homesmillbrae.com » Vacaville

Bay Area home prices projected to surge

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 18:10:27 +0000

Almost every corner of the Bay Area is poised for robust home-price appreciation this year in a surge that will outpace projected national growth, according to a forecast from real-estate information site Zillow.com.

Looking at 245 Bay Area ZIP codes, Zillow projects that 244 will see home values ratchet up by significant margins in 2013, with 27 ZIPs seeing double-digit appreciation. Only one of the ZIPs analyzed – 94515 in Calistoga – is forecast to see values recede, by a modest 1.4 percent.

“The forces of supply and demand seem to be exacerbated here right now,” said Svenja Gudell, senior economist with Zillow in Seattle. “We’re happily surprised by how well (the market) is doing and how much it’s picking up steam.”

Strikingly, some of the strongest percentage increases are likely to happen in both the cheapest and the priciest areas in the nine-county region, Zillow predicts. Low-end Solano County markets such as Vacaville, Fairfield, Dixon and Suisun City, where values plunged during the real-estate downturn and are still half off their peaks, should see values bump up by more than 14 percent – admittedly easier to do off a low base.

At the same time, Portola Valley, Atherton and Palo Alto – with million-dollar-plus median values that now exceed their boom-time heights – should see appreciation above 12 percent, Zillow said.

Popular San Francisco neighborhoods such as Noe Valley, the Castro, Twin Peaks, the Mission and Bernal Heights are poised for double-digit appreciation, along with Menlo Park, Larkspur, Palo Alto, Alameda and North Berkeley, Zillow predicts.

Regaining value

One major way that the low-cost and high-end markets diverge is in where values are now relative to their peak. Zillow shows 25 ZIP codes where values have regained all the value lost during the downturn and then some. All are in pricey Silicon Valley or San Francisco neighborhoods where the median price is around $1 million. Meanwhile, about 100 ZIP codes are still 30 percent or more below their peaks – all in hard-hit, lower-end communities in Solano, Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

For the San Francisco metropolitan area (the counties of San Francisco, San Mateo, Marin, Alameda and Contra Costa), Zillow projects that that values will rise 7.3 percent this year, more than double its predicted 3.3 percent national increase. The San Jose metro area (Santa Clara and San Benito counties) should rise 6.6 percent, it said.

“That is a really great number in the San Francisco metro,” Gudell said. “It is rather special compared to the U.S. as a whole.”

Zillow’s projections take into account both long-term historical trends back to 1997, as well as current data on how markets have behaved in recent months. It also factors in information on employment, income and other economic factors to predict what housing values might do, she said.

Can’t meet demand

Every market around the Bay Area – whether low-end, high-end or somewhere in the middle – now has one outstanding characteristic that is driving up prices: too few homes for sale to meet buyer appetite.

“There is no place where we see a steeper decline in listed homes (for sale) than the Bay Area,” said Lanny Baker, CEO of ZipRealty in Emeryville, which has agents throughout the Bay Area and the country. “This time last year there were 13,000 homes listed here. Today we see about 5,000 homes – a 60 percent reduction.”

Moreover, the mix of homes being sold has changed dramatically, something that particularly affects lower-end markets such as Solano County. Far fewer bargain-priced, bank-owned foreclosures are on the market.

In the low-cost markets, investors waving fistfuls of cash are snapping up properties, usually to keep as rentals, sometimes to flip. In the high-end markets, it’s tech millionaires – armed with far bigger wads of cash – who are jostling to live in homes in Silicon Valley or San Francisco.

“As soon as something new hits the market, it’s snapped up,” said Sandy Rainsbarger, an agent with ZipRealty in Vacaville. That town’s 95688 ZIP, where the median value is now $287,900, is projected by Zillow to see values rise 17.1 percent this year – the biggest price appreciation in the Bay Area. “There are multiple offers on every single property.”

Buyers pushed aside

Meanwhile, “regular” buyers, especially first-time home buyers who are relying on Federal Housing Administration mortgages, are finding themselves shoved aside time after time in frenzied bidding wars.

“The Bay Area is one of the fastest-moving markets in the country,” Baker said. “We see houses sell on average in 26 days here. One statistic we look at is what percentage of homes sell in just seven days; that’s like a red alert. If it gets to 15 percent, we know we’re in a zany market. In the Bay Area, it’s at 13 percent. In Sacramento, 25 percent of homes sell in less than seven days.

