“In many areas, we are seeing more interest in urban infill locations than in remote exurbs, which is having a pronounced shift in neighborhood design elements,” said AIA Chief Economist, Kermit Baker. “And regardless of city or suburban dwellers, people are asking more from their communities in terms of access to public transit, walkable areas and close proximity to job centers, retail options and open space.”

Half of residential architecture firms highlight demand for multi-generational housing, up from 44 percent in 2011. Fifty-nine percent said access to public transportation is key, up from 47 percent a year ago. (Read More: New Nightmare for Home Builders: Not Enough Skilled Workers)

More homeowners are also upsizing what they have, with 58 percent of architects reporting improvement in additions and alterations, up from just 35 percent a year ago; kitchen and bath, as usual, top the must-have list.

During the last housing boom, extravagance drove new construction and remodeling. Now, the trends are more practical, with energy efficiency and the need to accommodate growing families driving the gains. Home owners are also looking to builders to help them use the space they have more efficiently, especially Baby Boomers.

“They have a lot of desires for the home, and we’re hearing this group say they want functionality and smartly-designed homes without wasted space,” said Meyer, who adds that this doesn’t necessarily translate into smaller homes. While these findings bode well for the home builders, they may also add optimism to the upper end of the market, and all those so-called “McMansions,” many of which lost significant value during the housing crash. (Read More: Pending Home Sales Surge to Five Year High)

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100321206

The increased activity mirrors what’s happening nationally, as builders ramp up after a long hibernation that saw home starts plunge to record lows.

A Chronicle analysis of Census Bureau data on housing permits – a strong indicator of future construction as 86 percent become housing starts within one month – shows that this year the core Bay Area counties are on track for more-robust home building.

The home construction market is returning to normal as it recovers from the “boom and bust carnage,” said Robert Denk, senior economist at the National Association of Home Builders.

“We definitely see that we’re on our way up off the bottom,” said Gary Mayo, group president for Northern California and Nevada at Toll Brothers, one of the nation’s largest home builders. “The market is improving across the country, with Northern California among the stronger areas. In the Bay Area, sales started to dramatically improve in January. Our sales in the Bay Area on the same (housing developments) as last year are up 100 percent this year.”

Models not even done

Toll has luxury developments in Brisbane and Sunnyvale – each of which has sold more than a dozen homes without even completing a model house.

“We have a sales trailer out in the middle of the raw land where we’re putting in the site improvements. It shows the strength of the market: People are buying off of the blueprints and our reputation,” he said. Another new site in Pleasanton opened a week ago and has taken six deposits. Existing developments around the bay in Hayward, San Ramon, Dublin and elsewhere are suddenly finding a ready coterie of buyers, he said.

Kenny and Rena Tan will pay about $1 million for a five-bedroom home in Toll’s Brisbane development called the Ridge, which will be ready in about a year. For now, they put down a nonrefundable $9,000 deposit, accounting for about half of the structural options they requested, such as converting the downstairs library to a bedroom, putting in a kitchen island and a adding a sink to the laundry room.

They like the location, near San Francisco and the airport, and picked a site with hill views, he said.

At 52, Tan said they were looking ahead to their senior years.

“We wanted a home we can retire in, with a downstairs bedroom so we don’t have to climb stairs as we get older,” he said.

As a real estate lawyer, he’s very familiar with the market, Tan said.

“I know that the worst is over; especially in San Francisco and the Peninsula there is such a strong demand for homes that it is a very resilient market,” he said. “I waited until now; no way would I have jumped in two years ago.”

What caused the turnaround?

Richard Green, director of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate, said that a growing population’s demand had caught up with the existing supply, making it time for new homes to be built.

“We went a long time, basically five years, with almost no new construction to speak of,” he said. “In the post-World War II era we’ve never seen anything like this before, so it had to turn around.”

Biggest of all, Denk said: stabilization of the overall housing market. “Nobody will buy a house if they expect it to lose value,” he said. “The bottoming out of house prices is a critical factor enabling the turnaround.”

Low interest rates

Overall economic conditions, with growing consumer confidence and record-low interest rates, is another factor.

“I think people are tired of waiting,” Mayo said. “They’ve been sitting on the sidelines for five years wanting a new home but didn’t feel the dynamics were right. Employment didn’t feel solid. Now (they see) low interest rates, a strengthening economy and (more) equity in their existing homes, so they can sell them.”

Consider this: In both 2005 and 2006, builders pulled permits for about 15,000 new homes a year in the San Francisco metropolitan area (the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo), a little more than half of them being single-family houses and the rest apartments or condos. In 2009, just 3,550 permits were issued. By 2011 it was up to about 5,800.

Soaring past last year

As of August, builders have already taken out about 5,800 permits this year – as many as in all of last year – putting them on track to exceed last year’s total by 50 percent.

The San Jose metro area (the counties of Santa Clara and San Benito) had an even deeper plunge, going from roughly 6,000 new permits a year to only 1,100 in 2009. This year, it is on track for about 5,800 permits – almost back to its boom-time levels.

Home construction is an economic indicator that packs a hefty wallop. Building a house creates the equivalent of three full-time yearlong jobs, according to the National Association of Home Builders. About half of them are construction – the folks who swing the hammers and install the plumbing and electricity – while the other half are everything from real estate agents, mortgage brokers and lawyers to sellers of concrete, brick, masonry, steel, furniture and other goods.

The United States “was hovering at 1.4 million single-family houses being built a year, and that dropped to 400,000,” Denk said. “With 1 million fewer housing starts, that meant 3 million jobs that weren’t there because we weren’t building at a normal pace.”

From 2007 to 2011, more than 2.1 million construction workers lost their jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Since then, only about a quarter of a million have gone back to work in the industry.

