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Old 10-27-2015, 10:40 AM
 
Location: San Francisco
169 posts, read 168,978 times
Reputation: 320

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Buffaboy View Post
Interesting that I stumbled upon this thread as a result of reading this: https://www.reddit.com/r/news/commen..._landlord_who/, and as someone who was born and raised in suburban Buffalo (mentioned a few posts up), yes I do agree it's an up-and-coming city, and does have plenty of culture, including an underrated and under-invested waterfront and two professional sports teams. Our biggest problem is that we lost a ton of manufacturing companies and are just now shifting to "service" and R&D fields, and we have developers that don't want to invest in the urban prairie.
weather
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Old 10-27-2015, 10:47 AM
 
Location: San Francisco
169 posts, read 168,978 times
Reputation: 320
Answers:

1. A lot of VC money being tossed around to people working at small companies

2. A lot of international, wealthy people buying with CASH MONEY to build their investment portfolios

If you're a working stiff like myself, don't expect to buy in this area, unless you're going to buy in a very transitional to borderline ghetto area. If you want to live in Noe Valley or Pac Heights or nearly anywhere on the penisula (and even parts of Oakland and definitely Berkeley) make and app and sell it to someone for a few million and get ready to compete with cash offers.
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Old 10-27-2015, 11:37 AM
 
28,115 posts, read 63,692,777 times
Reputation: 23268
I bought my first home right out of college... always worked and had been since age 12.

Desperately wanted to own and found qualifying for a mortgage the biggest stumbling block.

Not being discouraged I started looking for the least expensive homes in the Bay Area and ended up buying one in East Oakland below East 14th... best decision of my life... I was a homeowner at age 22 for the price some pay for a car...

The place was set for condemnation hearing... a postage stamp sized lot with a cottage less than 700 square feet built in the teens.

Still have the home today and on my second tenant since I moved.

If being a Bay Area Homeowner is your goal... don't count yourself out before checking the lowest/cheapest homes in each area.

When I first viewed my home I told the Realtor I would pass... just needed too much work... she was really a smart woman and asked what did I think it was worth and over the course of an hour... wrote up an offer for less than half of the list price... the next morning, she called to congratulate me and the adventure began.
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Old 10-27-2015, 06:52 PM
 
3,098 posts, read 3,787,093 times
Reputation: 2580
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ultrarunner View Post
.. I was a homeowner at age 22 for the price some pay for a car...


How long ago was this and around how much did you pay?
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Old 10-27-2015, 08:04 PM
 
28,115 posts, read 63,692,777 times
Reputation: 23268
I bought my first home in the 80's... and have posted pictures of it to show I was not exaggerating the condition...

My point in writing is I bought what I could afford even though many would have shunned the neighborhood and 99% would have shunned the house... and I did it on my own because I was not going to let anyone prevent my from owning and aside from college... I learned more buying this run down cottage than anything else I have ever attempted.

To make it more relevant pricewise... I sold another home in 2005 for 255k... later it sold for 350k and in 2011 it sold as a bank owned foreclosure for 80k...

There certainly has been no shortage of opportunity in the Bay Area to own property.

Here is the picture of my first home and I still own it today... caution... contains graphic material

http://www.city-data.com/forum/attac...s-scan0008.jpg

next is before and after kitchen and bath pictures...

http://www.city-data.com/forum/attac...s-scan0009.jpg

Last edited by Ultrarunner; 10-27-2015 at 08:14 PM..
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Old 10-28-2015, 09:55 AM
 
540 posts, read 653,721 times
Reputation: 766
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ultrarunner View Post
I bought my first home in the 80's... and have posted pictures of it to show I was not exaggerating the condition...

My point in writing is I bought what I could afford even though many would have shunned the neighborhood and 99% would have shunned the house... and I did it on my own because I was not going to let anyone prevent my from owning and aside from college... I learned more buying this run down cottage than anything else I have ever attempted.

To make it more relevant pricewise... I sold another home in 2005 for 255k... later it sold for 350k and in 2011 it sold as a bank owned foreclosure for 80k...

There certainly has been no shortage of opportunity in the Bay Area to own property.

