The NOBE area, which consists of the North Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville neighborhoods, has become one of the most evolved locations in the Bay Area due to the continuing influx of young professionals and property renovations.

The breath of new life flows through the many storied properties that stood the test of decades, such as the bungalow at 1024 63rd St. in Oakland. Built in 1908, the two-bedroom, one-bath house is in the trendy Golden Gate Neighborhood.

“It is a somewhat undiscovered area that’s about to take off. You are close to the heart of so many cafes and shops, yet you are 15 to 20 minutes away from San Francisco,” said Linnette Edwards of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate. “You get so much bang for your buck with a residence like this. So much of the original integrity has been kept with this house.”

Edwards explained the area has created a perfect storm of culture and uniquely situated properties sure to attract many potential homeowners for quite some time. “That is why so many people discovering NOBE and are flocking to it. We are seeing so many homes in the areas built up in this fashion. There is a renaissance that is going on.”

An open house will be held from 2 to 4:30 p.m. Sunday. For more information, contact Linnette Edwards at Better Homes and Gardens, Highland Partners, (925) 580-8801, ledwards@MyHousingGuide.com; www.1024-63rd.com.

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/63rd-Street-bungalow-reflects-rebirth-of-NOBE-area-3923667.php

The average monthly price of an apartment lease has risen to $2,734 — up 12.9 percent since 2011 — according to data compiled by the rental data firm Real Facts. The spike in San Francisco rents seems to be spilling over to cheaper markets like Oakland, where the average rent is now $1,835 — up 14.4 percent since last year. Pacifica, where rents now average $1,908, has experienced a 15.6 percent increase.

“Outlying areas are starting to benefit from the improvement of Silicon Valley and San Francisco,” said Nick Grotjahn of Real Facts. “But you can still go right across the Bay and to Oakland and pay almost $1,000 less per month.”

At a forum Tuesday sponsored by the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association think tank, housing developers were asked whether The City is experiencing a “rent bubble.” Their answers didn’t break down along clear yes-or-no lines.

“Not quite yet,” said Meg Spriggs, a senior development director with the developer AvalonBay, which is seeking to put more than 250 new apartments on Ninth Street near the new Twitter headquarters. “But I think we’ll start to see rents taper a bit. Sixteen percent growth is not sustainable, but I think there’s still room for growth.”

Rental prices have surged following a new influx of young, high-earning workers who don’t necessarily want to be tied down to one place, but who also haven’t yet amassed enough money to make a down payment for San Francisco’s average home price of $725,000.

A recent survey by Realtor.com shows that The City’s median listing price is up 15.4 percent since last year, which matches a similar upward tick in Oakland, where the average home is selling for $379,000. The number of homes for sale in San Francisco is down 40 percent since last year, and nearly 60 percent in Oakland.

And where apartment owners in the mid-2000s fought to convert their units to condominiums so they could be sold, the popular move in today’s market is to build what could be considered condos and instead rent them as apartments.

“It’s the reverse trend now,” Grotjahn said.

Even with rising rents, the disparity between who can only afford to rent and who can buy in San Francisco remains large, said Kevin Kearney, a Coldwell Banker real estate agent who works throughout the Bay Area. He said even though high-earning young tech workers might not be able to afford homes just yet, in some cases their parents can.

“With the rising rents, we’re definitely seeing some people get off the fence,” Kearney said. “But still, a lot more people can afford to pay rent on a monthly basis — even if it’s higher than a mortgage payment — than those who can come up with a down payment. So we’re seeing more and more of those down payments from parents.”

dschreiber@sfexaminer.com

Median home price increases in Bay Area

• San Francisco: Up 15.4 percent to $725,000 since last year
• Oakland: Up 14.8 percent to $379,000 since last year
• San Jose: Up 12 percent to $549,000 since last year

Source: Realtor.com

Monthly apartment rent increases in Bay Area

Article source: http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/2012/07/san-francisco-housing-market-booms-bigger-ever

This week the social media giant is expected to open its doors to the general public. Overnight, Facebook will become a publicly traded company and a plethora of 20-somethings will see their personal wealth skyrocket.

