From Floor to Ceiling in Bernal
March 17, 2009Bernal Heights is a fantastic neighborhood. It has an eclectic mix of homes, flavors, and views. Spend some time there and you’ll find that Bernal grows on you more and more. Single family homes make up the bulk of Bernal’s inventory. They run the gamut from small and affordable to artsy, luxurious, and even risqué. That’s why we’ve taken the opportunity to do a floor, median, and ceiling comparison for the ‘hood.
We tracked the minimum sale, median sale, and maximum sale over a 14 year period (dating back to 1995). 2008 was the last full year of data we have, so the analysis stops there. We considered including an incomplete 2009, but there have only been 7 sales thus far… not very telling as how the year will shape up. This is the first analysis we’ve done on our blog of this sort, so we’re still pondering the things that can be learned from this information. Here is the chart and some initial thoughts:
Floor to ceiling in Bernal Heights (click to enlarge)
- First and foremost, all figures were adjusted for inflation. This controls for the changing value of the dollar over time and gives us a more accurate view of market behavior
- The floor shows four peaks in our analysis, with the highest one occurring in 2005.
- The ceiling shows four peaks, the highest one occurring last year in 2008.
- It appears that the ceiling peaks lag the floor peaks a little. Maybe this is our mind playing tricks on us because we’ve seen this trend in other analyses. It very well could be another indication of the high end lagging the low end in any given market.
- The median shows 2008 prices ended up just a little lower than 2004′s posting. This is great news for people buying in the neighborhood — not so great for those selling.
- Interestingly, the floor showed an uptick in 2008. We’ll follow this to see how it takes shape in 2009.
- The ceiling broke new barriers in 2008 with the sale of 306 Mullen Avenue, an architectural gem that busted all the comps for the neighborhood.
Final Thoughts:
This analysis was a bit of an experiment. We’re putting an awful lot of stock in those high and low sales painting some type of picture of the marketplace. For all we know the floor and ceiling could be completely useless, unless of course you are remodeling your home. We intend to take this analysis to other neighborhoods in the near future to further develop our opinion of its merit.
For now, the floors and ceilings may not serve so well in trending as they do simply by giving us a spread. We’ve seen the gap between the lowest sale and the highest sale increase over time in Bernal Heights. The gap itself may just be the interesting info we’re looking for in all of this. We’re now eager to find out how polarized different neighborhoods around the City are, and why.
Oh, and for those of you curious about the comp buster at 306 Mullen, here are some pics:
For more articles analyzing San Francisco’s neighborhoods, click HERE.
I like this analysis very much. It provides a lot of context around the median figure which is way too often quoted without explanation.
I find the median to be misleading for most people. Perhaps adding in the # of sales for each of those medians might provide a little more context. The house on Mullen provides insight into why my college professors typically threw out the highest and lowest scores on any exam, and calculated their curve based on that.
Hi Rolf,
Point taken. I know in each year the # of sales were over 100. I’ll post a reply here in the comments soon with the exact # of sales during each year.
Thanks
By including the floor and ceiling, variance can be inferred, but I agree with rolfsf that distribution is important.
Hey guys,
1995 – 142 sales
1996 – 154 sales
1997 – 212 sales
1998 – 190 sales
1999 – 189 sales
2000 – 189 sales
2001 – 161 sales
2002 – 187 sales
2003 – 245 sales
2004 – 204 sales
2005 – 199 sales
2006 – 175 sales
2007 – 153 sales
2008 – 117 sales
*Remember, these are just for Single Family Homes in Bernal Heights.
Cheers