A report from Bisnow on California. "New efforts by the Trump administration to penalize California for its housing crisis are misguided and off base, several CRE experts told Bisnow. Experts told Bisnow that while calling the skyrocketing rate of homeless on the streets in San Francisco and Los Angeles a 'disgrace' wasn’t exactly incorrect, Trump’s approach is reductive, shortsighted and unnecessarily punitive. A lack of affordable housing, restrictive zoning and municipal laws about conduct are prone to exacerbating homelessness, even in some of the nation’s most liberal enclaves."

"'The least expensive stuff is becoming more expensive because it is being bought, renovated and leased to individuals that previously wouldn't have looked at it,' said Panoramic Interests owner Patrick Kennedy, who develops in S.F. and Oakland. 'These flophouses in Oakland are suddenly being renovated and rented to techies. It's going to continue to get worse because we're woefully underproducing entry-level housing in the Bay Area.'"

The Huffington Post. "Ashley Shannon can fit all her earthly possessions into a suitcase and a duffel. The 23-year-old got rid of nearly all her stuff when she moved from Kansas to Los Angeles after college. For much of the past year, Shannon has lived at an upscale hostel called PodShare, paying $1,000 a month ― less than half the average cost of a one-bedroom apartment in the city ― for a bunk in a large room occupied mostly by other young people. For that, she gets free utilities, basic toiletries, coffee and food staples like peanut butter and ramen noodles."

"Starcity, another well-known co-living brand, renovates old hotels and office buildings in LA and San Francisco and offers private rooms that range from $1,300 to over $2,000. 'Those numbers might sound high,' CEO Jon Dishotsky told HuffPost, but they’re well below the average rent on a studio apartment in these pricey cities."

"But for all the 'win-win' tone of the marketing, critics say the new trend for co-living is simply a new way of repackaging a very old concept of shared housing in order to take advantage of the housing crisis and people’s growing sense of disconnection. 'Co-living is purely a new way for developers to squeeze profit from an already broken housing market,' Hannah Wheatley, a researcher on housing and land at the New Economics Foundation, told The Guardian."

The Santa Maria Sun. "What do you do with an apartment complex that historically has been a center for drug dealing, gang activity, assaults, rapes, and murders in Lompoc for the last four decades? That question was answered at a council meeting on Sept. 17. Lompoc has an abundance of low-income housing projects. In August 2018, city officials notified the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee that they had several concerns with a proposal to add just 40 low-cost units to the inventory in the city."

"This developer plans to spend $300,000 per unit to upgrade this property; that will likely produce well-appointed apartments like those low-income units built over the last few years here in the city. They will have all the bells and whistles that we associate with market-rate condo units. When you think of this project, consider this if you own a home: Can you afford to spend $300,000 to upgrade your digs? I don’t know of many people who can."

The Marin Independent Journal. "Marin’s numbers diverged from the Bay Area overall, where August home sales hit a nine-year low point for an August, dropping 5.7% to 7,247, down from the 7,682 sales in August 2018. Median prices also dipped across the Bay Area, to $810,000, down 2.4% from $830,000 in August 2018. arry Crotty, a broker with Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate in Greenbrae, added that two factors have led to Marin’s more balanced market, improving the landscape for buyers: higher inventory, and a rise in average days on the market."

"'Inventory has increased through most of 2019 due to home price appreciation over the past eight years,' Crotty said. 'Sellers may be believing the market has peaked and now is the best time to sell. An increase of inventory means more selection for buyers to choose from and less urgency to write an offer due to that increase in supply.'"

"Likewise, the bump in days on the market has led to list price reductions, Crotty said. 'List price reductions (are) making a home more affordable and buyers more hopeful when negotiating a purchase,' he said."

From CBS San Francisco."A new report shows home sales in the Bay Area have dipped to a 9-year low. The data from CoreLogic reports a total of 7,247 new and existing houses and condominiums were sold in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, Santa Clara, San Francisco, San Mateo, Solano and Sonoma counties in August 2019. In August 2010, at the zenith of the great recession, 6,698 homes were sold in the Bay Area."

"'All prices have to get capped at some point and there will be winners and losers,' said Karen Kircher of San Francisco. 'As a renter then I’ll be a winner,' she added."

"'I don’t see any indication that the market is on the precipice of a big downturn,' said Mary MacPherson of Compass Real Estate. 'We all wonder, ‘is this going to be the beginning of the end, the beginning of a cooling?’ I really don’t think so. We only have a couple hundred more listings right now active than we normally have on the market. And we always have at least 2,000 buyers active in the market at any given time. We have about 900 active listings. That’s still not enough to meet our supply and demand issue. So no, I don’t think so. By next year, who knows?'"

The Orange County Register. "Uncertainty over everything from political fighting in Washington to the trade war with China and Brexit are undermining business and consumer confidence, said CAR’s Chief Economist Leslie Appleton-Young. 'People are worried about everything, and you kind of wake up and wonder who’s tweeting what now?' Appleton-Young said. 'There’s not really a clear economic policy coming from the White House, so there’s just a lot to feel anxious about. … People are getting a little bit worried, and it shows up in how people view the housing market.'"

"For example, a recent Google consumer survey found that a little over a fifth of Californian consumers think now is a good time to buy a home and fewer than half think it’s a good time to sell — even with the big drop in mortgage rates and a strong economy, Appleton-Young said. 'We have very high prices,' Appleton-Young said, 'so there’s only so much lower (mortgage) rates can do.'"

"But home prices that are roughly double the national average are causing many residents to move out of state, particularly first-time buyers, Appleton-Young said. Nearly a third of sellers who plan to buy another home said they intend to buy out of state, according to the association’s latest State of the Housing Market study. That’s the most since 2005."