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SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) – Another sign things are getting back to normal, open houses are back!

If you’re in the market to buy a new home, you can now tour it without an appointment but it’s not going to be exactly the way it used to be.

Realtors have used open houses to sell homes for decades — That stopped when the pandemic hit but the California Department of Health has announced they can start up again with restrictions.

“I think it will give more buyers a chance to see a home before it’s off the market,” realtor Tracy Nelson said. 

Tracy Nelson has been selling homes in the East Bay for years using open houses to connect with potential buyers and sell her client’s homes.

During the pandemic, she had to get creative, unable to host an open house for more than a year.

“I think really it was prequalifying, pre-approving, and setting those appointments with very serious buyers who were ready, and this hot market really helped as well,” Nelson said.

The California Department of Public Health announced last week that in-person showings of properties, like open houses, can start back up again.

Showings must follow proper protocols:

• People who feel sick or have COVID-19 symptoms may not participate
• Physical distancing must be maintained
• Hand sanitizer should be made available
• Face coverings are required

“Even though open houses are possible it is certainly not business as usual there are still some very important procedures they are going to have to follow in order to tour an open home that is going to keep them safe it’s going to keep the agent safe and it’s going to keep the home seller safe as well,” David Stark, with Bay East Association of Realtors, said.

With a high demand for homes in the Bay Area and low inventory, Nelson says open houses can only help.

“I feel like a lot more buyers will have the opportunity by being able to drive around and be able to go into open houses and that way more people aren’t losing out on placing an offer,” Nelson said. 

Nelson says she’ll host open houses as long as her clients are comfortable with the idea.

Article source: https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/open-houses-return-to-the-bay-area-with-restrictions/

By comparison, home values in the U.S. overall rose 11.6% over the past year. And in some regions, including Phoenix and Austin, Texas, home values soared by more than 20%.

The S.F. and San Jose metropolitan areas actually rank at the very bottom of all major metropolitan areas for home value appreciation, noted Jeff Tucker, a senior economist at Zillow.

But, he said, these trends look very different at the county level.

“The big takeaway that I’m seeing here is, the most expensive parts of the Bay and the most urban parts of the Bay have had the slowest growth rates,” Tucker said.

That’s for a number of reasons, but a big one is that people are leaving San Francisco for other parts of the Bay Area and California, lowering demand compared to previous years.

These ex-San Franciscans and San Joseans are contributing to price increases in the more “affordable” Bay Area counties located within the San Francisco metropolitan area, like Alameda and Contra Costa: In those counties, home values increased by 14% and 14.3%, respectively, this year, even more than the U.S. average. Meanwhile, in San Francisco proper, home values actually decreased by 2.8%.

Not that any county in these metropolitan areas comes close to what most Americans would consider “affordable.” In San Jose, median home values are up to $1.36 million, while the San Francisco metro area’s home value has cracked an all-time high of $1.23 million. (Again, the S.F. metropolitan area includes those relatively more affordable counties, like Alameda and Contra Costa.)

Supply may also have affected the differences between the Bay Area and the rest of the country. While the home inventory nationwide was down 30.3% this April compared to last year, both the San Francisco and San Jose metro areas saw their home inventories increase compared to the previous year — inventory was up by 32% in the S.F. metro area and by 37% in San Jose.

Part of why the bay saw such a dramatic increase in supply stems from its strict response to the pandemic: The region’s housing market essentially shut down last April, normally the best time for home sales. That shutdown deflated housing stock for last April, making this April’s supply increase look especially large.

The Bay Area’s April 2020 real estate market pause likely had an especially strong effect because the region had so little housing supply to begin with, Tucker said: “In San Francisco, the levels of inventory are kind of notoriously low; it’s just not a market that has a deep liquid pool of homes trading and available.”

Still, prospective home buyers should take heart from the inventory increase — it reflects a real trend toward equilibrium between buyers and sellers in the Bay, according to Tucker.

“The pandemic and remote work has given more people options,” he said. “Maybe (they) keep that Bay Area job without having to live in the Bay Area.”

Susie Neilson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: susie.neilson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @susieneilson

Lexi Cerretti, who represented the buyers, was also involved in the sale of a $38 million property last September, which reportedly was the priciest-ever waterfront sale on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe. That estate was famous for its role as the fictional Ponderosa Ranch in the long-running Western television series “Bonanza.”

The recent $22 million sale involved one of just 15 properties with a much-sought-after private pier along the stretch of Incline Village’s sandy beach. The 5,163-square-foot home at 949 Lakeshore Blvd. has four bedrooms and seven bathrooms.

The home was owned by the family of Renée Vento, who was also the selling agent. Cerretti said the buyers were a Bay Area couple based out of Nevada. Both agents work for Compass Lake Tahoe.

