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Atherton topped even tony Pacific Heights to be crowned the Bay Area’s most expensive market, according to data from Compass. The median home price in the infamously expensive Peninsula locale was $6,350,000 in 2020, versus a mere $5,625,000 in second-place Pac Heights.

Interestingly, the average square footage was also larger in Pacific Heights, with a median home size of 4,080 square feet. Atherton’s median home size was 3,740 square feet, meaning the small town of about 7,000 people just north of Menlo Park also had the highest price per square foot at over $1,600 per square foot.

Article source: https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/slideshow/This-Peninsula-locale-is-even-more-expensive-than-216155.php

Funny thing about the latest New York Time article detailing the exodus from San Francisco; everyone they interviewed seems to be essentially the same person. This is not unique. If you read closely, every article about people leaving San Francisco features the same demographic: tech people in their 30s.

Some of them are single; some are married and have young children. Almost all have jobs with a tech company you’ve never heard of, or founded a tech company you’ve never heard of.

All of the artists, who’ve been bugging out since the ‘90s, are apparently already gone. The blue-collar workers got priced out years ago, and the old people?

They’re hiding in their houses, waiting for the all-clear, I suppose.

I’m not here to deny that droves of people in their 30s are leaving San Francisco; I’m here to deny that it’s anything new.

If you’ve lived in San Francisco for awhile, you know the story: Groups of friends move here after college, get jobs, go out every night and for a few years are the most dedicated San Franciscans on earth. But then, you know, it starts to wear a person down. By their mid-30s they’ve been working 60-hour weeks for way too long, overpaying for a place in SoMa and their high school friends keep posting pictures of their huge suburban houses. It’s time to get married, settle down, maybe have kids. It’s really hard to do that in San Francisco and everything looks so… effortless… in those posts.

And thus, they go; they go to Austin, Texas, or Phoenix, or Nashville. They’ve always done it, just minus the numbers and the narrative they’re doing it this year. San Francisco was fun and they always wanted to live here, but come on. They’d honestly never planned to live here forever, anyway. And now all the restaurants are closed.

So it’s a souped-up version of a phenomena known well by anyone who’s decided to stay, made easier by the “new way to work and live” and perhaps a bit unsettling for a city whose brand is that it’s obviously the most special place in the world but whose reality has always been that everybody comes but not everybody stays.

Someone is staying, though, and the evidence to support that might blow your mind. There’s another story, hidden beneath reams of data showing an imperiled, inventory-flooded San Francisco housing market: over the past six months of 2020, starting in July and lasting through December, sales of San Francisco homes priced at $3 million and above have increased by 35 percent compared to same stretch of 2019. Someone — a whole lot of someones, in fact — is not only not leaving San Francisco, they’re trading up.

They’re buying single-family homes, not condos. Condo sales have been static. For years we assumed that the Bay Area market was driven by an inventory shortage. There’s plenty of inventory now, but that inventory is selling. In December for example, the percentage of listings that had received at least one offer rose 104 percent year-over-year. It’s not a mad rush, but buyers are historically active — at the top end of the market. They’re taking advantage of historically low interest rates — and staying in The City. Or they’re coming to The City. Either way, they’re not leaving.

All over the Bay Area, the high-high-end is booming. Down in Burlingame, sales of $3 million-plus homes increased by 89 percent in 2020. In Hillsborough, sales at $5 million-plus increased 45 percent from 2019. During the second half of 2020, sales in both exclusive towns were almost double what they’d been in the first half. But this is what we’ve been told: People — wealthy people, in this case — are fleeing cities for the suburbs.

Not all of them.

In the most basic sense, it’s uplifting to realize that despite all of its challenges and despite the all of the apocalyptic hype, people are still eager to live in San Francisco, and that they still see local real estate as a sound investment. On the other hand, these are people of means. Real estate isn’t booming at all price points.

The bad news is that artists’ utopia you’d been hoping for after all the rich people leave? I don’t think it’s coming. The rich people aren’t leaving. Instead, it looks like we’re getting a COVID-fueled boost to the middle-class drain that started with teachers and firefighters and continues to work its way up the salary scale. COVID didn’t invent that, but it seems to be doing its part to accelerate the process.

Larry Rosen is a San Francisco-based writer, editor, podcaster and recovering former Realtor. He is a guest columnist and his viewpoint is not necessarily that of the Examiner. The Market Musings real estate column appears every other week.

housingreal estate

Article source: https://www.sfexaminer.com/news-columnists/not-everyone-is-leaving-san-francisco-as-home-sales-soar/

Funny thing about the latest New York Time article detailing the exodus from San Francisco; everyone they interviewed seems to be essentially the same person. This is not unique. If you read closely, every article about people leaving San Francisco features the same demographic: tech people in their 30s.

Some of them are single; some are married and have young children. Almost all have jobs with a tech company you’ve never heard of, or founded a tech company you’ve never heard of.