In April, Facebook estimated its value at $77 billion, but since then the Palo Alto-based company’s worth has been assumed to be somewhere in the $100 billion range. This influx of cash will have a number of impacts, one of which could be the increase in property value.

Using a conservative analysis, Movoto — a real estate brokerage in the San Mateo — estimated that Facebook’s coming out party could increase property value in trendy Bay Area neighborhoods and cities by $1 to 2 billion.

“Competition to buy listed homes in desirable Bay Area zip codes is already discouraging for the average home buyer.” said Mark Brandemuehl, VP Marketing Business Development at Movoto. “The Facebook IPO will only add to the millionaires competing to buy a small number of homes, and it seems inevitable that prices will be driven up.”

To make this analysis Movoto spoke with Carole Rodoni, president of Bamboo Consulting, a Bay Area real estate agent. Rodoni expected overall property value to rise.

She estimated that property value in fashionable areas will increase anywhere from five to 10 percent. This is on top of the area’s typical appreciation. She expected this mini housing bubble to last between a year and 18 months.

Those trendy areas are:

• Pacific Heights;
• Noe Valley;
• South of Market Area in San Francisco;
• Hillsborough;
• Atherton; and
• Palo Alto.

Rodoni called these new renters and homebuyers “shuttle babies” because they prefer to move back and forth between areas. It also means these shuttle babies are looking to move to areas where “you can walk, and within four blocks, you get your whole life.”

How the Math Works:

To figure out how Rodoni’s estimate would translate into a dollar amount, the Movoto team divided the trendy Bay Area locations into two parts: cities such as Hillsborough and neighborhoods in San Francisco.

For the cities, Movoto used Census data to calculate the number of owner-occupied households in the area. After learning this figure, we used housing data to calculate the 75th percentile of current home list prices-or, the most valuable homes on the market, which the wealthy are more likely to purchase. We then applied the estimated five to 10 percent price increase to homes priced at the 75th percentile and above.

Movoto used a similar process for the San Francisco neighborhoods.

A Second Opinion

But like most things, there’s a difference in opinion.

Kathy Krize, a real estate agent in the Menlo Park area, called the local housing market “quirky” and suggested there was a small housing bubble in high-end areas. Nonetheless, Krize was hesitant to attribute the increase in home prices in the Bay Area to Facebook.

“I think all this media hype going on isn’t necessarily true; it may have an impact, but not the impact everyone is talking about,” she said.

She did note that some potential homebuyers believe they need to purchase a home before the newly minted rich do so, and at the same time there are buyers who want to wait to put their homes on the market in the hopes of gaining value.

“The fact is, a lot of them already have the ability to purchase,” she said about Facebook employees. “I think the impact would have been seen already. I’m not seeing a lot of people from Facebook coming into the open houses.”

From her experiences, Krize said that she’s seen an increase in the number of cash offers and noted homes are regularly selling above the asking price. She noted that buyers using more traditional financing are losing out to cash offers.

“It’s a quirky market,” Krize added. “It’s not to say that every home on the market is getting picked up. What I’m saying is that there are a lot of buyers who want to have prime property and there isn’t a lot of prime property on the market.”

Krize offered this example to explain the market trend: She recently listed a two-bedroom, one-bath home in a marginal neighborhood — what she called a great starter house — for $368,000. After five offers the house sold for $420,000.

“There is something going on with the market,” Krize said. “We are seeing it across the board.”

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-j-cross/san-francisco-real-estate_b_1527172.html

Your best bets: a small handful of “property-wealth islands,” including San Francisco and San Jose/Silicon Valley, both seen as “primary 24-hour gateways located along global pathways,” according to a report being released today at the Urban Land Institute conference in San Francisco.

San Francisco ranks third out of 51 cities as a place to invest in and develop commercial and multifamily apartment properties and fourth in for-sale home building, with San Jose two or three rungs lower in each category, according to the survey compiled by the institute and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Washington, Austin and New York are the other top-rated cities.

“We come out very well as top investment places, although even here it’s still a bit of a chug,” said Kate White, executive director of ULI San Francisco.

