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It’s no secret that Bay Area living is expensive, so much so that many people are leaving or coming up with some very creative solutions. If you’ve ever searched for a new apartment online, you’ve undoubtedly come across a place where the images make your jaw drop at the photos and price – and NOT in a good way. Even as rent has hit a historic decline in San Francisco, I’m here to remind you that the median two-bedroom rent is still more than double the national average. Welcome to the series we’re calling, “Guess how much this rents for in San Francisco.”

This two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment across from Ghirardelli Square and just down the street from Aquatic Park is for rent on Craigslist.

Article source: https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/slideshow/2-bedroom-apartment-Ghirardelli-square-for-rent-sf-225044.php

Apple on Friday announced an initiative that will address a growing homeless community living on a tract of the company’s undeveloped land in San Jose.

The program will be funded by millions of dollars pulled from Apple’s $2.5 billion pledge to fight California’s housing shortage, reports The Mercury News.

Apple said it will spend the money on outreach and relocation projects for the between 35 and 70 people living on its property at the corner of North First Street and Component Drive in North San Jose, the report said.

“Apple has long been focused on helping to combat the housing crisis across California and working with partners to support at-risk communities and provide new affordable units,” Apple said in a statement. “In San Jose, we have been closely coordinating with local partners for several months to identify housing alternatives and support for families who will be transitioning away from the Component Drive site.”

Outreach began this week and is being conducted by Milipitas-based non-profit HomeFirst. The group is sending social workers to interview community members and will work to find residents temporary and permanent housing, said HomeFirst CEO Rene Ramirez. Healthcare services and financial counseling will also be provided.

“We are excited to be partnering with Apple in developing a service model that places people first, and that goes above and beyond traditional encampment interventions,” Ramirez said in a statement.

Apple earlier this week said it plans to build long-term affordable housing on a section of the plot.

The encampment on Apple’s San Jose land, located near the Mineta San Jose International Airport, has reportedly grown in recent months after the City of San Jose performed an “enhanced cleanup” of neighboring areas. Residents on the plot live in wooden structures and mobile homes, and share space with an estimated 200 tons of hazardous trash and debris.

A fire broke out on the roughly 55-acre property this week, consuming about five acres of vegetation and an RV.

Read on AppleInsider

Article source: https://forums.appleinsider.com/discussion/223368

Four consecutive months of statewide home-price records may be at an end as the California housing market shows signs of cooling.

The median house price for 2021 still will be up nearly 21% and sales will show an 8% jump over 2020 levels, thanks to the first half’s white-hot home-buying frenzy, California Association of Realtors economists said Wednesday, July 28. 

By year’s end, the 2021 median price of an existing single-family home is forecast to be $795,600, up 20.7% from the 2020 median. That’s a gain of $136,000 from last year – and a gain of almost $300,000 over the past five years, surpassing the pre-crash price run-up to 2007.

The median is the midpoint of all sales, with half the homes selling for more and half selling for less.

This year’s house sales are forecast to reach 444,500 transactions, up 7.9% to the highest tally in 12 years.

So, despite some softening in sales in the second half of the year, prices still will continue to climb, CAR Deputy Chief Economist Oscar Wei said.

“We may not set another new record high,” Wei said, but “statewide home prices will continue to stay pretty high.”

Underpinning the buying frenzy during the first half of 2021 were record-low mortgage rates and a drop in the number of homes on the market, CAR economists said.

For sale listings were down by at least 40% during the first five months of the year, CAR figures show, but they are projected to increase over the summer and fall when home buying typically slows and housing inventory typically rises. That will translate into “more normal” price and sales growth going forward.

“We do see the market as normalizing,” CAR Chief Economist Jordan Levine said.

Nonetheless, listings still will be down about 5% from year-ago levels by December, CAR predicted.

Levine said the COVID-19 pandemic was a key driver of the past year’s housing boom, dividing the job market into two segments.

Workers in restaurants, retail, leisure and hospitality sectors saw jobs drop from 42%-77% during the pandemic. On the other hand, those in the information, health care, manufacturing and professional and technical segments of the economy saw job gains in the 45%-86% range. The logistics sector saw employment nearly triple, thanks to the expanded reliance on online shopping.

Hence, demand for new homes grew sharply for people in higher-income jobs who could work from home.

Demand grew for bigger houses, with the average size of a sold home jumping from a pre-pandemic average of 1,755 square feet to 1,859 square feet during the summer of 2020.

“Those high-income earners and that excess need for housing … all mixed together to create this surge in buyer demand,” Levine said. “Folks who were in those low-wage categories, who really were grappling with housing costs, weren’t necessarily the prime targets for homeownership.”

At the same time, average rates for a 30-year fixed mortgage fell to an all-time low of 2.65% in January and averaged 2.9% this year so far, according to Freddie Mac. CAR predicted the average rate for 2021 as a whole will be 3%.

First-time buyers accounted for much of this year’s buying frenzy. CAR figures show 38.4% of homebuyers in 2020 were renters, the most in a decade. Levine noted, however, first-time buyers tended to be more affluent long-time renters with “remotable” jobs.

