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SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — Through the madness of 2020, one thing has remained the same: The San Francisco Bay Area is still the priciest place to live in the country.

New home sale data released by PropertyShark shows that, of the 100 priciest zip codes in the country, 50 of them are in the Bay Area.

Atherton, a wealthy enclave on the Peninsula, takes the top prize for the fourth year in a row, with a median 2020 home sale price of $7 million. Atherton leaves the competition in the dust; the second priciest zip code in Long Island, N.Y. has almost half that sale price at $3.875 million.

San Francisco has the highest concentration of extremely pricy zip codes, with 11 on the top 100 list. The priciest pocket is 94123, which encompasses the Marina District and Cow Hollow, and had a median sale price of $2.15 million, according to PropertyShark. The next priciest San Francisco zip code, with a median price of $2 million is 94118, is a slice of the city between the Presidio and Golden Gate Park that includes Presidio Heights and part of the Inner Richmond. The zip codes that encompass Noe Valley, Dolores Heights and Miraloma aren’t too far behind.

A map created by PropertyShark shows the most expensive zip codes in San Francisco and their median home sale price in 2020.

PropertyShark

RELATED: San Francisco sees record-breaking drop in rent prices amid pandemic, according to Zumper data

With cities like Palo Alto and Los Altos, it’s no surprise that Santa Clara County makes 15 appearances on the list.

If you look outside the Bay Area, California has even more zip codes on the list — 87 statewide, to be exact.

Here are the top 15 priciest zip codes in the country, according to PropertyShark data:

1. 94027: Atherton (San Mateo County): $7 million median sale price
2. 11962: Sagaponack (Suffolk County, N.Y.): $3.875 million median sale price
3. 90402: Santa Monica (LA County): $3.750 million median sale price
4. 90210: Beverly Hills (LA County): $3.750 million median sale price
5. 94957: Ross (Marin County): $3.605 million median sale price
6. 94028: Portola Valley (San Mateo County): $3.53 million median sale price
7. 94022: Los Altos (Santa Clara County): $3.453 million median sale price
8. 11932: Bridgehampton (Suffolk County, N.Y.): $3.325 million median sale price
9. 94301: Palo Alto (Santa Clara County): $3.298 million median sale price
10. 98039: Medina (King County, Wash.): $3.225 million median sale price
11. 94024: Los Altos (Santa Clara County): $3.2 million median sale price
12. 10007: New York City: $3.15 million median sale price
13. 94010: Burlingame (San Mateo County): $3.1 million median sale price
14. 10013: New York City: $2.999 million median sale price
15. 92657: Newport Coast (Orange County): $2.998 million median sale price

A map created by PropertyShark shows the number of zip codes on the top 100 most expensive that are in each Bay Area county.

PropertyShark

To compile its list, PropertyShark studied all home sales between Jan. 1 and Oct. 15 of this year. See the full data here. Note that because of several ties on the list, the full top 100 list was expanded to include 121 zip codes.

Article source: https://abc7news.com/bay-area-real-estate-san-francisco-home-prices-california-most-expensive-zip-codes/8071643/

The former Marin County home of late actor and comedian Robin Williams has finally sold for $5.35 million.

The property first came on the market in November of 2019 for an asking price of $7.25 million. It later received a big price cut in August 2020 to $5.995 million.

Article source: https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/slideshow/Robin-Williams-Bay-Area-home-sold-marin-212930.php

It’s no secret that since the pandemic started, California is seeing an exodus. Now a new study says the Bay Area appears to be getting hit the hardest.

Santa Clara-based company Upwork surveyed more than 20,000 people and found that cities with the highest housing prices are seeing the largest number of people leaving.

And few places are as pricey as San Francisco and San Jose. 

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“There’s a couple factors that are working against the Bay Area,” said Adam Ozimek, chief economist at Upwork. “One is that a lot of people in the Bay Area have jobs that can be done remotely. The other factor is just that it’s an extremely expensive housing market.” 

Ozimek says you can already tell there is a Bay Area exodus by looking at the recent rental market.

