homesmillbrae.com

The changes could ultimately help add hundreds of thousands of housing units across the state — though that is still far short of the more than a million new homes that experts estimate California will need in coming years to make up for the affordability gap and to accommodate future growth.

And the fight may not yet be over, as deep-pocketed opponents of the measures weigh potential legal and political challenges.

“The housing affordability crisis is undermining the California Dream for families across the state, and threatens our long-term growth and prosperity,” Newsom said in a statement. “Making a meaningful impact on this crisis will take bold investments, strong collaboration across sectors and political courage from our leaders and communities to do the right thing and build housing for all.”

SB9, by Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, will establish a streamlined process to split lots and convert homes into duplexes, potentially creating up to four units on a property that had just one before.

Under the law, local governments will have to approve applications if the projects meet size requirements and local design standards, fall outside historic and environmentally sensitive districts, and do not require the demolition of housing that is rent-restricted or has been occupied by tenants in the past three years.

A report published in July by the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley estimated that the bill would enable new development on about 5.4% of the approximately 7.5 million parcels statewide zoned for single-family homes, making up to 710,000 new housing units financially feasible under current housing conditions. By comparison, California built more than 100,000 housing units last year for the first time in more than a decade.

“It will help our communities welcome new families to the neighborhood and enable more folks to set foot on the path to buying their first home,” Atkins said in a statement.

SB10, by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, will allow cities to rezone some parcels in urban areas, including those near public transit, for up to 10 units. Wiener said in a statement that the voluntary process gives local governments, which can spend years on rezoning because of environmental reviews and other steps, “a powerful new tool to get the job done quickly.”

The two measures are the remnants of a far more expansive proposal, first introduced nearly four years ago by Wiener, that ignited intense debate in the state Capitol over housing costs, local control and gentrification.

In early 2018, Wiener pursued legislation that would have required cities to allow four-to-eight-story apartment buildings and condominiums within a half-mile of major transit hubs and within a quarter-mile of highly used bus or light-rail stops.

After the bill failed to clear its first committee, Wiener returned the following year with a follow-up measure that lowered the height limits to four-to-five stories, while also essentially eliminating single-family zoning in the state. It would have allowed any home or vacant lot in a residential area to be converted to up to four units, and eliminated density restrictions in wealthy areas close to good schools and employment opportunities.

Local governments and suburban homeowner groups raised fierce objections about losing control over how their communities developed. Organizations representing low-income renters also feared that the changes would supercharge luxury development on valuable new tracts of land, forcing them out of their homes.

When the bill narrowly died in a dramatic vote on the floor of the state Senate in early 2020, Atkins regrouped with a coalition of legislators to plan a path forward. Their new approach scaled back its provisions and separated them into several bills that Atkins said would provide more balance.

The olive branch failed to win over many opponents, underlining the increasingly stark divide between Californians who hold precious local control over planning decisions and those who blame it for contributing to the stratospheric cost of housing.

But after stalling in the final minutes of the legislative session last year because of political gamesmanship, the concepts returned this session as SB9 and SB10, sailing through to the governor’s desk last month with bipartisan support.

Opponents continued to lobby forcefully against the bills in recent weeks. The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that also advocates on housing issues, published a full-page newspaper ad calling for Newsom to veto them.

Susie Shannon, policy director for the foundation’s housing advocacy arm, Housing Is a Human Right, said it was “unconscionable” that the measures did not include requirements for affordable or homeless housing.

The organization is considering filing a lawsuit or qualifying a referendum for the ballot, she said. It has spent tens of millions of dollars on initiatives in recent election cycles.

“We should not be celebrating that the state wants to create more luxury housing that most people can’t afford,” Shannon said.

The residence at 170 Atherton Ave. includes two homes and a sculpture garden in the most expensive ZIP code in the country — 94027.

“This listing is the largest real estate offering since 2011 when a 12-acre property on Atherton Avenue sold,” Compass listing agent Mary Gullixson said in a statement. Properties like these are generational opportunities to own in the most desirable location of the Bay Area.”

The Fisher family purchased the estate in 1975, after Donald and Doris Fisher founded the Gap in 1969. The store, created to allow people an easier way to purchase jeans, grew to became one of the nation’s more prominent clothing retailers, one that often intersected with the zeitgeist of the times. Don Fisher passed away in 2009.

The main home includes five bedrooms and four bathrooms on a single level and boasts a pool, with a pool house, and a tennis court. Large works of sculpture sit among the estate, placed alongside and near pathways and green spaces.

A secondary home on the property includes a detached one-bedroom, one-bathroom guest house.

The gardens with sculptures stretch across the entire 8 acres surrounding the two residences on the property. The sculptures are not included in the sale.

The strategy is to create something of a blind auction where buyers try to puzzle out a number that the sellers’ will actually accept and a number that’s higher than all the other offers. It’s a local quirk that everyone seems to acknowledge is just the way that things are done here.

Jodi Nishimura, a Compass agent based in Oakland, said she was surprised when she moved to the area from New York in 2002 and saw how listings were priced lower than their worth, usually around 10 percent less at that time. “It wasn’t common to see homes go for 50 percent over the listing,” she said. The Covid housing boom has made things worse, she said, with certain homes — particularly ones with great outdoor space — selling for huge premiums, well above their listed prices.

Buyers tend to loathe the underpricing — describing it as everything from “a sick game” to “bizarre.” But brokers say it works well for sellers. “Sellers want to keep the bidding war blind,” said Mr. Stea, who had the Rockridge house that sold for more than $1 million over asking. “But it disfavors buyers because they’re shooting in the dark.”

