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Oakland landlords have sent hundreds of eviction notices to tenants during the pandemic, despite the city’s current moratorium banning most evictions, according to records obtained by NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit.

Those records show Oakland landlords served at least 482 eviction notices for failure to pay rent with the Oakland Rent Adjustment Program in the eight months following the passage of the city’s eviction moratorium on March 27, 2020. The data goes through the end of November 2020, so it’s unclear how many notices have been served since then.

Although the city’s database doesn’t name the property owner behind each eviction notice, NBC Bay Area used Alameda County Assessor records and California Secretary of State business filings to trace the notices back to their source.

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The analysis showed nearly a third of those notices came from a single property owner: Madison Park Financial, run by prominent Oakland real-estate developer John Protopappas.

Madison Park has served 150 eviction notices for failure to pay rent since the city’s eviction moratorium passed.

“They want to harass people and bully people into thinking that they need to pay them all the money or sign up for a payment plan,” said Madison Park tenant Lili Thomas-Brumme. “It’s exhausting and infuriating.”

Thomas-Brumme, a set designer for commercial and film productions, said she fell behind on rent when much of her income dried up during the pandemic.

She lives at the Vulcan Lofts in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood, which has been hit with at least 42 eviction notices since last April, the most of any building in the city.  All of those notices have come since September.

“At first they kind of showed up on my doorstep,” Thomas-Brumme said. “And then there was one I think taped to the door a day later. And then maybe a week after that, I got one in the mail as well.”

Despite the moratorium, a city spokesperson said it’s not actually illegal for a landlord to send an eviction notice, but encouraged tenants who receive such a notice to contact the City’s Rent Adjustment Program.

“There will inevitably be some property managers who make mistakes – some in good faith and some intentionally; we want the community to know that in most situations there are options and they do not need to immediately vacate their homes,” City Spokesperson Autumn King said in an email. “Tenants who receive an Eviction Notice should contact a RAP housing counselor at 510-238-3721.”

King added that the city sends notices informing tenants of their rights to anyone who receives an eviction notice.

While the eviction moratorium doesn’t specifically make it illegal for a landlord to serve an eviction notice, it could potentially be a violation of the city’s tenant protection ordinance, which states that a landlord cannot in bad faith “Misrepresent to a Tenant that they are required to vacate a Rental Unit or otherwise entice a Tenant to vacate a Rental Unit through misrepresentations or concealment of material facts.”

Leah Simon-Weisberg, legal director for the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, said a large corporation like Madison Park should have known better. Although the notices can’t be used to pursue an eviction in court, she fears they could sway tenants into paying money they’re currently not required to pay.

“People will do things that they don’t need to do,” Weisberg said.

“We are hearing from a lot of tenants who are taking out payday loans…families choosing between food and paying the rent.”

Madison Park declined an interview request from NBC Bay Area but said through an attorney that the company sent the 15-day pay or quit notices in compliance with California’s statewide eviction moratorium that took effect in September.

“These are notices that were issued in compliance with AB 3088,” Attorney Servando Sandoval said.

“Madison had no intention of pursuing any eviction for non-payment of rent. Madison was simply issuing the 15-Day Notices to meet the requirements of AB 3088.”

The city’s data shows eviction notices spiked across the city after AB 3088 went into effect last September.

Between April 1 and August 31 of last year, landlords served 132 eviction notices for failure to pay rent. But in the three months that followed the passage of that new state law, landlords served 350 eviction notices for failure to pay rent.

However, Oakland City Attorney’s Office says the statewide moratorium has very little impact on Oakland’s much stronger eviction protections, and tenant attorneys say they believe the Madison Park notices are inaccurate and misleading.

While the Oakland moratorium is in effect, tenants have no obligation to sign a declaration or provide any evidence of being financially impacted by the pandemic to stay in their homes when they can’t pay the rent.

However, that’s what the Madison Park notices informed tenants they needed to do, according to a copy of one such notice sent by Sandoval.

“Within fifteen days of the date of service of this Notice upon you, excluding weekends and judicial holidays, you are required: a) to pay said rent, or in the alternative, b) to quit and deliver up possession of said premises, or in the alternative, c) deliver a signed declaration of COVID-19-related financial distress, and documentation thereof, if applicable, to the Landlord…” the notices state.

Madison Park tenant say the patchwork of eviction protections is confusing.

“There’s a lot of confusion,” said tenant Jean Cadwell. “Which law do we follow?”

“Madison Park is feeding us the line that it’s the state law, when we know it’s not correct.”

In December, a group of Madison Park tenants organized as the Madison Park Tenants Council sent a letter to the company demanding it stop serving notices – which the company agreed to do in a response letter dated Dec. 30.

