You can get dizzy reading even just a sampling of the headlines on articles previewing the 2019 real estate market: “2019 real estate market forecast: Power shifts to buyers.” ... Read More
When producer Martin Gabel attended the initial rehearsal of the play The Assassin, he spotted an actress who was “gesticulating wildly instead of remaining motionless.” Irrita... Read More
THE VALUE OF TIME On Oct. 11, Mayor London Breed created a new position, the director of housing delivery, to speed up the permitting time for new housing. The director will manage... Read More
State voters will have a say on housing policy this November, as voters once again look at their long, multipage ballots and wonder what they did wrong to be confronted with this. ... Read More
San Francisco’s housing market is so competitive . . . How competitive is it? Here’s the headline from a recent Business Insider article: “San Francisco’s housing market is... Read More
When Board of Supervisors President London Breed became Mayor Breed in July, no one could escape hearing that the new mayor grew up in public housing, or that she has been a renter... Read More
Like almost nobody I know, I love secondary market mortgage securitization. It got a bum rap during the Great Recession, but its failings were in the execution, not the concept. ... Read More
There’s an old saw in the political world that says a president is lucky to begin a presidency with a recession. During a four-year term, a downturn is reasonably likely to happe... Read More
AWAY WITH THE AGENTS? When I was a young editor working for a commercial real estate affiliate of the National Association of Realtors in the 1990s, I remember hearing that NAR big... Read More
If you want to start a heated argument with a neighbor, bring up SB 827. It’s a bill put forward by our state senator, Scott Wiener, which would push communities to increase the ... Read More
IS AN OFF-MARKET DEAL RIGHT FOR YOU? We’ve all heard the stories from recent years about homes selling within days or even hours of going on the market. That might sound like a s... Read More
SHIFT COMING IN CITY HOUSING POLICY? We can call it the Marina Times Columnist Surprise: District 3 Supervisor Aaron Peskin masterminded the process by which acting mayor London Br... Read More
TAXES AND HOUSING Conservatives finally got their long-sought tax bill at the end of December. To help pay for dramatic decreases in taxes for top earners, authors of the congressi... Read More
REVIEW THE PREVIEW I was tempted to offer my own real estate year in review, but having already done that for the world at large (see my cover story this issue), I decided instead ... Read More
BATTLE OF THE MID-WAY In recent months, the Trump administration and congressional Republicans have been trying to hammer out details of their proposed tax legislation. The fate of... Read More