All of the artists, who’ve been bugging out since the ‘90s, are apparently already gone. The blue-collar workers got priced out years ago, and the old people?

They’re hiding in their houses, waiting for the all-clear, I suppose.

I’m not here to deny that droves of people in their 30s are leaving San Francisco; I’m here to deny that it’s anything new.

If you’ve lived in San Francisco for awhile, you know the story: Groups of friends move here after college, get jobs, go out every night and for a few years are the most dedicated San Franciscans on earth. But then, you know, it starts to wear a person down. By their mid-30s they’ve been working 60-hour weeks for way too long, overpaying for a place in SoMa and their high school friends keep posting pictures of their huge suburban houses. It’s time to get married, settle down, maybe have kids. It’s really hard to do that in San Francisco and everything looks so… effortless… in those posts.

And thus, they go; they go to Austin, Texas, or Phoenix, or Nashville. They’ve always done it, just minus the numbers and the narrative they’re doing it this year. San Francisco was fun and they always wanted to live here, but come on. They’d honestly never planned to live here forever, anyway. And now all the restaurants are closed.

So it’s a souped-up version of a phenomena known well by anyone who’s decided to stay, made easier by the “new way to work and live” and perhaps a bit unsettling for a city whose brand is that it’s obviously the most special place in the world but whose reality has always been that everybody comes but not everybody stays.

Someone is staying, though, and the evidence to support that might blow your mind. There’s another story, hidden beneath reams of data showing an imperiled, inventory-flooded San Francisco housing market: over the past six months of 2020, starting in July and lasting through December, sales of San Francisco homes priced at $3 million and above have increased by 35 percent compared to same stretch of 2019. Someone — a whole lot of someones, in fact — is not only not leaving San Francisco, they’re trading up.

They’re buying single-family homes, not condos. Condo sales have been static. For years we assumed that the Bay Area market was driven by an inventory shortage. There’s plenty of inventory now, but that inventory is selling. In December for example, the percentage of listings that had received at least one offer rose 104 percent year-over-year. It’s not a mad rush, but buyers are historically active — at the top end of the market. They’re taking advantage of historically low interest rates — and staying in The City. Or they’re coming to The City. Either way, they’re not leaving.

All over the Bay Area, the high-high-end is booming. Down in Burlingame, sales of $3 million-plus homes increased by 89 percent in 2020. In Hillsborough, sales at $5 million-plus increased 45 percent from 2019. During the second half of 2020, sales in both exclusive towns were almost double what they’d been in the first half. But this is what we’ve been told: People — wealthy people, in this case — are fleeing cities for the suburbs.

Not all of them.

In the most basic sense, it’s uplifting to realize that despite all of its challenges and despite the all of the apocalyptic hype, people are still eager to live in San Francisco, and that they still see local real estate as a sound investment. On the other hand, these are people of means. Real estate isn’t booming at all price points.

The bad news is that artists’ utopia you’d been hoping for after all the rich people leave? I don’t think it’s coming. The rich people aren’t leaving. Instead, it looks like we’re getting a COVID-fueled boost to the middle-class drain that started with teachers and firefighters and continues to work its way up the salary scale. COVID didn’t invent that, but it seems to be doing its part to accelerate the process.

Larry Rosen is a San Francisco-based writer, editor, podcaster and recovering former Realtor. He is a guest columnist and his viewpoint is not necessarily that of the Examiner. The Market Musings real estate column appears every other week.

housingreal estate

Article source: https://www.sfexaminer.com/news-columnists/not-everyone-is-leaving-san-francisco-as-home-sales-soar/

Presidio Bay Ventures has closed on $120 million in construction financing to develop a mixed-income, 193-unit rental community in San Francisco. The AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust, an impact investment firm focused on workforce and affordable housing, provided the senior construction loan for the project, Ventana Residences.

The project, a joint venture between Presidio Bay and American Realty Advisors with capital managed by TDA Investment Group, has recently broken ground in the Outer Mission and Excelsior District on the south edge of the city. Located at 99 Ocean Ave., the development marks the largest project built under the HOME-SF program, an optional program for developers of mixed-income housing in certain areas of the city.

READ ALSO: Facebook Commits $150M to Bay Area Affordable Housing

In keeping with the program’s requirement that 20 to 30 percent of the units must be affordable, Ventana Residences will feature 25 percent affordable housing. The community will provide a mix of units ranging from studios to three-bedroom layouts, and 48 of the units will be designed as below market-rate. Presidio Bay said in a statement that this will triple the number of new affordable units built in the Excelsior district in more than a decade.

Boosting the Bay Area

Acquired by Ventana Residences in early 2016, the site is located near Interstate 280 and the San Jose and Ocean light rail stop on the Muni Metro J Church line. Ventana Residences, which will use 100 percent union labor and more than 500 prevailing wage jobs, forms part of the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust’s $1 billion Bay Area Investment Initiative, a program announced last September to create jobs and rental housing in the region over the next five years.

