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Bay Area rental pendulum swings to condos

Wed, 21 Aug 2013 05:40:12 +0000

Some condominium complexes opened at the worst possible time – in the depths of the real estate downturn when home buyers were few and far between. They coped by becoming for-rent apartment buildings instead. But now, as the housing recovery accelerates, several East Bay and South Bay developments are switching back to for-sale condos.

“The pendulum has shifted,” said Michael Reynolds, managing partner of developer Embarcadero Pacific, which specializes in high-density urban infill projects.

In 2009, his firm opened The Bond, a 101-unit complex in Oakland’s Jack London Square area, as rental apartments. Now it’s switching the building over to condos, taking advantage of buyers’ avid appetites for real estate and the dearth of for-sale inventory. About a quarter of the units have sold in less than three months.

“Rents are rising too quickly that if you can make a down payment, the cost of ownership is lower than leasing,” Reynolds said. With a boutique hotel feel, the building has units ranging from $350,000 for a one-bedroom to $1.25 million for a top-floor galleria penthouse.

The Bond was always intended to start off as rentals and then switch to condos when the time was right. But other complexes that opened during the downturn intending to be for-sale had no choice but to become rentals “when the music stopped,” as Reynolds put it.

Condo to rental, back

For instance, the 125-unit Broadway Grand in Oakland, developed by Signature Properties, first opened as a condo complex, sold 17 units, and then switched to rentals as the market tanked, said Paul Zeger, a principal at PolarisPacific, which is marketing it and some other conversion projects. Last year it went condo again, and now has sold all but 11 of its units.

Similarly, the Skyline in San Jose with 121 units is now switching to condos after opening as rentals during the downturn. In Emeryville, the 424-unit Bridgewater is switching from rentals to condos. The current phase II, which started in June with 174 homes ranging from $185,000 to $450,000, is finding a receptive audience, said Alan Mark, president of the Mark Co., which is marketing the complex.

Other Oakland complexes, including 288 Third and Uptown, have already made the switch.

With only a few dozen condos on the market, the conversions stand out.

“The (East Bay) condos that are for sale are snapped up quickly,” said Anne Feste, an agent with The Grubb Co.

Some buildings benefit from Oakland transport changes. “Transportation options have blossomed with the Free B downtown Oakland shuttle (which runs along Broadway from Jack London Square to Downtown, Uptown and beyond) and the SouthSF Ferry for people in the tech world to get to work,” Feste said.

‘More for your money’

Then there’s the affordability factor.

“You get a lot more for your money in the East Bay,” said Mike Wilkes, who recently relocated from Portland, Ore., with his husband, Grant Barth. “We would pay easily over $1 million in San Francisco for something comparable to what we bought for under $700,000 at The Bond.”

The East Bay and South Bay apartment buildings’ switch to condos is worlds away from San Francisco’s contentious condo conversions of tenant-in-common units, which generally are in buildings with just a handful of units. The current breed of condo conversions involve properties that were approved as condos before they were even constructed. That means going condo is relatively simple.

“Demand has spiked for for-sale housing,” Zeger said. “Buildings that have a ‘condo map’ (meaning they’re already approved for condo sales) in the local municipality can just go to the Bureau of Real Estate” to get final approvals.

When a rental building goes condo, generally existing tenants have the first right to purchase their units at the public price. If they don’t want to buy, they finish out their leases, which can then be terminated by the developer. There’s also turnover in the normal course of affairs.

Harder to get a loan

“We gain vacancies through natural attrition as renters move out,” Reynolds said. “We then refurbish the units with new finishes and put them out for sale so part of the building is leased, part is owner-occupied.”

However, that mixture can make it harder to get a home loan. In today’s stricter climate, lenders often require a minimum percentage of owner-occupied units before they’ll issue mortgages in a condo complex.

“It’s much more difficult to get Fannie Mae approval when you’re converting a building,” Mark said. The agency requires condo conversions to pre-sell 70 percent of units to owner-occupants before it will back mortgages, he said, but sometimes agrees to reduce that requirement a degree.

The apartment-to-condo trajectory is less likely to happen in San Francisco, where about 8,000 rental units are under construction. That’s because most were financed in a way that requires they generate rental income for many years, Zeger said.

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

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/Bay-Area-rental-pendulum-swings-to-condos-4740789.php

Bay Area home prices, sales climb in July

Tue, 20 Aug 2013 11:38:23 +0000

With more Bay Area residents choosing to sell their homes, real estate sales in July hit their highest monthly volume in almost seven years, while the median price continued its surge, according to a real estate report released Thursday.

