Real estate agents are often asked where we think the housing market is headed by people we meet.  By way of response I often reply with a question “How’s your company doing?   Are you hiring?

Here in Silicon Valley we definitely see a direct correlation between the hiring patterns of local companies and the health of the real estate market.    When job reqs disappear so do home buyers and when companies are fighting for new employees, we’re fighting to get offers accepted in a bidding war.   There’s good reason to expect this correlation to continue; the Bay area has limited space and there’s not much room to expand beyond our current boundaries.

When we try to predict the future of our housing market we can look to job growth predictions as a point of reference.   While not an exact science it’s probably the best indicator we have of future housing demand in our area.   According to a recent independent study looking at Bay Area job growth through 2040, by far the largest percentage of job growth in the US is expected in areas that are all key components of the Bay Area economic base.   That’s good news for our local economy as well as our real estate investments.

Obviously many things factor into the creation of a healthy housing market; interest rates, economy, affordability, desirability, election cycles; but if the job growth predictions are accurate it looks like we have sustained demand for housing in our mid to long term future.  Excuse me while I go buy some investment property…. 🙂

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I feel like I should be watching reruns of Lost – Season 1 and listening to Boulevard of Broken Dreams on my playlist (except I didn’t have a playlist back then). It’s like 2005 all over again, with buyers bidding 10 and even 20 percent over asking, zero contingencies and multi-million dollar cash offers all over the place.

Do we have a county wide state of amnesia? Does anyone remember 2006, 2007 or even last month? You know, a time when the buyer was paying a price that the market could easily support because they already had comps to prove it, not one they hoped would just get them the house and they’d worry about paying for it later.

Buyers and sellers are inclined to act emotionally where their home is involved. I’ve always held the belief that the agents, lenders and appraisers are the necessary voice of reason, keeping offers in check and making sure buyers are truly “qualified”. How does that play out in today’s world of high demand and low supply, particularly when it comes to appraisals? How does an appraiser bring in a value when all the recent comps have closed significantly lower but there were 5 offers over asking within the first week? Perhaps the question really is SHOULD an appraiser be able to bring in a significantly higher value in that situation? Let me be clear, I think a 2 or 3 % increase is easily justifiable, I’m talking about 10 and 20 % increases here.

According to one appraiser I talked to they use the simple fact that so many people ARE bidding over asking for the property as an indicator of where the market is. Hmm, how do lenders feel about that? After all, buyers are emotional and in my opinion it’s easier to over-bid for a property when you’re in competition, there’s nothing else out there and it’s only another $100 per month on your mortgage payment in order to get into a home now.

If we’re to avoid another crisis like the last one wouldn’t it be more prudent for the appraisers to have some stricter guidelines about how much a “changing market” can affect the appraisal value? If the appraisal comes in at a lower value based on recent sales then a buyer is more than welcome to bring in their own cash to close the deal. If they are neither able nor willing to do that then perhaps they’re not REALLY qualified to buy this house or the supportable market value (as opposed to the anticipated market value) hasn’t quite got there yet. Either way, appraising a house at a value way higher simply because there’s no inventory competing with the house “at this precise time” seems to me to be a sure sign of history repeating itself.

What do you think?

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