Tech workers squeezing out renters in San Francisco, Seattle

Low- and middle-income residents of San Francisco, Oakland, Seattle and other metro areas, are getting pushed out of their homes as an influx of deep pocketed tech workers drive up rents.

Rental rates for the 10 metro areas most dominated by tech companies rose by an average of 5.7% year-over-year through January, nearly twice the average 3% increase seen in the nation's 90 other largest cities, according to Trulia. Certain cities have seen far bigger hikes: rents in San Francisco rose by 12.3%, to a median of $3,350 a month in January.

So high are rents in San Francisco and neighboring Oakland, in fact, that protestors have taken to blocking the shuttle buses that transport tech workers to the Silicon Valley offices of companies like Google(GOOG, Fortune 500) and Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500), blaming the companies and their highly paid workers for a spate of evictions.

Related: 10 hottest housing markets

"At locations along the Google, Apple or Genentech bus stops, most apartments are going to tech workers," said Craig Berendt, a property manager and apartment broker in the city. An apartment in San Francisco's Pacific Heights neighborhood that rented for $2,100 in 2010, for example, now rents for $3,200 a month, he said.

Many tech workers can afford it. The average paycheck in Silicon Valley has surged past $100,000, while the median wage for private sector workers nationwide is far smaller at $38,600.

Despite the fat paychecks, many young tech workers are choosing to rent over buy, in part because home prices in tech-saturated cities are even more prohibitively expensive than rents.

Cost of living: How far will my salary go in another city?

And prices keep rising. Year-over-year, asking prices in San Francisco and Oakland were up 16.2% and 24.4%, respectively, in January, according to Trulia. That's compared to a national average gain of 11.4%.

Making matters worse in places like San Francisco is that little is being done to meet the increase in demand. The city is hemmed in by the sea so there's very little land to build on and strict regulations have been put in place to preserve the low-rise charm of the city.

Instead, in once working class neighborhoods like San Francisco's Castro, South of Market, and the Mission, affordable multifamily rental housing is being converted into high-priced condos, said Victoria Stewart Davis, an agent with Pacific Union.

The pattern is similar in the Seattle area, home to tech giants like Amazon.com (AMZN,Fortune 500) and Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500).

Related: Top 10 cities people are moving to

"There's been a huge influx of people into the city and there's little land left for development," said Jonathan Grant, president of the Tenants Union of Washington State. "Housing in low-income neighborhoods is being converted to high-income rentals."

It wasn't like home prices were cheap in these places to begin with. In most tech hubs, home prices were 52% higher than the national average back in 1990 -- and that was before anyone really knew what the Internet was. Now, prices are 82% above the national average, Trulia reported.

Even some tech workers are getting displaced. David Stoesz, a 46 year-old website content developer for Microsoft, left his old apartment in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle last October when his new landlord doubled his $1,000 a month rent.

"The apartment was in a complex built in the 1940s and owned by a family," he said. "They sold it to a developer who immediately started to kick out old renters. There's nowhere for them to go. It sends the message that 'This is not your city.'"

Related: Where American millionaires live

Ballard was a blue-collar neighborhood of Norwegian fishermen and other working-class people -- the cast members of "Deadliest Catch," drink at a bar there, said Stoesz. Many of his old neighbors, which included a retired librarian and a grocer, were forced to move outside of town.

Stoesz was able to stay, but he is now paying $1,800 for a two-bedroom townhouse, which he shares with his daughter. "Now, everyone around me is the same, same age, same demographic, many are tech workers," said Stoesz. "It just sucks. The city is losing its character." 

Not all housing bubbles crash equally

Four reasons why a collapse in China's home prices won't spell global disaster.

By Shang-Jin Wei

FORTUNE -- As China's home prices soar to record highs and well beyond the reach of ordinary citizens, the world watches closely as many wonder if the housing market might eventually crash. The global economy is still recovering from the financial crisis triggered largely by the collapse of America's housing market, and it's easy to see why investors and economists would worry that a similar boom-and-bust scenario in China could deepen the lingering slump.

