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“At this point, it is so ridiculous,” said Carrasco, a 16-year veteran Realtor at San Jose’s Intero Real Estate Services. “For each property, we’ve got 20 offers.”

About 60% of Carrasco’s clients are Latino. They range from first-time Millennial buyers and longtime renters to families upgrading starter homes or scouting new investment properties. Together, they represent the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. and California home buying markets, according to two new reports from the Urban Institute and the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals.

But the story is more complicated in the Bay Area, where Latino homeownership declined 6% from 2010-2019, according to one analysis of census data by progressive advocacy group California Forward.

While the Bay Area has lost Latino homeowners, California is poised to gain 6.7 million more of them by 2040, the Urban Institute projects, even as overall homeownership rates fall. The question is whether coastal Bay Area cities’ losses will keep fueling outlying areas’ gains, and whether the next generation will be hindered by familiar financial barriers or realize new economic power.

“Latino homeowners have 40 times the wealth of Latino renters,” said Noerena Limón, a senior vice president at the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals. That makes buying a house a crucial tool for finding financial stability and closing racial wealth gaps, she said, but it “becomes a problem when there aren’t enough homes to buy.”

Realtors and lenders say some longtime Latino homeowners are seizing the moment to sell their Bay Area homes and move to emerging low-cost markets like Houston, Phoenix or Boise, Idaho. As extended suburbs like Tracy, Gilroy and Brentwood become more unaffordable, others are considering farther-flung locales like Modesto, Los Banos and Madera.

For those moving away from jobs still technically in San Francisco or San Jose, the uncertain future of super commutes can be another daunting prospect. And even on the fringes of the Bay Area, winning bidding wars increasingly means sacrificing buyer protections, adding financial risk.

“Buyers are blindly accepting properties in as-is condition,” said Lupe Silva, a former Apple software engineer who now runs Silva Real Estate Group in San Jose. “It has become so difficult for even areas like Manteca and Modesto.”

Federal mortgage data shows that prospective Latino, Black and native home buyers also still receive fewer home loans than white Californians, according to a report last year by Oakland social justice nonprofit the Greenlining Institute. The disparity can be magnified by risky deals like no-contingency home offers, Silva said, where buyers may have to come up with thousands of dollars to cover unexpected repairs or low property appraisals.

A lack of updated and detailed local data makes it hard to gauge exactly how many people from different demographic groups are moving during the pandemic. For smaller rural counties, accurate recent census estimates on Latino homeownership are especially hard to come by, though areas like Fresno appear to be growing. Personal motivations also drive the market, like Latinos’ higher rates of multigenerational households.

“Familia, or family, is just so central to the culture,” Limón said. “A lot of what happened during COVID, for all families, was a need to have four walls that are safe.”

On a recent afternoon in the eastern Contra Costa County exurb of Brentwood, Elizabeth Olivera juggled an infant and a furniture delivery in her new five-bedroom, three-bathroom house. “Quieren ayuda?” (“Do you want help?”) she yelled to the movers.

Buying a bigger house in a better neighborhood suddenly became much more important to 30-year-old Olivera when she hit the COVID trifecta of losing a job, planning a wedding and preparing for a baby. Carrasco, the real estate agent, helped her navigate a barrage of offers to sell the two-bedroom, one-bathroom San Leandro house Olivera’s father left her when he died, then used the money to secure the $655,000 house in Brentwood.

But that was only after the self-proclaimed city girl made a deal with her husband, who wanted more space to host family visiting from Mexico: “If you want to move out in the suburbs,” Olivera told him, “I need a pool.”

She got the pool. More importantly, they got better financing on the new house, and Olivera has a 15-minute drive to her new health care job in Antioch.

“When I first moved out of my dad’s house, I cried,” Olivera said, though the shock has faded since the baby arrived. “I never — never — thought in my life I would have a house like this.”

For first-time Latino buyers who don’t have another house to sell, a growing number of banks and nonprofits offer cost-assistance and loan programs. As of January, recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration program, or DACA, are eligible for federally-backed mortgages. More lenders are also approving immigrants with a federal tax identification number in lieu of a Social Security number, said Eric Becerra, area manager for the Fresno office of Cardinal Financial Co.

