Real estate executive sees glass half full

The San Francisco Bay Area (especially the city itself) has traditionally defied real estate market downturns.  The value homebuyers place on San Francisco’s dramatic scenery, its mild climate and its famous lifestyle has somehow insulated it from dramatic property value losses throughout the decades.

Avram Goldman is a 30-year veteran Bay Area real estate executive who has been publishing his blog, “The Goldman Report,” first as COO for Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage’s flagship S.F. Bay organization and now as CEO for San Francisco’s s Pacific Union GMAC  Real Estate.  Kicking off the new year for his agent minions, Goldman see the real estate market glass half full instead of half-empty.

His positive observations include:

• The Dow finishing above 9,000 on the first day of trading in the new year, up 6.1% during the last week of 2008. He predicts that if the Dow continues to hold steady in the first quarter, the rest of the year could bode well for a rally – an indicator that things have bottomed out.
• Gasoline has come down in price by at least half from its peak last summer. Unless a major escalation takes place in the Middle East, we my have more buck left in our pockets and be able to pay airfares again without offering the blood of our firstborn.
• Although he does not cite how much median prices have dropped over the past year (this report is, after all, meant to be a rally-the-troops publication), Goldman does point out that the media in general fails to inform us that the SF Metro area has seen a 39.44% increase in property values since 2000. He cites the example of a home purchased for $800,000 then is now worth $1.2 million.
• Goldman also reveals that his area experienced more closed sales in 2008 than in the previous year, even though the median price of those closings was significantly lower.
• Another tidbit of promising news is the Deutsche Bank has projected that the dollar should rise against the euro and the yen in the coming year, according to Goldman.

Goldman ends his newsletter taking heart in the idea that through these tough times, the nation is being brought back to its original values of friends and family, the realization that not all that glitters is gold, the golden rule and that greed and avarice do not lead to happiness – a silver lining in the clouds of economic despair.