Such concerns, though, are premature at best. Is there a bubble in China's housing market? It's possible, especially in major cities, such as Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, and several provincial capitals. But China's economy is far different from America's; should a real estate bubble in China suddenly burst, the following differences could temper the risks of another global disaster:

China's saving propensity might save the day

Declining home prices erode what's called the "wealth effect." If home prices drop, theoretically homeowners feel less wealthy so they consume less, which in turn, leads to an economic slowdown. The U.S housing crash in 2007 damaged the wealth of countless Americans, but such spillovers likely won't be as deep in China because the country saves far more than most other countries.

MORE: Fear be damned: This is the best time to invest in emerging markets

Most Chinese don't enjoy the kind of retirement plans and other social safety nets that most Americans do. So they tend to rely on savings and their children for financial security. In addition, they also save to help their children in their competition for marriage partners. As the ratio of males and females in the youth cohort rises due to gender-selective abortions, the competition for brides is getting fiercer for families with a son, and the competitive savings have risen in importance relative to the precautionary savings. Because of these factors, Chinese households save a greater fraction of their incremental wealth than most other countries.

As home prices rise, incremental consumption as a share of incremental wealth in China is smaller than in the U.S. For the same reasons, if home prices were to fall, the decline in consumption as a share of a decline in housing wealth may also be smaller than in the U.S.

 An affordable housing program can partially offset a slump

A housing bust could also disrupt input-output linkages -- when home prices collapse, the ramifications could ripple across the construction industry, leading to reduced demand for steel, cement, and appliances. China isn't immune, but the government's ambitious affordable housing program could cushion the blow to the wider construction industry. This program is meant to help address income inequality. To build these houses, you need cement, steel, and eventually furniture. To the extent that a price correction occurs in the normal housing market, the construction of low-income housing will at least partially offset any potential negative effect.

China's banks can manage bad home loans

As we saw in the U.S., a collapse in home prices nearly destroyed the nation's financial system as loans to real estate developers and homeowners turned sour.

In China, loans to real estate developers and mortgage loans to homeowners altogether account for about 20% of all bank loans. Suppose 20% of these loans go bad, which is an aggressive assumption given that subprime loans in the U.S. accounted for less than 20% of all banks' loans during the subprime crisis of 2007-2008 (and not all subprime loans went bad); this will produce 4% of bad loans.

While this is not negligible, China's banking sector should be able to work itself out, perhaps with the government's help. The fact that China's government debt burden is much lower than the U.S., Europe, or Japan is important here. After all, the Chinese banking sector got itself out of a far more serious bad loan problem a decade ago.

MORE: Why Greeks are overworked while Germans go home early

Policymakers don't sit idle

Chinese government policies are not fixed either. In the last few months, the country's central bank has tightened its expansionary monetary policies used to counter the global economic slowdown. It did so because it made a judgment that risk in the housing market was not very big. If it sees signs of a housing price correction and a potential negative effect on the overall economy, it can reverse course.

Bubbles are an inevitable byproduct of a market economy, especially when the underlying asset is hard to sell short (such as housing in China). However, even if a housing price correction comes, it won't have the same impact on the overall economy that we experienced when the U.S. and European markets collapsed.

Shang-Jin Wei is the director of Columbia Business School's Jerome A. Chazen Institute of International Business and the NT Wang Professor of Chinese Business and Economy.

Home prices show signs of topping out

Home prices are showing signs of topping out: The S&P/Case-Shiller index posted its first month-over-month decline in 10 months on Tuesday.

The annual measure of home prices still increased 13.7% in November, but that was only narrowly better than the rise posted in October.

The housing recovery was one of the stronger aspects of the economy last year, boosting household wealthand home construction.

But with mortgage rates climbing steadily since hittingrecord lows in May, it's clear the housing recovery is starting to lose some steam.

"While housing will make further contributions to the economy in 2014, the pace of price gains is likely to slow during the year," said David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices.

Calculator: How much house can you afford?

But housing experts say that more modest price increases are probably a good thing for the housing market. The rapid increases of the last year are not sustainable, they said.

