On ABC7 KGO News
Statistics released from the Census Bureau show that the Bay Area is losing high-income earners and professional folks in their late 20s and 30s to other parts of the country. Indeed, our own client pool is seeing this trend too where folks who would otherwise upgrade from their San Francisco condo to their San Francisco single-family home choose to head “home” to be closer with extended family members on the east coast or Midwest. This leaving-an-expensive-urban-metro-area to be in a small or medium-sized city is even more acute here because San Francisco is filled with so many transplants. See Kevin talk about this on a story that ran in the first part of October on ABC7 KGO San Francisco (about 1 minute in).
For More Media Snippets
While acute market forces are curtailing new construction starts now, development here was already an uphill battle. Development timelines take years, so any non-NIMBY-related delays in adding new homes will keep housing prices high that much longer. But even for people who can afford to buy in the Bay Area, there’s a shortage of accessible destination homes for folks who are downsizing or ones who can no longer do the stairs in their 3-story Victorian.
Conflicting news reports about the real estate ‘market’ are concerning because they gloss over the fact that the housing market is very nuanced as each property is unique. Folks can lose sight that buying a home not only serves the very basic purpose of shelter but is also the main way folks can build wealth.