We recently built some spreadsheets for a client who is looking to purchase a condo in Alamo Square, and as part of our due diligence, ran some trending analysis for them. Alamo Square is a tiny neighborhood with few sales, so finding trends in the area is a tough assignment. We had to think through adjacent areas that exhibit similar traits, both from a residential and commercial standpoint. We determined that Hayes Valley, NOPA, and Lower Pacific Heights were similar enough (and also located in MLS District “6″) to lump together with Alamo Square and see what the overall trends were.
Cue the "Full House" intro...
So that’s what we did… we looked at median sales prices for condos in these ‘hoods dating back to 1995. We wanted to include 2009, so we capped each year at July 15th, controlling for seasonal fluctuations. We also inflation-adjust the medians, so we could see market movement isolated from the changing value of the dollar.
The last step was to look at the same trends for San Francisco’s condo market as a whole, and place the two lines on a graph to see how similar (or dissimilar) they were. What resulted was pretty interesting, and you can see the charts by continuing to read –>
