"Snooker The Suckers, Then Laugh"
A reader posted this SFGate article that has under the byline "Surreal Estate." The subject is "pre-emptive offers" and that is strange enough. But listen to the tone and bizarre nature of the San Francisco market.
"'There are a lot of freaked-out and stressed-out buyers trying to figure out what they can do,' said Pier Charter..In the Bay Area, where there has been a seller's hootenanny for a couple years shy of a decade, a new convention has evolved that encourages multiple offers while allowing sellers to sit back, sip tea and enjoy bidding-war bloodbaths like spectators at a nice gladiator fight."
"Buyers tend to feel like defenseless soldiers in a war where they have few weapons except kamikaze-style overbidding (yes, I got the house, but now my children subsist on generic-brand kibble)."
"'I have a ton of pissed-off agents calling me,' Thomas Biss said with a laugh."
3 Comments:
The bull still runs in NYC. New York Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/realestate/17cov.html?
Bottom line, people have lost all faith in the stock market and as a result have totally forgone any kind of rationale asset allocation.
The Times Real Estate section isn't the best place to get an unbiased market view, much like their automotive section, it's all about sucking up to advertisers. Try to do some NOI calculations on Corcoran's latest purchase and you can see it doesn't look too good (yes, if you plan to hang on for years it might, but also remember NYC taxes are going up, up up -it's no longer the bargain it once was to maintain these buildings - especially with the rents flattening due to too much competition.)
(people need to live somewhere)
What was the comment the other day?
"GM: because you can live in your car but you can't drive your house."
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