Round Table Discusses Housing Market

Forbes magazine holds a monthly round table discussion with some of the real estate leaders each month to discuss trends. This month discussion was titled "Housing Talk: Could The Rally Die?" the moderator Stephane Fitch, explores the ever volatile Golden State as Experts continue to fret over California's autumn numbers. Since Alameda is impacted with California and high unemployment, I thought it worth passing along.

The Panel includes Donald Trump Jr., Trump Organization; Pat Lashinsky, CEO of ZipRealty; Michael Feder, Radar Logic and Spencer Rascoff, Zillow.

It is an interesting read. They cover inventory, employment and what is needed to get things moving in the housing sector.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/03/real-estate-advisor-personal-finance-october-housing-panel.html

What Numbers To Believe

I get all kinds of emails, from a variety of real estate sites, and I use most of them to formulate how the Alameda real estate market is performing. Many of the websites have great information and data and some well I hit the delete button.

The one website that continues to confuses me is Zillow. They have become extremely popular for the common person to track the value of their home. Reporter now use Zillow for all kinds of stories from the value of a house that suffered fire damage to mortgage data. I have always used Zillow's data as a guide but never fact and this is why.

In their most recent email they wrote that the median home price in Alameda is $625,000. The first issue I have is the time period they are talking about. I can only guess they mean September 2009. But the month was not over and my early numbers put the median around $568,000; that is a 9 percent difference. The last time the Island saw $625,000 or more median home price was April of 2008. The median only exceed $600K one month in 2009, April.

I guess my beef with Zillow is the home valuation, they always seem to be way off. Either high or low, because their secret formula does not account for local factors. The computer does not value physical, economic or social boundaries that can increase or decrease a property.

If you are bit of a numbers geek when it come to real estate Zillow has a more data than most sites.

Zillow does have a bunch of nifty and one of my favorite's is charts Homes Sold For A Loss. I guess that they use outstanding mortgage balances and compare them to the sale price. According to Zillow nearly 26 percent of homeowners sold at a loss for the month July. This stat does not seem out of line given the declining home values.

The take away is use any website as a guide, even 94501 Real Estate, because the market is fluid and the numbers change. The best opinon is the one you formulate from a collection of information. As Mark Twain wrote in his Autobiography:

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and
statistics."

Down But Not Out

This week the Case Shiller report was released and the data for San Francisco Bay Area showed the home housing prices have been hit hard. Home prices in the San Francisco Bay Area fell a massive 32.4 percent for the month of January. The more than one-third making decline gave our metro the distinction of being the third worst area out of the 20 metro areas the reports covers.

Only Las Vegas (32.5%) and Phoenix (35%) had larger declines. These two markets have been hit hard by foreclosures and are much smaller metros. The Case Shiller report tracks single-family home prices from available sales data.

Since I focus on Alameda, I wanted to see if we had seen similar declines in homes purchase in 2004 and 2006 and sold in the last few months. Although there were only a handful of examples these sharp declines did exist in Alameda.

Here are just a few examples:

Property: 3221 Encinal

Purchased: November 1, 2006

Purchase Price: $679,000

Sold Date: February 19, 2009

Sold Price: $420,000

Decline: 38%

 

Property: 1809 St. Charles

Purchased: August 15, 2005

Purchase Price: $690,000

Sold Date: January 22, 2009

Sold Price: $457,000

Decline: 34%

 

Property: 26 Maitland

Purchased: February 7, 2006

Purchase Price: $592,000

Sold Date: February 25, 2009

Sold Price: $460,000

Decline: 22%

I thought it would be interesting to see how a few properties purchased in 2004 were holding their value. I used Zillow for the estimated value, but I am very cautious about using Zillow valuations because the accuracy can be off. This is a whole lot of what if game, because there may be hidden value that is not taken into account. I do think the tool gives a fair overall look into what the declines in Alameda have been in the past few years.

The first property was the highest price property sold for the year 2004.

Property: 1193 Sherman

Purchased: July 27, 2004

Purchase Price: $1,675,000

Zillow’s Estimate: $1,532,500

Decline: 9%

 

Then next one was a million dollar home.

Property: 1831 San Jose

Purchased: May 5, 2004

Purchase Price: $1,000,000

Zillow’s Estimate: $814,000

Decline: 19%

 

The final two were a home purchased in the $700,000 and $500,000 ranges.

Property: 1311 San Antonio

Purchased: June 4, 2004

Purchase Price: $780,000

Zillow’s Estimate: $689,500

Decline: 12%

 

Property: 2056 Pacific

Purchased: April 16, 2004

Purchase Price: $560,000

Zillow’s Estimate: $485,000

Decline: 13%

 

Link to the Report: Case Shiller Indices,

A little mood Music from the Animals:

That's Trillion with a "T"

The forth quarter numbers from all the usual sources started coming out last week, but yesterday’s numbers from online property estimator Zillow left the nation and this blogger stunned. Zillow’s Zestimates, for homes in 161 metro areas, reported $6.1 trillion in home values have been lost since 2006 and 17.6 percent of all homeowners were underwater at the end of 2008.

Even more stunning that more than half, of $6.1 Trillion loss, an estimated $3.3 trillion in home values came in 2008. And almost half of 2008’s losses, $1.4 trillion, came in the fourth quarter.

