Pretty Maps of Housing Price "Collapse": Bay Area, Palm Springs

[drscott]

These appeared on Zillow a few weeks ago, and agree with the anecdotal understanding I have. People have complimented me on our excellent timing in selling our house in Sunnyvale (which was unintentional -- I just wanted to get out from under the maintenance), but the ironic bit is that it's actually worth about 5% more now. Desirable Bay Area properties are even higher than before the crash, while second-best houses, neighborhoods, and far-out areas attractive to lower middle class folks are in freefall.

Another data point: our friends John and Mark (who moved to Palm Springs last year, though Mark is here every week working) put their Atherton place up for sale at $4.195 million. It sold after two days on the market for much more than that. Since building the new house cost so much, they're not clearing anything like that amount, but still...

Some weakness in SoMa (where we might buy next) and half price sales in Cathedral City/Rancho Mirage (where we might also buy.)

Comments

[theoctothorpe.livejournal.com]

So what's up with Sunnyvale, and Cupertino?

I can't imagine it's just due to the companies in that area. Although if it's not, what could it be? They're not what I'd consider to be "good" places to live (too far from SF, making the trip annoying rather than convenient, but not far enough away that it has it's own style/life).

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

Partly due to rapid expansion of Google (Mountain View) and Apple (Cupertino) and Web 2.0 companies, and continuing good health of the tech complex (which is international, and not much affected by US consumers.) There is a huge amount of built-up stock wealth centering around Stanford (Palo Alto) and its spinoffs. Little building, no speculation, no subprime mortgages. People who bought on the fringes now regret it.

Silicon Valley does not seem that desirable compared to the city for gay and young people, but for straight people and families it has a very high quality of life. Straight tech workers with families don't need to visit SF all that often.

[theoctothorpe.livejournal.com]

Straight tech workers with families don't need to visit SF all that often.

Yeah, I know people who live in Stamford or Greenwich and *have never been to NYC*!

It's less than an hour by train. All you need to do is hop on.

Dayum. Some people just really wanna hermit.

[rfrench.livejournal.com]

I live in Sunnyvale. With no offense intended to the wonderful gay culture in San Francisco, going into San Francisco is my idea of hell. But I hate large cities in general - I would say the same thing about downtown Chicago or NYC. Sunnyvale is a very nice place to live. And most of the tech workers I know, especially those with families, don't have time to enjoy that much culture anyway.

[theoctothorpe.livejournal.com]

But you've actually been to SF, yes? The people about whom I referred have never been to NYC even though they live moments away. I'd go so far as to say it was anti-cultural. Here they are, 40 minutes (by rail) away to the greatest museums on the planet, along with restaurants, entertainment, etc., and they have no want to go. Anti-culturalism breeds myopia, and really, do Americans need to be more myopic?

[bittercrackbaby.livejournal.com]

You're pretty much correct. The folks in the Silicon Valley Rat race will congregate in the Mountain View to San Mateo corridor. The families who believe education is extremely important gravitate to Saratoga, Cupertino, Los Altos, and Palo Alto.

There's also some influence of foreign investment. When $800,000 only gets you a small 600sqft flat in Hong Kong, and you get a large house and 2 car garage and access to one of the best school districts here, you will probably think it's a bargain.

[qbear.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...we're keeping an eye on Palm Springs too. I think Cathedral City and Rancho Mirage might be the best value right now. I know CC has a less-than-great rep, but parts of it are nice, I think. I used to feel we had to be in PS proper, but not so much anymore, given the great values to be had in the other cities. Not DHS or Yucky Valley, though--too far out.

[excessor.livejournal.com]

We have friends living at the CC/Rancho border and it takes 20 minutes to get to anything. At first it wasn't a problem, but it seems torturous when we visit. For the geography, I'd prefer to live in PS or CC. Of course, for the fabulous homes, I'd prefer to live in Indian Wells or Rancho.

[pklexton.livejournal.com]

Pretty maps indeed. If this is Zillow's data, though, its prettiness may be its only reliable use. I understand Zillow is generally accurate to within about 20% of actual value, although it certainly seems intuitively correct that the inland areas are fairing a lot worse than the coastal core areas. Still, I think Mark and John were lucky (as were you). Just in the last couple of weeks, at least anecdotally, we have started to see a lot more inventory coming onto the market and not much sign of an uptick of what is moving, so it could be that the wave just hasn't reached the shore yet.

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

Zillow is a terrible appraisal service; their info is too old and knows little about conditions. But as a general look at what areas are doing relatively it's good enough. I do think as the credit crunch strikes more and more areas, our local spenders will start to pull back, but the last to weaken will be the very best locales.

[theoctothorpe.livejournal.com]

So what's a good alternative site that does what Zillow does, but with more accurate data?

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

Not aware of any better. The problem is the varying quality of the databases available, the tricks the industry uses to confuse or hide true sales prices, and the lack of public data on housing quality (beyond initial building permits, square footage, etc.) No appraisal using comps is all that good for unique properties in fast-moving markets, and trying to do it via computer on the web is even harder.

[markosf.livejournal.com]

The headline in today's Chronicle was Bay Area Housing Continues to Collapse" or something similar... except SF was the one county they showed had an overall rise prices between Feb 2007-08 (by a smidge.) Since we know the undesirable SF hoods went down, the good hoods had to go up by a fair amount.