SUNNYVALE (KCBS)— New townhome projects continue at a rapid pace in Sunnyvale, where home construction can barely keep up with demand. The 14 currently under construction probably won’t be empty for long. Home values increased nearly 11-percent nationwide over the last year, but homes in the Bay Area are getting even greater gains.

The Standard Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price index released Tuesday showed that all 20 cities measured by the report posted year-over-year gains for the third straight month.

And prices rose in 15 cities in March from February. That’s up from only 11 in the previous month. The monthly figures aren’t seasonally adjusted and may reflect the beginning of the spring buying season.

• Latest Case-Shiller Survey Results
• DataQuick’s Median Bay Area House Price By County

Prices rose in Phoenix by 22.5 percent over the past 12 months, the biggest gain among cities. It was followed by the Bay Area (22.2 percent) and Las Vegas (20.6 percent).

Niccole Beckerman said her family has been priced out of the Silicon Valley.

“It’s really expensive. My parents were trying to buy a house and it’s really expensive just because the schools are really good,” Beckerman said.

The story is the same throughout much of the Bay Area. According to the San Francisco Association Of Realtors, the median Bay Area price for a single-family home has crossed above the $1 million mark for the first time since 2007.

The Inventory of available homes remains extremely low according to San Jose realtor David Martz. He said there are only about 1,000 homes for sale in a population of nearly two-million people in the greater San Jose area.

“Combined with the fact that we currently have interest rates at an all-time low, it’s possible to get an interest rate close to three percent, which is driving demand, so the buyers are out there in force,” said Martz.

Martz said four out of every five homes that come on the market here receive multiple offers, with prices, in some cases, going up hundreds of thousands of dollars over asking.

Despite the gains, a limited number of homeowners are putting their houses on the market. That’s helped lift home prices. And it’s made builders more willing to ramp up construction. Applications for building permits rose in April to the highest level in nearly five years.

The supply of available homes jumped in April, but was still 14 percent below its level a year earlier.

Stan Humphries, chief economist at Zillow, a real estate data provider, said that the increase in the Case-Shiller index has been skewed higher by cities such as Phoenix and San Francisco. Fewer homes are available in those areas because many homeowners still owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. That makes it difficult to sell.

Still, even excluding those markets, home prices are rising steadily nationwide, Humphries said. The increases are “certainly confirmation that the housing market is experiencing a brisk recovery,” he added.

The housing recovery is creating more construction jobs and bolstering the economy in other ways. Higher home prices make homeowners feel wealthier and encourages them to spend more.

Rising prices also encourage more would-be buyers to purchase homes, before prices rise further. They also enable more homeowners to sell homes, by reducing the number of people who owe more on their mortgages than the homes are worth.

Prices have been increasing steadily since last summer. Still, they are about 29 percent below the peak reached in July 2006.

Banks have raised their credit standards since the housing bubble burst and are demanding larger down payments. That’s made it particularly hard for potential first-time buyers to get a mortgage.

(Copyright 2013 by CBS San Francisco. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

Article source: http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/05/28/builders-cant-keep-pace-with-demand-as-bay-area-housing-booms-again/

Today, far more Americans are renting. In fact, all of the latest household formations, according to the U.S. Census, are in rental units. The home ownership rate, which reached a high of just over 69 percent in 2004, stood at 67.8 percent in the fall of 2007. Today it continues to fall, now down to 65.4 percent.

(Read More: Best US Housing Markets for Buyers and Sellers)

Perhaps the biggest difference in today’s housing market from 2007 is in mortgage rates and activity. In October of 2007, the average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage was 6.38 percent. Today it is nearly half that at 3.67 percent. In turn, it is a tale of opposites. Refinance volume today is twice what it was in 2007, while mortgage applications to purchase a home are about half what they were.

(Read More: Soaring HousingStocks in Perspective)

In October 2007, the housing market was in the direct path of a massive foreclosure storm. Today, it is still picking up the pieces, with 5.3 million homeowners either delinquent on their mortgages or in foreclosure, according to Lender Processing Services. The good news is that the numbers are coming down, but the clean-up is far from over.

(Read More: How We Got Here, Where We’re Going)

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100419903

The six-acre Red Rock Island, near the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, is the only privately-owned island in San Francisco Bay.  It had been listed at twenty-two-million. 

Realtor Steven Higbee says he knows what he would do with the island if it were his.
  
“Oh, I’d definitely have a house, a small harbor,” said Higbee. “There’s enough rock — I mean, the island is basically solid rock, so if you want to create a flatter area, you could build, you know a breakwater and stuff so you have your own small boat harbor there.”

The only person who ever lived on Red Rock Island built a home in the 1850s.

Article source: http://www.kqed.org/news/story/2012/07/09/101128/price_reduced_on_sf_bays_red_rock_island?category=bay+area

A group pushing for more infrastructure spending has listed several California cities, including San Francisco, San Jose and Stockton as having among the nation’s highest percentage of structurally deficient bridges.

Transportation for America’s report, which will be released with updated figures at a press conference tomorrow, analyzes the federal National Bridge Inventory database and finds one in nine U.S. bridges are structurally deficient. The report said most U.S. bridges are at an age, about 50 years old, where they need overhaul or replacement, and that California is at the top of the list in the number of deficient bridges that carry heavy traffic.

San Jose is second in cities of up to two million population, with 18.7 percent of its bridges, or 189, ranked deficient, with daily traffic listed as nearly 6 million trips. San Francisco ranks second in cities over two million, with 20.9 percent, or 380, of its bridges ranked deficient, carrying 15 million trips on average each day.

The report said bridges are very expensive and complicated to repair or replace because so many drivers use them each day. The report calls for overhauling the way they are funded and prioritized, saying the problem can’t be fixed just by spending more money. State formula funding doesn’t work, the report said, recommending instead that states “should be required to show that they have taken care of what they have before they spend repair money on new capacity they can’t afford to maintain.

The report also says ending bike and pedestrian programs as some members of Congress want to do is stupid, in so many words, because it won’t make a dent in bridge repair.

Transportation for America is made up of a lot of local officials, including many from California, along with smart-growth, environmental, bicycle, real estate, architectural and other groups.

Article source: http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2011/10/18/bay-area-bridges-deemed/