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The mansion in the woodsy suburb of Kentfield over the Golden Gate Bridge was originally listed in 2019 but didn’t sell. At the time Newsom had just left the governor’s mansion in Sacramento for a more “kid-friendly” home in Fair Oaks, 14 miles from the capitol. 

Newsom, who grew up in San Francisco, and wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom moved to the mansion at 11 Rock Road in Kentfield in 2011 shortly after the former mayor of San Francisco became California’s lieutenant governor.

Although the couple had been close to renting in the Presidio, Newsom told SFGATE at the time, “We drove up the driveway and said, ‘Wow, this is it.’”

The 1,800-square-foot mid-century manor with unobstructed views of Mt. Tam and the bay, complete with pool, spa and olive trees, was bought by the Newsoms for $2.145 million in 2011. In May of this year Newsom off-loaded it for $5.895 million, records show. 

The New York Post reports that the Newsoms sank $330,000 into remodeling the house before first attempting to sell in 2019.

Check out the property in this promotional video from Vanguard.

Across the bay, Jessica Takano, a graduate of UC Berkeley School of Law, is a practicing real estate litigator with Donahue Fitzgerald, which has offices in Oakland, Walnut Creek and Marin. Though the two have never met or worked together, both agree that real estate law is deeply personal because at the core of many issues is one thing: a home.  

Article source: https://www.sfgate.com/top-lawyers/article/Feeling-at-home-Bay-Area-real-estate-lawyers-16377237.php

Bay Area home sales continued on a path of record prices and growing sales, as aggressive buyers returned to compete for houses near tech hubs.

The median sale price for an existing Bay Area home in June remained at $1.2 million — a record level also hit in May — while sales volume grew from the previous month. But agents noticed some creeping hesitancy among buyers, although not enough to keep prices from rising in 7 of 9 counties during the last two months.

CoreLogic economist Selma Hepp said home prices may have peaked before the typical summer lull, when families are more likely to head out on vacation than a housing-hunting journey. High prices may also be pushing more buyers out of the market. “There are fewer people who can compete at that level,” Hepp said.

The gains were even more dramatic compared to a year ago, when COVID-19 restrictions limited home tours, slowed sales and distorted the market. The median sale price for an existing Bay Area home in June rose 27% year-over-year to $1.62 million in Santa Clara County, grew 25% to $898,000 in Contra Costa County, jumped 11% to $1.83 million in San Mateo County, increased nearly 30% to $1.2 million in Alameda County and went up 10% to $1.83 million in San Francisco, according to CoreLogic data.

Overall sales of homes and condos grew 60% from last June, and about 12% from May.

But how long will Bay Area home prices climb?

Comparisons between May and June show the region’s prices rising more slowly, with most counties seeing gains of between 2% and 6%. The median in Contra Costa County fell nearly 3% in June from the previous month, suggesting buyers may be feeling the pinch of heavy mortgages in suburban communities.

Economists expect the California housing market to cool in the next six months. CoreLogic expects a 7.5% increase in home values in the next 12 months, still faster than the U.S. forecast of 3.2% growth.

Bay Area real estate, like the national market, has boomed during COVID-19. Home values soared in the last year in three western states popular with California refugees: up 34% in Idaho, 26% in Arizona, and 24% in Montana.

U.S. home values have appreciated at record levels in recent months, according to CoreLogic data going back to the 1970s. “We have to slow down from there,” Hepp said.

Economists from the California Association of Realtors are forecasting smaller price gains for sellers for the rest of the year as more homes come up for sale and buyers have more choices.

Bay Area agents are already seeing more houses on the market, even as potential buyers have headed out on summer vacations. Home buying usually picks back up after Labor Day.

Pleasanton agent Tina Hand, president of Bay East Association of Realtors, said low interest rates continue to attract buyers. The rate for a standard, 30-year fixed mortgage remained under 3% at the end of July, according to FreddieMac.

But she’s also seen deals fall apart in recent months. “It’s not the feeding frenzy it was earlier this year and last year,” Hand said. “The good news is, there’s more inventory coming on to the market.”

East Bay homes took an average of 13 days to sell in May and June — about twice as fast as sales a year ago. Castro Valley, Alameda and Berkeley continue to be among the most competitive East Bay communities, according to MLS data.

Silicon Valley cities continued to attract buyers, with sales up in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.

Cupertino agent Ramesh Rao said rising prices have made buyers more particular about their purchases. For buyers spending more than $2 million on a home near major tech headquarters, location and move-in ready condition are musts, he said.

Rao sold two spacious homes in Cupertino recently. Both fetched more than $2 million, around their listing prices, he said, but they sat on the market for more than a month. Many buyers seemed weary of paying a premium for homes located near major thoroughfares, he said.

Although taking a month to sell a home is typical in the rest of the country, he said, in Silicon Valley “if it doesn’t get sold in a week there’s something wrong.”

But Rao believes buyer sentiment has shifted in the last several weeks. Buyers who once looked at a potential bidding war and said, “Oh, man, I may not get this house,” are now asking a different question, Rao said. “Do I really want this home?”

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Article source: https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/08/05/bay-area-home-prices-sales-continue-to-surge

Latest updates:

Vaccinated Newsom staffer tests positive: A staff member in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office has tested positive for COVID-19 despite being fully vaccinated, his office said Monday afternoon. The governor and staff who routinely work closely with him had not interacted with the infected person, a spokesperson said. Newsom’s office requires employees to wear masks and staffers are required to be vaccinated or tested at least once per week. The governor had to quarantine twice last year after he came into contact with staffers who later tested positive.

