From: hamachi@adobe.com (Gordon Hamachi)
Subject: Real Estate News Summary, Part 131
Organization: Adobe Systems Incorporated
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 22:26:22 GMT

Real Estate News Summary, Part 131, October 1992

1033.Initiated sales for single-family homes on the Peninsula rose slightly
     over year-ago levels.  Homes priced from $300K to $499K were the most
     active at 49%.  Condo and townhouse activity was flat. [Times Tribune]

1034.Owning a home still makes sense as a means of accumulating savings.  But
     owners should not expect to see houses double or triple in value in a
     short time the way many did in the 1980s.  A Harvard study says equity
     can sometimes grow even were inflation outpaces a home's value, and the
     value declines in real terms.  [Times Tribune]

1035.New home construction climbed 1.4% in September.  Economists were pleased
     and surprised, especially as August starts were revised upward to a 12.6%
     jump.  The gains were fueled mostly by falling interest rates, but some
     believe that rates may have bottomed.  Purchasing activity has already
     fallen off from a mid-September peak.  For the first 9 months, home starts
     were 20.5% ahead of last year, but that was the lowest in 47 years.
     [Wall Street Journal]

1036.Cash-on-cash returns on residential real estate relative to stocks and
     bonds are at the highest point in modern history. Good-quality real estate
     can yield 9.5% to 10%, after all expenses except borrowing costs and not
     including any potential appreciation in property values.  Unlike the deals
     of the '80s that depended on appreciation, today's need to work
     financially even if property values don't go up.  But a word of caution:
     the same forces that are creating low prices are also pushing down rents
     and creating vacancies. [Wall Street Journal]

1037.Compared with 1989, home buyers today can own the same house for as much
     as 30% less in monthly mortgage payments.  The difference is not only
     substantially lower interest rates, but the end to more than 2 decades of
     mushrooming housing costs.  Nationally the median priced home increased 5
     times during the last 25 years.  The average house in California swelled
     nearly 10-fold during the same period. [Times Tribune]

1038.Mitchell A. Levy's new book, "Home Ownership: The American Myth," seeks to
     debunk the home ownership myth by showing readers how to save more money
     by renting and saving.  He claims you can save more than $50,000 in 3
     years by renting rather than buying a home. [San Jose Mercury News]

1039.One in 6 Santa Clara County home sellers in May, June and July sold their
     homes for less than they paid.  Just 3.5% of sellers didn't recoup what
     they had paid during the same period two years ago, compared with 17% this
     summer.  Job losses in the county are forcing more sales.  In Alameda
     County, 11% of sellers couldn't get as much as they had paid for their
     homes, compared with 1.5% two years ago. [San Jose Mercury News]

1040.Golden State Fall Quarterly.  Kennedy-Wilson will auction 126 homes,
     apartment buildings and land parcels throughout California.  Seven homes
     sold with no minimum selling price. [Direct mailing]

1041.Trying to unload a heavy inventory of Northern California real estate in a
     soft market, property owners will hold a number of auctions.  Forty-one
     new homes in 3 East Bay and South Bay cities will be sold by Citation
     Homes.  The starting prices are 50% to 60% below the last asking prices.
     [San Francisco Examiner]
Newsgroups: misc.invest.real-estate