Jerry Brown's replacement will be elected on November 6, 2018 - we can expect a barrage of advertising in the meantime. Here's how the candidates speak about the housing dilemma:
CA Governor 2018 and Housing
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Local Government
Regulating SFR Investors?
Now that the big investors have virtually stopped buying homes, a legislator wants to find a way to regulate them. Typically the term “institutional investor” refers to private investment firms that buy dozens of residential properties with the explicit aim of...
San Diego History
This is a brief history of the growth of San Diego from a sleepy mission village to a major agricultural and shipping center. Credit for this transformation goes to two men, Alonzo Horton and Frank Kimball, and an unheralded railroad, the California Southern. The...
Government Shutdown and Housing
Hat tip to Wendy for sending this in! A shutdown of the federal government could throw a monkey wrench into many corners of our economy. And if you're getting ready to close on a house, look out, because one of those wrenches might be headed your way. That's because...
Tax Reform – The Vote
Here we have three different real-estate-industry opinions on the effects of the final tax reform. 1) The demand will increase due to more spendable income, pushing home prices higher; 2) The demand will drop, due to less spendable income because middle-class...
Tax Reform – Final Bill
We knew these were coming: The legislation preserves the deductions for mortgage interest and charitable giving, though it lowers the cap on the mortgage deduction from $1 million to $750,000. Seeking to win over House Republicans from high-tax states, the conference...
California’s Housing Failure
We see these stories regularly now, but nothing is changing. Even if we had another housing crash and prices retreated by 10% or 20%, homes would still not be affordable for most. Hat tip to Richard! LINK For all of its claims of being an economic paradise,...
Five Out of 8 Years
As long as the House and Senate can agree, it appears that the tax reform bill will include the existing tax incentives for home buyers (M.I.D. and property-tax deduction up to $10,000). The N.A.R. and C.A.R. aren't happy though, and are still fighting the fight....
Senate Agrees, N.A.R. Complains
Real estate spokespeople from N.A.R., C.A.R., Zillow, etc. keep saying that if tax reform removes the incentives for homeownership, prices would fall at least 10%. Then the Senate leaves the mortgage-interest deduction untouched, and adds back in the property-tax...
Senate Approves Tax Reform
The Senate's version of the tax reform bill didn't include any changes to the mortgage-interest deduction, which keeps the limit at mortgages under $1,000,000. But the House limit was $500,000, and they still have to reconcile the two versions, so it's not done yet....
