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“We did have a brief window of opportunity—or now it seems brief, it actually lasted quite awhile—during the housing downturn where we had, for the first time in years something approaching reasonable affordability in the Bay Area,” said Carolyn Said, economics and real estate reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, on KQED Public Radio’s Forum show. “First-time home buyers could find a home in the $300,000 price range. [That home wasn't] necessarily in San Francisco, but in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, and without even going way out to the outer edges of the counties.”

And homes prices in San Francisco dipped as well.

Affordability was “the highest we have seen in 25 years in 2010, early 2011,” said Rick Turley, president of Coldwell Banker for the San Francisco Bay Area.

This Golden Age of Affordability may have come to an end, at least for now. But here’s the good news: If you didn’t buy a home in the past few years, you only sort of missed the boat.

Low Interest Rates

An advantageous part of the affordability equation is still applicable in the form of historically low interest rates, according to Said. “[Rates] are still right around 3.5 percent, which is just amazing when you think of it,” she said.

“That’s a positive for people looking to buy a house. Their buying power is really more because their effective monthly payment is still going to be less, even if they’re paying a little more [for the property].”

In addition to low interest rates, there’s some other good news for would-be home buyers. The Federal Housing Administration still offers loans requiring relatively small down payments.

FHA Loans

“In order to have home ownership, you need to have a down payment, which people starting out in their careers often don’t have,” said Said. She said FHA loan are available with a “3.5 percent down payment if you have decent enough credit, and of course it helps to have a stable income.” A down payment of less than 20 percent requires the purchase of mortgage insurance, but even with that added cost, the low percentage required up front should make the initial plunge more affordable.

Micro-Markets

It’s also important to remember that the Bay Area is a diverse region, and with that diversity comes price range.

“We tend to roll things up as the ‘Bay Area’ in general, but we’re probably 30 micro-markets,” said Turley.

You may have missed your window of opportunity to own a house in San Francisco and Palo Alto proper, but there are still relatively affordable places in the Bay Area.

“More affordable neighborhoods are in Oakland, eastern Contra Costa County, and other parts of the East Bay, as well as in some San Jose neighborhoods,” said Jed Kolko, chief economist for Trulia, an online real estate company.

These places might not have the cachet of the Marina district, but they still offer many of the benefits of living in the Bay Area: good weather,  a decent job market and proximity to outdoor recreation.

And even if you have to pay a bit more to enter the market, chances are you still will get a decent return on your investment.

Still Time to Make a Good Investment

“Historically, since World War II, housing has appreciated … maybe half a percent or a percent ahead of inflation,” said Said. “And that is normal for our country. If you look at [the value of your house] going up 3.5 percent a year over the next 20 years that’s still a substantial appreciation.”

True, that’s not a doubling in value that earlier California generations enjoyed. But Said said that “given what’s been happening in Silicon Valley, with the tremendous demand for housing and the tremendous amount of money that is out there for people working at high-tech companies, the housing in Silicon Valley is not following normal economic paths. It is fueled by all this tech money and from that perspective, it’s perfectly possible that your house will run way up there.”

Finding a Place in the Bay Area Was Never Easy

If you should find yourself put on the spot about why you didn’t jump while prices were lower, you can always blame a lack of credit.

“One of the reasons why people haven’t been able to take advantage of the relatively lower prices and low mortgage rates during the past couple of years is that mortgage credit has been very tight,” said Kolko. “Banks have been reluctant to lend to people who don’t have high credit scores.” The new mortgage rules announced Thursday might encourage banks to be more willing to lend to borrowers who meet income and credit guidelines, he said, so that credit could become easier for some people to obtain.

And remember, San Francisco is a world-class city. Affordability here is a relative term.

“It’s as if God wanted the Bay Area to be expensive,” said Kolko. Not only does the region’s relatively mild weather attract people, but because the region is “hemmed in by the ocean on one side, the bay and the mountains on the other, there’s very little available land to build. The Bay Area’s not like places in Texas or other parts of the South where you can spread out in all directions.”

And there are other limits on building…

“Regulations on building are particularly strict in the Bay Area,” said Kolko. “That makes it even more difficult to build new housing, both in the Bay Area and in much of California, and that adds to the high cost.”

So if you didn’t get around to buying a house when prices were low — take solace in the fact that prices weren’t ever that low.

Article source: http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2013/01/10/if-youre-in-the-market-for-a-home-in-the-bay-area-yes-you-missed-the-boat-sort-of/

“People at this income level,” Paster said before the auction that wasn’t, “always have money.”