Put the “chug” down to the enduring doldrums in the housing market, which continues to weigh on San Francisco and San Jose, if not as badly as in other parts of the Bay Area and nation. Even though both rank high in the home-building category, according to the report, their prospects for investment and development are described only as “fair.”

“There’s still an understandable reluctance by potential homeowners to get into the market,” said White.

Not so, however, when it comes to renting or leasing commercial space in high-tech areas like San Francisco’s Mid-Market and South of Market, a trend driven largely by the influx of a younger, more mobile and urban-oriented workforce.

“Gen Y is driving up the demand for apartments and driving up rents, which makes investing in apartments a safer bet,” said White.

Depending on how long it lasts, such a trend could be a game-changer for real estate.

“Living smaller, closer to work, and preferably near mass transit holds increasing appeal as more people look to manage expenses wisely,” notes the report. “More companies concentrate in urban districts where sought-after generation-Y talent wants to locate in 24-hour environments.”

A separate Urban Land Institute report, examining land use changes in California, takes the point further.

Projecting out to 2035, the report says demand for traditional single- family homes will decline, by as much as 10 percent, while “changing demographics” and other factors shift the real estate focus to smaller lots and “multiple or intergenerational households” within walking distance of “transit station areas.”

“California’s future is a lot more urban and transit-oriented than it has been historically. There’ll be an increasing demand for the 24-hour, livable city model,” said White. “The next generation is ushering it in, and local agencies need to plan accordingly.”

– These and other provocative notions will be chewed over at the ULI conference, today in San Francisco at the Hotel Nikko, and Wednesday at the Corinthian Event Center in San Jose. Agenda, speakers and registration at sfg.ly/sDt7tE.

The ULI/PwC report, “Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2012,” can be read and downloaded at sfg.ly/rKT6up.

The California land use report, “The New California Dream: How Demographic and Economic Changes May Shape the Housing Market,” is at sfg.ly/stQrNV.

Blogging: www.sfgate.com/columns/bottomline. Facebook page: sfg.ly/doACKM. Tweeting: @andrewsross. E-mail: bottomline@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page D – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/13/BUMU1MBG04.DTL&type=business

Compared to second-quarter data from 2010, rents rose 8.6 percent in San Francisco and 9.3 percent in San Mateo County, for monthly averages of $2,400 and $1,800 respectively.

The trend can be pegged to a dwindling rental supply and increasing demand from new workers with high-paying jobs, according to RealFacts owner Sarah Bridge.

“Talent is coming into the area. It’s not that there are so many jobs, but the ones out there are paying well,” Bridge said, adding that although the new tech boom is similar to the dot-com bubble of 2000, it is bringing workers with a more experiential, less materialistic mindset. “They’re not big into being tied down to a big piece of real estate.”

According to the real estate data aggregator Zillow.com, 480 homes were sold in San Francisco in May, down 22 percent in a year-over-year comparison. Meanwhile, RealFacts data show supply running out in San Francisco and San Mateo County, both with a 96 percent occupancy rate, up 6 percent and 1 percent, respectively.

The factors are helping San Francisco maintain its status as one of the most expensive big-city rental markets in the country, which has advocates for current tenants taking notice.

“It’s making it a landlord’s market,” said Ted Gullicksen, executive director of the San Francisco Tenants Union. “We could see more evictions, more tenant buyouts.”

Gullicksen said although The City’s rent-control standards keep some costs in check for renters, state law prevents the controls from being applied to units themselves. Like in 2000, Gullicksen said, he fears without cheaper options, residents could be pushed to the outskirts of the Bay Area.

“I think we’re headed back in that direction,” he said.

Of the 43 markets examined by RealFacts, 41 posted rent increases, with the biggest gains seen in the Bay Area. San Jose, the unofficial capital of Silicon Valley, experienced the largest increase at 6.6 percent, up from $1,650 to $1,759 per month.

dschreiber@sfexaminer.com

Average rent per unit type

Average rent increase

Source: RealFacts

Article source: http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/peninsula/2011/07/influx-workers-drives-rental-rates-san-francisco-and-san-mateo-county