Bay Area

[HeadHunter]

I've been looking on the Peninsula for a while, but haven't bought (yet, hopefully). Am I going to be out of luck when Facebook IPO comes though? Will it blow up the RE market and everything will get snagged up?

[nj2bayarea]

Depends on what price you are looking at. I expect the FB IPO to impact the highe end prices, not the low end (which in the peninsula is pretty much $1M or below).

[HeadHunter]

I am looking at around 1M (at this point, I don't even know if it's high or low ) Seems that everyone is in that range. Our prolonged search is pushing us up into a higher range..

[nj2bayarea]

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HeadHunter wrote:

I am looking at around 1M (at this point, I don't even know if it's high or low ) Seems that everyone is in that range. Our prolonged search is pushing us up into a higher range..

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High(ish) in Redwood City. Lowish in Burlingame. Damnn low in Palo Alto!

[elt1]

School districts drive the price. $1m is low end in any RBA neighborhood with API's over 900 that includes the Roy Cloud  school districts in Redwood City(basically Emerald hills). Even in the Clifford school district you won't find a 4/3 under $1m

[MarinRabbit]

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elt1 wrote:

School districts drive the price. $1m is low end in any RBA neighborhood with API's over 900 that includes the Roy Cloud  school districts in Redwood City(basically Emerald hills). Even in the Clifford school district you won't find a 4/3 under $1m

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What does RBA mean?

[CrazyMan]

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MarinRabbit wrote:

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elt1 wrote:

School districts drive the price. $1m is low end in any RBA neighborhood with API's over 900 that includes the Roy Cloud  school districts in Redwood City(basically Emerald hills). Even in the Clifford school district you won't find a 4/3 under $1m

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What does RBA mean?

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An area on a map that shrinks continuously.

"Real Bay Area". http://www.burbed.com/2010/04/18/keeping-it-real-real-bay-area-that-is/

On topic: the 1/2 dozen employees I know that "worked" for Facebook either already own homes and are retiring, or have already left the state. Anecdotal of course.

Michael Spector, CEO of Vista Wealth Management, said several of his clients who were early Facebook employees have already moved to states like Washington, Florida and Texas to avoid California income tax.

I'm sure it will have some affect on housing, but in the grand scheme of things it's a drop in the bucket. It's still a miniscule part of the population.

[norcalnative]

IPO's take time to create big money newly wealthy folks by the way. You have a year or two before the larger number of newly wealthy FB people will be out in full force buying homes. Netflix folks only just recently just prior to the stupid business decisions and stock crash - were out purchasing homes.

[Dukey]

Doubt Facebook IPO results in onslaught of home buying.  Maybe the luxury car dealers will do very well.

Why?  'Cos FB employee are allowed to exercise/cash in on some portion of their options at IPO.  Yes many millionaires in paper but not in bank cash account.

A start-up I used to work at almost went thru IPO in 2006 (pulled 3 days before trading).  None of the share holders were able to sell their entire position including the venture capitalists and senior management.  I figured I can only sell enough shares to buy a off lease Porche. 

That said one can borrow against the above the water stock options.  Many of old timers at Microsoft did this and tried their hands at day trading and losing pretty much everything they had in 2000-2002 as the MSFT stock price slide.

[DealHunter0]

The amount of wealth being generated is staggering and should affect all tiers of the market.  A lot of the early employees have already had a chance to tap into their wealth through vehicles like SecondMarket.  Palo Alto has already benefitted enormously as it's the closest spot with 900+ API schools to any of the past 3 fb headquarters.  The further you get from Menlo Park, the less impact the IPO will have.

The rumor I've heard is that a few years ago Zuck put a restriction on selling shares while working at the company, so the more recent hires with less stock are the ones that will benefit most from the IPO.  A lot of these are people who would be buying in the $800k – 2M range.  There will probably be an insider lock-up period of ~6 months after the IPO date, so that should give you an idea of when the cash will start to flow.