Real Estate

  Expect a weaker housing market in California in 2023 as an ongoing battle against inflation creates a small recession — keeping interest rates elevated and suppressing buyer demand, according to a forecast released Wednesday by the California Association of Realtors. The baseline scenario of CAR’s “2023 California Housing Market Forecast” sees a decline in existing single-family home sales of 7.2% next year to reach 333,450 units, down from the projected 2022 sales figure of 359,220. The 2022 figure is 19.2% lower compared with the pace of 444,520 homes sold in 2021, according to the real estate trade association. The

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Bay Area Home Prices Becoming More “Normal”

After two years of soaring home prices, the Bay Area housing market may have entered a cooling phase as rising mortgage rates put a squeeze on buyers. But that doesn’t mean home values are suddenly falling back to Earth. Far from it. The median price of existing single-family houses in the region hit a record $1.36 million in May, a 13% increase from the same month last year, according to the latest data from real estate analytics firm CoreLogic. Even so, housing experts say the breakneck pace of year-over-year price growth appears to have peaked – though few are predicting

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