Built in 1904, for more than half a century the house sat happily at 1818 Broadway atop Pacific Heights. Designed for renowned UCSF doctor Herbert C. Moffitt, the home was later expanded by one of San Francisco’s most celebrated architects, William Polk.
8 West Shore Road, Belvedere, Calif.
Open Homes Photography
But after Dr. Moffitt and his wife Margaret passed away in the 1950s, the home fell into disrepair.
As the city’s need for housing increased in the early 1960s, the building was put on the chopping block to make way for a condominium building at the site — a new and exciting type of housing at the time.
“A renaissance of gracious living is on the horizon,” an ad for the planned apartment building in the San Francisco Examiner proclaimed. “1818 Broadway is the carefully selected site for a wondrous new-mode of in-town luxury residence living.”
But one man was making an extravagant plan to save the “luxurious trophy home” on Pacific Heights from demolition. Marin architect Norman Gilroy bought the property in 1962 and set about slicing it in half, trucking it onto a 285-foot barge and moving it to a plot across the water at 8 West Shore Road, Belvedere.
8 West Shore Road, Belvedere, Calif.
Open Homes Photography
The Chronicle covered the house’s journey down from Pacific Heights and across the water. “A stately old Pacific Height mansion joined the flight to the suburbs yesterday,” a story on the front page on June 25, 1962, read.
Outside of some thieves stealing some of the home’s fixtures, the slow move went surprisingly smoothly, though some proto-NIMBYs of the time protested the move. “Because I’m a native San Franciscan, I hate to see progress,” a neighbor told the paper. “I hate to see it go.”
“So many of our old landmarks are going,” said another, “and these horrible modern apartments are going up.”
The mansion that formerly sat at 1818 Broadway heads north on Franklin Street, June 25, 1962.
San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst N/Hearst Newspapers via Getty Imag
Hundreds of residents watched the trucks take the two halves of the home, which had been split down the middle with a chainsaw, down Franklin Street. After spending a night at Marina Green, the home was hoisted onto a barge the following day to complete its journey north. In 2020, the Chronicle published more photos from the archives showing the Moffitt Mansion moving across the water.
The home that now looks across Richardson Bay to Sausalito is being listed for $11,950,000 by Compass and Janet and Sally Williamson.
“It is an exciting opportunity for us to represent this example of historic San Francisco architecture that has traveled across the bay on a barge to find a new home,” Sally Williamson told SFGATE over email. “This Belvedere residence truly is a showplace and one of the most admired in Marin. We are honored to work with our seller to find the next generation to enjoy it.”
8 West Shore Road, Belvedere, Calif.
Open Homes Photography
The home features hardwood floors, custom moldings, four fireplaces, a secluded spa and a private covered balcony.
Renters searching for an affordable home in the greater Tampa Bay region have another hurdle to overcome: internet scams.
Many are of the low-dollar variety, like the one that ensnared Dominic Cwiklinsi in June.
Cwiklinsi was searching Zillow in June when he spotted a rental within his monthly budget — a rarity in Tampa Bay’s surging market, he said.
Eager, he applied through a third-party website, electronically paid the $30 fee and never heard back.
Although the online listing appeared legitimate, Cwiklinski believes he fell victim to a rental scam created to fish for application fees. He said the property remained listed for more than a month — likely shamming hundreds of potential renters just like him.
“They try to have you send them money, or application fees, in order to hold the place,” he said. Sometimes, asking for a security deposit or first- and last-month’s rent. And often, asking for fees to be paid up front, without touring the property.
Authorities say scams like these are becoming more common in the greater Tampa Bay region. With little inventory and lots of people looking for places to live, the housing market is ripe for scammers.
On it’s website, Zillow warns about this kind of foul play, saying it could happen on any website where users can self-advertise rental listings, including Craigslist, eBay and Facebook Marketplace.
“This is particularly true if you’re on a tight deadline to find a place, making it even more important to be on the lookout for potential fraud,” according to a tip sheet published by the real-estate website.
Cwiklinski said filtering though scams adds another frustration for people who are having a difficult time finding an affordable place to live.
“I can’t describe the frustration,” Cwiklinski said. “It’s like – you don’t know what to do next. What else should I try? What else can I try?”
Better known as “Coach,” Cwiklisnki teaches health and runs the track program at Tampa Bay Technical High School. He had hoped to find a new place to live before the school year started.
