It’s not all bad news for those who own or are interested in homes in East Bay, located in Northern California. A Reuters article published on September 15, 2009, by James Pethokoukis, claimed that recent surveys see East Bay real estate being among the first markets to recover from the global recession that has hurt economies around the world. A quarterly survey commissioned by PricewaterhouseCoopers sees a recovery beginning around 2012 and first affecting Washington D.C., San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Long Island.
Eric Young’s article in the San Francisco Business Times on September 16, 2009, claimed that despite the Bay Area’s competitive advantages, the global recession that has hit almost every housing market around the world would continue to “inflict pain on the region into next year.” In fact, Young’s article points to late 2009 as the peak of unemployment in the region. Even scarier, “commercial real estate is in serious decline across all areas for all types of space: office, retail and industrial. Rents continue to fall as vacancy rates rise and net absorption of space is negative.” The article claims that real estate in East Bay will experience sales declines through 2010 and plateau in 2012. The thought of such a long and extended period of lackluster home market sales is scary for many current homeowners looking to sell their properties or move in the next few years.
A September 24, 2009, article in the San Francisco Real Estate Examiner had a slightly different outlook. For prospective home buyers, East Bay homes for sale were selling at bargain prices to those who could afford the purchase without extensive financing. With sellers looking to move their houses, many times properties have been sold with little to no up mark. The article also envisions a blossoming opportunity for entrepreneurs: “the rental market will stay strong, or get stronger, as more and more people face foreclosure in the coming years. They have the cash and are willing to spend it to get the income stream that comes from owning rental properties.”
