It’s a familiar pattern, oft repeated. A forgotten neighborhood is discovered by artists seeking good spaces and cheap rents. They move in and the process of gentrification begins. Before long, the rents are so high and home values so steep, that the artists have to look elsewhere for space. The neighborhood is so no longer…
We love top ten lists, and we want to be on them. So San Diegans, take a bow. You have made the list of the hottest real estate markets in the U.S., coming in at No. 6 in the month of November 2015. For 2016, San Diego made the Realtor.com of “markets to watch”, this…
If you’ve decided a home in San Diego is on your wish list, you’re not alone. When you go out shopping you will find that inventory of homes in every category, both single family and condos, is awfully low. Zillow’s latest report quotes an over 30 percent decline in housing on the market in the…
You may think of San Diego as a collection of neighborhoods filled with charming Craftsman bungalows and historic homes. A new entry into the real estate market may indeed change your point of view. The San Diego City Council has approved the development of a 45 story condominium tower called Pacific Gate, which is soon…
In 1978, the Constitution of California was amended to include the famous Proposition 13, the People’s Initiative to Limit Property Taxation. In a nutshell, what this Proposition accomplished was to limit the tax rate for real estate to no more than one percent of the market value. It set assessments of property at their 1975…
Climate change. It’s here and it is changing the way we live and our expectations. Formerly dry places may get wetter, and unexpected water can cause a lot of damage, especially in locations where runoff has no place to go. According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), a mere two inches of water can…
San Diego is a city of neighborhoods, and neighborhoods within neighborhoods, and many of them have tales to tell. We peer today into such a community, Marston Hills, an area within Hillcrest bounded by Sixth Avenue to the west, Pennsylvania Avenue to the north, and Park Boulevard to the east. The area is named after…
In my last article, I discussed the forces at work in the real estate market driving sales ratios and prices. Most notably, the three factors slowing the number of sales were low inventories, interest rate concerns and most especially, the lack of affordability. The California Association of Realtors is constantly tracking all sorts of variables…
The real estate market is in a sleepy mode, and there are lots of reasons for this. This is the first of a two-part peek at the forecast for 2016, and in this first of the series, we’ll lay out the forces that are at play, setting the stage for what is to come. In…
Let’s make up a hypothetical choice for this experiment. Let us compare the purchase of a home for $500,000 with an annual real estate tax of $3,000 and insurance bill of $1,500, to the rental of a luxury apartment for $2,500 a month. Let us say you live in the home for a period of…
