Monday, December 26, 2011

$3.49M of 17 units apartment Homes in Walnut Creek

位于旧金山湾区Walnut Creek 的全新公寓。共24个单位,于竣工后卖出7个单位。2010年被银行回收。目前有17个单位出售。其中包括有12个两房两卫面积 905 平方英尺的单位以及5个 一房一卫 779 平方英尺的单位 公寓分为上下两层并拥有地下停车位。每户均有硬木地板,大理石台面,不锈钢厨房电器及上下式洗衣干衣机的连接 所有的17个单位目前都是空房.

$3.75M, 22 Single Family Houses in West Sacramento

一个位于沙加缅度的现代化独立房屋群,于2007年建成,共22栋, 总面积 35,205sf, 占地29,040sf, 每户三层三房三卫,面积于1550sf-1630sf之间, 售价$$170,455/户. 每户可租$1550/月.总售价$3,750,000. 大约可有6.8%回报率.


16 Units, Castro Valley Apartments

位于加州湾区的Castro Valley16个单位的公寓,每个单位2房1.5卫浴. 公寓維護良好,周围环境安静. 总面积19,152sf,占地59,045sf总售价$3,160,080, 每年可有$219,144的总收入,大约可有3.8%的回报率. 


Study Finds 38% of Homes Purchased in 2011 Bought with Cash

In DSNews 12/23/2011, 38% of the homes were bought by cash investors, which is twice as much as the % in 2006.

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Despite record low mortgage rates, 2011 has seen a surprisingly high level of cash home purchases, according to the real estate research firm Hanley Wood Market Intelligence.


Jonathan Dienhart and Ken Lee, two analysts with the company, say between tight lending standards and a desperate search for yield by investors, cash purchases of homes – particularly for distressed properties – became even more common in 2011 than last year.

Dienhart and Lee analyzed data collected through Hanley Wood’s Housing IntelligencePro, and shared their findings in a blog post.

The two discovered that 38 percent of homes purchased in 2011 were bought with all cash. That’s up from 34 percent in 2010, and double the 19 percent rate in 2006.

According to Dienhart and Lee, this trend is likely to continue in the near term. They note that cash-paying investors are responsible for an increasing share of home purchases nowadays as prior homeowners abandon the ownership market and head back to rentals.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Housing starts showing some strength

 If you watch bay area housing prices, you may notice that the pricing for many average houses had stabilized since 2009 Dec. You could buy a nice San Jose house (2000 sqft) for $500K in late 2009 but you may not be able to get lower prices or even the same bargain now. It is similar in other CA cities such as Sacramento or Stockton. 


Below is an article to show the housing market starts to show a bit of strength. A smart investor should ask if the window of the great opportunities has started to close down. 


-----------------  From Washington Post on 12/20/2011

The deeply depressed housing sector finally seems to have found its bottom — and may even be starting to bounce back.
A wide range of housing indicators — construction, home sales, prices — have stabilized in the past few months, although they remain at historically very low levels. And it looks as if construction activity in particular will pick up in 2012.
The latest evidence of the momentum — new-housing starts for November — was released Tuesday. The surprising 9.3 percent gain bumped the rate of new-housing construction to its highest level in 19 months, to a rate of 685,000 new units a year. The number of building permits issued for new houses and apartments also rose, to 5.7 percent in November.
“The good news is that housing has switched from being a drag on overall growth, to modest positive contributions,” said Brian Bethune, chief economist of Alpha Macroeconomic Foresights.
Behind this improvement was a combination of powerful demographic trends, differences in the job and housing markets in various local economies, and the half-decade in which very few homes were built or renovated.
In normal times, about 1.2 million new households are created in the United States each year, because of rising population. That number falls during bad economic times as more young adults live with their parents, retirees move in with their children and immigration declines. But it doesn’t fall as dramatically as has home construction amid the housing bust and recession.

 Read more on Is housing bouncing back?


PS Business Parks pays $520 million for 18 South Bay and East Bay business parks

I had leased an office from PS Business Parks and impressed with their management. They have started to buy bay area office and industrial complexes. Should a regular investor take advantages of depressed pricing in bay area now as well? 


------------  From Mercury News on 12/21/2011
Making a half-billion-dollar bet the Bay Area economy is rebounding, a realty firm Tuesday bought 18 business parks in the East Bay and South Bay in what's believed to be the biggest property purchase in the Bay Area this year.
PS Business Parks said Tuesday it paid $520 million for a portfolio of research, industrial and warehouse complexes in nine Bay Area cities. The seller in the deal was RREEF America REIT II.
"This portfolio acquisition significantly enhances PS Business Park's presence in Northern California, providing a strong concentration of parks in markets that are poised for continued recovery," said Joseph Russell, CEO of Glendale-based PS Business.
The properties total 5.3 million square feet -- roughly the combined size of Sunvalley Shopping Center in Concord, Valley Fair mall in San Jose, Broadway Plaza in Walnut Creek and Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto.
"This is the largest transaction we're aware of in the Bay Area this year," said John Yandle, a senior vice president in the Santa Clara office of Cornish & Carey Commercial Newmark Knight Frank, a commercial realty firm. "There is nothing that would beat a half a billion dollars."
The business parks that PS bought are located in San Jose, Oakland, Hayward, Fremont, Milpitas, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Concord and San Leandro. They typically consist of buildings with multiple tenants, with an office in the front and manufacturing, research and warehouse space in the rear of the buildings.
The properties have a combined occupancy level of 82 percent. The buyer believes it can profit from leasing the properties because of their location in key sections of the Bay Area. It expects rents to rise in the coming years.
"The economic strength and stability" of these markets, Russell said, "will provide opportunities to create value from this unique opportunity."
Local realty brokers predicted that PS won't have to combat a big surge in newly constructed projects that would compete against the newly acquired portfolio.
"It's a smart purchase," Yandle said. "There is not that much of this type of space left in the area."
So far this year, the Bay Area has added 47,500 jobs. That's four times as many as the 10,700 new jobs the region created during the first 11 months of 2010.
"We are having healthy growth in social networking, Internet companies, software companies, and that is contributing to job growth in the Bay Area," said Ed Hofer, a senior vice president with Colliers International, a realty firm.
And the South Bay is leading that growth. During the 12 months that ended in October, the South Bay job market expanded by 3.2 percent -- the fastest rate of growth among major urban centers in the United States.
"The Bay Area is not going away," Hofer said. "It is going to have a strong economy into the future."

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Pending Sales Increase May Point to Budding Market Recovery

DSNews 11/30/2011

The National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) pending home sales index reported strong positive movement over the month of October, rising 10.4 percent from September.
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Nonetheless, “I’m actually encouraged by these numbers,” Yun says. This could be the first sign of sustained recovery in the market, he says.
Pending home sales rose in three of four regions in October, falling only in the West, which experienced a 0.3 percent decline to 105.5. The rate, however, is 8.1 percent higher than last year
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We will see if this is the start of a new beginning.