San Francisco’s luxury homes are attracting eager buyers. 

Mark Calvey
Senior Reporter- San Francisco Business Times

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Don’t be surprised if you hear your real estate agent and mortgage lender suddenly belt out a rendition of “Happy Days are Here Again.”

Luxury home values in the Bay Area and other key California cities are chalking up their biggest gains since the housing boom went bust in the last decade.

Bay Area luxury home values soared 6.6 percent in the second quarter, the biggest year-over-year gain since the first quarter of 2006.

And Bay Area luxury home values rose 2.9 percent from the first quarter of 2012. The average luxury home in San Francisco is now $2.67 million, according to the First Republic Prestige Home Index produced by First Republic Bank and Fiserv CSW Inc. (NASDAQ: FISV)

“We have a hot market right now,” said Jay Costello, president of Hill Co. in San Francisco. “We’re going to see price increases over the next three to five years.”

Or at least until the Nasdaq makes a U-turn.

Real estate agents point to the strength of the stock market in driving Bay Area home prices since so many of the region’s affluent residents own stocks and options tied to publicly traded companies or private companies that will one day go public or be acquired, or so they hope.

The Nasdaq was approaching an 11-year high this week, thanks largely to shares of Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) hitting a record high Monday on news of its patent-litigation victory against Samsung.

On the luxury home front, First Republic had more good news. California’s strengthening economy, which first emerged in the Bay Area, is now evident in luxury home values in Los Angeles and San Diego.

Los Angeles values increased 2.4 percent from a year ago and jumped 4.3 percent from this year’s first quarter, marking the biggest quarterly gain since the third quarter of 2005, when the national housing boom was in full swing. The average luxury home value in the L.A. area is now $2.04 million.

Mark Calvey covers banking and finance for the San Francisco Business Times.

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Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2012/08/san-francisco-real-estate-home-prices.html

A new item is posted each weekday. Some San Francisco websites offer an overwhelming amount of news, reports, profiles and event calendars. SFDentro seeks to present a single jewel each day, the very best of San Francisco.

The posts are deliberately short in order to be easily digested – usually only two or three paragraphs long. They always include a photo or two, and typically have links to other pages where more information can be found.

Categories include: Happenings, People, Looking Forward, Places to See and Neighborhoods.

Hill Co. is a real estate company, but the blog is not all about real estate. Instead, it’s more general in nature. It is intended to be an insider’s guide to San Francisco, appealing to City and Bay Area residents, visitors, out-of-towners and prospective homeowners alike.

“Our website provides lots of good information on the San Francisco real estate market,” said Hill Co. Vice President Eileen Mougeot. “We have market reports, homes for sales, neighborhood profiles and more. This blog rounds things out. It offers a broader view of the City than you might find elsewhere.”

Dentro is Italian for “inside,” and that’s where the name SFDentro comes from. Items are posted on the blog, and then reposted on Hill Co.’s Facebook and Twitter channels.

Article source: http://www.jagsreport.com/2011/11/13/hill-co-real-estate-launches-an-inside-san-francisco-blog/