Are SF, Phoenix Home Prices Really “Surging?” A tight supply of homes and an increase in affordability fueled by record-low mortgage rates are helping shore up some regional markets where values plunged during the recession. San Francisco’s home prices surged at a 16 percent annual rate in the three months ended in April, while Phoenix...Read More
Building Cranes Yes, Minneapolis may be the worst performing residential market according to Case-Shiller’s just-released March numbers (down 10% year over year, the largest drop in the top 20 markets that Case-Shiller measures). Nevertheless, there is a mini-building boom apace in Minneapolis’ Uptown neighborhood, just northeast of Lake Calhoun and southeast of the Lake of...Read More
Buyer Psychology Is the housing market in for a double dip? That seems to be the topic du jour, in the wake of the latest Case-Shiller numbers showing renewed market weakness virtually across the country. Personally, I don’t know if that’s in the cards. However, I do think there’s a self-fulfilling quality to the discussion. Namely,...Read More
Still Casting Stones . . . But Now With (Lots of) Caveats An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today. “Laurence J. Peter [Editor’s note: to see my rebuttal to Freakonomics, the predecessor to SuperFreakonomics, click here] So, I finally finished off the (surprisingly short)...Read More
2010 Housing Market:More Toyotas (er, Chevy’s), fewer BMW’s Confused by the cacophony of statistics purporting to describe today’s housing market? The root of the problem is that the statistics are really capturing two things: 1) the change in housing prices; and 2) the changing mix of homes that are being sold. (The exception to the...Read More
City Lakes November Showings It’s easy to get overwhelmed by real estate statistics — even for professionals. For starters, there’s monthly sales data; “pending” sales data (under contract, but not closed); median and average sale prices; number of active listings (inventory), etc. Those data are available locally, regionally, and nationally. Further complicating matters: different “scorekeepers”...Read More
