All Forum Posts by: Ramsin Jacob

@Ramsin Jacob assuming these are vacant lots? From owning vacant land in the past, it can be nice to put your money in something that pays you each month vs. a land bank.

My crystal ball is still under warranty so take this as 100% accurate future prediction. The SF city market will never ever crash, ever due to COVID or financial reasons etc. It wont ever happen. What people who are not from here fail to understand is that SF is a legally zoned monopoly. They aren't making more dirt, you can't build up in most areas and the immediate land to the south is garbage. What happens here every decade or so is that you get a little softening and buyers have a little less pressure and a few more options and a little more time to be picky. When this happens it FEELS like a collapse as sellers were led to believe that 10-20-50% over asking was guaranteed. So people freak out and think prices are falling when they are just not going up. Then all the data comes in and we had a little dip, 5-10-15% on median sales prices, probably dragged down by high-end condos falling the most. If you can afford to play here and have a 5-10 year time horizon you will never lose money.

Now...let me add one massive caveat to this for everyone thinking I am not as smart as I think I am.... When the next big earthquake comes, prices will collapse. I mean BIG quake, the 7s, 8s and 9s where the Marina is 50% red-tagged and freeways are flattened. When this eventually happens, and it will, all bets are off. Most people here haven't felt a real earthquake and when it comes I can imagine 10,000s of people will leave and never return. The fear of death is a strong motivator to move. And to all those people complaining about homeless, **** on the street, petty theft etc, thats all part of the charm of SF, its a feature not a bug, very few ppl will move out of here b/c SF city govt cant clean up the tenderloin or parts of SOMA.

I live in the Bay Area, and the price of housing has started to rise again here as we begin to come out of COVID. Demand is always high in this area, and I really don't see that changing anytime soon, so I don't see a crash coming. However, people are always moving out of the Bay Area because it's so expensive, and with the undergoing shift to more remote work, some people are keeping their high income jobs and moving to lower cost areas. Things will doubtless adjust somewhat, but people like living here, and I think will always want to buy here.