For example, a third of buyers last year had enough cash to pay a 20% down payment, compared with a fourth paying 20% down during the housing boom of 2006, a survey of Realtors showed. And just a 10th of home buyers purchased a home with no down payment vs. 40% in 2006.

Some changes caused by the pandemic are here to stay, Levine said. Remote work and online shopping will continue to be higher than before the pandemic. But following a year in which home-buying demand surged in resorts and outlying suburbs, demand again is returning to California’s urban core.

“When you kind of look at it from a more zoomed-out perspective, on a regional basis, the two areas that are growing fastest right now in terms of closed transactions are the San Francisco Bay area and Southern California,” Levine said.

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Article source: https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2021/07/29/californias-housing-market-to-cool-in-second-half-of-year-realtor-economist-predict/

Over in Walnut Creek this week, a burned-out family home has hit the market for $875,000, and buyers are clamoring to make the winning bid.

The home at 254 Tamarisk Drive was ravaged by a two-alarm fire on Sept. 11 last year. The roof collapsed and the garage was reportedly fully engulfed in flames. Firefighters determined that the blaze appeared to have started in the garage, though a cause wasn’t revealed. 

The wrecked state of the house hasn’t dissuaded buyers though, which may not be a surprise in the Bay Area’s ultra competitive real estate market.

“Bare bones opportunity to renovate/rebuild/restore. Extensive damage from a fire has this house stripped to the studs on both floors. This one is ready to start fresh and build to suit your style preferences,” the blurb reads. 

“Opportunities like this are rare to make dramatic changes to a home and floor plan … this is more than a fixer and the potential is limited only by imagination.”

And just like that, after hitting the market for only 6 days, a sale is “pending” after multiple offers flooded in.

Listing agent Melinda Byrne of Key Realty told SFGATE that eight offers came in, with more on the way, and expects the sale to close next week at “significantly over list price.” 

“I’ve been in business a long time and sold a lot of fixers so I wasn’t surprised at all,” Byrne added. “The location is great.”

Could this charred shell of a home sell for $1 million?

Despite these headline-making outliers, average tenant buyout sums in San Francisco have actually stayed pretty consistent. We found that the median buyout figure has hovered between $30,000 and $35,000 every year since 2015.

“(Buyout amounts are) almost more consistent than you’d expect it to be, given that rents are going up in the city,” Robert Collins, executive director of the San Francisco Rent Board, told The Chronicle.

Collins added that the number of buyouts yearly has also remained remarkably consistent despite other upheavals in San Francisco’s housing landscape during the pandemic. Landlords filed 334 buyout agreements in 2020, just a slight decrease from the 365 filed in 2019 and the same number as in 2017.

A tenant buyout occurs when a landlord pays their tenants to willingly vacate a unit. That could be either because they cannot legally evict them or because the costs of eviction are higher than the cost of buying them out, Joseph Tobener, a tenants’ rights attorney and partner at Tobener Ravenscroft LLP, told The Chronicle.

“You’ve gotta look at what the landlord stands to gain or lose,” Tobener said. “What are the consequences of the eviction, what are the minimum moving allowances, how much do they stand to gain if they do this buyout.”

Large buyouts, like the record-breaking Presidio Heights transaction, generally go to tenants of buildings in expensive neighborhoods paying well below market rate after having lived in a unit for decades.

In most cases, Tobener said, landlords can make tenants vacate through a no-fault eviction process, such as the Ellis Act, which allows property owners to evict tenants if they plan to move themselves or relatives in, sell the units or demolish the building. In such cases, landlords must pay each tenant about $7,500 for relocation expenses.

But in some instances — such as when the tenant is elderly, disabled or infirm — evicting someone through an Ellis Act makes the unit ineligible for conversion into a condominium, Tobener said. Thus, landlords usually prefer to pay those tenants to leave willingly.

In other cases, tenants have secured lifetime leases on units, making Ellis Act and other no-fault evictions illegal, Tobener said.

The data shows that buyouts are concentrated in certain parts of San Francisco. We found that from 2015 through this June, buyouts happen most commonly in the middle of the city, in neighborhoods including Noe Valley, the Castro and the Mission.

The concentration of buyouts in these neighborhoods makes sense, Tobener said; they are expensive, with high-value housing units.

“The nicer the neighborhood, the higher values of the home, the bigger the buyouts,” he said.

They also tend to have larger numbers of two-unit condominiums, which are the most common targets of tenant buyouts. That’s because S.F. currently has a moratorium on condominium conversions for all multi-unit buildings except for two-unit ones.

And since condo conversions can increase a building’s value by up to 30% — not to mention rid landlords of tenants paying below market-rate rents — two-unit buildings in expensive neighborhoods are “kind of like the holy grail for real estate developers,” Tobener said.

Single-family rental homes, on the other hand, are rarely targeted for buyouts because they don’t fall under San Francisco’s strict rent control laws, and thus landlords can keep home rentals at or near market rates, he said.

Susie Neilson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer, and Nami Sumida is a Chronicle data visualization developer. Email: susan.neilson@sfchronicle.com, nami.sumida@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @susieneilson, @namisumida