A total of 9,339 new and resale houses and condos changed hands in the nine-county Bay Area in July – up 13.3 percent from July 2012, said DataQuick, a San Diego real estate research firm. The median paid was $562,000, a 33.5 percent increase from the same time last year.

Pent-up buyer demand, an improving regional economy and low interest rates have propelled home prices upward for many months. But a dearth of homes for sale meant the number being sold fell on a year-over-year basis every month since January. That trajectory reversed course in July.

“It was a really strong month,” said Andrew LePage, a DataQuick analyst.

Rising inventory shows the real estate market regaining equilibrium.

“Sellers want to jump on the train by putting their properties on the market, which levels supply and demand,” said Tanja Beck, an agent with Zephyr Real Estate in San Francisco.

Fewer bids

More inventory, as well as rising interest rates, should soon rein in the sharp price increases. Although bidding wars still occur, many agents say multiple offers now are measured in smaller numbers – perhaps three bids instead of a dozen.

While San Francisco is the nation’s most competitive market, with 80.5 percent of successful home buyers facing other bids, multiple offers in the city dropped nearly 10 percent from June to July, according to a report from real estate firm Redfin.

Nationwide, fewer bidding wars “points toward the strong sellers’ market beginning to shift toward more balance, giving frustrated home buyers a bit of relief,” Redfin said.

Distress sales are down sharply, another sign of a return to normal. Foreclosure resales were under 5 percent of the total – their lowest level since August 2007, before the credit crunch hit. In February 2009, foreclosure resales were 52 percent of the market, DataQuick said. Their historic monthly average in the Bay Area is about 10 percent of sales.

Short sales – properties sold for less than is owed on the mortgage – were 10 percent of July resales, down from 23.7 percent a year earlier.

Fewer distress sales also mean that people who sell their homes are likely to turn around and buy another property, creating a positive upward spiral.

“There was a time when more than half the sales were the lender pocketing money (in a foreclosure resale) so they just ended there,” LePage said. “Now a greater and greater percentage are traditional sellers, who will move up and buy from someone who themselves will move up.”

Upward mobility

Jessica and Josh Rowe exemplify that move-up buyer. The couple, along with their toddler and two French bulldogs, wants to move from San Francisco to the South Bay to live closer to their jobs. They listed their condo in Haight-Ashbury, a three-bedroom remodeled Victorian, at $949,000. It’s likely to go for well above asking price.

“To go from being sellers to being buyers, your confidence gets crazy-hacked,” said Jessica Rowe. “As a seller, you’re on top of the world, you make all this money – but as a buyer you can’t afford to get (something comparable) to what you just sold.”

The Haight condo itself illustrates the market turnaround. When the Rowes bought it three years ago – near the market’s bottom – the previous owners were on the brink of foreclosure. After unsuccessfully listing it at $799,000 for a month, they slashed the price to $755,000, which is what the Rowes paid.

The Bay Area’s median price is now 15.5 percent off the $665,000 peak it reached in summer 2007, LePage said. During the downturn, its nadir was $290,000 in March 2009.

The median represents the middle value of homes sold, meaning half sold for more and half for less. DataQuick said about three-quarters of the median’s increase stems from rising home values, the remainder from a shift in market mix.

More high-end homes and fewer inexpensive ones sold in July. Just over half (51 percent) of sales had mortgages above the old jumbo limit of $417,000, compared with 38.6 percent a year earlier and the low point of 17.1 percent in January 2009.

Federal Housing Administration loans, mostly used by first-time buyers, were 10.6 percent of purchase mortgages in July, down from 16 percent a year earlier. First-time home buyers consistently report getting squeezed out by investors and others paying all cash.

All-cash sales continued to be a strong force, accounting for 24 percent of July purchases, DataQuick said. In February, they peaked at 32.3 percent of sales.

Absentee buyers, who are mainly investors, snapped up 20.9 percent of Bay Area homes in July. Their market share also peaked in February, at 28.7 percent.

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

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Bay-Area-home-prices-sales-climb-in-July-4736589.php

The Madrone, Mission Bay: sold out in record time

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 16:43:23 +0000

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Mission Bay: Where once tumbleweeds tumbled and defunct buildings moldered, a thriving community has emerged, one that’s been developing over the past decade and a half. And part of it is Bosa’s Madrone at Mission Bay, a condo complex that broke SF records for the rapidity with which it sold out.

