My job has some perks, and one of them is getting to talk with interesting people. In late August (after deadline for this paper), I will have the privilege of interviewing Joe Tal... Read More
MIDYEAR MARKET UPDATE The economy remains strong, as does housing. Sounds simple enough, right? But the interesting stuff is in the details. Leslie Appleton-Young and Jordan Levine... Read More
HOUSING PRICES REBOUND After several years of prices below the heights they reached in 2015, the median house sales prices are back up to their second-highest levels for the area i... Read More
State Senator Scott Wiener stirred up a hornets’ nest last year when he pushed a bill to allow greater density of housing around transit points across the state. That bill died e... Read More
Recently in the news there was a story about the Oakland A’s baseball team lining up political support for a new stadium to be built (they hope) at the Howard Terminal on the wa... Read More
I don’t know how you feel about it,” the neighbor said, informing me about a neighborhood development. “I don’t know if you’re a NIMBY or YIMBY or whatever . . . ” My n... Read More
This month, let’s dig back into the numbers and see what about the local real estate market makes us smile, makes us worry, or makes us want to lose our lunch. BIGLY “In 2018, ... Read More
In this housing crisis, can the Bay Area’s billionaires do what its more humble citizens can not? Marc Benioff told a gathering of techies in October that “there’s a group of... Read More
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