Earlier this year, SFHAC completed its first-ever ‘State of the SF Housing Market’. The goal was to get a snapshot of how our members in the development and construction industry felt about current market conditions. After digging through the responses, we knew that this might become a useful way to explain the crazy housing climate in the City. So we decided to continue our efforts and, after making some minor improvements to the questionnaire, we surveyed our members a second time in August – September.
What factors shape the housing world? Construction costs? Softening prices? Regulatory burdens? Given these factors, are the folks who build housing becoming bearish about the market or, like most developers, are they innately bullish? We received enthusiastic feedback from our members, but what does it show?
Perhaps an overall theme is that the survey’s respondents are generally positive, but based on the current drop in building permit applications, there seems to be a ‘wait and see’ attitude. One thing is certain, land and construction costs are close to all-time highs and our members don’t expect that to drop significantly in the near term.
The SFHAC will continue this survey twice a year, spring and fall. Before then, we’ll work on refining the specificity of the questions. As always, we’d welcome our member’s feedback on how to improve this survey.
Here are some of the most interesting results:
