Home construction across the U.S. staged a modest rebound last month after a big June drop, but was weaker than Wall Street had expected, with many analysts taking a bleak view of the housing market. Housing starts grew 0.9% in July from the prior month, significantly weaker than the 8.3% bounce back economists surveyed by […]
Housing affordability has hit a 10-year low throughout most of California, new data show, as three out of four state residents can no longer afford sky-high median homes prices. Buyers in the capital region are feeling similar pressure. The percentage of people able to afford an average-price home dropped sharply from 31 percent at the […]
Not long ago, I quoted Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck’s conclusion about the results of rent control. He wrote that in many cases, it “appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing.” Lindbeck, however, seems to have missed an even better way to wreak havoc on major […]
Anyone concerned about the future of the state and local budgets should pay particular attention to what the state’s non-partisan legislative analyst had to say about Proposition 10, the ballot measure that repeals the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, including protections for tenants and single-family home owners. The Legislative Analysts Office (LA) noted Prop 10 could […]
Big businesses want lower taxes. Cities—and many of the people who live in them—want lower rates of homelessness. Lately, the compatibility of these two desires is being tested, as local governments across the U.S. float a new strategy to help the growing number of unsheltered people on their streets: Asking businesses to pay a greater […]
Sacramento home sales have hit a summer slump as potential buyers back away from escalating prices and rising mortgage interest rates. New data shows that 4,300 homes sold in the region in June, a modest amount, but notably nearly 5 percent fewer than the number of sales in June last year, according to CoreLogic, a […]
Southern California home sales hit the brakes in June, falling to the lowest reading for the month in four years. Sales of both new and existing houses and condominiums dropped 11.8 percent year over year, as prices shot up to a record high, according to CoreLogic. The report covers Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, Ventura, […]
Looking at data from the U.S. Census Bureau, RentCafe found the number of families with children who own their homes in the San Francisco metro area has dropped dramatically, while an increasing number are renting. . . . Researchers at the apartment search site found a 10 percent decrease in homeowner families, meaning 31,000 fewer […]
A huge housing/multi-use project proposed for Silicon Valley faced strong opposition. Nearby residents hated it and blocked smaller versions of the project that were on the 2016 ballot. The mayor called it out of place and sniped at outsiders who criticized his city’s history in adding housing stock. The building trades unions which sometimes come […]
On weekdays, bus driver Adan Miranda hauls people across Silicon Valley. But his own roughly 100-mile commute home to a Sacramento suburb nearly killed him, so 15 years ago he decided to start sleeping in a San Jose parking lot four nights a week. It’s a choice that’s becoming more common for people who want […]
The federal government is well aware of the steep prices Bay Area residents pay when it comes to just getting by. For four-person households in San Mateo, Marin and San Francisco counties, the threshold for “low” income housing bumped up to $117,400 per year according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s latest […]
Middle-income housing affordability is important, because affordable access to quality housing has been pivotal to the democratization of prosperity that occurred in the last century in most high-income nations. Normally, the competitive market has provided middle-income housing without the need for subsidies. Middle-income is different from low – income housing (also called “affordable housing” or […]
California voters will decide in November whether to give cities and counties new freedom to expand the use of rent control after an initiative backed by tenant groups earned a spot Friday on this fall’s ballot. The initiative would repeal a decades-old state law that prevents local governments from passing most new rent control laws. […]
Plenty of workers still move West each year for a new job in California. But the state’s high cost of housing may be deterring many other job seekers from moving into the state. Business leaders up and down the state say California’s expensive housing makes it challenging to recruit new workers — and to keep […]
When the California Housing Finance Agency was created in 1975 in Governor Jerry Brown’s first term, the mission was simple: help low- and moderate-income families buy their first home. More than 40 years later, amid skyrocketing housing prices and near-record low homeownership rates, that goal is getting harder and harder to attain. So much so […]