Ms. San Francisco Real Estate (Janice Lee)

Should you walk your dog on the left or the right?   Q : My dog, Wanda, is taking chemo for lymphoma and fortunately, she’s doing great. I’m trying to get her on nice trail walks several times a week, and this raises a question. My habit is to walk on the left side of the trail, with Wanda on leash to my left. This way I’m between Wanda and other oncoming dogs and their people as we pass. Wanda loves everyone and wants to jump up on them and this helps me control her. I thought it was customary to walk on the left side, but more often than not, oncoming walkers and joggers position themselves to pass on Wanda’s side. Is there trail etiquette of which I’m unaware? A : The general rule for walking on trails is to stay to the right and pass on the left. As to which side the dog goes on, show and hunting dogs are trained to stay on their human’s left side, but for most dogs, it doesn’t matter. Experts, however, suggest you pick a side — left or right — and keep to it so ...

Saving for a Bay Area down payment? This is how long it could take New study looks at down payments across the nation Resolving to become a homeowner in the next few years? Buyers in places like St. Louis and Tampa need only to save a modest amount to make that goal a reality. But in the Bay Area, you’ll need a stash. According to a new analysis from Realtor.com, would-be homeowners in the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward metro area need to sock away $3,379 a month for five years to cobble together a median down payment of $212,000. If that gives you sticker shock, forget the South Bay. In the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara metro area, where the median home goes for more than $1 million, homebuyers are putting down an average of $265,000. That requires saving $4,224 every month for five years or a whopping $7,170 each month for three years. And those figures don’t account for any potential change in home prices. So if the market accelerates, those amount...

Will the housing market crash in 2020? The Bay Area just said goodbye to a decade when real estate prices soared to astronomical heights. The 2010s were marked by $1 million fixer-uppers and bidding wars, and many homeowners saw their property values double. In 2019, prices flattened out a bit compared to 2018. At the start of a new decade, what will 2020 bring? Is a crash on the horizon? What impact with the U.S. presidential election have? We reached out to four experts to weigh in on the outlook for the Bay Area real estate market in 2020. We've compiled their responses to several questions below. BOOM OR BUST: WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE HOUSING MARKET IN 2020? Ken Rosen , chairman of the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at UC Berkeley: "First of all, the rate of price increases flattened out for home prices in 2019 ... We expect that to continue in 2020. We have low-interest rates, but we also have the fact that housing is very expensive so it’s ...

Wishing everyone a happy and prosperous new year!