San Francisco Real Estate Stats

With all the news on subprime mortgages and the faltering real estate market, here are some interesting stats on San Francisco in the last few months. While they’re a quite a bit softer than one might have expect in 2006, they still look fairly strong. What’s most interesting to me is the sale price versus the final list price. In the go-go days, 115% wouldn’t be uncommon. Seeing 100.3% for condos makes the market that much more approachable. I was talking to the sales agent at the new Ritz building on Market Street, and they had some eight or nine properties still for sale. She mentioned that they were expecting to have offers some 90% of their listed asking price. You would have never seen that two years ago.

Median Home Sale Price:
November 2006: $750,000
November 2007: $820,000
Increase: up 9.3%

Average Sales Price as a Percentage of Final List Price, November 2007:
Sold Houses: 101.8%
Sold Condos: 100.3%

Fratelli’s in Bedminster

On Thursday, my family and I went to Fratelli’s in Bedminster to have dinner. I’d mentioned earlier in the week that I wanted to find a really authentic Italian restaurant, something that should be quite easy around these parts. Thus we went to this little place at 959 US Highway 202, called Fratelli’s.

When we entered the restaurant, the host and waiters started talking to each other in Italian to arrange a table for us. When we sat down in the dining room, most of the people were families, in groups of 6+ people. The place of service was slow and relaxed, and our waiter took time to bring us menus and gushed over certain dishes and knew that an Indian family coming in was possibly vegetarian (and asked as when we’d sat down to guide us on the menu). What struck me the most was the pace of the whole dining experience. Slow, relaxing, saying coming here to enjoy the food and the company you’re in. It wasn’t a get in, get out way of eating. I’m pretty sure our family recorded a record long time eating at one restaurant.

The food, while simple, was exactly what I was looking for. We ordered a simple ricotta ravioli, a penne (which was incredibly al dente), and a breaded and fried eggplant dish (not sure what its name was). The dishes took their time to come out after we’d ordered them, but we were all pleasantly surprised when we received them. Simple and delicious, there was nothing far too fancy about them; just what you’d expect from a family run place.

I’d highly recommend eating at Fratelli’s. It’s likely out of the way unless you’re here and I’m fairly certain there’s no shortage of great Italian eateries in the NY/NJ area, but if you do happen to find yourself on US Highway 202, give it a shot. You won’t be disappointed.

Kite Runner

I finished reading The Kite Runner today, a bit late to the whole Kahled Hosseini party. It’s a quick read, a fast moving story that overall I found to be very enjoyable, albeit depressing. It was interesting to watch the pages of Afghanistan’s history turn through the course of the novel, as well as the life of a boy (and a man) torn by his own weaknesses. I’d highly recommend the book to anyone looking for a good story with a chilling historic backdrop. I need to see the movie next, as I’ve heard from multiple people that it’s quite moving as well. Next book on the winter break list is “This is Paradise! My North Korean Childhood” by Hyok Kang.

East Coast Bound

It’s vacation time! Work is finished up for the year, just a few loose ends to tie up at home, a little more packing to do, and I’m off on a plane for the East Coast. Not a whole lot planned. Going to the Met to see War and Peace (as an opera, we’ll see how that turns out) next Friday and possibly spending next Saturday in NYC as well. I’m just looking foward to spending time with the family and unwinding.

California SB 223

Senate Bill 223, passed and signed by the Governor last month prohibits property appraisers from colluding to artificially raise prices of their appraisals in order to raise their compenstation. In other words, they can’t base their fees on the prices at which they appraise a propery at. Can you believe this wasn’t illegal already? Crazy. From the text of the bill:

No person with an interest in a real estate transaction involving an appraisal shall improperly influence or attempt to improperly influence, through coercion, extortion, or bribery, the development, reporting, result, or review of a real estate appraisal sought in connection with a mortgage loan.

What Happened to RedYawning

About three weeks ago, the c: drive failed on RedYawning, my server that basically runs and hosts all my life (including websites, photos, etc). Luckily, this was just the system drive and it did not have any data on it. I keep all my data on a RAID-1 mirror, the d: drive of the machine. I ordered a new drive from NewEgg, popped it in, reinstalled Windows (2003 Server this time), and spent about two hours reinstalling everything. It was really quite easy with Windows Server, just mostly fiddilng knobs and dials to have it look like it did on the old Windows Server 2000. The server is back in action now, and back to blogging business for me.

