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- From: hamachi@adobe.com (Gordon Hamachi)
- Subject: Real Estate News Summary, Part 131
- Message-ID: <1992Dec22.222622.8269@adobe.com>
- Sender: usenet@adobe.com (USENET NEWS)
- Organization: Adobe Systems Incorporated
- Distribution: usa
- Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 22:26:22 GMT
- Lines: 57
-
- Real Estate News Summary, Part 131, October 1992
-
- 1033.Initiated sales for single-family homes on the Peninsula rose slightly
- over year-ago levels. Homes priced from $300K to $499K were the most
- active at 49%. Condo and townhouse activity was flat. [Times Tribune]
-
- 1034.Owning a home still makes sense as a means of accumulating savings. But
- owners should not expect to see houses double or triple in value in a
- short time the way many did in the 1980s. A Harvard study says equity
- can sometimes grow even were inflation outpaces a home's value, and the
- value declines in real terms. [Times Tribune]
-
- 1035.New home construction climbed 1.4% in September. Economists were pleased
- and surprised, especially as August starts were revised upward to a 12.6%
- jump. The gains were fueled mostly by falling interest rates, but some
- believe that rates may have bottomed. Purchasing activity has already
- fallen off from a mid-September peak. For the first 9 months, home starts
- were 20.5% ahead of last year, but that was the lowest in 47 years.
- [Wall Street Journal]
-
- 1036.Cash-on-cash returns on residential real estate relative to stocks and
- bonds are at the highest point in modern history. Good-quality real estate
- can yield 9.5% to 10%, after all expenses except borrowing costs and not
- including any potential appreciation in property values. Unlike the deals
- of the '80s that depended on appreciation, today's need to work
- financially even if property values don't go up. But a word of caution:
- the same forces that are creating low prices are also pushing down rents
- and creating vacancies. [Wall Street Journal]
-
- 1037.Compared with 1989, home buyers today can own the same house for as much
- as 30% less in monthly mortgage payments. The difference is not only
- substantially lower interest rates, but the end to more than 2 decades of
- mushrooming housing costs. Nationally the median priced home increased 5
- times during the last 25 years. The average house in California swelled
- nearly 10-fold during the same period. [Times Tribune]
-
- 1038.Mitchell A. Levy's new book, "Home Ownership: The American Myth," seeks to
- debunk the home ownership myth by showing readers how to save more money
- by renting and saving. He claims you can save more than $50,000 in 3
- years by renting rather than buying a home. [San Jose Mercury News]
-
- 1039.One in 6 Santa Clara County home sellers in May, June and July sold their
- homes for less than they paid. Just 3.5% of sellers didn't recoup what
- they had paid during the same period two years ago, compared with 17% this
- summer. Job losses in the county are forcing more sales. In Alameda
- County, 11% of sellers couldn't get as much as they had paid for their
- homes, compared with 1.5% two years ago. [San Jose Mercury News]
-
- 1040.Golden State Fall Quarterly. Kennedy-Wilson will auction 126 homes,
- apartment buildings and land parcels throughout California. Seven homes
- sold with no minimum selling price. [Direct mailing]
-
- 1041.Trying to unload a heavy inventory of Northern California real estate in a
- soft market, property owners will hold a number of auctions. Forty-one
- new homes in 3 East Bay and South Bay cities will be sold by Citation
- Homes. The starting prices are 50% to 60% below the last asking prices.
- [San Francisco Examiner]
-