Silicon Valley vs. Twin Cities Housing Prices Yeah, Yeah, California has mountains, the ocean, and a (too-nice?**) sunny, mild climate. But, it’s also got a ton of people, earthquakes, sky-high gas prices, and even crazier housing prices — at least in the heart of Silicon Valley (note: I visited my college sophomore son there recently)....Read More
“Sellers Who Don’t Have to Sell,” or Picking Up Their Marbles & Going Staying Home It’s always nice to discuss housing market statistics with a fellow quant — which is why it was nice chatting with fellow Edina Realty agent (and now technology consultant) Aaron Dickinson earlier this week. His/my take on housing prices following The...Read More
“Realtors Property Resource” I actually discussed the idea with a University of Minnesota Computer Science professor 5 years ago (or was it 7?), but ultimately decided not to pursue anything. Or should I say, couldn’t find any investment capital to back it (admittedly, I didn’t look that hard). The idea? To convert megabytes of...Read More
Divining the Direction of Housing Prices, One Deal (and Tick) at a Time Both the stock and housing markets have “upticks” and “down ticks.” The difference is that, in the stock market, ticks are measured in pennies, whereas in residential real estate, they’re measured in thousands — or even tens of thousands — of dollars....Read More
Buy the Land . . . Get the House for Free Benjamin Graham, the father of value investing, famously recommended buying stocks that trade at a discount to the company’s underlying “book value” (basically, assets minus liabilities). His rationale was that a company’s book value established a floor under its stock price: even if the...Read More
Foreclosures Explain Latest Housing Price DropThe most recent batch of housing statistics — from S&P/Case-Shiller and NAR — show that housing prices are continuing to fall nationally. Depending on how you slice and dice the market (sale pairs, top 20 markets vs. all markets, all homes vs. those under $417k, etc.), the year-over-year annual decline...Read More