Vento described the ongoing “huge frenzy to come to Lake Tahoe,” with a lot of wealthy, younger buyers from Silicon Valley searching for lakefront property and looking to take advantage of Nevada’s tax incentives. That in turn has led to “extremely low inventory that has driven prices up,” she said.

The Reno Gazette-Journal reported Monday that the median home price in Incline Village-Crystal Bay tripled this spring over the previous year, and also noted the generational shift with Baby Boomers selling to Generation X and Millennial buyers.

Cerretti said she’s mostly seeing buyers from the Bay Area, with some out of New York and the Chicago area. She said many have experienced major financial events including selling companies or retirement, or are looking to leave states with higher taxes.

Vento said the Lakeshore Boulevard house was built in 1972, and it was rumored that the owner of Cal Neva Casino in nearby Crystal Bay was the original owner. Her family bought it in 2012 for about $12 million to use as a vacation home, and after a decade, they were ready to sell it to another family.

“It was just time to do so,” she said. “Everyone’s grown up, and both my sisters and their families live in the Lake Tahoe area and have homes of their own.”

Vento said the property was listed for $26 million in early April, and the family received several offers. She said sellers typically don’t get their asking prices in the luxury market, which is very different from the typical median market.

Vento added that the home had no major renovations or upgrades, though the sellers “took very good care of it.” Cerretti said because it was an older construction, some interested buyers wanted to rebuild the property.

Ultimately, she said, $22 million was a “fair market price.”

Vento said one of the property’s main selling points was its expansive lake views — farther east or west, “the view gets pinched.” It also offered a sandy beach and a pier, which Vento said buyers prize because permits are now very difficult to acquire.

Kellie Hwang is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kellie.hwang@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kelliehwang

If you think buying a house has become too expensive, try renting a home or apartment. Fast-rising home prices have investors seeing dollar signs, and renters digging deeper into their wallets.

Rents for apartments rose 1.3% in April, according to RealPage, which is the fastest pace for a single month in about a decade. And the jump comes right at the beginning of prime leasing season, as the majority of household moves occur between April and September.  

In the San Francisco Bay Area, which saw rents plummet amid the coronavirus pandemic, renters are coming back as vaccinations encourage people to return to cities. Rents finally began to rise again in May, although they were still down about 21% from their pre-pandemic peak, according to Zumper, a rental app. 

“Our data shows promising signs that the ‘Grand Unlock’ is underway. After more than a year of uncertainty and volatile rents due to the pandemic, we are seeing signs of rebound and stability,” said Anthemos Georgiades, co-founder and CEO of Zumper. 

Single-family rentals are rising even faster. Rents for those homes jumped 4.3% in March compared with a year ago, according to CoreLogic. That’s up from a 3% year-over-year increase in March 2020. Demand is outstripping supply, as occupancy for single-family rentals is at a generational high, according to the U.S. Census. 

The index, “shows a preference shift to standalone properties as renters seek more space in less dense areas,” said Molly Boesel, principal economist at CoreLogic. “Prior to the pandemic, rents for detached properties and attached properties grew at similar rates. However, starting in June 2020, rent growth for detached properties accelerated and by March, grew at five times the rent growth rate of attached properties.” 

High home prices are also driving more people to rent single-family homes. They simply can’t afford to buy. As rents move higher, however, affordability will start to play into that demand as well. Just over a third of consumers surveyed by CoreLogic said they already feel rental options in their neighborhood are not very or not at all affordable. 

Rents for single-family homes are also growing faster at the higher end of the market. Below is CoreLogic’s breakdown of rent increases by price tier: 

·       Lower-priced (75% or less than the regional median): 3.2%, down from 3.8% in March 2020

·       Lower-middle priced (75% to 100% of the regional median): 3.7%, up from 3.1% in March 2020

·       Higher-middle priced (100% to 125% of the regional median): 4.2%, up from 2.9% in March 2020

·       Higher-priced (125% or more than the regional median): 5%, up from 2.8% in March 2020 

Given the higher rents these properties can command, investors are plowing back into the market. Home sales to investors rose 2.7% year over year in the first quarter of this year, marking the first period of growth since the pandemic began, according Redfin a real estate brokerage. Investors bought about 1 of every 7 U.S. homes (14.9%) in the first quarter. 

“Investors are likely starting to feel more comfortable because the economy is in recovery mode,” Sheharyar Bokhari, senior economist at Redfin, said. “They also may be jumping back in because they see the intensifying shortage of homes for sale as an opportunity. With so few houses on the market, many families are resorting to rentals.” 

Investors also often have the benefit of cash, making them far more competitive in an already competitive market. All-cash buyers made up 25% of home sales in April, according to the National Association of Realtors, up from just 13% the previous April. 

