Jackson

I've been looking at 2-3 bedroom places in the Marina for the past 11 months and I can tell you that prices have been flat. For the attractive units, prices have not started falling... yet... - Wed Jul 9 2008, 23:10

JR

It seems like you're implying that the number of real estate pros is less than 13%. I think Trulia would be very happy with that because the brokers want to be where the buyers and sellers are right? A broker heavy community might be fun for you guys but it won't make you as much money. - Tue Mar 4 2008, 07:50

Well I think there are only about 1mm or so real estate agents and comscore pegs Trulia at 1.6MM uniques which is probably off by a factor of 2 because comscore usually under reports. It sounds like they're reporting legitimate numbers to me. I don't know anyone at the company but I'm going to believe the Trulia mgmt team here. - Thu Feb 7 2008, 16:43

That might be true but Trulia claims that only 13% of their users are brokers and agents. That said, I'm sure the agents account for a disproportionate amount of page views. Here's the blog post.

http://www.truliablog.com/?p=210 - Thu Feb 7 2008, 15:44

I don't know the number of registered users but they're ranked 7k on Alexa. Compete.com says they only have 1.6MM monthly uniques. Comscore also puts them at around 1.6MM uniques a month. Both feel a bit low to me.

Interesting that comscore has them skewing female with 55% of their traffic female and 45% male. - Thu Feb 7 2008, 10:21

Where do you live in Santa Monica and I'll tell you where you'll want to live in SF. My fiance is moving up from Santa Monica and I've looked at houses there and up here. If you're the north of Wilshire, south of Montanna, 10th st to 26th street type then you'll want to rent or buy in either Pac Heights, Cow Hollow or the Marina.

I'm not an agent - just giving you the straight talk. - Wed Feb 27 2008, 17:49

To be sure - SF is the best place to live in the country. I grew up in Santa Cruz and I'm very familiar with earthquakes. I just want to mitigate my risk somewhat financially.

What are the best resources for earthquake insurance? What are some of things to look out for? There should be a wiki up on Trulia for this. That way everyone could add to the wiki and we will end up with the most complete expert resource on the web. - Thu Feb 7 2008, 09:31

You guys need to read Taleb's "The Black Swan."

Jed Lane is right. I do like the water and my fiance loves the "cuteness" factor of the Marina and hates the hills in San Francisco. We're 60 days from being a young married couple and we like to walk and meet our friends for brunch or dinner. She's from LA and hasn't adopted the SF tennis shoe look so we end up taking a cab to Union St even though it's 4 blocks from my apartment in Pac Heights. I feel like the biggest LA transplant schmuck in the city. Who takes a cab 4 blocks?

The answer is of course - "me." A large earthquake in SF (not necessarily the big one) is inevitable so I can't even call it a real black swan. Taleb uses the term "black swan" to describe the completely unexpected catastrophic event that isn't factored into our decision process. In this case people are not factoring this in to their purchasing decisions. Aww - denial is a powerful drug.

Even if you ignore the safety risks in the marina and just focus on the economics it doesn't seem like the houses are priced correctly. I need to either include earthquake insurance and/or the likely possibility that my home has $300K+ of damage and I lose all of equity in my home. If I do that, it would seem that Cow Hollow (the nice parts) should sell for a ~25% premium to the marina. So if a really nice place in Cow Hollow goes for $1000 a square foot the same place in the marina should go for $800 a square foot.

So, "buy in Cow Hollow" you say.

Well, I would, but there isn't anything good on the market in Cow Hollow. I guess those people already know what I just figured out and they're not selling anytime soon.

I don’t see a lot of little green markers near Green and Steiner do you? - Thu Feb 7 2008, 08:56