D.J. Grubb, president of the Grubb Company, a local brokerage, also attributed the extreme discrepancy between list prices and sale prices to a fast-moving market where home values have climbed quickly, making it tricky to accurately figure out the value of homes.

Agents in the area use a classic “merchandising strategy,” but take it to an extreme, says Mr. Grubb. Instead of using the retail trick of pricing a $1 million product at $999,000, agents in the area typically advise sellers to price a $1 million home to capture buyers shopping in the $750,000 price range, which means a list price of $749,000. That way, multiple offers will come in with the winning bid typically around $1 million. If enough offers come in, one might come in at $1.2 million — maybe from someone willing to pay a premium to put an end their exhausting housing search, or someone who assumes home values will soon rise to meet what they’ve paid.

When Katy Anderson bought her Upper Rockridge home about 10 years ago, she and her husband remodeled it from top to bottom, including removing a swimming pool to create a large, flat lawn her children used as a soccer field. Ms. Anderson said they were ready to “cash out” and buy a fixer upper in Orinda, a nearby suburb, and pocket some of the equity as a financial cushion.

Ms. Anderson, who is also a real estate agent with Compass, paid $786,000 for the home a decade ago and spent about $500,000 on the remodel. She thought they might be able to get above $2 million for the 3,000-square-foot home — then she saw a neighboring home sell for $2.6 million.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/07/realestate/house-hunting-is-this-price-right.html

The biggest decline in the nine-county region was in Marin County, where the median sold price fell 10.9% to $1,560,000 from July to August, according to the Realtors group. In San Mateo County, prices fell 8.8% to a median $1,925,000, and in Contra Costa the decline was 5.4% with a median price of $889,500.

The median was relatively flat in San Francisco at $1,850,000, down just $2,500 from July. Sonoma was the only Bay Area county seeing an increase, with the median sold price rising 1.1% to $770,000 in August.

The price drops accompanied a small rise in supply: Available homes in the San Francisco metropolitan area listed on real estate website Zillow rose from 8,630 in July to 8,795 in August. The share of listings with a price cut grew as well — meaning that buyers had more choices and an improved chance of seeing a drop in asking price. However, compared to the same month in 2020, inventory was down 4.1%.

Zillow defines the San Francisco metro area as Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin counties.

According to the Realtors group, the unsold inventory index — indicating the number of months it would take to sell the supply of homes on the market at the current rate — was flat for most Bay Area counties in August.

Statewide, the median sold price set its fifth record in six months, reaching $827,940, up 2.1% from July and 17.1% from August last year, the Realtors group said.

Zillow uses a different metric called typical home value, which it calculates as an average of the middle third of the market, minus the top and bottom 5%. In August, the typical home value in the San Francisco metro area was $1,331,868, up 1.5% from July and 17.9% over last year, according to Zillow.

Nationwide, while home values grew in all 50 of the country’s largest markets last month, a deceleration is widespread, according to Zillow — 43 of the 50 major metros saw appreciation slow down. San Francisco was among the cities with the largest drop-off, along with Buffalo, San Diego and Austin.

The “lift of the gas pedal” in terms of home values “is indicative of balance returning to the market” Nicole Bachaud, economic data analyst at Zillow, said in a press release. But the factors that “pushed the market to extremes” this year are still present, she said.

Nationwide, home sales have been rising monthly since March, and monthly rent growth had been accelerating since January before slowing down slightly last month.

Typical rent in the San Francisco metro area in August — around $3,092 a month — was up from $3,072 in July and up 3.9% from $2,977 in August 2020, according to Zillow.

The biggest decline in the nine-county region was in Marin County, where the median sold price fell 10.9% to $1,560,000 from July to August, according to the Realtors group. In San Mateo County, prices fell 8.8% to a median $1,925,000, and in Contra Costa the decline was 5.4% with a median price of $889,500.

The median was relatively flat in San Francisco at $1,850,000, down just $2,500 from July. Sonoma was the only Bay Area county seeing an increase, with the median sold price rising 1.1% to $770,000 in August.

The price drops accompanied a small rise in supply: Available homes in the San Francisco metropolitan area listed on real estate website Zillow rose from 8,630 in July to 8,795 in August. The share of listings with a price cut grew as well — meaning that buyers had more choices and an improved chance of seeing a drop in asking price. However, compared to the same month in 2020, inventory was down 4.1%.

Zillow defines the San Francisco metro area as Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin counties.

According to the Realtors group, the unsold inventory index — indicating the number of months it would take to sell the supply of homes on the market at the current rate — was flat for most Bay Area counties in August.

Statewide, the median sold price set its fifth record in six months, reaching $827,940, up 2.1% from July and 17.1% from August last year, the Realtors group said.

Zillow uses a different metric called typical home value, which it calculates as an average of the middle third of the market, minus the top and bottom 5%. In August, the typical home value in the San Francisco metro area was $1,331,868, up 1.5% from July and 17.9% over last year, according to Zillow.

Nationwide, while home values grew in all 50 of the country’s largest markets last month, a deceleration is widespread, according to Zillow — 43 of the 50 major metros saw appreciation slow down. San Francisco was among the cities with the largest drop-off, along with Buffalo, San Diego and Austin.

The “lift of the gas pedal” in terms of home values “is indicative of balance returning to the market” Nicole Bachaud, economic data analyst at Zillow, said in a press release. But the factors that “pushed the market to extremes” this year are still present, she said.

Nationwide, home sales have been rising monthly since March, and monthly rent growth had been accelerating since January before slowing down slightly last month.

Typical rent in the San Francisco metro area in August — around $3,092 a month — was up from $3,072 in July and up 3.9% from $2,977 in August 2020, according to Zillow.