“I think throughout this year, we’ll see Bay Area markets continue to be very, very strong,” Baker said. “On the lower end, the specter of foreclosures and ‘Gosh, nobody’s ever going to want to live this far out’ has washed away, and there is more confidence in values recovering.

“On the high end, we’ve got Silicon Valley and the tech economy doing really well.”

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: csaid@sfchronicle.com

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/Bay-Area-home-prices-projected-to-surge-4288392.php

Bay Area open space: 75 percent is being protected, but 300000 acres are still …

Wed, 23 May 2012 22:47:52 +0000

Click photo to enlarge

Roughly 75 percent of all the land in the Bay Area is either permanently protected in parks or open space, or at low risk of development because it is zoned for farming or other rural uses.

But 322,000 acres — an area 12 times the size of the city of San Francisco — remains threatened by development over the next three decades, with hot spots in eastern Contra Costa County and around Gilroy, Morgan Hill, Livermore and Vacaville, according to a new report out Tuesday from the Greenbelt Alliance, an open space preservation group.

The Bay Area almost certainly has more parks, farmland, beaches and other open spaces than any other major urban area in the United States. That’s the product of 100 years of advocacy

by park lovers, hikers and environmental groups.

And while Bay Area residents regularly support tough zoning, and new fees and taxes at the ballot box for open space, the difficult economy over the past five years has meant less money to maintain parks — and rough times raising money to buy more land.

“We’ve had a lot of success in this region protecting our greenbelt,” said Jeremy Madsen, executive director of the Greenbelt Alliance. “We need to be proud of that, but there is a lot still to do, not only in stopping sprawl, but also in investing and stewarding land that’s already protected.”

When counties are ranked by the acres they have permanently protected in parks, wildlife refuges and open space preserves, the Bay

Area’s largest county, Santa Clara County, is first, with 229,800 acres, according to the report.

Next is Marin, with 185,400 acres; Sonoma with 171,200; Napa with 122,700; Contra Costa with 119,100; San Mateo with 111,000; Alameda with 106,000; and Solano, with 57,000 acres.

That may come as a surprise to Bay Area residents who see Silicon Valley as a poster child for Los Angeles-style sprawl. But most of the large developments that paved over orchards and farmland ended by the 1970s with tougher zoning. And over the past decade, land trusts such as the Nature Conservancy and Peninsula Open Space Trust have bought tens of thousands of acres in the Mount Hamilton area, around Henry Coe State Park, and in the foothills south of San Jose, preserving hillsides, ranches and farms.

“There’s been a dawning awareness that there are some spectacularly beautiful lands at risk just 15 or 20 minutes south of San Jose,” said Walter Moore, president of the Peninsula Open Space Trust, in Palo Alto.

In the East Bay, a historic milestone came in 2008 when voters in Contra Costa and Alameda counties overwhelmingly approved Measure WW, a $500 million bond act to provide new funding for the East Bay Regional Park District.

The district, founded in 1934, already has 112,000 acres preserved in 65 parks. With the new funding, it is adding lands. Further, roughly 6,000 acres of meadows and other grazing lands are being preserved by the Contra Costa Water District as part of its project to enlarge Los Vaqueros Reservoir near Brentwood.

“Contrary to what’s happening in other parts of the state, combined with the recent real estate downturn, there have been some amazing gains in open space protection in the East Bay,” said Ron Brown, executive director of Save Mount Diablo in Walnut Creek.

When counties are compared by how much of their land area is protected in parks and open space preserves, Marin comes in first, with 55.6 percent; followed by San Mateo at 38.6 percent; Santa Clara at 27.7 percent; Contra Costa at 25.8 percent; Napa at 25.4 percent; Alameda at 22.4 percent; Sonoma at 16.9 percent and Solano at 10.8 percent.

Brown and Moore both noted that funding is becoming a significant issue in many parts of Northern California. State bonds approved by voters in years past to buy new parkland and build playgrounds are nearly all spent. And Gov. Jerry Brown plans to close 70 state parks by July 1 to save $22 million toward balancing the state budget.

Although East Bay regional parks won passage of its bond measure, other agencies, like the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District and the Santa Clara County Open Space Authority, are running low on funding to buy new parks and will ask voters in the next few years for more to continue their efforts.

