Foreigners get a piece of the real estate pie
Kevin and Denise McCullough, a couple from Victoria, British Columbia, visited San Francisco nearly 50 times in the past decade, taking in Giants games, jogging along the Embarcadero and eating at favorite restaurants like Farallon and Myth.
They long talked of buying a vacation home here, but early inquiries brought home the twin realities of the city’s sky-high housing costs and their country’s weak exchange rate. That all changed last year, when the Canadian dollar reached and then passed parity with the U.S. dollar as the local real estate market flattened.
Early last month, the couple closed escrow on a $775,000 condo in Jackson Square, two blocks from the Embarcadero. A house at that price when they started looking six years ago would have cost them $1.3 million. Instead it cost them $711,000 – a difference of nearly $600,000.
“It’s mind-boggling,” said Kevin McCullough, 43, a criminal defense attorney.