California Assembly mandates COVID vaccination for employees: In a memo to staff, Speaker Anthony Rendon said that every employee will be required to get fully vaccinated by Sept. 1. “By ensuring Assembly staff is vaccinated, we are protecting everyone who enters the Capitol, including constituents, lobbyists and journalists,” Rendon said. Those who do not the vaccine could be fired, he added.

Rental applications show S.F. is back: People still really want to live in San Francisco, at least according to rental data. RentCafe, a national real estate listing service, collects data on rental applications filed in major cities from year to year. Its latest report shows that rental applications into San Francisco more than doubled in the first half of 2021 compared with the same period in 2020 — a 105% increase. Read the story here.

San Francisco to re-open mass COVID-19 testing site amid delta surge: San Francisco will re-open a mass COVID-19 testing site in SoMa Wednesday amid a troubling rise in cases — mostly among the unvaccinated — and a surge in demand for tests. Read the story here.

In San Francisco, it’s the summer of rental scams: A sunny apartment at a price too good to be true. A text message offering a loan to pay off pandemic rent debt. Or a sudden phone call promising a grant to avoid an eviction — for a small up-front fee. Welcome to the world of housing scams in the age of COVID-19. Read the story here.

San Francisco’s first day of school brings and nerves as students return amid pandemic’s delta surge: More than 50,000 San Francisco students walked, skipped or ran into the city’s fully reopened public schools Monday, many for the first time in 17 months. Their laughter, squeals and joy filling playgrounds and high school hallways. It was, many said, a moment they had dreamed of and at times had lost hope of seeing during the long months of distance learning. Read the story here.

The delta variant disrupted BART’
s return to the office. Now it weighs vaccine mandates: The delta variant disrupted BART’s return to the office. Now it weighs vaccine mandates:Weeks after California declared itself reopened, BART office employees who’d mostly been working remotely for nearly a year and a half made their return to the transit agency’s new downtown Oakland headquarters last month under a hybrid work schedule. But what happened in the month that followed illustrated the stubborn challenges facing BART and all office workplaces as they attempt to inch toward normalcy amid a surging and highly infectious delta variant. Read the story here.

In expensive rental markets like the Bay Area, apartment scams light on details and heavy on pressure to hand over deposits are nothing new. But recent alerts from financial watchdogs and data on rental housing schemes point to a fast-changing landscape for California renters trying to navigate the frenzied pandemic housing market, where some tenants are struggling to dig out of debt while others take advantage of discounted rents.

A new Apartment Guide report reveals that from January 2015 to May 2021, California was home to three of the nation’s top five cities for reported rental scams per capita: No. 1 Los Angeles, No. 3 San Francisco and No. 4 San Diego. The report also found that the busy summer moving season tends to be the most costly, when median losses have topped $19,000 per victim.

This year, the timing couldn’t be worse. After a slow start to California’s unprecedented $5.2 billion pandemic rent relief program, officials are pleading with tenants to apply for assistance before the state’s Sept. 30 eviction moratorium expires. But tenant advocates warn that a widening array of scams may be hindering those efforts.

“It’s really brutal out there in terms of trying to prove that you’re not trying to just get people’s information and take advantage of them,” said Leora Tanjuatco Ross, associate director of the Housing Leadership Council of San Mateo County.

Even before the pandemic, Tanjuatco Ross said her nonprofit was hearing more skepticism from renters worn down by years of rising costs and intense competition for housing. And now, dozens of community groups around the state have been enlisted to help pump out rent relief funds through a maze of city, county and state programs funded by the federal government.

As of last week, the state’s primary rent relief program had paid $282 million in funding to 23,760 households, according to the California Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency — a fraction of the 807,000 households that the National Equity Atlas estimates are behind on rent. When adding in smaller Bay Area county and city rent relief programs, just 10% of nearly $900 million in funds available to the region had been paid out as of mid-July.

Now, efforts to speed up those payments are colliding with recent warnings from watchdog groups about scammers changing their tactics as pandemic rental protections start to expire.

“Con artists often take advantage of the confusion and stress surrounding major events,” the Better Business Bureau explained in an Aug. 6 alert. “As the eviction moratorium winds down, watch out for scammers offering loans, peddling credit repair services or promoting government programs.”

The Better Business Bureau’s scam tracker, which is just one snapshot based on consumer reports, identified more than 50 rental and moving scams around the Bay Area and 144 throughout California since the start of COVID-19 lockdowns in March 2020. They range from two roommates in Oakland who said they lost $4,190 after touring an apartment by sending money for a deposit through a cash app to a person in Los Angeles who paid $499 for an eviction defense service that never materialized.

One challenge is that the range of rental scams in California has already exploded in recent years, going far beyond familiar attempts to get apartment applicants to wire money to unknown recipients. Now, scammers may assure targets that they don’t need Social Security numbers, just a credit report. Or they repost photos from houses recently sold or listed for rent on more regulated websites such as Zillow, Vrbo or Airbnb, district attorneys in Santa Cruz County and elsewhere have warned.

Last year, the FBI’s cybercrime division reported more than 13,600 confirmed victims of rental and real estate scams across the U.S., making them less widespread than credit card schemes but more frequent than health care-related ploys. All told, real estate scams cost victims more than $213 million.

Around the Bay Area, rental scams have also taken root in areas reeling from fires and, more recently, in places seeing an influx of remote workers. Take a three-bedroom Santa Cruz bungalow with a white picket fence advertised for $3,600 a month last week on Craigslist and $4,600 a month on Zillow.

“I cannot give you a tour in person right now,” the Craigslist poster said, instead offering an elaborate backstory about out-of-state cancer treatment and an image of a driver’s license with the same Santa Cruz address.

“Yeah, it’s a scam,” said Scott Joly, the Realtor trying to rent the actual house.

Lauren Hepler is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: lauren.hepler@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LAHepler