“In a normal year, housing construction is 5 percent of GDP,” Green said. The downturn “shaved 3 percent off the GDP. When we get back to normal – and we’re still not there yet – that’s another 3 percent back of GDP, which I think everyone will welcome.”

Exurbia building

Some people predicted that post-downturn new homes would be leaner than the boom-time McMansions, but that doesn’t seem to be holding true.

“There is more building in exurbia, where land is relatively cheap,” Green said. “Developers make bigger margins on bigger houses, so that’s probably what we’re going to see.”

Patrick Duffy, principal at home-building consultant Metro Intelligence Real Estate Advisors, said he predicts that next year will see builders break ground on 800,000 to 1 million new homes nationwide, following this year’s projected 600,000.

“House building has a big multiplier effect” on the economy, he said. “That’s why we’ve been dragging along. Now housing is starting to pick up; that’s a nice annual bump. It’s really hopeful, but there’s still some economic uncertainty out there. “

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: csaid@sfchronicle.com

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/Bay-Area-new-home-construction-rebounds-3986773.php

That would be unequal pay, or what Rosin – who sees the 21st century service-oriented economy playing more to women’s strengths – calls “the last artifacts of a vanishing age.”

How are those artifacts doing? Nationally, for every dollar paid to men, working women are getting 77 cents, according to 2011 figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. Working women in California are doing relatively better, earning 85 cents for every dollar paid to men. But if you think women in the progressive Bay Area are doing the best of all, you’d be wrong.

The four congressional districts where women’s median pay equals or exceeds men’s are in and around Los Angeles, suggesting there’s more equality in the entertainment world than in high tech or finance.

The southern part of Silicon Valley, including San Jose, comes close, with women there making 97 percent of men’s pay. But in another Silicon Valley congressional district, including Santa Clara, Los Altos and Cupertino, women are paid just 73 cents for every dollar made by a man – below the national and state averages, and equivalent to an annual wage gap of $21,000, according to an analysis of the Census Bureau report by the National Partnership for Women Families, an advocacy group in Washington, D.C.

San Francisco, represented by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, also has a ways to go, with women here making 85 percent of men’s median pay – an annual wage gap of $9,800. Alameda, San Mateo and Marin counties do better than San Francisco. Contra Costa lags, with a wage gap of up to $20,000.

Other studies suggest the gender gap may be smaller – as low as 5 cents on the dollar, according to one produced for the U.S. Labor Department in 2009 – but it’s still there, as the Equal Pay Act of 1963 approaches its 50th anniversary.

Scofflaw watch: It’s that time of year again, when the state Board of Equalization puts out its quarterly list of the top 500 tax delinquents.

Many of the names will be familiar to those keeping tabs on California’s biggest offenders; for example, C JD USA Inc., a shipping firm in Oakland, has owed $16.9 million since at least 2010.

One new name did catch our eye, though: Siebel Systems, co-founded by billionaire entrepreneur Thomas Siebel, owes the state $1,371,765 in back taxes, and has a lien placed on the company’s listed headquarters in San Mateo.

One of America’s largest customer relationship management software companies, Siebel Systems was acquired by Oracle for $5.8 billion in 2006, and a Wikipedia entry labels the company “defunct.” Its listed telephone number was disconnected.

So who is actually on the hook for the money, and how far back do the unpaid taxes go? Oracle, when contacted, declined to comment. Oracle continues to market Siebel-branded products, including Siebel CRM Public Sector 8.2.2, released in December.

Siebel, a former Oracle executive, is currently chairman of First Virtual Group, a holding company headquartered in Palo Alto, and of C3 Energy, an enterprise management software company in Redwood City. Calls and e-mails to both companies were not returned on Monday.

Citing confidentiality rules, the Board of Equalization says it could not provide details of the date or dates of the unpaid taxes, but referred me to published information about the tax lien, first dated March 7, 2012.

Are there cases of companies or business owners being cited for unpaid taxes dating back several years? Yes, said board spokesmen.

Going begging: The state of California has $6.1 billion to give away. That’s the amount of unclaimed property it’s collected on behalf of 17 million individuals and organizations, according to the controller’s office.

No, not real estate; these are bank accounts, safety deposit box contents, cashier’s checks, money orders, stocks, mutual funds, CDs, matured insurance policies and more that owners, or their heirs, have forgotten to collect.

They’re being held under California’s Unclaimed Property Law, designed to prevent institutions like banks and insurance companies from pocketing the uncollected money for themselves.

Feeling lucky? Check out the controller’s unclaimed property page at scoweb.sco.ca.gov/UCP.

Back to the table: The California Public Employees’ Retirement System must be feeling luckier than the last time it dabbled heavily in real estate.

CalPERS recently announced a $530 million investment in Chinese real estate funds, despite rumblings of a bubble in that country’s real estate market.

“Income growth and urbanization remain the key themes for growth in China,” said Joe Dear, the pension fund’s chief investment officer. “China’s office and retail sectors offer stable rental income and potential for capital value growth.”

Previous investments in Chinese real estate have done well for CalPERS, earning a 19.2 percent return for the year ending March 31. On the other hand, CalPERS’ real estate investments have taken a shellacking at home, losing almost half their value in 2009 when the U.S. bubble burst.

Not to worry, though.

“We believe foreign investment in the Chinese real estate market will continue to grow over time, notwithstanding near-term challenges and some price volatility along the way,” Moses Song, head of ARA Asset Management, which is handling CalPERS money, told the English-language China Daily last week.

Andrew S. Ross is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. E-mail: bottomline@sfchronicle.com Blog: www.sfgate.com/columns/bottomline Twitter: @andrewsross Facebook: sfg.ly/doACKM

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/business/bottomline/article/L-A-beats-Bay-Area-on-gender-gap-in-pay-3890940.php

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