That maxim proved true when it came to luxury properties in the Bay Area last year. Technology executives paying discounts on listed prices were active buyers in 2012, as the growth of social-media and Internet firms including Twitter and Yammer created a wave of millionaires.

Some older homes on the market had sat unsold for years before finding buyers, said Rick Turley, president of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage of Northern California. But by the final week of 2012, there were at least 13 publicly recorded transactions for more than $10 million in exclusive San Francisco neighborhoods such as Pacific Heights, Presidio Heights and Sea Cliff, according to DataQuick, a research firm.

That’s up from six sales last year and a dozen in 2007, the previous high mark. The numbers don’t include deals in expensive areas outside the city, such as Belvedere, Tiburon, Atherton or Palo Alto.

“Over a long listing period, it’s hard to say what will happen, because obviously the market is constantly changing,” Turley said. “The success of tech and social media means people are looking very generally at San Francisco and the Silicon Valley as places to live because these businesses are sourced here. It’s highest on their radar.”

Initial public offerings in 2012 by Bay Area companies raised a record $17.5 billion in public equities markets, including sales by Facebook, Yelp and Workday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The total is more than double the $8.3 billion reached in 1999, the height of the dot-com boom.

This year’s Bay Area IPOs generated $9.4 billion in cash for selling shareholders. Other investors have been able to generate money before initial stock sales through the rise of secondary-share markets such as SharesPost.

Yammer founder

Yammer founder David Sacks, who sold the social-media company to Microsoft in June for $1.2 billion, later bought an unfinished home in Pacific Heights that had been listed for $38.5 million. The transfer tax indicated a $20 million sale.

Sacks’ new residence, built in the style of a French chateau, was last purchased by Peter Sperling, incoming chairman of Apollo Group Inc., who paid $32 million in 2002, said David Barrett of listing brokerage Warwick Properties Group.

“It’s built to be the finest residence in San Francisco, from limestone quarried in France and with the same glaziers who worked on the Eiffel Tower renovation,” Barrett said.

In December, Jay Paul, the San Francisco developer of 6 million square feet of Silicon Valley offices, including Google’s four-building complex in Sunnyvale, completed a purchase in the same neighborhood, said a person with knowledge of the transaction. The house sold for $28.25 million, said Dona Crowder of TRI Coldwell Banker, a co-listing broker on the home. She declined to comment on the buyer.

Seller deals

The deal was at a 48 percent discount from the asking price in 2007, around the time U.S. housing prices peaked. The seller had most recently sought $34 million, Crowder said.

Paul didn’t return a telephone message seeking comment.

In some cases, luxury discounts this past year in San Francisco and the Silicon Valley are a reflection of aged homes built decades ago that needed extensive renovations, Crowder said. Sellers were also motivated by the prospect of higher capital gains taxes in 2013, she said. Her listing on Broadway in Pacific Heights received higher bids in the past, including one earlier in 2012, which were rejected by the seller, she said.

“The generations are turning over in this neighborhood,” Crowder said in a phone interview. “If it were understood back then that record prices were being offered, it would have been wise to sell” in 2007.

Dorsey, Benioff

Jack Dorsey, a Twitter co-founder, paid $9.9 million in February for a “humble” two-bedroom house in Sea Cliff that had been listed for $12.5 million, said Olivia Hsu Decker, owner of Tiburon’s Decker Bullock Sotheby’s International Realty and Dorsey’s agent on the deal. Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff bought a nearby house in 2009, Decker said.

The Sea Cliff neighborhood is named for its location high above the Pacific Ocean, just west of the Golden Gate. In May, Dorsey, who is known to take public buses to work, tweeted a quote from the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, “I need the sea because it teaches me,” Decker said.

Other multimillion-dollar home buyers of 2012 included Mark Pincus, founder of online game maker Zynga. He purchased a Pacific Heights house in July for $16 million after a $500,000 price cut, said Decker, who represented him in the past and also was the listing agent for the Belvedere home.

Rising prices

The region’s broader housing market is also showing strong demand, bolstered by the addition of 32,400 new jobs in the San Francisco metropolitan area in the year through November. House and condominium prices in the nine-county Bay Area in November rose almost 21 percent from a year earlier to a median $438,000, the highest since August 2008, according to DataQuick of San Diego. Sales jumped almost 16 percent.

Dan Levy is a Bloomberg writer. E-mail: dlevy13@bloomberg.net

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/Luxury-Bay-Area-homes-selling-briskly-4160241.php

We’re in Silicon Valley, the Mecca for innovation and entrepreneurship. The weather can’t be beat and the opportunities are flowing.

The demand for Peninsula real estate is at an all-time high, while the number of housing options continues to shrink.