Composed of two 16-story towers and a total of 329 units, these condos, according to a recent press release from The Mark Company, are 100% spoken for. Despite facing a still recovering economy, The Madrone closed on more than 200 residences by the building’s completion in August 2012. In August, its grand opening month, a total of 97 units closed, making it San Francisco’s fastest selling property (previously, the most units closing escrow in a month was 50 for a single development).

Luxury condos back in demand

San Francisco’s appetite for luxury condos has been reawakened of late, but the dearth of inventory makes satisfaction of that hunger hard to come by. In March of this year, the number of available condos on the MLS was down 32.9% year-over-year, while the median sold price was up 31.6%. The Madrone met the needs of well paid tech, education, and science employees looking for for waterfront 1, 2, and 3 bedroom units with swanky amenities. But the record sell-out of every single condo in the complex is still a striking accomplishment given the price point here: Property records for a sold 2-bedroom unit show a sale price of $1,818,750; and a 3-bed for $1,995,000.

Evolution of a neighborhood

Mission Bay covers 303 acres of land between the San Francisco Bay and Interstate-280. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors established the Mission Bay North and South Redevelopment Project Areas in November 1998, successfully planning the building of the University of California, San Francisco research campus, a state-of-the art UCSF hospital complex, housing and services, all steps away from ATT Park, the home of the San Francisco Giants.

San Francisco, already so dense and tiny, offers few chances for the emergence of a new neighborhood. We asked Alan P. Mark of the Mark Company what he expects next for the area, given this large induction of new, well-monied residents.

There will be a couple of thousand renters moving into Mission Bay within the next couple of years as a number of rental buildings are being delivered. Retail services typically follow. My forecast would be that there will be a mixture of more well known entities and entrepreneurial retailers.

What do you think, readers? We have our established Haight-Ashbury, our Marina, our Pac Heights, each with their identity and unique vibe. Given these latest developments, what will be the flavor and feeling of Mission Bay?

Anna Marie Erwert writes from both the renter and new buyer perspective, having (finally) achieved both statuses. She focuses on national real estate trends, specializing in the San Francisco Bay Area and Pacific Northwest, and writes for SFGate and CurbedSF. Follow Anna on Twitter: @AnnaMarieErwert

Article source: http://blog.sfgate.com/ontheblock/2013/04/19/the-madrone-mission-bay-sold-out-in-record-time/

Homes sell faster than ever in Bay Area

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 06:22:39 +0000

Tight inventory – a dearth of homes for sale – is driving bidding wars throughout the Bay Area, sending prices up and leaving scores of disappointed would-be buyers. Homes that do hit the market sell within days.

So few homes are listed for sale that agents are resurrecting old ways of drumming up business – going door to door, leaving cards and flyers and writing personal letters, asking owners if they’re interested in selling. Social networking and e-mail blasts are being used to increase inventory as well.

“People are going old-school, farming their territory,” said Lynda DiVito, an agent with Redfin in the East Bay, using real estate agent slang for canvassing neighborhoods.

While tight inventory is a national trend, it’s especially pronounced in the Bay Area.

Alameda County, for instance, had 949 homes for sale in February, down 64 percent from the 2,617 on the market at the same time last year, according to data from Realtor.com, the listings website of the National Association of Realtors. Contra Costa County had 899, down 58 percent from 2,152 in February 2012.

“Those are striking reductions in inventory,” said Errol Samuelson, president of Realtor.com.

While inventory numbers did tick up slightly from January to February, that was a normal seasonal change, not an indication of the logjam loosening.

“After seasonal adjustments, inventory is still falling; the underlying trend is still downward,” said Jed Kolko, chief economist with real estate site Trulia.com.

However, he thinks the rate of decline is slowing.

“Inventory tends to fall the most sharply after prices bottom, as no one wants to sell at the bottom, they just want to buy,” he said. Trulia shows that Bay Area prices bottomed more than a year ago.

Price a factor

Sellers remain reluctant and elusive for several reasons. Those who are still underwater – owing more than their house is worth – have the obvious impediment of not wanting to do a short sale.

But many others “feel underwater based on the price they paid,” Samuelson said. That is, someone who paid $700,000 for a home in 2007 won’t feel good about selling it for $625,000 right now, even though the sale would cover their remaining mortgage.

