The 2nd Best Place to Sell a Home

I ran across an article a few days ago on Forbes.com that listed the 5 Best Places to Sell a Home. Frankly, with more than half of all properties in the San Francisco Market going for significantly over asking price, and approximately half receiving multiple offers, there’s no wonder that San Francisco made the top 5. What did surprise me is that we only came in second. I mean, when is San Francisco second to anything? But whatever, that doesn’t matter too much to me… Raleigh, NC came in first, and I’ve never been there. I’m sure they don’t have Mitchell’s Ice Cream or dim sum that comes close to being as good as Yank Sing.
The fact of the matter is that San Francisco is geographically challenged. And no, I don’t mean because our location on the Pacific Ocean has turned us into a barricade that fights back the fog so the rest of the Bay Area can remain warm and sunny during the summer months. I mean that we are a little penninsula… just 7 miles by 7.5 miles. There is only so much land that is available here, and we have built upon most of it. While there are a few frontiers that have yet to be fully developed (Mission Bay, SoMa, the old Naval Shipyards in Hunters Point), they too are on in the beginning stages to becoming thriving residential communities. Mission Bay was recently listed as the eigth fastest growing neighborhood in the country (with Hunters Point as a runner up!) And while demand hasn’t quite caught up with supply yet in those neighborhoods, it’ll happen within the next few years. In the meantime, the already in demand neighborhoods such as Noe Valley, Hayes Valley, Bernal Heights and Potrero Hill are still seeing properties selling for well above asking price, and in several recent cases for $200,000 and even more over the asking price.
Overall, if you’re looking to sell a piece of real estate in San Francisco, and have owned it for at least a few years (in some cases a mere year has seen a properties value skyrocket by over $100,000 in a market of $800,000 to $1,000,000 homes), you can expect to that your investment will definitely leave you with a nice chunk of change in your pocket. And if you’re a buyer, there’s no time to buy like the present, because if there’s one thing that the history of the San Franciso real estate market has shown us, it’s that the prices here in our little City that’s second to none, always go up!