Actually, house prices in Silicon Valley and San Francisco have not pulled back yet. The median prices fell last year, then recovered. They hit new all-time highs last month all over the Bay Area.
I've read that both the 1929 bust and the Japanese 1989 bust were followed 2 years later by peaks in real estate prices. Perhaps its another of those timeless themes... equity bubble collapses, interest rates drop, people say "real estate is the place to be".
If the schedule continues to hold, this should be about the peak of the secondary bubble. However, I honestly see no sign of that around where I live. The number of For-Sale signs in my neighborhood is lower than it's been most of the last year.
For your entertainment, here are some of the completed-sales listings from last Saturday's paper, for Campbell where I live. Campbell is a decent but quite ordinary suburb of San Jose. The housing stock here has a lot of 40-year old tract homes and 1970's-80's townhouses, 20 years ago it was a lower-middle-to-blue-collar area.
164 North 3rd St: $620,000, 1,650 SF, 2 BR, W. and V. Zurn to E. and J. Manchester.
90 North Milton Ave: $580,000, 1,280 SF, 3 BR, C. Dunbar to R. Gowdy.
1471 Patio Drive: $695,000, 1,396 SF, 3 BR, Martinez Trust to S. Hagar-Biagini.
887 Steinway Ave: $565,000, 1,326 SF, 3 BR, M. and M. McLeod to P. and J. Weideling.
310 Sunberry Drive: $500,000, 1,025 SF, 3 BR, M. Hu to R. Hsu.
Nah, no bubble here. LOL.
AI
