Comments on: Dublin Real Estate Update – 12/5/08

By: John M. Zukoski

John M. Zukoski — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Hi Yang – we haven’t been doing the real estate updates. There has been a thought to maybe start providing quarterly updates. Any suggestions or thoughts on what information you’d be interested in seeing?

Thx, John Z.

By: Yang

Yang — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Hey are you still doing real estate updates?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

From what the experts have said, Loma Prieta is just a small taste of what is going to happen next. San Francisco is a city built to burn. Oakland and especially Hayward will be devastated. It’s not that the homes in Dublin will be so damaged, but the local economy will be ravaged and this will affect home prices. I think it took 7 to 9 years to recover from ’89. The next could collapse bridges, destroy freeway overheads, and the poorly built homes in the East Bay and SF are sitting ducks.

I don’t mean to scare everyone, but just be prepared for it to happen and build it into your real estate investment plan. My wife and I do have earthquake insurance. It’s expensive, but living in CA, it’s a necessary expense. We’ve gone almost 150 years since the last big one, so we’re long, long overdue. And the longer it takes to happen, the bigger it will be when it does happen.

By: Jing Firmeza

Jing Firmeza — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

I won’t even think about home price when the big one hits. How will I be able to rebuild. Earthquake insurance is costly and hard to find. Feds will probably step in but you are looking at increasing your mortgage to rebuild. Would be hard to predict the magnitude of home damage to the epicenter of the quake. The closer you are the greater. West Dublin is closer to the fault. Let us take for example the Loma Prieta quake. Home damage was extensive closer to the fault. San Francisco Marina District got hit hard because that is a land fill. Marina District home price is still at a all time high. Maybe the ambience of living close to the bay and the city. Homes nowadays can withstand the Loma Prieta magnitude. Anything higher we don’t know. I have been to a 7.6 in the Philippines in the 80′s. Disaster? Yes…. 2 building collapsed because of poor engineering with lots of kickbacks to building inspector. Fire and water shortage? Yes. In short, it is nice to live in a one story home. As long as you are not standing at the fault. Centex new homes have great earthquake retrofits. I like how they enforce their foundations. I am more scared of oceans rising than the big one coming at the Hayward Fault.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

I wonder what all these real estate experts are going to do when Dublin falls victim to the long overdue Hayward fault snapping and causing a massive earthquake in this region. I can already imagine smoke coming from the underground parking garages along the condos and apartments on Dublin Blvd, suffocating those inside. I imagine lots of homes badly damaged, the economy collapsing, and basically experiencing the Bay Area's own Katrina.

It sounds terrible, but it's bound to happen sometime soon and any earthquake expert will tell you that. All real estate experts fail to acknowledge this scenario, which would destroy home values for many years (as the '89 quake did). The only analyst I've heard talk about this has been Rob Black.

We're in our single story home for the long haul, and one day it'll be worth more than what we paid for it in 2006. But we also know that when the big one hits, real estate is in for a world of hurt, and that's hoping we even escape this disaster alive and unharmed.