“You can look at San Francisco, San house and the general area and see that apartment rents are declining rapidly,” said Ozimek.

Scott Fuller is the founder of a company called “Leaving the Bay Area” that helps clients relocate to less expensive places.

He’s seen the trend but adds that the work from home trend isn’t the only recent event pushing people to leave.

“It certainly has increased, really probably in the last 30 days,” said Fuller. “Especially with a lot of the issues we’ve had with fires. You take a lot of these collective things that have happened in the Bay Area and in California, and at some point, people kind of reach their tipping point.”

According to Fuller, Arizona and Texas are some of the most popular states to go from California.

In 2019 – Uhaul listed Texas as a state with far more people coming than going. But California was just the opposite.

Renting a Uhaul truck from San Jose to Austin next weekend, for example, will cost you over $2,000.

But if you want to go from Austin to San Jose the price drops to $800.

San Jose to Phoenix will cost just over $1,000 but Phoenix to San Jose drops to $200. 

Experts say don’t expect the trend to end anytime soon.

 “I certainly see this continuing to increase, continuing over the next 3 to 5 years at least,” Fuller said.

Article source: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/making-it-in-the-bay/cities-with-highest-housing-prices-see-largest-exodus-report/2388477/

San Jose and San Francisco could be big losers, with the wider adoption of remote work causing a flood of migration away from metropolises, researchers say.

Migration rates are expected to be three to four times higher than normal in the coming years as more companies allow employees to work from home. The highest share of movers will be leaving expensive cities for lower-cost cities, and rural communities, a survey by Santa Clara-based Upwork found.

At least 1 in 5 residents in high-priced cities say they have already moved or expect to — a possible harbinger of signficant change in the Bay Area. More than half of all those surveyed are looking for lower housing costs, and are willing to move more than two hours away from their offices.

“This is the biggest, fastest transformation of how we work since World War II,” said Adam Ozimek, chief economist at Upwork. “It’s an extraordinary change.”

The exodus from high cost cities is already showing up in the Bay Area, with softening demand and plummeting rents hinting at a shift in work and home life. The median price of a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco fell 20 percent in October from the previous year, and dropped 9 percent in San Jose, according to listing site Zumper.

The Upwork survey looked at 20,000 people nationwide, asking if they expected remote work to change where they planned to live. The analysis showed between 7 and 11 percent of workers expected to make a big move outside of their county or state, Ozemik said. That equates to roughly 14 to 23 million people.

The report did not break down results by demographics or geography.

More than half of the people surveyed said they were looking for a lower cost of living. About half said they were moving more than two hours away, and 40 percent said they were moving more than four hours away. “They want to move somewhere else entirely,” said Ozimek.

The results mirror similar surveys in the real estate industry. Far more California residents this year than last searched for properties outside California between July and September on Redfin, according to the listing website. About 53,000 more Redfin users in California looked at properties outside the state, a 62 percent increase from the previous year. Redfin found a similar trend of users looking to leave New York City.

Upwork, a digital platform connecting freelancers to businesses, has found corporate clients more willing to extend work-from-home policies for employees. Ozimek said remote work has offered businesses a deeper and wider pool of talent from which to choose.

Smaller communities left behind in the rush of highly educated professionals to tech hubs like the Bay Area, Seattle and New York will likely benefit from the dispersal of employees, he said. Skilled professionals can choose to stay in so-called “Zoom-towns,” working with colleagues through video meetings while enjoying a lower cost of living in small cities.

“This is great news for these places,” Ozimek said. “It’s highly educated people. It’s entrepreneurial people.”

The pandemic has warped the residential real estate market in the Bay Area. Despite widespread unemployment amid a national recession, suburban home prices have soared to near-record levels on strong demand for more living and work space. San Francisco home prices have lagged behind the greater region, and a flood of condominiums have gone up for sale.

Outer suburbs and resort regions like Lake Tahoe and Sierra Foothilll towns have seen rapidly rising demand and prices, as Bay Area workers seek respite from the pandemic.  Home and condo sales around Lake Tahoe in the third quarter nearly doubled over the same period in 2019. The median sale price of a single-family home in Truckee jumped 29 percent, from $725,000 to $937,000, according to the Tahoe Sierra Board of Realtors.