Some potential sellers, seeing prices surge, are hoping to hold out for more. Others who might want to move up to a bigger house fear that the market frenzy means they won’t be able to find or afford anything else.

Now that it’s spring, the busiest real estate season, more homes should start hitting the market. But many agents have been taking matters into their own hands, making pitches directly to potential sellers about why it’s time to get off the fence.

Although there are numerous online sites to track homes for sale, “the way the market is set up now is forcing us to go back to the beginning where (agents) walk up to a door and knock and say, ‘Hi, how are you, my name is … ‘ ” said Adelaida Mejia, a Realtor with Vanguard Property in San Francisco.

Personal touch

She recently worked with a client seeking a home in San Francisco’s Clarendon Heights neighborhood, above Cole Valley. After losing out with bids, she walked the neighborhood with him and identified houses he particularly liked. Mejia looked up the homeowners and wrote personal letters to each, explaining that her client loved the area and was seeking a house there.

“Three weeks later, one person called me back and said ‘We loved your letter, we’d love to talk even though we’re not on the market, come on over,’ ” she said.

Rich and Renee Gimigliano, the homeowners, said they received two or three agent solicitations a week after unsuccessfully trying to sell the house last year, but ignored them because they were form letters.

“Adelaida’s note was different; more personalized,” Rich Gimigliano said. “We were planning to put the house on the market again, but the note just pre-empted that.”

Her client ended up visiting the house, making an all-cash offer and buying it. “It was a really stress-free experience for both” the buyer and seller, she said.

Beating the bushes for sellers is an about-face from just 18 months ago, when the challenge was to find people who wanted to buy.

A corresponding trend is that homes are selling very quickly.

‘Unbelievable’

“The median days on market in Contra Costa is 13 days – that’s unbelievable,” Samuelson said. A year ago it was 33 days.

Redfin has identified another trend it calls “flash sales” – homes that sell within 24 hours of being listed, usually because a buyer swoops in with an offer too good to refuse. Often, those are buyers who have lost other bidding wars and are determined to land a property.

In the past six months, almost 1,000 Bay Area properties went under contract within one day, Redfin said.

“I just had that experience at a house in the Oakland hills,” DiVito said. “I held the brokers’ tour just before putting it on the market. A buyer and agent walked in and offered us our list price in cash on the spot.”

Underscoring how much the market has changed, she said her sellers had tried to sell the house a year ago “and could not move this property, even though they lowered the price three times.”

Same-day offer

The sellers, who were buying a new home and needed to sell quickly, were happy to take the same-day offer since a cash deal meant it couldn’t be derailed by problems with financing or appraisals.

“Flash-sale terms tend to be really good because (buyers) really want to lock down that property quickly,” DiVito said. “They’re more willing to meet the sellers’ needs to scoop it up before anyone else gets it.”

What happens next with inventory is a big question hanging over the real estate recovery.

“My best guess is that you’ll see an orderly return of inventory to the market,” Samuelson said. “I don’t expect that you’ll see the floodgates open and torrents of properties hit the market. But for each percentage point increase in price, there will be some people who for life reasons have wanted to sell for the past five years – their kids moved out, they got divorced – and now feel that the time is right and they have enough equity.”

Tight inventory, fast sales

The number of homes for sale in the six largest Bay Area counties has dropped dramatically compared with a year ago, according to data from the Multiple Listing Service. Correspondingly, the time the homes stay on the market has also dropped.

Source: Realtor.com

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

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/Homes-sell-faster-than-ever-in-Bay-Area-4375058.php

Bay Area home prices up 24.6% over 2012

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 10:16:23 +0000

In the latest sign of a rebounding real estate market, eager buyers vying for a limited pool of properties pushed Bay Area median home prices 24.6 percent higher in February compared with last year, according to a real estate report released Thursday.

“Drum-tight inventory, lower (interest) rates than most people alive have ever seen, and in some areas record levels of investor purchases (created) an unusual environment,” said Andrew LePage, analyst at San Diego’s DataQuick, which produced the report.

Another big factor – “unleashing of pent-up (buyer) demand,” he said. During the downturn, “for years, some people sat on the sidelines, afraid to buy. Now there’s been a shift in psychology in the past year with people switching from fearing prices might fall more, to fearing they will go up, so they want to buy now.”

An improving economy and job growth – factors that are stronger here than elsewhere in the country – also feed buyer demand.

