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Real Estate: Market Conditions – Partly Cloudy
By Lance Fulford
Having just returned from vacationing in and out of the U.S. as well as attending an international real estate conference; I’ve seen, observed and heard of other markets experiencing the same conditions as our own San Francisco.
The lower end of the market is selling while the upper end is really struggling. I believe we’re now entering a crucial six month period that will truly tell us “where this economy is going.”
Right now, we’re in transition. It’s not a word that you’ll hear a lot out and about in the real estate sector and not too many take my view of what’s going on; however, as the U. S. Treasury starts to pull in the reigns of stimulus money by year’s end and the banks continue sitting on their large inventory of foreclosed homes and many of the larger banks are unable to repeat their bookkeeping feats of higher earnings through cost cutting and other one time actions I believe you’ll see prices nationally in general but also here in San Francisco “settle” down another “notch.”
Now, that doesn’t mean as a buyer you shouldn’t buy - because the best buys are always on the downside. And, I do believe in the long run we’ll see another run up if nothing else due to inflation on the horizon and just the fact that housing creation has stopped and will not start again until the market picks up - therefore a big lag in supply.
It’s this tricky period of transition that keeps buyers on the sidelines and sellers frozen trying to decide when to “jump out”.
This is definitely the period for buyers in my view and sellers should have already gotten on the market or taken a position of holding off for at least another two years. It is really the sellers that can’t make it another two years that will be the ones, in my view, to feel the squeeze. And with all the variables in the world in general, that may prove to be a larger pool than anyone imagines.
Lance Fulford, MBA, has been a real estate broker since 1988 and a certified international property specialist candidate and a long-time resident of Eureka Valley. He works for Alain Pinel Realtors. He can be reached at (415) 793-6140.
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