“The last four years, I lived at an apartment complex,” he said. “And rent almost doubled in two years.”
For now, he’s living out of a suitcase in a friend’s extra bedroom. Before and after school, during lunch and in between classes, Cwiklinski combs through rental listings on half a dozen mobile apps.
Now that he knows what to watch for, he estimates he’s spotted about a hundred fraudulent listings.
By the numbers
Data requested from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center show that real-estate scams are a persistent problem in the greater Tampa Bay region.
The center, which acts as a clearinghouse for complaints by internet crime victims, defines real-estate scams as the reported loss of funds through fraud involving any rental or timeshare property, including higher-dollar schemes.
Last year, 304 victims reported losing a total of $6.2 million in six Florida counties: Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, Polk, Sarasota and Manatee.
Hillsborough County accounts for nearly half of those reports in the greater Tampa Bay region, with 132 people reporting around $3.5 million in losses in 2021.
Between January and July, the count of complaints and loss amounts per month were on an upward trend in Hillsborough, Manatee and Pasco counties compared to 2021. Notably, in Pasco County losses more than doubled for victims of real-estate scams – jumping from almost $790,000 to over $2 million in less than 12 months.
Special agent Andrew Sekela with the FBI Tampa Division predicts the actual loss amount for real-estate victims in the Tampa Bay region are two- to three-times higher than what was reported. In his former FBI role, he headed the region’s white-collar crime division and worked closely with financial institutions and the real-estate industry.
“Based on my experience being here for 10 years, there are a lot of fraudsters in Tampa,” Sekela said.
He said not all real-estate scams warrant a response from law enforcement.
Low-dollar scams not usually investigated
The most common, low-dollar real-estate scam — like the one that entrapped Cwiklinski – is called “adverse possession.”
“This is when someone takes possession of a property that they don’t legitimately own,” Sekela said.
Traditionally, scammers would stake fake “For Rent” signs in the front yards of vacant properties they had no claim to. Sekela said this was a popular scheme in the early 2000s, when there was a similarly heightened interest in the housing market.
Since then, real-estate fraudsters have moved online. Though the strategy has remained the same: to swindle an application fee, security deposit or even begin collecting rent before the jig is up.
Nowadays, scammers scrape images from legitimate listings and advertise them on websites like Zillow, eBay, Craigslist and FaceBook Marketplace – posing as the owner.
Tampa realtor Tiffany Prete said she had been warned about this kind of activity, but was still surprised to find one of her own properties roped into a rental fraud scheme.
“It took my breath away,” she said.
In July, Prete sold a New Port Richey home for nearly $500,000 to out-of-state buyers. In August, the buyers listed the home for rent on Zillow and found tenants within a couple days, according to the buyer’s agent Tetiana Gapych. About a week later, a fake rental listing surfaced on Facebook, advertising the home for $2,500 a month.
More often than not, Sekela said these low-dollar scams aren’t investigated.
To warrant the involvement of local law enforcement or the FBI’s internet crime squad, Sekela said the loss amount must exceed a threshold of six or seven figures, as set by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
He warns renters and realtors to beware of these higher-dollar schemes: some scammers will purport to offer mortgage refinance services and then pocket borrowers’ payments. Others can hack into legitimate business email communications, like a realtor and a homebuyer, to intercept high-dollar transactions, like a down payment on a home.
Sekela’s advice: Trust no one.
“If you receive an email or a text message, or even a phone call from somebody, verify they are who they say they are independently,” he said. “Don’t take them at their word for it.”
Renters should verify their realtor’s identity and real-estate license on the website for Florida’s Department of Business and Professional Regulations. Property ownership should also be verified on the county’s property appraiser website.
“It’s hard nowadays to know exactly what is good enough because the fraudsters … the longer they are engaged in a scheme, the more savvy they become.”
Scammers prey on desperate renters
Rose Burke is all too familiar.
She’s been scammed before. So, she knows all the tell-tale signs of rental fraud. And still, in August, she was nearly taken in by a real-estate scam. This time: on a website that her daughter’s social worker suggested.
“I guess there’s no website that you can really trust out there,” she said.
Burke works from her Carrollwood home as a telesales agent. In her spare time, she’s been combing through rental listings for her daughter, a single mom of five who qualifies for Section 8 housing.