“The San Francisco Bay Area is the hottest market in the country right now,” said Errol Samuelson, president of Realtor.com, the online marketplace for the National Association of Realtors.

February’s sales median for the nine-county region was $405,000, compared with $325,000 in February 2012. It was the fourth straight month in which prices rose more than 20 percent compared with the prior year, and the ninth consecutive month of double-digit increases, DataQuick said.

The same dearth of inventory that amped up prices caused the volume of sales to slump 6.1 percent compared with a year earlier. A total of 5,404 new and resale homes and condos changed hands in the region in February, DataQuick said.

Return of bidding wars

Realtors around the area report that tight inventories are spurring ferocious bidding wars over properties – a phenomenon that holds true at all price points.

In Berkeley, John and Judith Ratcliffe of the Grubb Co. sold three homes in recent weeks that listed for more than $1 million and went for substantial amounts above asking. One architecturally distinctive home was listed at $1.295 million but sold for $1.8 million, all cash – more than half a million dollars, or 39 percent, above the asking price.

“Everything in our market is getting multiple offers,” Judith Ratcliffe said. “We need more inventory.”

At a different point on the scale, Annie Brown, an agent with ZipRealty in the East Bay, recently took an investor client to tour a $399,000 four-bedroom tract home in Dublin.

“We drove up and saw all these people in a line,” she said. “I was thinking, ‘What the hey?’ and then I realized it was to get in this particular house. It’s human nature; if people think they can’t get something, they want it more. We stood in line for over an hour to get in.”

Her client offered $92,000 over asking and lost out to another investor who bid $100,000 more than the list price, she said. There were 40 offers.

“It’s an investor’s market right now,” Brown said. “Our first-time home buyers … are having a really hard time getting an offer accepted. It’s hard for them to compete with investors.”

Absentee buyers

Indeed, investors continued to be powerful forces in the market. Absentee buyers accounted for an all-time high of 28.2 percent of February sales, DataQuick said. All-cash buyers also hit a record, representing 31.9 percent of February sales. Historically, cash transactions have been about 12.9 percent of sales.

Realtor.com data show that listings here are being snapped up much more quickly than elsewhere in the nation. In Alameda County, for instance, listings go into escrow on average within 14 days of hitting the market. Nationwide, it takes 98 days for houses to sell.

Around the Bay Area, inventories of for-sale homes are about half what they were a year ago, Realtor.com shows. By contrast, nationwide, inventories are down about 16 percent compared with last year, Samuelson said.

That’s true in many micro-markets as well. Take San Francisco’s Nob Hill, for instance. A year ago, it had 30 homes for sale. Now it has just 15, according to Redfin.

Kiesha Stephens, a listing specialist with Redfin, is preparing a two-bedroom Nob Hill condo – a remodeled unit that retains its early 1900s character, including stained glass windows, wood wainscoting and two fireplaces – to hit the market next week for $799,000, a relative bargain in that neighborhood.

She’s already had six agents ask if they could make pre-emptive offers.

“There’s so little inventory that things are definitely skewed in sellers’ favor,” she said. “Right now there seems to be a surge of buyers.”

Fewer distress sales

DataQuick said that changes in the market mix, such as fewer bargain-priced distress sales and more high-end homes, account for about half of the median’s increase. In other words, all Bay Area home values did not jump 25 percent in February, although values definitely are rising across the board. Distress sales – foreclosures and short sales, both often sold at a discount – are still above their historic norms but are declining.

About a third of February’s existing-home sales were distressed; a year ago more than half (53.4 percent) were foreclosures or short sales, DataQuick said. Just 13.6 percent of resales were foreclosures in February, the lowest level since November 2007.

At their peak in February 2009, foreclosures accounted for 52 percent of all resales. Short sales also declined, but not as much. They were 21.4 percent of resales, versus 27.0 percent a year ago.

The number of homes selling for more than $500,000 rose 27.7 percent compared with last year, while those less than $500,000 fell 14.4 percent, DataQuick said.

Prices, which went into free fall during the downturn, are still far off their peaks. The Bay Area median reached a high of $665,000 in summer 2007 and a low of $290,000 in March 2009. DataQuick said that if the current rate of increase holds up, the Bay Area prices will be halfway back to their peak this spring or summer.

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

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/Bay-Area-home-prices-up-24-6-over-2012-4356658.php

DDR Corp. buys Oakland Whole Foods near Lake Merritt

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 14:02:44 +0000

The Bond Cos. redeveloped a former car showroom to house a Whole Foods in 2007 and just sold the building to an affiliate of DDR Corp.

