Why are there so many houses for sale in Bernal

As of today, there are 32 single family homes on the market in Bernal Heights, and its been in the last month or so, up to 35 homes. That's quite a lot and it certainly shows in the time on the market. To put some perspective on things, last year at this time there were more like 15 to 17 houses for sale at any time in the spring and the year before that it topped out in the 20s.

Are things really bad ? I've heard tell that it takes about 30 to 35 houses on the market to make a buyers market in bernal, but I just rules of thumb are always a bit simpler that reality. I took a look at the map of all of the active listings in Bernal and counted the ones that were one or two blocks away from either US101, or Rt280. I included streets like holiday, franconia, 800 block of peralta, Justin in St Mary's Park and anything on or south of crescent. There were a few homes that I would consider a bit too close to Mission, but I didn't count those. Just the ones near the highways, or too close to the projects or crescent. I counted 18 that were Geographically challenged. that's 56% for just a small sliver of the area of our neighborhood.

The difference in price between these houses is interesting too. In the highway group, the price per square foot is $534/sqft while the hill and north-west averages $669, yet the average total price is higher for the highway group since the average size is much larger average ~1400 sq ft vs ~1100 in the later group. Days on the market (which is not a good measure because it does not measure days until sold, but some point in time) is 51 vs 49. which is not much difference.

In all I think that the market is dropping for everyone; I've seen lots of great deals this year above Cortland and on really great streets and locations. Further, if we are comparing to last year, it would not be reasonable to say that on any normal year there would be 14 listings on the hill and just 1 or 2 close to the highway. Inventory is definitely up across the board. Though, it certainly is interesting to see that such a small portion of Bernal makes up the greatest share of the active listings.

SF Mayor appoints new head of housing authority

Mayor Newsom Just appointed a new head of the housing authority in San Francisco. Great job Gavin. Its so nice to see someone actually doing something proactive and positive to approach the problems of housing costs for lower income San Franciscans, rather than taking aim at particular groups of business men (and women). If the likes of the board of supervisors and the SF tenants Union would stop trying to grab from the industrious and give indiscriminately to tenants who need subsidy or not, but rather support programs which provide assistance to those who need help, life would not be such a difficult place to exist for those in the middle.

Well, enough preaching, and back to the point. Good job Mayor. Now, lets hope that this new guy actually lives up to his reputation.