San Pablo Multi-Unit Investment Opportunity – 1260 Sanford Ave.

We’re constantly coming across East Bay investment opportunities that might be a good fit for our readers/potential clients and starting with this post, we’re going to start passing them along.  If you’re interested in having us sending any future deals directly to your inbox, there’s a place at the bottom of this post where you can enter you email & we’ll be happy to pass them along.

To kick things off, here’s a San Pablo investment opportunity that is just hitting the market.  It’s a 4-plex with three occupied units. It’s a potential short sale listed by an experienced short sale team that just happens to be down the hall from us, so if you’re interested in more info, call or email Norman (nngee@comcast.net / 510.552.0878) and we’ll take good care of you.

Click here to download a cash flow analysis for 1260 Sanford Ave

If you’re interested in hearing about other opportunities like this, enter your email below and we’ll let you know.

Time to Jump in and Buy Real Estate Again!

In an article posted on CnnMoney, on March 28th, titled “Real estate: It’s time to buy again,” Shawn Tully, senior editor, states; “Forget stocks. Don’t bet on gold. After four years of plunging home prices, the most attractive asset class in America is housing.”

This is a compelling article, with an optimistic overview on the housing market well worth the read!

This following quote lays the foundation and leads to an insightful argument in favor of recovery in the housing market.

If all the noise you’re hearing about housing has you totally confused, join the crowd. One day you’ll read that owning a home has never been more affordable. The next day you’ll see news that housing starts have plunged to nearly their lowest level in half a century, as headlines announced in March. After four years of falling prices and surging foreclosures, it’s hard to know what to think. Even Robert Shiller and Karl Case can’t agree. The two economists, who together created the widely followed S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price indices, are right now offering sharply contrasting views of housing’s future. Shiller recently warned that the chances were high for a further double-digit drop in U.S. home prices. But in an interview with Fortune, Case took a far brighter view: “The lack of new home building is a huge help that a lot of people are ignoring,” says Case. “People think I’m crazy to be optimistic, but housing is looking like the little engine that could.”

flickr photo credit Jitze Couperus Used under a creative commons license.

Looking Closer at the Historical Median Price Trend in the East Bay

One of the trends that we’ve been talking about lately has been what’s going on with housing prices. We’ve been saying that areas in the lower price ranges seem to be stabilizing and now “bouncing” along the bottom. However, we have been predicting that prices in the mid to high end are seeing further reductions.

While compiling my latest set of numbers, I selected 8 cities in both Alameda and Contra Costa Counties and tracked the median price going back to the beginning of last year.

You can see in the graph below that Richmond and San Pablo have remained relatively stable, what I believe to be “bouncing” along the bottom. Then take a look at what’s been going on in Kensington, Berkeley, El Cerrito and Albany especially in the last 5 months. That’s a fairly dramatic drop.

East Bay Housing Data – Glen’s Numbers through February 2011

This month’s edition of Glen’s East Bay Housing Numbers is in and February seemed somewhat uneventful on the surface.

Inventory stayed relatively even compared to January with a slight increase seen in pending sales, up about 8.5%. The months supply remained steady at 3.3 months, still well above the 2 month supply we saw last year.

The Pending/Active Ratio increased to .88, still indicating that we are still, on the whole, in a mild buyer’s market.

Sales continue to remain sluggish. We’re seeing, as a trend in most cities, days on market slowly increasing, median prices decreasing slightly and the average sales price coming down slightly in comparison to the average list price.

Other Recent News

“Bay Area home sales took their normal plunge from December last month but rose slightly from a year ago as prices edged lower. Although investors stayed quite active, many potential buyers and sellers continued to play a waiting game, while new-home sales dropped to the lowest level in more than two decades.” DQ News

As always, I’m available if you want to talk about the market, or explore your options for buying, selling or investing in East Bay real estate. You can reach me directly at 510.333.4460.

You can download the entire copy of Glens East Bay Housing Numbers through Feb-2011 here.