“You have folks that were maybe previously in the shadow,” Becerra said. It’s another factor — along with lower prices and family-friendly floor plans — that’s contributing to “a perfect storm” of demand for homes in the Central Valley.

For Carrasco, today’s high price of admission is a hurdle that can be overcome. In Santa Clara County, where she lives, the median home price has soared to $1.3 million, compared to a median Latino household income around $80,000. Buy a house farther away now when mortgage rates are low, she says, and you can always move back to the city later.

The persistence required today reminds her of the path she carved after moving to the U.S. from her home state of Durango, Mexico, way before she had her own Carrasco Team selling millions of dollars in property each year. Almost two decades ago, she started out as an assistant making $12 an hour in San Jose.

“Back then, the houses were $600,000,” she said. “Now, that’s not even a condo.”

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

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) – If you have been thinking about taking advantage of low apartment rental prices in San Francisco, this story is for you.

A pair of Bay Area real estate analysts say you better act fast because time is running out. 

The rental price for a one bedroom in San Francisco — is it going up or is it trending down?

“It is going up once again. It’s been going up for the last couple of months actually,” senior research associate Rob Warnock said. 

Senior research associate from Apartment List, Rob Warnock, sites data found in Apartment List’s monthly rent report showing rent being on the rise in the city.

“This past month we saw prices go up three percentage points month over month. 3% may not sound like a whole lot but in terms of city-wide rent prices it’s quite a substantial increase than we normally see at this time of the year,” Warnock said. 

“We’re seeing that first real big pop in rental prices month over month since the beginning of the pandemic,” senior economist Joshua Clark said. 

Zillow’s senior economist Joshua Clark talks about the going rental rate for a one-bedroom in San Francisco.

“You’re looking from anywhere from the mid-two-thousands to over three thousand depending on the type of building you’re going to get into. That is still a far cry away from what we were seeing a year ago when we were seeing rents typically three to four hundred dollars higher on these types of buildings,” Clark said. 

The negative economic impact of the pandemic is not only wearing off in the San Francisco rental market, says Warnock.

“Across the Bay Area, it’s the same story. 3% in San Francisco. 4 1/2 in Berkeley. 2 1/2 increase in San Mateo. 2% in the East Bay in Dublin and Walnut Creek. San Jose, Redwood City, the same story. Prices are going up. Still lower than it was this time last year but, getting closer and closer as we move throughout the Spring,” Warnock said. 

“I have been telling my friends for a while now. Hey! Get in now,” Clark said.

Article source: https://www.kron4.com/news/real-estate/bay-area-rental-rates-on-the-rise/

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KTXL) — As the exodus from the Bay Area to Sacramento continues, local realtors and appraisers are scrambling to keep up with the fluctuating demand from homebuyers.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Sacramento area is now a seller’s market, meaning there are a lot of homebuyers but a limited inventory. That has created an unprecedented and challenging housing market for both realtors and potential homeowners.

Navigating major booms in the housing market is not an unfamiliar task for El Dorado Hills realtor Melissa Quade, who experienced it while working in Seattle 10 years ago.

“I saw prices rise exponentially when I was in that market, and now I’m seeing it here, too,” Quade told FOX40.

But COVID-19 has created a unique situation for Quade and other realtors in the Sacramento and Bay areas.

A recent CBRE research study showed the migration from densely populated and pricey areas rose tremendously. Case in point: Moves from San Francisco to Sacramento County went up 70%.

“The buyers are out there in full force,” Quade explained. “A lot moving from the Bay Area. They don’t have to live there anymore because they can work remotely, so they’re coming here where you can get a lot more for your money.”

The issue right now, however, is sellers are in short supply.

“In El Dorado County, here where I am, we have 75% fewer listings than last year,” Quade said. 

Quade added that creates frustrations for prospective homebuyers “not just because they don’t have the cash that the Bay Area buyer do but just because things are being done very, very differently now and the buyers are having to take on a lot more risk.” 