Tuesday’s report noted that of the 4.4 million acres in the nine counties around the Bay Area, 1.1 million are in parks and open space preserves. Another 2.2 million are protected through zoning for farms, hillsides and rural development. That leaves 788,000 acres developed in urban areas and 322,000 acres of open land at risk of development over the next 30 years, with a quarter of that at risk in the next 10 years.

Developers say the battle is done.

“The era of the mega-master-planned community in the Bay Area is largely over. Politically it is just too difficult,” said Paul Campos, senior vice president of the Building Industry Association of the Bay Area.

Campos said while developers support building “in-fill” homes, condominiums and townhouses in existing neighborhoods and near transit projects, as environmentalists want, enough people still want to buy affordable single-family homes with yards that they are willing to commute long distances from Tracy and other Central Valley towns.

But Madsen, of the Greenbelt Alliance, said there are lots of single-family homes for sale in the Bay Area.

“What we need to build now are the choices for people who want something else — townhomes, condos, rental property in town to meet the demands of empty nesters, young people in their 20s and families with kids who want to live an urban lifestyle,” he said.

Paul Rogers covers resources and environmental issues. Contact him at 408-920-5045. Follow him on Twitter.com/PaulRogersSJMN.

Article source: http://www.contracostatimes.com/science/ci_20685004/bay-area-open-space-more-it-is-being?source=inthenews

Amici’s pizzeria to open Shanghai location

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 02:04:51 +0000

Amici’s East Coast Pizzeria said it is opening a location in Shanghai come January.

Amici’s East Coast Pizzeria said Tuesday it is opening a location in Shanghai come January.

The San Mateo-based company said its first “Ello Amici’s” is to be located on Xiangyang Road in the popular HuaiHai Road shopping district of Shanghai, featuring a menu similar to what is available to Amici’s diners in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The location in China comes as a result of collaboration between Amici’s co-founder and President Peter Cooperstein, partner Mike Forter and the Lo Family of Shanghai. Menlo Park resident Sophie Lo is a Bay Area businesswoman and her brother Jimmy Lo is a real estate developer in China, Amici’s said in a prepared statement.

“Our goal is to open several locations in Shanghai and then expand into Beijing, Hong Kong, Macau and other areas in China,” Cooperstein said in the statement.

The pizza company has 12 locations from San Jose to Vacaville in the Bay Area, and is planning to open another location in Southern California’s La Jolla in spring 2012. Its pizza is also served at San Jose Sharks National Hockey League games in the HP Pavilion.

Click here to read the press release from Amici’s.

Written by Lisa Sibley. She can be reached at 408.299.1830 or lsibley@bizjournals.com.

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Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2011/12/07/amicis-pizzeria-opens-shanghai.html

George H. Samayoa

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 14:10:05 +0000

George passed away suddenly while scuba diving in Monterey Bay,
doing what he loved to do. Born in Guatemala, he and his family
moved to the San Francisco Bay Area when he was 3 years old. He
graduated from Riordan High School in San Francisco and attended
San Mateo Community College.

He was broker-principal of the Vanguard Company, located in
Burlingame, dealing in commercial real estate. He was a member of
the South San Francisco Rotary Club, serving as president from July
1, 1993, to June 30, 1994. He was also a Paul Harris Fellow
recipient.

He moved to Fairfield after marrying the love of his life. He
was employed by Hanlees Dealership in Napa, as a service adviser,
prior to his passing.

George enjoyed helping people with whatever needed to be done,
fixing things, and always had a smile on his face. He was an expert
scuba diver, loved to travel to the Caribbean and Hawaii and, most
of all, creating digital travelogues set to music. He was an avid
49ers fan.

He is survived by his loving wife of 19 years, Christine; his
son, Jean-Pierre; mother, Adela; sister, Selma; brother, Sid
(Debi); brother-in-law, Vince (Judy); nieces and nephews, Elaine,
Ronnie, Bonnie, Sarah and Sean; and great-niece and nephew, Elina
and Ryan. His father, Amil, predeceased him.

A celebration of life will be held for family and friends at
Nadeau Family Funeral Home in Vacaville on July 20, from 11 a.m. to
2 p.m. Attendees are encouraged to dress comfortably for a
Caribbean-themed celebration. In lieu of flowers, please donate to
a charity of one’s own choosing.

Article source: http://napavalleyregister.com/news/local/obituaries/george-h-samayoa/article_eb03c522-b280-11e0-8819-001cc4c03286.html