Here is the picture of my first home and I still own it today... caution... contains graphic material

http://www.city-data.com/forum/attac...s-scan0008.jpg

next is before and after kitchen and bath pictures...

http://www.city-data.com/forum/attac...s-scan0009.jpg
The 80s are long gone and that cannot be done here ever again unless you're rich. Even homes in the lower bottoms of West Oakland are selling for 400K
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Old 10-28-2015, 12:20 PM
 
2,007 posts, read 1,275,799 times
Reputation: 1858
Our beloved city of San Francisco has a rather clever way to determine who stays and who goes :

Everybody gets the chance when they first arrive in the city. Now I mean everybody as in young or not so young professionals mostly now in the Tech field. First off is the hunt for someplace to rent, lease or just get a room to sleep. Then, after that comes the real test in whether you have it to stay. The qst becomes can you put aside enough cash for a down payment or deposit on a place to own?. Next, how about the monthly mortgage on a place. Do you really think you will be in the city , especially if you have kids and a family , for the distant future?. It is one thing to be young and making an above average salary, but who else are you competing against for home ownership ?. There are many couples in the city with combined incomes in the $250k income bracket and above vying for housing. To acquire home ownership, we are now facing a situation whereby home buyers are willing to leverage more of their income to ensure ownership. San Francisco remains for now and very much indefinitely a sellers market.

For SF natives like myself, San Francisco has changed so much in the last decade or so. What I hear over and over from people I know are the terms "fake and plastic" & "phony" as well as the kicker "This city has gone soulless, god help it" heard from a old time rasta living in Bernal Heights.

The city has changed more than anybody could have imagined in recent years. Now we just have to live and roll with the changes.

Are we becoming the little "Rome" on the bay?. And as we all know nothing is forever!
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Old 10-28-2015, 01:15 PM
 
28,115 posts, read 63,692,777 times
Reputation: 23268
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bisaro TMF View Post
The 80s are long gone and that cannot be done here ever again unless you're rich. Even homes in the lower bottoms of West Oakland are selling for 400K
You completely missed my point... a home I owned and sold was sold and sold again for 350k and then sold for 80k as a foreclosure and had improvements done... this was not the 80's... this was in 2012.

The pictures I posted document the lengths I went to achieve home owenrship.

I posted on C-D that Oakland had over 200 homes on the MLS under 125k a few years back and many responded they were not worth the price at that...

The other part is I was making $3.50 an hour working several part time jobs... and now wages are many times that.
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Old 10-28-2015, 02:15 PM
 
Location: San Francisco
169 posts, read 168,978 times
Reputation: 320
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ultrarunner View Post
You completely missed my point... a home I owned and sold was sold and sold again for 350k and then sold for 80k as a foreclosure and had improvements done... this was not the 80's... this was in 2012.

The pictures I posted document the lengths I went to achieve home owenrship.

I posted on C-D that Oakland had over 200 homes on the MLS under 125k a few years back and many responded they were not worth the price at that...

The other part is I was making $3.50 an hour working several part time jobs... and now wages are many times that.
Yeah, but what others are saying is that you can't pull that off now....investors are buying up even bad Oakland with the hopes of improving it. The fastest RISING prices are in Oakland, not even SF. The fact that tech workers, physicians, professionals, etc struggle to buy in this areas says alot about what's going on
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Old 10-28-2015, 03:40 PM
 
28,115 posts, read 63,692,777 times
Reputation: 23268
Quote:
Originally Posted by twiggidy View Post
Yeah, but what others are saying is that you can't pull that off now....investors are buying up even bad Oakland with the hopes of improving it. The fastest RISING prices are in Oakland, not even SF. The fact that tech workers, physicians, professionals, etc struggle to buy in this areas says alot about what's going on
It really does come down to timing and Oakland is the geographic center of the Bay Area with ideal weather and BART, BUS, FERRY, TRAIN and confluence of Interstate Roads.

Realtor.com still shows over 100 MLS residential listings at 250k or less.

This is exactly how I bought my first home... I scoped out the 10 cheapest homes in Oakland every week and did a drive by... took a couple months and the one I ended up buying was by far the cheapest after negotiations...

My only regret was not being able to buy more of the cheapest East Oakland homes.

Here is a link to the first one that popped up

http://www.realtor.com/realestateand...9-45495?row=10

My 2br house on the same street sold for 350k in 2007... so at least in my neighborhood, prices have not fully recovered.
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