According to Quade, the median sales price in the Sacramento region, which encompasses Sacramento, Placer, El Dorado and Yolo counties, has gone up over 20% between March 2020 and March 2021. Since January of this year, the market has shot up 9% and is on track to keep rising.

“We haven’t seen this kind of shortage of inventory in any recent history and we haven’t seen this many buyers out here and it’s just creating a frenzy,” Quade said. 

There’s also the gap between appraised value and actual market value for houses, which is what appraiser and market analyst Ryan Lundquist is finding difficult as well.

“Our median price in January was $485,000 and it’s about $530,000 just a few months later now,” Lundquist said. “And so we’ve really seen very, very quick growth.”

Out of the 30 largest metro areas in the U.S., Sacramento is ranked number one in terms of net move-ins, which are mostly from San Francisco. 

And while it may seem daunting, Sacramento’s housing market presents a lot of opportunity.

“We actually had a high sales volume happening for 10 months in a row,” Lundquist told FOX40. “Buyers are pulling the trigger on what’s out there … so we’ve actually been able to achieve numbers that are higher than 2019 and 2020.”

“It was a seller’s market here for a long time but not like this,” Quade said.

Quade’s advice for first-time Sacramento homebuyers is simple: be patient, be ready to compete, negotiate terms and focus on houses that have been on the market for at least more than a week. 

Lundquist said there is good news for buyers: Listings are on the rise within the region and for three weeks in a row, there has been a national decline in mortgage applications. That means less competition. 

It’s not all bad news for local real estate. In fact, Quade said this is the best time to sell. The only thing is a seller’s best bet would be to find a new home out of state.

Lundquist also offered advice for sellers: don’t be overzealous and scare off potential buyers. 

“Even though buyers are hungry, they’re not so overly desperate where they’ll pay literally anything for any price, for any home,” he said.

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Article source: https://fox40.com/news/local-news/experts-say-influx-of-buyers-from-san-francisco-creating-major-challenges-for-sacramentos-housing-market/

“Most landlords that I talk to, they’re panicked about the market,” said Ray Amouzandeh, principal broker with Targa Residential Brokerage. “They’re saying ‘God, is anybody renting?’”

By one measure, they are.

San Francisco rents rose 3% in April, to a median $2,157 for a one-bedroom apartment, according to real estate site Apartment List. But another report by the listing site Zumper found that San Francisco rents dropped 1.9% from last month, and they calculated a higher $2,600 median price for the same size apartment.

So which is it? And what does it mean for both the Bay Area’s usually busy summer moving season and the thousands of local renters still seeking financial relief after the economic fallout of the pandemic?

With the explosion of online real estate listing sites, deciphering constantly changing rent prices has become an art form. The main differences are usually what kind of properties are included, and whether economists are analyzing the price landlords are asking versus the prices tenants end up paying.

Apartment List combines Census median rent reports with data on listings that have been rented multiple times to weed out brand-new units that can skew numbers higher. Zumper analyzes its current online apartment listings and includes new rentals.

“We’re trying to get closer to, ‘What is the median rent in San Francisco, regardless of what mechanism you’re using to rent an apartment?’” said Rob Warnock, a San Francisco-based senior research associate at Apartment List. And even with the more measured approach, he said, one thing is clear: “The rents are rebounding.”

Amouzandeh said that depends which part of the city you’re talking about. He’s starting to see window washers return to the tech offices near his downtown apartment, but he also just negotiated a 20% price reduction with his own landlord. Across town in Bernal Heights, however, there’s more competition to rent standalone homes and cottages.

Apartment List found that San Francisco rents are still more than 19% lower than last April, though prices remain significantly higher than other major cities like New York, Los Angeles and Seattle. Zumper reported that asking rents were down by nearly 25% compared to last April, and it calculated an even larger 30% drop in nearby Redwood City and a 28% decline in Facebook’s home of Menlo Park.