"Sellers used to seeing huge price gains month after month may feel some whiplash as that slows down," said Stan Humphries, chief economist for sales tracker Zillow. But more modest price increases mean "the housing market is still a long way from normal, but it's getting there."

The Case-Shiller index chronicles prices across the nation's 20 largest metropolitan areas. Fourteen of those markets posted double-digit percentage gains over the last year, but only nine posted any month-over-month gain.

Related: Top 10 cities people are moving to

The improvement in housing was driven by pent-up demand for home purchases, combined with lower unemployment and a drop in foreclosures. Mortgage rates have been climbing steadily of late but remain low by historical standards, making housing prices far more affordable than they were at the height of the bubble last decade.

National prices are still nearly 20% below peak levels reached in mid-2006, according to Case-Shiller. 

U.S. postpones 2014 hike in mortgage fees

New housing finance chief Mel Watt says he will postpone fee increases set for April.

It's a Christmas miracle! Planned fee increases that would have added to the cost of millions of mortgages will be postponed.

Currently, borrowers seeking loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are set to pay higher upfront fees starting April 1.

The fees, ordered by the Federal Housing Finance Agency earlier this month, are meant to help safeguard banks against risky borrowers who might default.

But housing experts say they will add thousands of dollars to the cost of all mortgages insured by Fannie and Freddie, with the biggest hits taken by borrowers with less than perfect credit histories.

On Friday, the incoming chief of the FHFA, Mel Watt, said he intends to postpone the fees -- and perhaps even cancel them -- until more analysis is done. The FHFA oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Watt, a former Democratic member of Congress, has been confirmed to his post by the Senate and takes office on January 6.

In a statement, Watt said he intends to "evaluate fully the rationale" for the fees and their impact on Fannie and Freddie and the "availability of credit."

Related: 10 hottest housing markets

The mortgage industry has been bracing for substantial increases in the price of loans in 2014.

"If these [policies] had been implemented, it would have increased borrowing costs dramatically," said David Stevens, CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association.

The hit for individual borrowers would depend on the amount of the home purchase being financed, according to Brian Koss, executive vice president at Massachusetts-based lender Mortgage Network.

Borrowers would have paid a fee when they took out the loan, or they could have effectively rolled the higher fees into their interest rate, raising monthly mortgage payments by as much as a quarter percentage point.

Related: American Dream homes. What you'll pay in 10 cities

Even with the reversal, however, mortgages will probably get more expensive over the next few months anyway as the Federal Reserve cuts back on its purchases of mortgage backed securities, a program designed to keep interest rates low.

Stevens, the mortgage industry representative, said the proposed increases made little sense. Defaults on mortgages made in recent years have been much lower than on those made before the housing crash.

As a result, Fannie and Freddie are flush with profits, so much so that they have already returned almost all of their $187 billion taxpayer-funded bailout.

"The GSEs are making a lot of money," said Stevens. "There's no rationale for the increases." 

Real estate: Look for value in 2014

NEW YORK (Money Magazine)

In Money magazine's Make More in 2014, you'll find next year's economic outlook, where to find opportunities in stocks and bonds, the best moves for homebuyers, sellers and owners, and strategies for boosting your career. This installment: How to play the housing market.

The good news for housing is that price gains next year are expected to be only about half as strong as in 2013, when sellers stayed on the sidelines. Yes, that's good news. "For a sustainable recovery you want to see more balance between buyers and sellers," says David Stiff, chief economist at CoreLogic Case-Shiller, which is forecasting a 6.8% rise in the median home value for 2014.

Inventory is already improving. Nationwide, the number of homes for sale in September rose 1.8% vs. a year earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors. That's the first increase since late 2011. In Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Orlando, inventory was 10% or higher than a year earlier.

"It will still be a sellers' market in 2014, given how far we have before inventory is back to normal," says Jed Kolko, chief economist at Trulia, noting the supply of homes in September was still about 15% below historical norms. "But it will not be as extreme as 2013," he says.