Image Link

Zillow reviewed homes in nine Bay Area counties to measure the equity lost. Regionally, Bay Area homes lost $202 billion in value in 2008. Anyone who has been listening or watching the news has seen the real estate values have continued to fall as foreclosures increased and the mortgage market fell apart. Adding to the pressure on the housing market now is job loss.

Alameda has held up well in the region and Zillow reinforces that with their estimate. Even though Alameda saw a year-over-year loss it was number 11 of all Bay Area Cities. Cities that have high home values and are affluent were ahead of the Island. The cities of Woodside, Menlo Park, Albany and Sausalito saw positive change in value. Rounding out the top 10 was: Belvedere/Tiburon, Berkeley, Piedmont, Lafayette, Hillsborough, and Orinda. Over five years, Alameda came in number #35 in annualize change of value.

 

Zillow Numbers for Alameda

Alameda (both 94501 and 94502)

Zillow Home Value Index:                              $577,500

Quarter-Over-Quarter Change:                       -4.4%

Year-Over-Year                                            -5.3%

5-Year Annualized Change                            0.9%

10-Year Annualized Change                          7.6%

 

94501

Zillow Home Value Index:                              $573,165

Quarter-Over-Quarter Change:                       -3.6%

Year-Over-Year                                            -5.2%

5-Year Annualized Change                            1.1%

10-Year Annualized Change                          7.9%

 

94502

Zillow Home Value Index:                              $594,839

Quarter-Over-Quarter Change:                       -5.0%

Year-Over-Year                                            -5.5%

5-Year Annualized Change                            0.4%

10-Year Annualized Change                          7.1%

 KPIX Video Link (They do not ave an embed feature) on the Zillow Story

http://tinyurl.com/bkhotv

San Francisco Chronicle Story on the Zillow Story

http://tinyurl.com/c3tz6x

 

Part of Alameda Real Estate Swimming

Happy New Year's Eve to all those who love to real about Alameda Real Estate, even on the last day of 2008.

I found this widget on SF Gate about homes that are Under Water. According to Zillow who powers the data, 13-14% of Alameda homes are now worth less than what people owe in their mortgage. So of the 14,561 owned properties in Alameda that is roughly 1,890 to 2,039 homes in the market.

The bigger number was 21.2% of homes in 94501 and the 18.4% in the 94502 that were sold at a loss.

See the SF Gate Data Center has a lot of cool data: http://www.sfgate.com/data/

Have a Safe and Happy New Year

Alameda Real Estate: By The Numbers

It is amazing that 2008 is rapidly coming to a close. We are now midway through the fourth quarter of 2008, and before the new year starts, I wanted to take a look back at a couple of third quarter housing reports produced by online real estate valuation estimator Zillow and online residential real estate brokerage ZipRealty. Both companies produce housing reports that track the market, home values, sales and inventory and wanted to look at these reports and see what it means for Alameda.

Zillow reports, in their Real Estate Market Report, that Alameda experienced a 1.3% decline in pricing from the prior quarter. The year-over-year change was a -7.8% in value to Alameda homes. The good news is Island has not seen the same decline as the national average 9.7%. Zillow reports that the San Francisco, CA Metro Area has current index of $567,000 which is a one year change of -14.4% compared to Alameda’s index of $600,000 to the -7.8% change in the 12 months prior.

Prices in Alameda have taken a hit in the macro but the good news is the Island has held up well during the real estate downturn. Taking a look at the ZipRealty Quarterly Housing Report, reveled that sellers in Alameda are accepting offers about 98% of the list price.

City	Zipcode	Sales	Ave List Pirce	Ave. Sale Price	%
Alameda	94501	101	$651,473.47	$637,765.89	97.90%
Alameda	94502	33	$743,346.94	$733,665.15	98.70%

Looking at the report, this shows that Alameda is doing well for the Bay Area. The Bernal Heights neighborhood in San Francisco was tops in the Bay Area with offers on average at 103% of list. Eleven zipcodes were below 95%, at the bottom was the Green Valley area of Fairfield at 92% of list.

Sales from September to October are up, but the average sale price and average price per square foot declined. Although it is not a trend, I think that it shows that people (buyers) are starting to find prices that are attractive. Not so good news if you are selling.

I guess it is tough to swallow the fact that housing market continues to decline. Even though Alameda is not suffering like the rest of the country or even parts of the Bay Area the number show that 21% of Alameda's listing are either a foreclosure or short sale. With the traditional slow home sales period approaching during the holiday season, it will be interesting to see what happens to inventory over the next couple of months.

Weekly Inventory Report -- Total Alameda Inventory

Data Pulled November 15, 2008 at 7:30 AM

Total Listings: 183

Single Family Residences: 108

Condominiums: 44

Multi-Family: 31

Short Sales: 21

Foreclosures: 17

Highst List Price: $1,995,000

Lowest List Price: $210,000

Note: The lowest list price was $165,000 for a houseboat at Barnhill Marina. I did not include it as the low listing, because it is not on land. There are three house boats included in the numbers.

With the housing market being so tough, I thought a little humor for Monday is appropriate. So Welcome, to 94501 Real Estate!