Roofstock, an online property sales and management company that facilitates investor purchases, said it saw substantial growth in the first quarter, in both the number and dollar value of homes transacted on its platform. The gross merchandize value of the homes bought and sold was more than $380 million, a 569% increase over the first quarter of 2020.  

“While we did experience a downturn in Q2 and Q3 of last year, in Q4 the market came roaring back, and we are now experiencing unprecedented levels of demand across our platform,” said Gary Beasley, co-founder and CEO of Roofstock. “In fact, COVID has encouraged people to increasingly transact digitally since travel has been restricted, and we’ve seen that over 90% of rentals purchased through Roofstock are more than 250 miles away from where the investor lives.”  

Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/25/get-ready-rents-are-rising-fast-again-even-in-san-francisco.html

Thousands of Bay Area landowners hoping to lock in tax savings flooded assessors’ offices this year, transferring ownership of homes and other properties to their children before new rules took effect limiting the next generation’s ability to inherit their parents’ advantageous property assessments.

“Everyone is going, ‘Oh-oh, the window is closing if I want to transfer my property to my kids,’” said Contra Costa County Assessor Gus Kramer. “We had a landrush if you will.”

The rush was spurred by the implementation of Proposition 19, a statewide measure approved by voters last November that expanded property tax breaks for older homeowners, created a new firefighting fund and changed the rules on inherited properties.

For years, parents and grandparents have been able to transfer property to their descendants at its current assessed value, which is based on the original purchase price plus a small annual increase. Thanks to Proposition 13, that’s often significantly lower than a property’s current market value. And in California’s stratospheric housing market, lower assessments mean lower taxes.

But under Prop. 19, children can only inherit those lower assessments if they move into the home within a year. If they don’t, the property is reassessed at current market value.

Assessors’ offices throughout the region were inundated with applications before the new rules took effect in mid-February. Alameda County received 2,900 parent-to-child property transfers – three times the number it got during the same three and a half month time period the prior year. In Contra Costa County, there were 1,086 transfers compared to 643 the prior year. In just three and a half months San Mateo County had 1,338 transfers – almost as many as it got in all of 2019.

Marin County saw 660, 12 times as many as during the same time the previous year, according to the Marin Independent-Journal. And Santa Clara County had 1,178 transfers during that period, nearly double the preceding year. An official with the Santa Clara County Assessor’s office said many of the properties transferred before the deadline were likely vacation homes or other secondary properties, not family homes whose heirs would still be able to move in and claim a lower assessed value under Prop. 19.

San Francisco hasn’t yet counted parent-to-child transfers, but a spokesman for the assessor-recorder’s office said they received almost a years’ worth of property transactions in the nine months leading up to Feb. 16.

Estate attorney Jim Cunningham, whose law firm CunninghamLegal has offices throughout California, said he got about 300 calls from people panicked that they didn’t have enough time to transfer properties to their kids and preserve their lower taxes.

“I had people crying,” he said. “It negatively impacted people whose wealth is in real estate.”

The change in inheritance rules was part of Prop 19’s pitch to voters that it would close what supporters called “unfair tax loopholes.” Critics say the old rules allowed families to build generational wealth.

In 2018, the Los Angeles Times found many of those children were renting out the properties they inherited, cashing in on rising market-rate rents while paying significantly lower property taxes. Nearly two-thirds of inherited properties in Los Angeles County were used as rentals or second homes, the newspaper found. And the lower taxes on those properties cost schools and local governments $280 million. Actor Jeff Bridges and his brother, the newspaper found, saved about $300,000 in taxes between 2009 and 2017 on a Malibu beach house they inherited and rented out for nearly $16,000 a month.

The Yes on 19 campaign said it wanted to close those “loopholes exploited by East Coast investors, celebrities, and wealthy trust fund heirs to avoid paying their fair share on vacation homes, beachfront rentals, and luxury estates.” The proposition, which was approved with 51 percent of the vote, will also allow homeowners 55 and older to transfer the lower assessed value of their house to a new primary home purchased anywhere in the state.

“This proposition is affecting a lot of people who are not as wealthy as Jeff Bridges,” said Ronald Ongtoaboc, communications director for state Sen. Patricia Bates, R-Laguna Niguel.

Bates introduced a bill to delay implementation of Prop 19’s inheritance rules to Feb. 16, 2023, saying the COVID-19 pandemic makes it hard for some people to move into an inherited home within a year.

But the extension, which is still pending in the Legislature, wouldn’t change the fact that it’ll be increasingly hard for people to pass down favorable property taxes.

“(Implementation) being extended helps, but honestly it helps the lawyers,” estate attorney Cunningham said. “People are having to do unnatural things like give their property to their kids before they die.”

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Article source: https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/05/10/we-had-a-landrush-whats-driving-the-spike-in-bay-area-property-transfers