[nshelly]

Keep in mind Paragon Real Estate Group is motivated by turning over inventory and encouraging people to buy.

> "longer term trends have always been positive"

This suggests that you should always buy if you're planning to stay in the Bay Area for the long term. The problem is that if you need to move within the Bay Area, then you could be setting yourself up for a very long commute, when one could have rented and invested the difference in the bull market over the past 10 years. And if you do ever leave the region (like many do, despite what the article suggests that lumps overseas in-migration with domestic out-migration), then you're looking at a 8-10% in fees to buy and then sell. Many parts of the region still haven't recovered from the bubble of 2007, and a more apt study would be to examine historical prices in urban areas like Boston or New York and the opportunity costs. A study of 100 years of commercial real estate in NYC show how property values were 30% lower in 1999 than they were in 1899, adjusting for inflation, and within, any decade values often rise and fall by 20–50% in real terms. https://economics.mit.edu/files/5887