“Since these formal notices have appeared to cause concern by residents, moving forward and for the duration of the Local Emergency, Management will simply be sending monthly reminders of the accruing balances to each household,” the Madison Park letter stated.

Cadwell called it a victory for the Madison Park Tenants Council and said renters across the city should consider organizing.

“They want the tenant to self-evict,” Cadwell said.  “And the only way to combat that is by forming a tenants union and by staying together as tenants. Your landlord has a team, you need a team too.”

Despite frustrations that some landlords continue to send eviction notices, tenant advocates and city officials say the data shows the city’s moratorium is working.  In the one month before the city’s moratorium took effect, Oakland landlords filed more than 450 eviction notices with the Rent Adjustment Program, nearly the same number of notices served to tenants in the eight months that followed the moratorium’s passage.

Article source: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/oakland-landlords-send-hundreds-of-eviction-notices-for-non-payment-despite-citys-moratorium/2457283/

It’s a sharp reversal to the company’s explosive growth in the past decade, which included 25 Bay Area locations and over 700 globally, making it the largest private tenant in Manhattan and one of the biggest in San Francisco. The company signed long-term office leases and rented out desks by the month to startups and later, corporate giants, but a failed initial public offering in the fall of 2019 led to thousands of layoffs. Then the coronavirus pandemic slammed the traditional workplace and froze office markets across urban centers.

“With an abundance of supply in our markets, we have been able to rightsize our footprint while also ensuring our members can continue to access first-class flex office space,” WeWork said.

WeWork is also laying off four employees in San Francisco, according to a filing to California’s Employment Development Department last month.

A person familiar with WeWork’s plans who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly said the closures could include 1161 Mission St., 995 Market St., 156-160 Second St. and 25 Taylor St. in downtown San Francisco. Representatives for the building owners didn’t immediately respond to request for comment. WeWork owns 25 Taylor St. and has leased the other locations for years.

Early last year, prior to the pandemic’s arrival in the U.S., WeWork left its corporate space at Salesforce Tower and listed it for other tenants. The company said it had no updates on the space.

WeWork’s exits, combined with minimal leasing activity, will strain the local office market further by adding supply among weak demand. Vacancy has already jumped to 16.7% in San Francisco, according to brokerage Cushman Wakefield. That’s the highest since 2005.

WeWork has also closed locations in Denver, Phoenix, Washington and its original New York City location.

Co-working company Regus has also sought bankruptcy protection on more than 100 affiliate companies tied to individual buildings. Breather, which rented out rooms by the hour, also filed for bankruptcy and expects to be sold to real estate firm Newmark.

Boston Properties, San Francisco’s biggest landlord and owner of Salesforce Tower, reported a $38 million loss on rental income from co-working tenants nationally last week, as it expects tenants like WeWork to struggle to pay rent in the future.

“We’re now 11 months into this pandemic, and it’s pretty clear that the flexible space operators, customers — obviously, many of which had short-term leases, and then many of those leases are probably expired — they’ve been very slow to come back to work,” Douglas Linde, president of Boston Properties, said on an earnings call last week.

Roland Li is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: roland.li@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rolandlisf

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — “This market has people ripping their hair out” is how Bay Area real estate agent Hans Struzyna started his conversation with ABC7 news anchor Reggie Aqui. The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed a lot of rules out the door so we caught up with Struzyna to get his opinion on the state of real estate in the Bay Area.

By now, you’ve probably heard a story or two about a growing number of people moving out, but at the same time it’s still difficult to find affordable housing. Struzyna says it’s because there’s just a lack of inventory.

Are we in a real estate bubble?

Struzyna says it seems that way. “A bubble generally is exuberant spending,” Struzyna said. “I’m seeing people spend huge amounts of money above the comps.”

He says he just had a buyer write an offer for a property in Albany. They were one of 16 offers and they went about $50,000 over the best comp in the area… yet they got beat out by over $300,000. It’s hard to take an anecdote and apply it to an entire market, but Struzyna says this has not been out of the ordinary.

What should buyers know?

“You have to get really clear on what it is you want out of a home,” Struzyna said. “Simply put, it is not the time to just casually shop.” Factors include space for your pets, space to work from home, space for your in-laws, etc. He says know what’s in your budget and be patient, it may take a couple of months for cash-heavy buyers to exhaust themselves. However, be aware because there are still listings that get mismanaged and still opportunities out there. “If you’re clear, you can strike gold,” Struzyna said.

If you know you need to buy that house you’ll be in for 10 or more years, it’s a good time to buy. If you’re struggling to come up with the 20% down payment and you aren’t sure about what you really want, you may have to be patient until some of the “heat” comes off the market.

What should sellers know?

Nail your presentation. “We’re in an Instagram three-second world,” Struzyna said. “You have to grab people’s attention when they scroll through. If you do that and you price it effectively you will get attention and you will get offers.”

