Old World Charm, Modern Living: Nob HIll Condo
Beautiful, renovated Victorian condo!
Garage parking! Top floor!
Walking distance to everything!
Fun neighborhood!
I’ve been working with a new buyer, who is not a cook and doesn’t care about kitchens, at all. Visiting a newly constructed condo recently, I saw her lingering in the kitchen for a while. That’s interesting. So I asked. Evidently, she likes the amount of storage space, and indicated that the extra storage provided by the beautiful cabinets would be useful. Shoes, we joked. It reminds me of a friend, also not much of a cook, who uses extra storage space in her kitchen for her shoes. It turns out that most San Francisco condos have closets that are not large enough for shoes.
All of these shoe references remind me of an article written by Carol Lloyd for The San Francisco Chronicle back in July 2004. It was published shortly after she first started wondering if we were in a real estate bubble. She presents three scenarios of typical Bay Area buyers and looks at the question of whether they should buy now, the implications on their situation if the market were to drop, and the tradeoff of waiting to buy until after a drop in prices (and the impact of potentially higher interest rates).
The shoe reference is to one of the characters in this article who has a large shoe collection and a refined taste in wine. It also refers to the comments that some clients will make when they decide to purchase a home. It refers to something that they know they are spending money on (often in excess). They hope that buying a home will help them cut back.
Of course, every investment has risks that should be carefully evaluated by each person in the context of their own situation. And any purchase of real estate should be considered to be long term. And for most people, I recommend purchasing real estate over shoes.
