Burlingame (a suburb halfway between San Francisco and Silicon Valley)
Zillow Home Value Index: $1,119,900
-        MoM: -0.3%
-        QoQ: +1%
-        YoY: +10.7%
Zillow Rent Index: $3,607
-        MoM: -1.2%
-        QoQ: -3%
-        YoY: +14.2%

Cupertino (the home of Apple, very near San Jose, about an hour south of San Francisco)
Zillow Home Value Index: $1,022,600
-        MoM: +0.6%
-        QoQ: +0.9%
-        YoY: +1.6%
Zillow Rent Index: $3,423
-        MoM: +0.6%
-        QoQ: +2.7%
-        YoY: +15.5%

Mountain View (home of Google, about 45 minutes south of San Francisco)
Zillow Home Value Index: $741,400
-        MoM: +0.5%
-        QoQ: +0.5%
-        YoY: +5.1%
Zillow Rent Index: $2,944
-        MoM: +0.4%
-        QoQ: +0.2%
-        YoY: +12.7%

Palo Alto (a wealthy suburb that’s home to Stanford University, lots of VC firms, and some startups. Very close to Google and Facebook.)
Zillow Home Value Index: $1,289,600
-        MoM: +1.7%
-        QoQ: +3.5%
-        YoY: +9%
Zillow Rent Index: $3,725
-        MoM: +0.5%
-        QoQ: -1.5%
-        YoY: +3.9%

San Francisco (Twitter and a ton of other tech startups are now headquartered in S.F.)
Zillow Home Value Index: $654,100
-        MoM: 0%
-        QoQ: -1.2%
-        YoY: -0.5%
Zillow Rent Index: $2,963
-        MoM: -0.3%
-        QoQ: +1.1%
-        YoY: +13.7%

San Jose (The third-biggest city in California — bigger than San Francisco — has IBM, Cisco, Adobe, eBay, and many other well-established tech companies. was harder hit by the economic downturn than San Francisco, though.)
Zillow Home Value Index: $474,100
-        MoM: +0.4%
-        QoQ: -0.1%
-        YoY: -2.2%
Zillow Rent Index: $2,427
-        MoM: +0.2%
-        QoQ: +0.9%
-        YoY: +5.6%

(Source: Business Insider)

Also, boobs.

Take, for example, these recent articles on Bloomberg and the Contra Costa Times:

• Bidding Wars Erupt as U.S. Supply of Homes for Sale Falls (Bloomberg)
• Buyers compete for short supply of homes in Bay Area (Contra Costa Times)

Reading a few of these sorts of articles is enough to send me into an “OMG-I-BETTER-JUMP-INTO-THE-MARKET-NOW!!!” panic….  But lest I start making bids for 20% over asking, I remind myself to take a closer look at the article and consider whether it’s guilty of any of the following:

It cherry-picks its data.  It’s easy to cherry-pick certain indicators to justify one’s position.  For example, “The Miami-area inventory of homes selling for less than $100,000 fell to less than three months’ supply in February.”  Sounds bullish enough, but what about homes over $100k?  Seems like an arbitrary figure whose only purpose is to make the market sound hotter than it really is.

It doesn’t provide any real data at all.  In the case of the Contra Costa article, the whole thing is a series of anecdotes.  But read enough of them, and you start thinking that it must be the norm.  In reality, 5 anecdotes does not a market make.  I don’t doubt that the anecdotes are genuine, but they are hardly a substitute for hard data that takes the aggregate into account.

The quotes are exclusively from realtors.  Seriously, what is the point of quoting a realtor?  They will almost never say they think it’s a terrible time to buy.  Nor will they tell you that, because prices are still trending down, you may essentially lose your downpayment in a year or so.  Which is exactly the position you’d be in today if you’d bought in early 2011.

There are lots of these worthless articles out there.  Some of it even purports to be journalism.  I have another word for it: noise.  The realtor associations have got this marketing tactic down to a science — they know that if they produce enough noise in the media, you’ll be distracted from reading articles that present actual data.

If you notice any errors or omissions, please let me know in the comments section.

* Dependent on FICO score

Other key dates:
10/1/2008: Minimum down payment increased from 3% to 3.5%

If you want to own a SFH within a 10-mile radius of Google, where I work, be prepared to shell out at least $700k — and this is with prices having corrected back to 2004-2005 levels. (Go deeper into areas like east San Jose, and prices have corrected even further — back down to 2000 levels. Check out this link for an interesting comparison between two San Jose neighborhoods that corrected very differently.)

Anyway, point being, if you want to buy a house here and want to put down 20% for a conventional mortgage, you’re going to need to have saved about $140,000. Not a lot of us have that kind of dough lying around, so that leaves us with FHA loans, which require little downpayment and aren’t limited to $625,000 (currently, FHA limits are $729,750). For this privilege, the Federal Housing Administration requires lenders to pay an annual mortgage insurance premium of 1.15% of the loan amount.  That means, on a $729,750 loan, expect to pay $699/month for this insurance.

Starting April 9, 2012, however, they are raising that premium to 1.5% for new loans above $625,000 with less than 5% down and with a term of over 15 years. That means that, on that $729,750 loan, that insurance premium is now $912/month — an increase of $213. Notice that this is the first time the FHA has specifically targeted jumbo loans for higher premiums.

I understand the FHA’s need to beef up the capital reserve rate, but they definitely aren’t doing the housing market any favors. This will put more downward pressure on house prices, especially those at the upper end of the price spectrum.

• You introduced new banking fees right after I opened a no-fee account back in mid-2010.
• You incessantly send me credit card checks that I don’t need.  While the teaser 0% APR looks good, you hide in the fine print the fact that you charge a fee of 3 freaking percent of the transfer balance.
• More fine print: you hide the fact that your dividend card only pays up to $300 in a calendar year.  I easily get double that amount from using my American Express card, thankyouverymuch.

I’m sure there are lots of other reasons why you suck, but that’s all I can think of today.

Doesn’t look like there’s much more the government can do to prop up the Canadian housing market. The pending correction is long, long overdue.

Doesn’t look the least bit glamorous, does it?

SJ’s affordability ratio sits at 6.9, while NY is at 6.2. (The affordability ratio is the median annual household income divided by the median house price.)

As someone who’s looking to buy in the Bay Area, this comes as a bit of a shock to me. I’ve been looking at San Jose as an affordable place to live — at least compared to places like Mountain View (home of Google), Cupertino (home of Apple), and Palo Alto (home of Facebook and countless other tech companies). And no doubt that’s true; I suppose I’ve just been desensitized to the cost of housing around here.