August 20, 2024
The upcoming Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC, or just ‘Fed’) meeting September 17-18 is one of the most widely (wildly?) anticipated business meetings this year, and the housing industry is on the edge of its proverbial seat. The questions are: 1. Will Jerome Powell’s talk at the Jackson Hole Symposium...
July 8, 2024
Someday, perhaps, the history of the 2020 Global Pandemic could encapsulate an entire decade – to 2030, and appropriately start by featuring the health crisis and widespread fear that the human race faced on every continent. Then the pages will shift to the more enduring consequences on people’s lives economically....
June 28, 2024
“I read the news today oh boy, about a lucky man who made the grade, and though the news was rather sad, but I had just had to laugh, I saw the photograph………..” and then “nobody was really sure if he was from the house of Lords”….” And, “3,000 holes...
March 30, 2024
While the weather here in Sonoma County hasn’t really behaved liked spring lately, we are entering the spring season for home sales and we have a glimpse of “the new normal.” It’s actually a modest evolution from where we have been, with a market still limited by inventory. However, there...
January 25, 2024
Jess Young As everyone knows, real estate sales have been slower than usual the past couple of years, and the primary culprits have been the limited inventory of homes for sale and the rapid rise in interest rates and subsequent increases to mortgage rates. While the latter seems to have...
January 5, 2024
Christmas came a little early this year, when Jerome Powell’s early December speech following the Federal (Reserve) Open Market Committee meeting featured a strong orientation toward the position that the Fed is done raising interest rates (after pauses in its past four meetings) and that the door was open for...
September 6, 2023
The housing market, the mortgage market, it’s reminding us of the lyrics from a vintage Joni Mitchell song: “Sittin’ in a park in Paris, France.Reading the news, and it’s all bad.They won’t give peace a chance.That was just a dream some of us had.” The Canadian-born, singer-songwriter and musical icon...
May 10, 2023
The average selling price for a Sonoma County home in the early part of the year was $531 per-square-foot (psf), or a 5% drop from the same period a year ago, according to BAREIS MLS. The median price of homes listed for sale is much higher, at $790,000 (the median...
May 1, 2023
This post reminds us of one of Mark Twain’s famous quips: “There are lies. Damn lies. And statistics!” An interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal ran recently on the U.S. housing shortage, and depending on the source, it’s as “few” as 1.7 million housing units or as many as...
A Perspective on Mortgage Rates
April 7, 2023
It’s an old saying in the residential real estate industry and we are being reminded of it now: in home buying it’s not the cost of the home—it’s the cost of the money. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate as of April 7 was 7.09% -- sticker shock from the...
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