Buyers will also enjoy an advantage next year as real estate investors are expected to be less of a factor. Why? In an improving market, there are fewer distressed homes, which they covet. According to the Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking survey, the investor share of residential home purchases fell from 23% earlier this year to 17% in September. In a more balanced market like this, here's what you can do to get an edge:

BUYERS

Waiting for more inventory can make sense if you have a dream home in mind. But in 2014 there will be a price for delay -- 30-year fixed-rate mortgages are forecast to climb from today's 4.5% to more than 5%.

Work with a fast closer. Qualifying for loans is easier now, but speed is another issue. Franklin, Tenn., agent Patty Latham says she will not work with buyers using a particular lender that has missed several deadlines. For speed, Virginia agent Rob Wittman suggests sticking with local lenders with ties to nearby appraisers.

Related: Was my home a good investment?

What's fast? John Wheaton at Guaranteed Rate says, "Where 45 days was the norm, you can get an express closing in 20 days and even faster."

Lead with a credible offer. At a time of multiple bids, low-balling isn't the way to go. "The reality is, sellers don't have to come back to you with a counter if they've got better bids," Wittman says. Of course, you don't want to overpay either. Even in markets that are starting to experience bidding wars, such as L.A. and Boston, final sales prices are still typically about 1% below asking. Use that and your agent's local knowledge and go in with a respectable bid.

OWNERS

If you like your home and are not in a rush to sell, you have great flexibility. For instance, your rising home equity will make it easier to borrow against the property. That can help pay for deferred maintenance or home renovations you've been eyeing for years -- which will only add value when you eventually put your home on the market.

Remodel within reason. Home-improvement spending is expected to grow by double digits through mid-2014, according to Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies. Atop the wish list: bathroom and kitchen jobs.

Keep resale in mind. While the focus was on value at the market lows, today "homes with all the fixings are the ones attracting multiple buyers," says McLean, Va., real estate broker Jon Wolford. So, yes, you can splurge a bit, but don't go crazy. Remodeling Magazine's cost-vs.-value survey found that moderate kitchen remodels ($57,500) recouped 69% of their cost, close to what minor jobs paid back. Over-the-top projects ($111,000), though, recouped less than 60%.

Take advantage of low home-equity rates. While 30-year mortgages rose nearly a point this year, rates on home-equity lines of credit have fallen a bit to 5.1%. That's because HELOCs are tied to short-term rates that the Fed isn't likely to hike until 2015.

If you'll need to repay your loan over many years, though, go with a fixed-rate home-equity loan. Today's 6.25% average is about 0.25 points lower than a year ago, as lenders are now more interested in doing deals, says Keith Gumbinger at HSH.com. Credit unions can be the best place to shop for home-equity loans. The average credit union rate is 5.75%.

SELLERS

List too early and you'll leave gains on the table. Wait too long and rising borrowing costs might put an end to bidding wars. You can't time the market perfectly, but you can keep an eye on inventory trends. Ask your agent to give you a monthly report on the number of listings compared with closings. Housing trends play out gradually.

Once you see a big uptick in listings relative to closings, you'll know price gains are getting ready to slow -- and that it's time to act.

Related: New mortgage rules may mean less choice

Price it right the first time. Don't waste your time by listing too high only to have to wait and lower the price. "Buyers are smart these days -- they know where the market is, and now that rates are higher, they aren't going to bite on a list price above recent comparables," says Sara Fischer, an agent with Redfin based in San Diego. The real estate site Zillow reports that about one-third of listed homes in August had a price drop, up from 26% earlier this year.

Play tour guide for the appraiser. If your buyer's lender gets an appraisal that comes in lower than the agreed-upon price, you're in for plenty of headaches -- even in an improving market. You'll have to lower the price, the buyer will have to cough up a bigger down payment, or worst case, the deal might collapse, sending you back to square one.

Fischer recommends that sellers be present when appraisers come by. "They don't want to listen to the agent," she says. "But if you're the owner and can walk them through all the improvements, that can help the appraiser better understand what has gone into the home." She recommends handing the appraiser a spreadsheet of all upgrades, listing when they were done and the scope of each project.