Blanca Torres
Reporter- San Francisco Business Times

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The landmark Whole Foods near Lake Merritt in Oakland has a new owner.

The Bond Cos. redeveloped a former Cox Cadillac Showroom, at 230 Bay Place, into a 57,218-square-foot, Class A retail property in 2007 with Whole Foods (NYSE: WFM) as the sole tenant.

The seller declined to disclose the buyer or the terms of the deal, but a public records search shows that the buyer was an affliiate of DDR Corp., an Ohio-based retail investor that owns close to 460 retail centers nationwide. The 2012 assessed tax value for the building was $27.2 million.

The building brought a much-need grocery store close to Oakland’s thriving Lake Merritt and Uptown neighborhoods while retaining the historic aesthetic and character of the original structure.

“On the West Coast, there continues to be a dearth of quality retail properties on the market like Whole Foods at Bay Place, and an insatiable amount of capital,” said Nicholas Bicardo, a broker with Holliday Fenoglio Fowler who represented the seller. “This acquisition for the buyer represents a fantastic purchase of a trophy building occupied by a credit top-tier grocer with some of the strongest sales productivity in the world.”

Bond Cos. develops retail, infill, mixed-use, commercial, civic and hospitality projects. The firm has offices in Chicago and Los Angeles.

DDR already owns two other Bay Area shopping centers: Hilltop Plaza in Richmond and Van Ness Plaza in San Francisco.

Blanca Torres covers East Bay real estate for the San Francisco Business Times.

Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/2013/03/ddr-corp-buys-oakland-whole-foods.html

Bay Area home sales, prices jump

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 23:55:35 +0000

Rock-bottom mortgage rates, tight inventory and increasing demand spurred double-digit rises in Bay Area home prices and sales volume in November, according to a real estate report released Thursday.

The nine-county region saw the highest November sales rate in six years, said San Diego-based DataQuick. A total of 7,296 new and resale homes changed hands in November, up 15.5 percent from a year earlier. That was nearing the long-term November average of 7,873 sales.

“We’re seeing a more-normal level of sales and a more-normal distribution of sales across price categories,” said Andrew LePage, a DataQuick analyst. “The market isn’t quite as lopsided.”

Bay Area buyers paid a median price of $438,000 last month, up 20.5 percent from November 2011. DataQuick said about half of the increase stemmed from a shift in the mix of houses sold.

Bargain-basement foreclosure resales are now at their lowest level in five years, accounting for 11.5 percent of November resale transactions. A year ago they were a quarter of the market; at their peak in 2009, foreclosures were 52 percent of all resales.

Short sales – homes sold for less than is owed on the mortgage – were 23 percent of the resale market, down from 24.9 percent a year ago.

More buyers committed to pricier homes. Mortgages above the old “jumbo” limit of $417,000 were 40.1 percent of the November market, up from 29 percent a year earlier.

Realtors throughout the Bay Area report that a dearth of supply is fueling bidding wars, with properties selling well above asking prices.

“We’re getting 30 offers on properties at the lowest price points,” said Don Faught, managing broker with Alain Pinel Realtors in the Tri-Valley area.

“The challenge we have now is that there’s nothing to sell,” he said. “But now that prices are increasing, people are finally realizing that they can sell their house.”

LePage agreed. “This is a strengthening market that is still undersupplied, hence the pressure on prices,” he said. “If these trends hold, we will see a lot more inventory. As prices ratchet up, fewer people are underwater and those who are in a position to sell will be tempted to make their move now.”

Investors remained a potent market force. Buyers paying all cash bought 28.7 percent of Bay Area properties in November, the same as a year earlier, paying a median $320,000, up 27 percent from November 2011.

Low interest rates – one trend underlying the surge in sales – seem likely to continue. The rates on 30-year mortgages dipped last week to an average of 3.32, nearing the record low, according to a Freddie Mac survey, also released Thursday. The all-time low was 3.31 percent in the Nov. 21 report.

The Federal Reserve said Wednesday it would continue buying government securities and mortgage bonds until unemployment drops below 6.5 percent – something it predicts will not happen until 2015. The tens of billions of dollars it is pouring into those purchases will keep interest rates low.

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

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/Bay-Area-home-sales-prices-jump-4116852.php

Bay Area home sales, prices jump – SFGate – San Francisco Chronicle

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 05:36:21 +0000