Thursday, December 29, 2005

Most Overvalued Housing Markets

Just for fun... CNN has a tabulation of various housing markets and how over/under priced they are. How did they do it?
National City arrives at its estimates of what the typical house in these markets should cost by examining the town's population densities, local interest rates, and income levels. It also factors in historical premiums and discounts for each area.
For some inexplicable reason Marin towns were overlooked by this analysis. Some of the closest are as follows (a positive percentage means overpriced):
Salinas, CA +75%
Napa, CA +65%
Santa Rosa, CA +56%
Oakland, CA +47%
Santa Cruz, CA +44%
San Francisco, CA +35%.

6 comments:

marine_explorer said...

For some inexplicable reason Marin towns were overlooked by this analysis

I've noticed that too, and what could be a plausible explanation? Anecdotally, the media's coverage of California real estate could offer an explanation. It's pretty common to read about destinations, such as San Francisco, Monterey, or Napa. Less commonly, one hears about bedroom communities such as Marin, Burlingame, Palo Alto or Berkeley--despite their high prices. Save for a Forbes article or two on Belvedere and other pricey towns, perhaps Marin is not actually that distinctive to outsiders?

Anonymous said...

The reason Salinas is so high on the list is that it has a lot of nice new home sales and a lot of super poor farm workers that drive the average income for the city down.

P.S. Bloomberg.com just had the info below:
Sales of existing homes fell to an eight-month low in November, leaving the number of houses on the market at the highest since 1986 and suggesting one pillar of the U.S. economy will weaken next year.

Anonymous said...

Below is my estimate:

Marin, CA +110%

Marinite said...

I was being sarcastic. Marin's towns are probably too small to be noticed.

Marinite said...

Bloomberg.com just had the info below:
Sales of existing homes fell to an eight-month low in November, leaving the number of houses on the market at the highest since 1986


Yes, I actually received that notification this morning and instead of blogging it, I snuck it in to my bulleted list of items in the previous post.

Anonymous said...

Marin's towns are probably not on there because incomes in marin are probably higher than in any of the other areas. So, even though our houses are expensive in absolute terms, compared to incomes, they are probably more "affordable" than those in salinas or napa.

There might be something to the destination concept as well.

Most outsiders don't immeadiately realize the unparalleled virtuous lifestyle that is Living in Marin.