Housing

San Francisco Homeowners Get Crushed

Homeowners lost $2.3 trillion in the United States last year. That is against a total value of $45.3 trillion. This number is even worse than during the Great Recession. San Francisco had the worst number of all large cities. (Click here to see where young people want to relocate to the most.)

Among the primary conclusions of Redfin’s “U.S. Homeowners Have Lost $2.3 Trillion in Value Since June Peak” was that the median home value in the United States was down 11.5% from $433,133, which was near a record.

According to the study, “The total value of San Francisco homes fell 6.7% year over year to $517.5 billion in December (a $37.3 billion decline)—a larger drop in percentage terms than any other major U.S. metropolitan area.” The other cities with the largest losses were also in the Bay Area: Oakland dropped 5.2% and San Jose declined by 3.2%. This may be because the three were among the places with the highest prices in America, and they still are. Many people who owned homes in these cities moved inland to smaller places. Mortgage rates of 3% helped people make these relocations.


Florida cities were the biggest winners, according to the report. Miami prices rose 19.7% during the same period. Sarasota prices were up 17.8%, and prices in Lakeland jumped by 16.9%. “Florida’s housing market is being sustained by folks moving in from the North and as of recently, the West Coast,” said Elena Fleck, a Redfin real estate agent in Palm Beach, Florida, told the home selling company. Over 2,000 miles is a long way to travel to find an affordable home.

As the Bay Area becomes less attractive, even for people who make a lot of money in the tech industry, the price drop will continue.

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