Bay Area

[Jil]

Blackstone Rushes $2.5 Billion Purchase as Homes Rise

Blackstone has spent more than $2.5 billion on 16,000 homes to manage as rentals, deploying capital from the $13.3 billion fund it raised last year, said Jonathan Gray, global head of real estate for the world’s largest private equity firm. That’s up from $1 billion of homes owned in October, when Blackstone Chairman Stephen Schwarzman said the company was spending $100 million a week on houses.

Blackstone is buying in Atlanta, Chicago, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Northern and Southern California; Miami, Orlando and Tampa, Florida 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-09/blackstone-steps-up-home-buying-as-prices-jump-mortgages.ht...

When big brothers are playing, there is no place for small home owners.

No charts will help the waiters! 

[Jil]

Last year, I saw 74 SFH available with 50% short sale for Blossom Valley (San Jose, CA) exactly at this time. Today, I just notice 11 with only one short sale Blossom Valley 

[BAzx]

It is not surprising that these big investors take most of the share.  As the seller/banker - I want to deal with a few transactions vs many small ones...

[buyinghouse]

   I used to see this in the countries in development but not here. It seems we are going back to the Banana republic. The big sharks eating out the little fish. And with the help of Uncle Sam and using the same taxes from the ones being eaten.

   Welcome to Rentingland!

[PonziScheme]

I'm looking at my old zip code and there's a freaking total of 5 houses for sale!!

This is insane. I remember 3 years ago there were about 3 pages of houses for sale. Some of them were on the markets for years

[Michelle1x]

As was mentioned here earlier, and I agree, much of the bay area was not as affected by the 2001-2008 property bubble as elsewhere in the country.  Our prices were too high to begin with coming off the dot com bubble and we had a severe recession early in the decade.  Of course prices went up, especially in the sketchy areas like East San Jose (some even tripled) but it wasn't like, say, Nevada or Florida where lots that sold for $10K were fetching $150K 3 years later.

On the other hand, THIS market we are seeing now going into 2013 seems like a real bona fide boom putting bay area real estate on a par with demand seen in places like Manhattan or a worldwide destination like Japan or Hong Kong.  There is *nothing* available for any price, it seems.  Of course shacks in east san jose are not going to sell for $1 million.  But they are going to go much higher than people think.

I'm regretting not purchasing another property a year ago but at this point, I think I have to sit tight.  I don't think I can be a player in this.

[donjumpsuit]

Absente landlords will cause rents to collapse.  This is my prediction.