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Brookline’s Allison Nieuwsma joins Hammond real estate office

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 19:34:57 +0000

Nancy McCreary, manager of Hammond Residential Real Estate’s Chestnut Hill Rental Group, has announced the addition of new rental agent Allison Nieuwsma to the team. In her new position, Nieuwsma will be representing tenants and landlords from Hammond’s office at 826 Boylston St., which also serves as the company’s headquarters.

A California native, Nieuwsma moved to Brookline in 2009, and has become an avid participant in the amenities and attractions of greater Boston since then. She currently lives in Roslindale, and will soon received her bachelor’s degree in management from Hellenic College in Brookline, where she is involved in the college’s peer tutoring program and works in local schools, shelters and nursing homes as part of the “President’s Challenge.” In her free time, Nieuwsma enjoys horseback riding, yoga and volunteering.

Nieuwsma’s interest in real estate developed at an early age through her exposure to her father’s commercial brokerage business in the competitive Bay Area marketplace. She carried this interest further by working as an administrative assistant for a family-owned business which held single family, mixed-use and apartment developments in the San Francisco area.

Hammond Residential is headquartered in Chestnut Hill, and has three Boston locations and 13 suburban branch offices. To learn more, visit www.HammondRE.com.

Article source: http://www.wickedlocal.com/brookline/features/x2082700289/Brooklines-Allison-Nieuwsma-joins-Hammond-real-estate-office

Rental competition fierce in SF’s market

Wed, 09 May 2012 14:18:05 +0000

Michael Austin and Emily Morrison aren’t highly paid tech workers. He’s an actor with a day job as an administrative assistant; she’s an arts teacher at CalShakes. Newly engaged, they’ve been seeking an apartment in San Francisco to move into together.

“We started combing Craigslist, and when we filtered by the neighborhoods we want and our maximum price of $2,000 for a two-bedroom, there is almost nothing,” Austin said. “It was just shocking to me.”

They broadened their search to the East Bay. Even there, “You show up at an open house and it’s really intimidating,” he said. “There are 20 other couples already ready to apply.”

They decided to “get creative and get off the Craigslist merry-go-round,” he said, posting their search on Facebook and placing their own Craigslist “apartment wanted” ad. A Facebook friend shared a tip on an Oakland apartment that may work out for them.

Their story is typical of San Francisco’s overheated rental market, where well-compensated tech workers are flocking to desirable neighborhoods, driving up prices and locking out those who aren’t big earners. The chichi areas, which also are closest to convenient transit, are hardest to break into. And the competition is spilling over into the East Bay.

“The Bay Area is growing in an extraordinary, unprecedented way,” said Sarah Bridge, owner of Novato’s RealFacts, which tracks apartment prices nationwide at buildings with 50 or more units.

“It has to do with job growth,” she said. “It’s a gold-rush mentality where the best and the brightest come to the Bay Area. The trend is for Gen Y folks, which is mostly what employers are hiring, and that particular generation has a preference for the urban core.”

San Francisco rents rose 15.8 percent in the first quarter of this year compared with the same time last year, to an average of $2,663 for all size units, according to RealFacts. Studio apartments average $2,075, up 16.5 percent in a year. The steepest rise came in one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartments, which are now $2,611 – up 19.9 percent in the past year and up 30 percent from just two years ago.

Growth was also strong in San Mateo County, where units of all sizes average $2,003, a 15.6 percent annual increase, RealFacts said. In Santa Clara County, the $1,857 average rent is a 12.5 percent annual increase. For Alameda County, the $1,519 average rent is up 7 percent – still a big increase compared with other areas of the country.

“When you see markets like Oakland with rental growth, it’s because it has proximity to San Francisco rather than in and of itself doing anything,” Bridge said.

San Francisco is the most expensive metropolitan area in the country for renters, according to a recent report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, which compared rents to wages. The going rate for a two-bedroom apartment in the counties of San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo requires a $76,200 annual income, the report said. By contrast, the New York metropolitan area, which includes eight counties, requires a $56,950 annual salary.

Even well-paid workers can find it hard to navigate San Francisco’s blood-sport rental market.

That’s spurred the creation of services targeting them. Real estate agent Wendy Willbanks last year decided to become a scout, or “rental concierge,” for apartment hunters, calling her business She Moves You (shemovesyou.com).

“I swoop in and beat the competition,” Willbanks said. “It’s a fast track to jumping them ahead of the long lines of other applicants (and) landing a rental property in San Francisco without wasting time.”

