#1. This three-bedroom home in Piedmont is offered at $2.75 million. Piedmont has a School Score of 9.5 and a median home price of $1.2 million.

Blanca Torres
Reporter- San Francisco Business Times

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For homebuyers looking for a great public school district, the East Bay is the top area to buy a home in the Bay Area. Emeryville-based ZipRealty, an online brokerage, compiled a list of the top selling cities in the Bay Area with the highest ranking public schools — eight were in the East Bay.

Click on the slideshow to see the top 10 .

“Home values and school scores are always going to be linked,” said ZipRealty President and CEO Lanny Baker. “In order to give our users the most complete picture of a home’s value, we provide a School Score, which is calculated based on test-score data as well as student/teacher ratios, for every home listing on ZipRealty.com.”

The scores range from zero to 10 with 10 being the highest.

The No. 1 city with the highest school score is Piedmont, a small rich enclave completely surrounded by Oakland where the schools scored a 9.5 and the median price dropped 27 percent to $1.2 million in August of 2013 from $1.53 during the same month last year.

The only non-East Bay cities on the list were Palo Alto and Benicia.

Overall, median home prices in the Bay Area rose 36 percent during the past year to $585,000.

Nationwide, the Bay Area real estate market ranked second after Sacramento for having the best public schools. The Bay Area is followed by Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Orlando.

Blanca Torres covers East Bay real estate for the San Francisco Business Times.

Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2013/09/bay-area-real-estate-top-school-district.html

The Golden Gate Bridge is seen in the view from a 15,000-square-foot custom built home on Belvedere Island in Marin County, California, U.S., in Dec. 2012. The builder couldn’t find a buyer for the brand-new waterfront mansion he listed in January for $45 million. He hoped one will turn up at an auction, where the starting bid was $25 million. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Blanca Torres
Reporter- San Francisco Business Times

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Home prices across the country show signs of stabilizing — except in the Bay Area where we continued to see big price spikes. Why do we always have to play the role of outlier?

Signs of stabilization depend on increases in median home price, numbers of new listings and the average number of days for-sale homes stay on the market.

In the Bay Area, our inventory of new listings increased by only 3 percent to 8,006 homes in July 2013 compared with the same month last year, while our median home price soared by 40 percent to $610,000 in July, up from $436,000 the prior year, according to Emeryville-based ZipRealty.

At the same time, nationally, inventory levels grew by an average of 12 percent and median home prices beefed up by 15.8 percent — a lot more moderate than our 40 percent hike.

Van Davis, ZipRealty’s president of brokerage operations, called the growth in the U.S. real estate market, “one of moderation with underlying strength.”

“The increase in listings coupled with moderating price growth and sales volumes provide significant evidence that the real estate market is beginning to become more balanced,” Davis said.

More inventory on the market keeps prices from ballooning, but clearly that isn’t happening in the Bay Area.

In fact, our total inventory of available homes dropped by 21 percent to 8,275 in July 2013, compared with 10,466 in July 2012.

Places where new listings are climbing at impressive rates include Denver with 34 percent growth, Portland, Ore. with 24 percent, Orange County with 22 percent and Seattle and San Diego both with 21 percent.

“Several metros on the West Coast, which have had the greatest supply imbalances, are now seeing the biggest increases in listings,” Davis said. Did you notice San Francisco is a glaring omission on that list?

Blanca Torres covers East Bay real estate for the San Francisco Business Times.

Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/2013/08/housing-market-stabilizing-everywhere.html

The area median home price shoot up by 43 percent to $620,000 in the Bay Area during the past year, according to ZipRealty.

Blanca Torres
Reporter- San Francisco Business Times

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The Bay Area housing market is on fire — and we’re about to get burned.

The median home price in the Bay Area ballooned by 43 percent during the past year to $620,000 in June, up from $435,000 a year ago, according to ZipRealty, the Emeryville-based online brokerage.

The Bay Area leads the nation in year-over-year growth, followed by Sacramento with 41 percent, Los Angeles with 31 percent, Las Vegas with 30 percent and San Diego with 25 percent.

Meanwhile, the number of homes on the market in the Bay Area has dropped by 32 percent to 7,961 from 11,662 a year ago.

The fire burns brighter in particular parts of the Bay Area (like San Francisco, where the median price hit $1 million in April).

Still, that type of growth is phenomenal — and likely unsustainable. So, how long before prices level off?

The drop in inventory indicates that we’re in a supply constrained market, which could entice more sellers to put their homes on the market.

“After months of runaway prices and a near-desperate inventory situation, the Bay Area housing market is starting to replenish itself,” said ZipRealty CEO and President Lanny Baker. “Home owners across the region now see increased values, tight bid/offer spreads and lightning fast sales, and they’re reacting by putting more homes, and particularly more attractive homes, on the market once again. It’s a welcomed break in the trend even if it ultimately means prices start to cool off a bit too.”

But, what do rising home prices really mean?

I asked economist Christopher Thornberg of Beacon Economics, who is best known for rightly predicting the 2008 mortgage crisis (even though no one agreed with him).

Blanca Torres covers East Bay real estate for the San Francisco Business Times.

Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2013/07/bay-area-housing-prices-jump-43.html

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Homes keep getting bid up over asking, which keeps pushing up prices. Another week, another real estate report showing that home prices are on a tear, with the Bay Area among the nation’s leaders. This time, it was the SP/Case-Shiller home-price index showing double-digit prices increases.

Here are photos from one of those now-commonplace scenarios: A perfectly nice, but not extraordinary house that went for way over asking. In this case it was a four-bedroom rancher in Walnut Creek’s Larkey Park area. Listed for $615,950, it went for $650,000 — $34,050 or 5.5 percent over asking.

On average, homes in the 9-county San Francisco Bay Area area are selling for 103.6 percent of asking; this time last year, they went for 100 percent of asking, said Lanny Baker, CEO of Emeryville’s ZipRealty.

Realtors around the Bay Area continue to report flocks of buying chasing super-tight inventory. ZipRealty shows that for-sale Bay Area  inventory is down 43 percent from this time last year to only about 6,998 homes. In 22 out of 24 metro areas it tracks nationwide, ZipRealty “saw more new listings as of April 30 compared to April 30, 2012,” it said in a report. “San Francisco and Austin were the only two metros showing slight declines in new listings.”

“Five of the top seven cities in our national report on price appreciation are in California,” Baker said. “We see San Francisco (metro) as the No. 1 city in the country right now for price momentum,”

In the Case-Shiller report, prices for a 20-city composite index were up 10.9 percent in March versus a year earlier. For the SF metro, which Case-Shiller defines as the counties of San Francisco, Marin, San Mateo, Alameda and Contra Costa, the increase was a strong 22.2 percent, second only to Phoenix’s 22.5 percent gain. For an in-depth look at the report and its implications, click here.

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Follow her on Twitter: @csaid

Article source: http://blog.sfgate.com/ontheblock/2013/05/29/homes-prices-keep-on-ratcheting-up-as-bay-area-outpaces-national-growth/

This home at 6905 Norfolk Road in Berkeley boasts four bedrooms and three bathrooms for $1,095,000 or $322 per square foot. See listing here.

Blanca Torres
Reporter- San Francisco Business Times

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The median price for a single family home in San Francisco hit $1 million in April — the highest level since 2007.

The new median price is a 32 percent jump from $760,000 last year.

Got a cool $1 million to spend on a home? Click on the slideshow to the right for a virtual tour of $1 million homes in Bay Area cities.

“Shrinking inventory combined with low interest rates and motivated buyers has resulted in historically high sales prices,” said Christine Dwiggins, president of the San Francisco Association of Realtors.

Inventory levels are significantly low with only 1.1 months of inventory available — that means the amount of time it would take to sell off all the homes on the market if no new supply came on — in April whereas five to seven months of inventory is considered a balanced market.

Single-family homes in San Francisco are selling in an average of 28 days, down about 44 percent from an average of 49 days a year ago.

Meanwhile, the median price for a condo in San Francisco reached $850,000 in April — the highest level in the last two years.

Home prices have ballooned in the past year in San Francisco, but it’s not the only Bay Area city enjoying price gains.

See our slideshow for examples of what $1 million can get you in the Bay Area these days courtesy of ZipRealty.

Blanca Torres covers East Bay real estate for the San Francisco Business Times.

Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/2013/05/median-home-price-hits-1-million-in.html

San Ramon Valley Unified: School Score 9.1/ Median Price per SF $304. House in San Ramon for sale.

Blanca Torres
Reporter- San Francisco Business Times

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Location, location, location, right? Isn’t that the mantra for real estate valuation? But what if you have school-age kids? Then the real estate valuation mantra shifts: Location, location, schools.

For families with school-age kids, San Ramon ranks as the best place to buy a home based on school quality and home price, according to data from ZipRealty. Of the top 10 cities, all but two — Palo Alto and Benicia — were in the East Bay.

The Emeryville-based online residential real estate brokerage calculated which Bay Area cities had school districts with the highest test scores, lowest student/teacher ratios and lowest median price per square foot.

“We all know lots of factors — not just price per square foot — go into determining home values,” said Lanny Baker, ZipRealty CEO and president. “Among the most important of these factors for many families today is the quality of local schools in relation to the price of their local real estate.”

Here’s ZipRealty’s list of Top Ten School District Home Values in the Bay Area. Click to right to see slideshow of homes for sale.

Blanca Torres covers East Bay real estate for the San Francisco Business Times.

Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/2013/05/east-bay-schools-boost-real-estate.html

A limited inventory of homes on the market, combined with the extremely low cost of mortgage financing, has resulted in homes selling above asking price in many western markets, boosting the average listing to closing price ratio, explains Lanny Baker, Chief Executive Officer and President of ZipRealty. The median amount of time that homes are listed on the market before they sell has shortened by more than two weeks since last year, and in some areas we are seeing one-in-five newly listed homes sell in less than seven days. Multiple-bid situations are also increasingly common in the markets we reviewed.

In January 2011, the list to close price ratio in the U.S. reached 97.1%, and increased 40 basis points to 97.5% in 2012. The ratio hit 98.3% nationwide as of December 2012, according to ZipRealty data.

TheTop 10 Best Cities for Home Sellersbased on ZipRealtys List Price to Close Price RatioReport are: San Francisco, San Diego, Sacramento, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Orange County, Denver, Tucson, Portland and Seattle.