Arriving in Singapore and Little India, Chinatown, etc

After a grueling day of traveling due to China Eastern Airlines inability to depart on time I made it to Singapore last night around 9pm. After meeting up with my friends, we headed out to Chinatown to find some food at one of the various hakwer stalls. It was a familiar site, very close to what Kuala Lumpur was like with hawker stalls and people everywhere, but about a thousand times clear and hundreds of signs saying how much you’ll get fined for just about anything (including eating durian). We had some pretty good street food, then went to get some foot massages, then ended up walking around for a bit in the area. After we got bored of walking around, we decided to jump in a taxi and head over to the spectacular Raffles Hotel to grab a Sinagpore Sling at place it was created, Long Bar. The hotel was fantastic, full of old world British charm. The Long Bar was picturesque too, if not a bit touristy and the sling was, well a sling. We went back home to get an early start to today.

In the morning, we made our way over to Takashimaya to get a highly recomended breakfast of coffee, soft boiled eggs and strong sweet coffee at Ya Kun Kaya, located in the basement. It was delicious. We cruised around the basemen tof Takashimaya for a little longer, and I got some more food (it was pretty much the theme for the day), a Noyan rice ball wrapped in banana leaf. Again, delicious. I’d always wanted to try one, and that was the first time I’d seen a vegetarian version of the snack.

After finishing up breakfast, we went over to Little India by MRT. The subway system is very simular in rolling stock, ticket systems, and floor plans to the one in Shanghai. It’s very comprehensive, clean and runs often. Little India was fun, again centered around food. There were still a lot of signs up for Diwali as well as plenty of South Indian looking/styled temples. We ate at a veg South Indian restaurant, where I had a good masala dosa and a few other folks got some great looking thalis, too. We made our way back to the major market area in Little India to get some teh tarik, a Malay-style pulled sweet black tea.

From there it was back the colonial/city/downtown area and walked through the cricket grounds, the Supreme Court, and some of the other old British buildings. A lot of times it was hard to tell if you were in London or in Singapore just how the roads were layed out and the buildings were styled. On the docket for tonight is the night safari at the zoo, a supposed top thing to do in Singapore. We’re about to head out to dinner, who knows where, but I’m in South East Asia, which means I’m always ready to eat. Tomorrow I think I might hop over to Indonesia to spend the morning-ish hours at the beach at Bintan or another island over there.

To Be Back in Shanghai

I forgot how much I liked this place. There’s a lot to love about Shanghai. Yesterday I spent the day crusing around the city and work meeting up with friends all over. I loved being able to walk down to the street and pick up a taxi, pop on my head phones and spin around town. Today was more of the same, spent time eating, chatting and eating some more. We ate at Yuxin tonight, which is an amazing Sichuan place that is so crazy spicy that my sweating required napkining off. Delicious. I’m sure I’ll regret it tomorrow, but boy do I love it.

I’m off to Singapore in the morning, 9am flight via Hong Kong, and meeting up w/ some office folks. 85F right now, this should be fun.

Back in Shanghai

After a nine month hiatus I’m back in Shanghai. I didn’t quite remember the flight out here being so long (11:45 + 3.5 hours of flying, plus one hour of layover in Tokyo). As I picked up my luggage and walked through customs, out in to the open, the familar faces of Shanghai came back like a ton of bricks, as if I’d never left.

I went to the same ICBC ATM to withdraw money from my account in China (the money which thankfully did not mysteriously disappear), then passed through the various people harrasing me for “taxi” rides, and got in the offical taxi queue. The chalky smell of the air, the bumping and pushing, and public belching, it was all there in its full and wonderful authentic glory.

I was a little worried about having to use my rather poor Chinese when I got in the cab, but as I hunkered down it all started to flow and we were on our way to Xujiahui. As we crossed the Lupu Bridge, I could see the new World Financial Center (aka Shanghai 102), which looks like its topped out and makes the Jin Mao Tower seem small in comparison. Also different is how amazingly quiet the streets are now that there’s a 200 RMB fine for honking!

Didn’t do a whole lot today once I got in; I was pretty nuked after the flight. I did go however to the foot massage place we used to frequent and used it as an opportunity to catch up about life, work, and Shanghai with some old friends. It was great to hang out and talk the same nonsense as usual. I’m wishing I had more than just two and a half days here.

Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore: Here I Come

I’m off! I’m leaving today for a vacation over Thanksgiving. I’m heading to Shanghai first to meet up with a bunch of my friends from there, then off to Singapore with a couple of folks from the office to tour around, then we’re all off to Hong Kong for my good friends wedding. It’s gonna be a great trip and I’m looking forward to getting some time off. As usual, I’ll be blogging from the road.