These are just some of the factors that have resulted in Coldwell Banker’s annual Home Listing Report ranking 10 cities in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties as part of the top 20 most expensive markets in the country.

“The success of many of our native tech companies has shined a spotlight on Silicon Valley and our real estate market in the San Francisco Bay Area,” said Rick Turley, president of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in the San Francisco Bay Area, in a written statement.

Ranking at #1? Los Altos/Los Altos Hills. Following behind: #3 Saratoga, #4 Menlo Park, #5 Palo Alto, #6 Los Gatos, #10 San Carlos, #12 Cupertino, #15 Belmont, and #20 Redwood City.

For the average listing price of a 4-BR, 2 BA home in these cities, check out this article. 

Cities’ staffs have seen large numbers of housing development proposals, such as Google’s housing project in Mountain View and the Cargill Saltworks Development in Redwood City.

And as more and more tech companies begin to sprout up and down the Peninsula, employees will want to live closer to their workplaces. Is increasing the prices of homes the answer to the skyrocketing demand for real estate?  

Tell us in the comments why homes in the area are worth their price tags. Or if they’re simply overpriced. 

Article source: http://losaltos.patch.com/articles/is-real-estate-on-the-peninsula-too-expensive-poll

This year, Los Altos/Los Altos Hills, at an average price of $1,706,688, is the most expensive market in the country when it comes to how much house your dollar will buy, according to Coldwell Banker’s annual Home Listing Report.

And Belmont isnt far behind, ranking 15 on the list with an average listing price for a four-bedroom, two-bath home priced at $1,098,777.

In fact, of the nation’s top five most expensive markets, four are on the lower Peninsula and Santa Clara County, and all are in California. Besides Los Altos, they include Saratoga ($1,582,434), Menlo Park ($1,506,909), and Palo Alto ($1,495,364). Newport Beach, in the No. 2 position ($1,658,000), was the only market outside of the Bay Area in the top five.

Coldwell Banker attributes Los Altos’ ranking to the confluence of tech and desirable locations. Google, Apple, Facebook and Stanford University are all located within 15 minutes of Los Altos, Coldwell Banker observed. And, so are the other top-five cities Saratoga, Menlo Park and Palo Alto.

And Los Altos Hills is the town that brought you the $100 million home, purchased by Russian tech investor Yuri Milner in 2011. 

“The success of many of our native tech companies has shined a spotlight on Silicon Valley and our real estate market in the San Francisco Bay Area,” said Rick Turley, president of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in the San Francisco Bay Area, in a written statement.

In fact, among the top 20 most expensive markets in the country, ten of them are on the Peninsula or in Santa Clara Valley. They include the additional cities (in order of price) of Los Gatos, San Carlos, Cupertino, San Francisco and Redwood City.

High demand, low inventory, desirability and population projections all figure into the prices, Turley said.

Conversely, the most affordable was in Redford, Michigan, where the average a four-bedroom, two bath house cost $60,490—or 28 times less than the same house in Los Altos.

Coldwell Banker lists both the top 20 most affordable and the most expensive in the chart below.

For a state-by-state ranking, see this Coldwell Banker link.

Don’t be left out of the conversation taking place in Belmont–Sign up for our daily newsletter|Like Belmont|Patch on Facebook | Follow us on Twitter | Start your ?own blog

Article source: http://belmont-ca.patch.com/articles/belmont-one-the-most-expensive-real-estate-markets-in-country

This year, Los Altos/Los Altos Hills, at an average price of $1,706,688, is the most expensive market in the country when it comes to how much house your dollar will buy, according to Coldwell Banker’s annual Home Listing Report.

By contrast, for an average of $60,490 a four-bedroom, two-bathroom home can be found in Redford, Mich., which is just outside of Detroit. It’s a isting price difference of more than $1.6 million.

Cupertino is 9th in California and 12th in the nation with an average price of $1,151,145 for a similar sized home. It sits just above San Francisco with an average of $1,132,086.

In fact, of the nation’s top five most expensive markets, four are on the lower Peninsula and Santa Clara County, and all are in California. Besides Los Altos, they include Saratoga ($1,582,434), Menlo Park ($1,506,909), and Palo Alto ($1,495,364). Newport Beach, in the No. 2 position ($1,658,000), was the only market outside of the Bay Area in the top five.

Coldwell Banker attributes Los Altos’ ranking to the confluence of tech and desirable locations. Google, Apple, Facebook and Stanford University are all located within 15 minutes of Los Altos, Coldwell Banker observed. And, so are the other top-five cities Saratoga, Menlo Park and Palo Alto.

And Los Altos Hills is the town that brought you the $100 million home, purchased by Russian tech investor Yuri Milner in 2011. 