What’s going on with the condo market?

Struzyna says condos are taking a major hit and there’s a much smaller buyer pool compared to single-family homes. He calls it the COVID effect. “People don’t want to share elevators and hallways with all of their neighbors when breathing the same air as them can give you COVID,” Struzyna said. They’ve seen a hit and haven’t seen the appreciation that singe-family homes have had.

Watch ABC7′s “Midday Live” every weekday at 11 a.m., right after “The View.”

You can also stream it live or watch it on the ABC7 News App.

Article source: https://abc7news.com/housing-market-bay-area-san-francisco-real-estate-buying-home-in-sf/10253592

The pandemic has brought the commercial real estate market in San Francisco to a new low, with work-from-home policies and office closures slowing Silicon Valley-driven business expansion to numbers not seen in at least three decades.

New office-leasing activity in 2020 dropped a staggering 71% compared with the year before, according to the real estate brokerage Cushman Wakefield, from 7.7m to 2.2m sq ft – the lowest since the early 1990s. Tenant demand also halved during the pandemic, from 6.6m sq ft to 3.3m sq ft.

“Vacancies have obviously climbed substantially,” said Robert Sammons, Cushman Wakefield’s senior director of Bay Area research, adding that more than half of the rise was driven by sublease vacancy, a common commercial space practice in San Francisco in which subleasers lease from a tenant, not a property manager. “That has never happened before in San Francisco,” he said.

The numbers emerge as the tech companies that fueled the office real-estate boom in the city – a boom that has contributed to the state’s affordable housing and construction crisis – re-evaluate the future of office culture and working from home.

Google will keep its employees home at least until July, while Pinterest paid nearly $90m to break a lease on an unbuilt, 500,000-sq ft office it no longer needs. Facebook has stated that it expects at least half of its employees will work remotely for the next five to 10 years, while Twitter announced it would let employees who wish to do so work from home “for ever”.

In September, Twitter listed nearly 105,000 sq ft of its Mid-Market neighborhood headquarters for sublease.

What this all means for San Francisco and its future as a capital for the tech industry is still unclear. A survey of thousands of tech workers in May found that two out of three employees would consider moving out of the Bay Area if given the opportunity to work remotely indefinitely. But Sammons said it was too soon to say if the pandemic had made any lasting changes to the tech industry or the fabric of office life in San Francisco.

When coronavirus vaccines began to be distributed, Sammons found that tenant demand in San Francisco had risen again to 4m sq ft. “We’re beginning to see a change, a mental change, if you will,” he said. “Now that vaccines are being rolled out, people can see the end. They realize they may want to reoccupy their spaces and continue to grow. They have more hope that this will be behind us toward the end of this year.”

Further sweetening the pot is that rental prices are now down for both office spaces and residences. Sammons believes that will draw people back to San Francisco and back to their offices.

“It’s about work culture,” Sammons said. “It’s about working around people who do the same thing you do. Will that pull exist when this is all behind us and the offices are back open, to be in that competitive mode again and to create that environment where they have to work with others? It’s a tricky question to answer. But I still think there’s still that desire and still that competition.”

The city has had a complicated relationship with Silicon Valley, with the abundant wealth coming in from tech deepening stark racial and societal inequities that existed well before the second dotcom boom. But the departure of this much wealth – during a time when San Francisco is projecting a $653.2m budget deficit – could be catastrophic as well.

Sammons doesn’t see it happening anytime soon. Venture capital funding hit record highs in the Bay Area this year, he pointed out. “There’s still a huge contingent of tech workers in the Bay Area,” he said. “The major tech players are and still will be headquartered here. That feeling that there are still so many tech players here, big or small, that if you don’t like it at Company A, you can move to Company B, or you can start your own company – that feeling is still there, that your opportunities are greater here in San Francisco than in other markets.

“It’s going to take a while to come out of this for San Francisco,” Sammons said. “But we’re still a tech market. We will remain one of the tech capitals of the world. There’s still a lot of churn as far as money goes in this market, and that will continue to be the case.”

Article source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/14/san-francisco-office-leases-tech-industry-covid

San Francisco’s tony Pacific Heights neighborhood came in second, with a median price of $5.625 million.

Atherton’s pricier homes were smaller on average than Pacific Heights’; the town’s median home size was 3,740 square feet, compared with Pacific Heights’ 4,080-square-foot average.

That made Atherton the most expensive town by square footage, too, at $1,607 per square foot of home space compared to $1,538 per square foot in Pacific Heights.

Two other San Francisco neighborhoods made the top 10 most-expensive list in the Bay Area: The Marina district was the sixth-most expensive, with a median price of $3.825 million, and St. Francis Wood, near the Sunset District, came in ninth, at $3.43 million.