While browsing, Burke said a man messaged her on the affordable housing website, which collects rental properties that accept housing vouchers. The message provided an address for a charming yellow home 15 minutes away and the person who said he was the owner encouraged her to drive by and check it out.
“And so I did go there. I was looking in the backyard – oh my god – looking in the windows,” she said.
After leaving, she called the number on the “For Rent” sign posted in the front yard and learned that the man she was messaging with was not the owner.
“I think that they’re targeting low-income people, because I think that there’s a certain desperation,” she said.
Burke knows to verify the identity of realtors and double-check property records. But, she said, most people don’t.
Tampa real-estate broker Gary De Pury, who is also an attorney, advises renters: “If it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t true.”
Quite simply, he said, fraud follows booming business. And in an affordable housing crisis, rental scams are a symptom of desperation.
Unlike New York or San Francisco, where the average income competes with the cost of housing, De Pury said wages in the greater Tampa Bay region are out of step with the “astronomical rent increases.”
“Every few months, it seems I’ll get an inquiry from someone who has been taken advantage of and they would like me to go get the money back,” he said.
But there’s rarely a legal avenue to recoup victims’ losses.
De Pury said the best prevention for renters relocating amid the affordable housing crisis is a greater awareness.
“If the Tampa Bay area can be 10 percent more aware,” he said, “the scammers will move on to a different area.”
Avoid paying with cash or money-payment applications like PayPal or Zelle. When possible, use credit cards through a verified payment portal. Avoid transferring money or paying fees before touring a property.
Reverse search images on Google to identify fake rental listings with borrowed photos.
To report a real-estate scam in the greater Tampa Bay region:
Flag suspicious posts in social media or other real-estate marketplace apps
Gabriella Paul covers the stories of people living paycheck to paycheck in the greater Tampa Bay region for WUSF. She’s also a Report for America corps member. Here’s how you can share your story with her.
Over the past decade, startups migrated north from Silicon Valley to make San Francisco the country’s hottest tech hub. The streets of the city were bustling as throngs of — mostly tech — workers walked or caught Ubers to their next meetings.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and things slid to a halt. Now, more than two years and several vaccines later, San Francisco’s office scene has still not rebounded and the city’s streets remain eerily quiet.
If you think it’s even more sparse than other cities you’ve visited lately, you’re right. San Francisco is seeing the lowest attendance rates for office employees in the United States, according to Colin Yasukochi, executive director of real estate brokerage CBRE’s Tech Insights Center. Silicon Valley is not far behind.
Turns out the region’s heavy reliance on tech workers has also slowed down its recovery, with many local employees continuing to insist on remote work, and employers grudgingly allowing it.
Tech companies, said Yasukochi, have “been the most accommodating in terms of offering flexibility and not requiring their employees to come back for any number of days. Some certainly have [asked staffers to come back]. But what their policy is and what their compliance is are two different things.”
He added: “They’re saying you need to be back three days a week, and if you’re only back two days of the week, or one day a week, or not at all, what are they doing to enforce that? And the answer to that question is, not a lot at the moment.”
Why tiptoe around the issue? Well, despite the fact that the tech industry has seen tens of thousands of workers laid off in recent months, Yasukochi believes that a still-strong labor market that provides employees with plenty of options has “a disproportionate amount of influence” over remote work policies.
As he explained it, “It’s still very difficult to hire, unemployment remains pretty low, tech workers have been traditionally difficult to hire for, and so many employers are worried about accelerating the normal turnover that they already have.”
Bottom line, they’re scared. And it’s not just startups that are worried about losing employees. Some of the biggest and most powerful companies have backed off, or at least delayed their return to work plans, because of pushback they received from their employee base. Examples include Apple and Google, among others.
So just how low are attendance rates for office workers in San Francisco?
According to Kastle Access Control, in mid-to-late August, San Jose had the lowest attendance rate at 34.8% compared to pre-pandemic levels. San Francisco was not too far behind, at 38.4%, including the East Bay and the Peninsula. By contrast, emerging tech hub Austin’s attendance rate stood at 58.5% in mid-August.
Supply way up, rents only slightly down
Despite so few workers actually going in to the office and the amount of supply on the market in SF having gone up dramatically, rent prices are only down 13.1% since the first quarter of 2020 — from an all-time high of $88.40 per square foot annually then to $76.86 in the second quarter of 2022, according to Yasukochi.