“The success of many of our native tech companies has shined a spotlight on Silicon Valley and our real estate market in the San Francisco Bay Area,” said Rick Turley, president of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in the San Francisco Bay Area, in a written statement.

In fact, among the top 20 most expensive markets in the country, 10 of them are on the Peninsula or in Santa Clara Valley. They include the additional cities (in order of price) of Los Gatos, San Carlos, Cupertino, San Francisco and Redwood City.

High demand, low inventory, desirability and population projections all figure into the prices, Turley said.

Conversely, the most affordable was in Redford, Michigan, where the average a four-bedroom, two bath house cost $60,490—or 28 times less than the same house in Los Altos.

Coldwell Banker lists both the top 20 most affordable and the most expensive in the chart below.

For a state-by-state ranking, see this Coldwell Banker link.

Article source: http://cupertino.patch.com/articles/los-altos-the-most-expensive-market-in-country-a35fc8e0

The 2012 report compares the average home listing price of more than 72,000 four-bedroom, two-bathroom properties listed on coldwellbanker.com between January and June 2012. The average home price in Vienna area came in at $668,317.

Arlington topped the list with an average price of $678,486. Behind it was Alexandria at $587,716, according to the report. The least-expensive market in the state was in Danville, with an average home price of $153,957.

Nationally, the most expensive state-level market was Hawaii, with an average home price of $742,551, followed by Massachusetts and California. The least expensive statewide home market averages were Nebraska, Iowa and Georgia.

Nationally, the most expensive market was Los Altos, Calif., where the average price listing of a four-bedroom, two-bathroom home was $1.7 million. The report noted the Los Altos market is within 15 minutes of Google, Apple, Facebook and Stanford University, highlighting the success of the technology industry.

“The success of many of our native tech companies has shined a spotlight on Silicon Valley and our real estate market in the San Francisco Bay Area,” said Rick Turley, president of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in the San Francisco Bay Area, in a press statement. “Listing prices in our market are a product of ongoing high demand, projected population growth and the low inventory levels of homes in what is one of the most desirable locations to live.”

The most affordable market this year is Redford, Mich., where a four-bedroom, two-bathroom home is listed at $60,490.

Read the full report here.

Article source: http://vienna.patch.com/articles/report-vienna-second-most-expensive-home-market-in-state

PARSIPPANY, N.J.

November 28, 2012
5:43am

•  The difference between Silicon Valley and the Central Valley

•  “A product of ongoing high demand, projected population growth and the low inventory levels”

What’s the difference between living in Los Altos in Silicon Valley and Delhi in the Central Valley?

Just $1,583,834.

That’s the difference in the median prices of homes in the two cities that are just 112 miles apart, according to a new report Wednesday from Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC, which is listing the media prices it has found in 2,500 markets.

Several of the nation’s most expensive real estate markets are in Northern California, it says. Google, Apple, Facebook and Stanford University are all located within 15 minutes of this year’s most expensive market, Los Altos, where the average listing price of a four-bedroom, two-bathroom home is $1,706,688.

“The success of many of our native tech companies has shined a spotlight on Silicon Valley and our real estate market in the San Francisco Bay Area,” says Rick Turley, president of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in the San Francisco Bay Area. “Listing prices in our market are a product of ongoing high demand, projected population growth and the low inventory levels of homes in what is one of the most desirable locations to live.”

Lowest median in the Central Valley is in Delhi in Stanislaus County where the money that fell off the table in Los Altos might buy a four-bedroom, two-bath home: $122,854.

In contrast, the most affordable market this year is Redford, Mich., where a similar home, four-bedrooms, two-bathrooms, is listed at $60,490 — a listing price difference of more than $1.6 million from Los Altos. In fact, says the report, 28 homes could be purchased in Redford for the price of a similar home in Los Altos.

Overall, the report found the average listing price of a four-bedroom, two-bathroom home in the U.S. to be $292,152. Affordability remains strong in many markets across the country as 36 percent of the markets analyzed by the report had an average home listing price of less than $200,000 for four-bedroom, two-bathroom homes.

The five most expensive markets are all in California, with four in the San Francisco Bay Area. Los Altos tops the list, followed by Newport Beach ($1,658,000), Saratoga ($1,582,434), Menlo Park ($1,506,909) and Palo Alto ($1,495,364). But even with these high priced markets, California was not the most expensive state. The average listing price of a four-bedroom, two-bathroom home in California ($431,625) is less than both Hawaii ($742,551) and Massachusetts ($489,063).

Article source: http://www.centralvalleybusinesstimes.com/stories/001/?ID=22378