After nailing down her clients’ wish lists, Willbanks sifts through listings and attends open houses, armed with her clients’ credit reports and renter profiles. She photographs and videos the spaces. Some clients, such as people moving from elsewhere in the country, decide on apartments based purely on her scouting.

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/09/BU551OD1PL.DTL&tsp=1

Bay Area renters squeezed in tight market

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 18:28:05 +0000

A surge of tech hiring and the aftereffects of the housing crash are filling up apartments in Silicon Valley and pushing renters toward the East Bay, where rents also are rising and vacancies dropping, according to a new housing report.

Natalie Gonzales has been looking for an apartment or home to rent in the East Bay for six months, and she’s ready to give up and stay put in Pacifica.

“I feel like it’s impossible to find a decent place for a good price,” she said.

Three factors have converged to make apartment hunting a misery in the Bay Area, experts say: the resurgence of tech hiring that has brought more people to Silicon Valley; potential homeowners still uncertain how far prices will drop continuing to rent; and the release of pent-up demand from young adults moving to their own digs after living with family or roommates during the downturn.

“All three have all happened almost simultaneously during the last 18 months,” said Hessam Nadji, managing director for research at Marcus Millichap, a commercial real estate brokerage with offices around the Bay Area.

The company expects vacancies in Silicon Valley this year to drop below 3 percent, a level not seen since the dot-com boom. Rents will hit $1,522 per month, a more than 7 percent increase from 2011. For San Francisco and the Peninsula, the company forecasts a 7.2 percent increase to $1,947 a month.

East Bay-bound

The

tight Silicon Valley rental market is expected to push more apartment hunters to the East Bay, where rents could rise to $1,361 a month, an increase of 3.8 percent this year, on the heels of a nearly 3 percent increase last year, the company said. East Bay vacancies are expected to drop to about 3.2 percent this year. Marcus Millichap’s forecast is for the entire apartment market for 20 units and above.

“Most of the time everything’s just too expensive,” said Jamie Atkinson, an administrative assistant at an upscale Peninsula grocery store who has searched for a new apartment on the Peninsula and in Hayward, Alameda and South San Francisco. “Big complexes, little complexes, everything — they have gone to outrageous prices.”

The low number of vacancies in large apartment complexes has made the San Jose area the best place in the U.S. for new developments, the company said.

“We’ve had many, many months of increasing employment,” said Steven Seligman of Marcus Millichap in Palo Alto. “There are going to be some apartments coming on line, particularly in San Jose, but in general there hasn’t been lot of construction over the last few years and rents had significant increases in 2011, and most are predicting increases in 2012.”

That’s put pressure on tech workers looking for apartments in complexes that have all the amenities.

Kimberley McInnis, a systems engineer with a startup, was faced with a rent increase and found a place in one weekend of intensive searching — $1,765 a month for a small one-bedroom in a better complex in Sunnyvale. “Rents are ridiculous,” she said.

Aditya Shukla, a project manager at Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), said that three weeks of searching for a new place in Cupertino or Sunnyvale has convinced him that rents are up 10 to 15 percent from last year. “I was able to find multiple apartments,” he said, possibly because he’s looking for a two-bedroom. But they were for high monthly rates with large deposits and “no negotiation — you have to put down this much, then move in if you want.”

New projects

Apartment developers are racing to complete projects, including Crescent Village, a 1,750-unit Irvine Co. development in north San Jose. The first phase with 380 units just opened, with 1,000 to be completed by the end of the year. The units go for $1,750 to $2,950 a month.

“There are all these jobs coming into the market, but there’s been very little construction over the last three or four years,” said Kevin Baldridge, Irvine Co. executive vice president for apartment communities. “We’ve been in an undersupplied environment for the last two to three years. That will begin changing.”

Irvine Co. already has signed 32 leases and had 200 visitors since the first units at Crescent Village opened April 2.

Adding to the rental pressure are foreclosed homeowners looking for places to live. After bailing on a $6,000 monthly mortgage, a $2,000-a-month rental looks affordable to a foreclosed homeowner, said Ron Stern of BayRentals.com, a Bay Area referral service.

Rents are more affordable for smaller units such as duplexes and fourplexes, Stern said. “There’s pretty good supply and rents are reasonable, especially in the smaller units that don’t have all the pools and rec rooms. You can definitely get better deals on them.” But Stern said he thinks rents will rise toward the middle of the year.

Contact Pete Carey at 408-920-5419.

Article source: http://www.montereyherald.com/business/ci_20410464/bay-area-rent-renters-expensive-squeeze-tight-market