Presidio Bay specializes in new construction and renovation of special-use facilities including mixed-use urban infill multifamily projects as well as office and industrial real estate. American Realty Advisors, the company’s partner in the current development, is a private equity real estate investment manager with more than $10 billion in assets under management.

Article source: https://www.multihousingnews.com/post/presidio-bay-ventures-scores-120m-for-san-francisco-project/

(TNS) — The majority of San Francisco tech companies are cutting their office space and will keep at least part of their workforce remote beyond the coronavirus pandemic, a dire sign for the local economy, according to a survey of 83 companies released Wednesday.

The survey was commissioned by SF.citi, a tech trade group, which warned that a “breaking point” of tech departures and higher taxes could cripple the city’s economy. Remote work has already sent shock waves through the real estate market, with 63% of the surveyed tech companies reducing or planning to reduce their office space. San Francisco’s vacancy rate spiked to 16.7% at the end of last year, the highest level since 2005, according to brokerage Cushman Wakefield.

“What the data makes abundantly clear is that tech companies and their employees are reducing their footprint in San Francisco, their departure does not bode well for San Francisco’s economic future, and the industry trend toward decentralization is only going to accelerate after the pandemic ends,” said Jennifer Stojkovic, executive director of SF.citi, in a statement.

The city is facing a $411 million budget deficit for the next fiscal year even after voters passed multiple tax increases last year. Downtown and South of Market, once teeming with tech workers, are desolate and filled with boarded-up storefronts.

The trend of tech workers leaving the region may accelerate: 55% of surveyed tech companies plan to keep at least a quarter of workers permanently remote, while 36% anticipate half or more of their workforce to stay remote. The majority of companies, 59%, said San Francisco regulations, taxes and policies are factoring into their growth plans. Companies surveyed include both private startups and large public companies, Stojkovic said.

SF.citi is calling for no more tax increases and more housing construction to keep living costs stable to help retain and attract tech companies, she added.

A separate survey of 90 tech founders by venture capital firm Initialized also showed widespread appetite for more dispersed workforces, a loss for Silicon Valley that could boost the economy of cities outside the Bay Area.

“Everyone is a lot more comfortable with hiring remote now, and it’s very hard to put the genie back in the bottle there,” said Kim-Mai Cutler, a partner at Initialized.

Neither survey is scientific, since both draw on a limited and voluntary pool of respondents and are backed by organizations with a direct interest in the topic, but they provide a window into the mood in the startup community.

Shaan Hathiramani, CEO of Flockjay, a San Francisco tech sales education company, said in the SF.citi report that 90% of its workforce will become fully remote, up from 10%. That will allow better hiring opportunities, an upside that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also highlighted in announcing a decision to let employees work remotely indefinitely.

“We will be able to hire a decentralized workforce with greater diversity of background, whether it be geography, gender, race, or capability,” Zuckerberg said in a statement.

When the pandemic began and companies started going remote, many fled the Bay Area’s high prices for less expensive nearby destinations such as Sacramento, Stockton and Fresno. Others left California for states including Texas and Florida, which have no income taxes. Silicon Valley powerhouses Oracle and Hewlett Packard Enterprise both said they would move their headquarters to Texas, though they will retain large Bay Area offices.

In the 2020 survey among companies in Initialized Capital’s portfolio conducted before the pandemic, 41.6% of respondents said if they were to start a company today, it would be in the Bay Area. New York and Los Angeles were tied at 13.5% each, and Seattle at 10.1%.

The 2021 survey’s respondents knocked the Bay Area out of first place, but not to another city. Rather, 42.1% said their company would be distributed or remote, with the Bay Area in second place at 28.4%.

Austin, Texas, and New York tied with 6.8% each, followed by 4.6% for cities outside the U.S. and 3.4% for Los Angeles. Miami, which has gained attention as a destination for fleeing Silicon Valley expats during the pandemic, received just 1.1%.

Still, tech companies expect the Bay Area to remain an epicenter for the industry, and the biggest firms including Google and Facebook are advancing huge office projects. Facebook and Apple both reported record quarterly profits on Wednesday, another sign that the Bay Area’s dominant tech firms have been among the pandemic’s biggest winners.

Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, said last month that his newly public company is also committed.

“Airbnb is staying in California and I’m staying in California. This is a special place,” he wrote on Twitter. “When I came to San Francisco, I was taken by the unique culture — people believed almost anything was possible, and they were willing to believe in a 26-year-old and his two friends with a crazy idea to let strangers live together.”

In the SF.citi report, board chairman Ron Conway, who invested in Airbnb and other startups, also called for startups to stay.

“I have always believed in San Francisco,” he said. “That’s why I’m calling on my fellow tech and business leaders to commit to staying in San Francisco and helping the city recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.”

©2021 the San Francisco Chronicle, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Article source: https://www.govtech.com/workforce/Survey-Shows-Troubling-Economic-Situation-for-Bay-Area.html