Click Photo to Enlarge

I recently reviewed some new Bay Area supply and demand graphs we are now following. They are generated from a data mining and graphing software we are now utilizing. One of the interesting graphs it produces gives us a nice look at the supply and demand trends of the many different Bay Area markets. It does a nice job of zooming in on what is happening in localized micro-climates.

At first glance I found it interesting to note the supply and demand trends in Kensington (above). I found it interesting to see that Kensington’s supply of homes (homes on the market) has gone down (year over year), while its demand (or homes sold and under contract) has been keeping pace with the market nicely. It is interesting to see that not all areas are seeing rapidly rising inventory as the media has made it seem. Don’t get me wrong there are buying opportunities in many markets, but as this graph allows me to illustrate, we have also been observing some nice selling opportunities as well.

Currently, the best advice for sellers, is to make sure your real estate professional has a good grip on your markets micro-economic conditions. What are your markets supply and demand trends? What is the data suggesting? You should have the information necessary to make an informed decision on the timing and pricing of your next transaction.

This article on MSN Money illustrates a situation that we all should get used to reading about as there will be millions upon millions of boomers who will have some variation of this happen to them.  The article still doesn’t really talk about what it means to be too old with too little money.  They kind of talk around the problem but they don’t get real about what sacrifices and compromises this man must make in his life.  He will suffer first then suffer some more and then when he needs critical health care, he won’t be able to get it.  Can you spot the mistakes that he made?  Are you working to avoid them for yourself?

As part of the now-signed-into-law Stimulus Package, the raising of conforming loan limits is a welcome change for many home owners, buyers and sellers in the San Francisco Bay Area. But there are clearly some limitations of what the benefit will be, who will benefit and if/how/when it will all come together.

Tuck Reed, Executive VP of SunTrust Mortgage, released a memorandum earlier this week that I think best articulates and speculates about the impact of the increase in conforming loan limits. The ramifications and benefits will come to fruition over the next few months and throughout 2008.

The San Francisco Chronicle ran a real estate article today showing the ups and downs of the real estate market. The story ran along with a Zillow heat map that showed average appreciating and depreciating ZIP codes in the Bay Area. I can’t say that the data behind the heat map is all correct. Especially, considering Zillow’s past record on predicting the value of Bay Area homes.

Yet, it is interesting to see that Berkeley, El Cerrito, parts of Oakland, Marin, San Rafael, San Mateo, Redwood City, Palo Alto, Cupertino and Santa Clara all seemed to buck the National downward trend. Historically the Bay Area housing market is the last area into a down market and first out. This report appears to show that we are weathering the National storm fairly well.

I was sent this You Tube video from a friend. I found it interesting in the context of top 1% performance. It is especially interesting if you couple it with Curt Van Emon’s recent post Interesting Commentary on the Top 1%. This Thomas Sowell article stated, “At the highest income levels, people are especially likely to be transient at that level. Recent data from the Internal Revenue Service show that more than half the people who were in the top one percent in 1996 were no longer there in 2005.”