SF: Your Best Investment?
With real estate looking sketchy, what’s the best investment in 2008? I have the answer, but you’ll have to wait for it. First I’m going to lead you there inductively by showing you some stats from San Francisco Schtuff’s excellent “Then Vs. Now” series. Redfin writer Susan Brady already highlighted the Noe Valley info, picking out the fact that a single family home in Noe in 1997 was $458,985; in 2007, the same sold for $1,503,412. You can see this data for other parts of the city as well, including NoPa, Pacific Heights, Potrero Hill, Bernal Heights, and most recently, Glen Park.
However, the Glen Park data are different. This time, instead of working with the 97-07 time frame, Schtuff extrapolated the digits (using the same rate of inflation and appreciation) to project from 2007 to 2017. Here are the results:
| Glen Park |
2007 | 2017 |
| Average cost of a single family house | $1,059,660 | $3,274,349 |
| Average cost of a cup of coffee | $1.65 | $2.73 |
| Average cost of a Condo/Loft/TIC | $833,878 | $2,068,993 |
| Average cost of a gallon of gas | $3.25 | $8.18 |
| Average cost of a multi unit building | $1,065,333 | $3,123,467 |
I had been watching this data (hot tears of would- have-could-have-should-have blurring my eyes), thinking if only I had been more together in the late 90′s, I could have bought something then and today be one of the idle rich instead of a bitter renter. But even I could buy now, would the investment be the same? Schtuff does not think so:
Not only do we doubt that the rate of appreciation will remain the same, but we hope with all our might that it doesn’t because not a damn soul will be able to afford a tank of gas let alone a modest house in Glen Park.
I have to agree: it just can’t continue; those halcyon days are gone with Kurt Cobain and the Dot.com launch parties (oh, if I only knew the open bars would end, I would have drunk so much more!) of the 90′s. So this brings me back to my original question: what’s the best investment now, if not real estate? Hopefully the answer is pretty clear, for it can only be…
…a time machine.