It’s astonishing, considering that San Francisco’s office market was 4% vacant. It’s now 24% vacant.
Meanwhile, vacancy rates in San Jose stood at 6% at the end of 2019. They are now at 12.5%, which is “not very high relative to the city,”noted Yasukochi. And office rents have remained the same compared to the end of 2019.
If you’re curious why San Jose is faring better than its northern neighbor, Yasukochi says it owes to the types of businesses in both cities. While San Jose is home to stalwart businesses like eBay and PayPal that were established over two decades ago, San Francisco has a higher concentration of less established startups that had a harder time surviving and thriving in the pandemic, from companies involved in mobility and transportation to retail to restaurants.
“When there was a shutdown, business went south, and though they have since recovered, many have laid off and reduced office space,” he told TechCrunch. “And also when many companies decided they were going to go remote first, they needed a lot less office space than before.”
Either way, employees still have the upper hand for now. But things will gradually change, Yasukochi believes.
“The pendulum tends to swing in different directions based on different conditions in the marketplace,” he said. “We will eventually start to see more influence in the hands of employers as the labor market may be loosened up a little bit, although there’s no sense that the labor market is going to change dramatically anytime soon.”
In the meantime, the question on many people’s minds is — with an ongoing housing shortage and an oversupply of office inventory — why more office buildings aren’t being converted into residential units.
Yasukochi suggests some space could potentially be converted in the future, but that right now, it’s too bitter a prospect for commercial building owners.
“We’re not anywhere close to that yet because the values of these buildings need to come down dramatically,” Yasukochi said. “If you bought your building for a certain price — say $700 or $1,000 a square foot, you’re not going to want to sell for $200 or $300 a square foot to make a residential conversion feasible.”
“It’s completely logical to put it to more productive use, but tell that to the person who paid for it — that they have to take a loss, right?”
Maybe landlords have reason to hold out hope. Not all employers in San Francisco are letting employees mostly work from home.
The Information recently reported that startup Merge “has chosen to go all in on in-person work.” The company — which aims to give B2B enterprises a unified API to access data from dozens of HR, payroll, recruiting and accounting platforms — is mandating that all its employees be in the office five days a week, a rarity in the Bay Area.
Meanwhile, Axios recently reported on customer service startup Front “welcoming employees back into its Mid Market headquarters in late June.”
Some 75% of the company’s 450 employees are required, unless exempted, to come in to the office on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The remaining 25% “will either be in the office full-time, completely remote or mostly remote,” reported Axios.
Chief people officer Ashley Alexander of Front told TechCrunch that the nine-year-old company — originally founded in France — has had an office in San Francisco for about eight years.
Front reopened its U.S. offices in March 2021 on a voluntary basis. After “extensively” surveying its team to hear what they wanted in a new post-COVID work structure, Front determined it made the most sense to require people to come into the office on the same days, even if not every day.
Image Credits: Front
“We wanted to be deliberate about this because having just a handful of people spread across a big empty office doesn’t achieve what our team is looking for. We want to ensure that on days when employees come to the office, they’re feeling the bustle, energy and warmth of their team around them,” she said. “If everyone could select their own days to come in, we might have small groups every day of the week — and employees that didn’t organize when to come in together might never get to meet.”
Still, she acknowledged that Front is only a couple of months in on its new approach, and is “monitoring the return to office process closely” to see how it will need to adapt and adjust.
Just how this tug of war will play out over time remains to be seen.
New data from real estate listings site Zillow shows that while sales of million-dollar homes has reached record levels in recent years, buyers are getting a lot less house for that $1 million than they used to, especially in the Bay Area.
Here, $1 million homes are considered less expensive. In the San Jose metro, the typical home value is more than $1.5 million and homes that cost $1 million or more make up 72% of the housing market. In the San Francisco metro, the typical home value is $1.46 million and $1 million-plus homes account for 62% of the market.
So, it stands to reason that buyers with $1 million to spend in the Bay Area are getting the least square footage, said Matt Kreamer, a data spokesman for Zillow.
“Just like toilet paper rolls and candy bars, houses have experienced ‘shrinkflation,’” he wrote in an email. “As the price of homes has skyrocketed over the past couple years, you just don’t get as much for your money as you used to.”