Other Bay Area cities where rents appear to be on a steeper incline include Berkeley, Emeryville and Union City, where Apartment List found prices rose 3-to-4% last month.

“In terms of transactions, we have doubled our number of signed leases every months since November,” Amouzandeh said. “I’m an optimist, so I think by the end of 2022, we’ll probably be gaining all that back.”

While things may be looking up for some landlords, it’s far less clear how confusion about eviction moratorium and rent relief programs may play out for San Francisco tenants hit hardest by job losses and instability triggered by pandemic shutdowns.

Just last week, local faith leaders organized a sit-in at San Francisco’s Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development to highlight the inability by thousands of mostly Black and Latino families to access promised local rent relief. Notices of rent hikes are also starting to return, said Tenants Together communications and legislative director Shanti Singh, and language access is another big barrier to emergency programs.

“We know people are falling through the cracks,” Singh said, and that many who lost jobs during the pandemic took on debt to try to stay housed. Those bills will be coming due in the months ahead.

“It’s chaos right now,” she said.

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

SAN FRANCISCO, April 28, 2021 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ – Escrow Out Loud, the podcast about San Francisco real estate from co-founders Matt Fuller and Britton Jackson of Jackson Fuller Real Estate, has released a three-part podcast series that looks at racism in California Real Estate. Prop 14: The California Fair Housing Massacre of 1964, One Community Activist Four REALTORS® Discuss Racism, and Real Estate Racism in 2021 with Nate Johnson are all available for immediate download on leading podcast apps and stores.

Episode 108, Prop 14: The California Fair Housing Massacre of 1964, features the first Black president of the San Francisco Association of Realtors, retired real estate broker Don Saunders. Together with Matt, he shines a light on the fair housing massacre of the 1963 Rumford Act by 1964′s state ballot initiative known as Proposition 14. Prop 14 was sponsored, written, and supported by the state trade association now known as the California Association of Realtors. The outcome of that election truly changed the course of American history in ways that affect us to this day.

Episode 109, One Community Activist Four REALTORS® Discuss Racism, begins with a powerful statement from Dave Walsh, 2021 President of the California Association of Realtors. The panelists then discuss the progress, setbacks, and impacts of racism in the Bay Area. It’s a lively roundtable that tells a more complete story than you’ve likely heard about housing racism in the Bay Area. Yes, even in tree-hugging progressive San Francisco, we have a deep history of housing racism.

Episode 110, Real Estate Racism in 2021 with Nate Johnson, features fair-housing advocate and Realtor Nate Johnson of Red Key Realty in St. Louis. Nate joins Matt to talk about the dog-whistle of “bad neighborhoods,” what racism in real estate looks like in 2021, and what we can all do to increase our awareness and decrease our biases when confronting racism in real estate.

Now in its fifth season, Escrow Out Loud is available through Apple, Google, Spotify, and directly from jacksonfuller.com. It’s an educational, insightful, and humorous discussion about San Francisco real estate based on Matt and Britton’s decades of experience. “If you’re serious about understanding racism in California real estate, our 3-part podcast series is a great place to start,” says podcast co-host ands brokerage co-founder Matthew Fuller.

Matt Fuller and Britton Jackson are both noted for their contributions to the real estate industry and work along the innovative edge of what is possible in real estate. While TIC sales are no longer a focus of their business, they closed the first fractional TIC loan in San Francisco during the sale of a Noe Valley TIC share. Britton Jackson has been quoted in the New York Times, and Matt has appeared on local media as a frequent San Francisco real estate expert, including Fox KTVU-2 and NBC 5. Britton was the 2018 chair of the San Francisco Standard Forms Committee. Matt served as an elected Director from 2014 – 2019 for the San Francisco Association of Realtors, served as the SF Association of Realtors 2017 President, and was a Director for the California Association of Realtors from 2015 – 2019.

Media Contact

Matt Fuller, Jackson Fuller Real Estate, +1 (415) 800-2058, matt@jacksonfuller.com

Matt Fuller, GRI, CIPS, Jackson Fuller Real Estate, 415-203-1745, matt@jacksonfuller.com

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