Next hot Bay Area neighborhoods might surprise you

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 20:21:11 +0000

Real estate site Redfin listed its picks for the next hottest neighborhoods or small cities across the country, and it’s no surprise that three of them are in the Bay Area (8 out of the 10 are in California!). What might surprise you is which neighborhoods Redfin agents predict will be hottest in 2013.

OK, coming in at No. 9, The Mission District might not surprise you. But San Jose’s Willow Glen neighborhood at No. 6? Livermore at No. 5? Hmm.

Where would the up-and-coming type Bay Area resident live in these neighborhoods? Here are the hippest looking pads we could find there:

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Redfin’s post explains: “the hottest neighborhoods aren’t the well-known bastions of privilege. They’re once-gritty urban areas and far-flung suburbs with school districts on the rise.”

How did Redfin decide which neighborhoods to designate as ”hot”? They looked for “shrinking selection, increasing sales, and increasing prices—often at rates far above the metro areas that contain them.” Listings in the Mission are down 29 percent, sales are up 17 percent and prices are up 80 percent (!), all year-over-year as of December. Listings in Willow Glen are down 60 percent, sales are up 9 percent and prices are up 32 percent. In Livermore, listings are down 71 percent, sales are up 13 percent and prices up 20 percent.

Indeed, this article describes Willow Glen as both trendy and upward bound. As much as we searched, we couldn’t find any recent article that used the words “trendy” and “Livermore” together, but if Redfin is right, you may be able to say a few years from now that you moved to Livermore before Livermore was cool.

By the way, the LA neighborhoods that made the list are: Glassell Park (7), Eagle Rock (4), Faircrest Heights (3) and Highland Park (1). In San Diego, Mira Mesa was listed at No. 2.

Carrie Kirby is a freelance writer who recently returned to the Bay Area after living for six years in Chicago. Carrie is more heavily invested in real estate than she ever expected to be, since she and her husband are now long-distance landlords of their Chicago home, and have also purchased a house in Alameda. She posts about interesting properties and real estate trends in San Francisco and Silicon Valley every Tuesday. Carrie also shares money-saving tips on her blog, Frugalistic Mom.

Article source: http://blog.sfgate.com/ontheblock/2013/01/22/next-hot-bay-area-neighborhoods-might-surprise-you/

‘Red hot’ Bay Area luxury home market sees biggest jump since 2006

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 21:07:59 +0000

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

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Next hot Bay Area neighborhoods might surprise you

‘Red hot’ Bay Area luxury home market sees biggest jump since 2006

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