• This new S.F. tower with condos and office space is a $1 billion bet on the city’s recovery.
Today’s forecast
Californians have endured scorching heat for what seems like an eternity, which in the Bay Area resulted in record temperatures including an all-time high of 117 in Fairfield on Tuesday and a record of 109 in San Jose on Tuesday.
So we could all definitely use a break.
Thankfully, Thursday signals the slow withering of the ridge of high pressure that’s resulted in this heat wave as the sea breeze pushes closer and closer to shore, writes newsroom meteorologist Gerry Díaz.
San Francisco residents on the west side will be the first to welcome cool, moist Pacific clouds, which will eventually spread along the rest of the coast. This will bring wind gusts of up to 25 mph at times, and afternoon highs in the upper 70s.
While the sea breeze will travel into the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, East Bay cities will still need to put up with the stubborn 100-plus-degree heat today. And active wildfires may bring some moderately bad air quality to the Bay Area.
Meteorologists say we’ll see a cooldown starting Friday and through the weekend, with temperatures declining further early next week.
• State power grid strained again Wednesday by extreme demand, braces for Thursday.
• California wildfire in Tahoe National Forest produces massive pyrocumulus cloud.
What to eat and drink
The bacon-wrapped burrito from Taco Mama Cuca in Oakland.
Courtesy Maria Marquez
When you think of bacon and burritos, a breakfast burrito probably comes to mind. But what about a bacon-wrapped burrito, or baconrito?
Yes, this is a dish that exists at an Oakland home restaurant called Tacos Mama Cuca. Owner Maria Marquez fills a pliable flour tortilla with asada, grilled mozzarella cheese, chorizo refried beans and Anaheim pepper, then wraps it in bacon and toasts it on a plancha until crisp.
Associate restaurant critic Cesar Hernandez tried the burrito and you can read his verdict here.
• What to order at this buzzy S.F. pizza restaurant from a former Mister Jiu’s chef.
• This Napa wine’s secret ingredient? Straw. Yes, straw.
Around the Bay
The BART system is celebrating its 50th birthday.
Jessica Christian/The Chronicle
• BART at 50: After decades of growth and tumult, the transit system is stuck in a massive financial hole.
• A big spike: New data shows the homeless population in this East Bay city nearly doubled. “Fifth Mission” podcast: How California is rethinking homeless shelters.
• Municipal property as reparations: This Bay Area city will be first to allow an Indigenous group the exclusive right to use city land.
• Claim debunked: No, Newsom’s push for electric cars isn’t the cause of potential blackouts in California. Also: Newsom just signed fast-food worker protections into law. There’s already an effort to overturn them.
• Judge ruling: Controversial S.F. supervisorial candidate Leanna Louie can’t be on the November ballot. Also: Alison Collins and her husband list S.F. home for $2.9 million despite unresolved building compliance violation.
• A free-speech nightmare? Critics denounce California bill punishing doctors who spread COVID misinformation.
• Taken into custody: Alameda deputy accused of “execution style” slaying of married couple surrenders to authorities.
• Questions raised: She starred in an anti-Prop 27 ad — after her organization got $50,000 from a top anti-Prop. 27 funder.
100 years of the San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Opera conductor Eun Sun Kim at War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco.
Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle
Tonight the San Francisco Opera’s new season opens, which is particularly meaningful this year because the company is celebrating its centennial anniversary.
Today, only the legendary Metropolitan Opera in New York can claim a longer history among the nation’s principal opera companies, writes classical music critic Joshua Kosman.
“The San Francisco Opera is such a great and important company,” said Marc A. Scorca, CEO of the industry umbrella group Opera America. “Even at times when it was in a small city that seemed far away from the cultural center of the country, it’s a company that, in many ways, has punched above its weight.”
If you plan to attend a concert, here is everything you need to know including what’s new this year, the full season schedule, dress and etiquette, and COVID protocols.
Also:
• Netflix’s “Knives Out” sequel will open the 45th Mill Valley Film Festival. Here’s a look at the full lineup.
Bay Briefing is written by Kellie Hwang and Anna Buchmann and sent to readers’ email inboxes on weekday mornings. Sign up for the newsletter here, and contact the writers at kellie.hwang@sfchronicle.com and anna.buchmann@sfchronicle.com.