Zumper CEO Anth Georgiades said “there could be further to go” on rent declines. Entrepreneurs have been hesitant to re-open offices and businesses, and many younger workers have chosen to ride out the pandemic away from the city.

The peak San Francisco rental prices in recent years may not be reached again anytime soon, he said. But Georgiades expects the Bay Area to bounce back with another wave of workers in their 20s and 30s seeking good jobs and big city life. “The exodus we’ve seen now is temporary,” he said.

Ozimek also does not expect remote work to turn the Bay Area and similar high-tech hubs into ghost towns. New residents will still be attracted to the cities, he said, and perhaps take advantage of falling rents and housing costs.

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Article source: https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/10/29/bay-area-could-be-worst-hit-by-outward-pandemic-migration/

Bay Area single-family home prices hit another record high in October and sales were up 19% over last year, defying the usual slowdown that hits the real estate market in fall, according to a California Association of Realtors report out Tuesday.

“Typically by September we should have the end of home-buying season,” said Oscar Wei, the association’s senior economist. The busy season was extended this year because mortgage rates hit another record low in October and the market is still playing catch-up from April and May, when sales fell off a cliff amid stringent shelter-in-place rules.

Also, “the home-buying season is typically shaped by kids going back to school,” Wei said. This year they’re going back to school, but remotely. “That gives parents a little more leverage in shopping for homes in the off-season.”

The median price paid for an existing, single-family home in the Bay Area hit $1.1 million in October, which was up 3.8% from September and 17% higher than last October. Sales were also robust, rising 1.5% from September and 18.9% year over year, the report showed.

The median paid for an existing Bay Area condo was $740,000, down 1.3% from September but up 3.5% year over year.

The median is the price at which half of homes sold for more and half for less, and can be influenced by changes in market mix. For example, if more entry-level homes and fewer luxury homes are sold in one month, the median price could be pulled down even though prices overall went up.

Looking at prices per square foot reduces this effect somewhat. In October, the median price per square foot paid for an existing single-family home in the Bay Area jumped to $613 from $584 in September and $541 last October. That is “an indication that there is price appreciation, not just people buying bigger houses,” Wei said.

Prices are also climbing because supply remains tight in many areas. Active listings, meaning the number of homes on the market, were down 23.8% year over year in the Bay Area, but dropped more than 40% in most other areas of the state. The only two counties statewide where active listings increased were San Francisco, up 34.3%, and San Mateo, up 0.7%, the report said.

“We are experiencing very active sales. It’s true that San Francisco is experiencing some tendency for both homeowners and renters to leave the urban environment for something with more size and open space,” Randall Kostick, Bay Area president of Corcoran Global Living, said in an email.

“The result is that the surrounding marketplaces of Marin, Napa, Sonoma and Contra Costa (counties) are seeing record activity in the form of both permanent residences and second homes. Sale prices have risen in the surrounding markets but San Francisco prices have remained very stable. The only exception to that is S.F. condos, especially smaller ones (studios and one-bedrooms), which in some neighborhoods have seen some softening in pricing,” Kostick said, citing South Beach, South of Market and the Marina as examples.

In San Francisco, the median price for a single-family home was $1.625 million in October, down 2.4% from February and down 1.5% from last October.

The median price for a San Francisco condo was about $1.22 million, down 1.8% from September and down 12.8% from last October. Condo sales in the city were down 5.5% from September but up 14.7% year over year.

San Francisco’s condo inventory “is huge, almost double the amount we had last year,” said Marc Dickow, an agent with Core7. “Some people just don’t want to live in high-rises. Some investors are deciding that the San Francisco rental market has been impacted (by the pandemic). I think some investors are saying it’s time to look to sell.”

San Mateo Realtor David Vigas said, “I have a condo listing in San Francisco that has had three or four showings and no offers in three months. It’s on Second Street by the ballpark. I can’t get anyone to see it.” He cut the price from $2.8 million to $2.2 million and “it’s probably not going to go for more than $1.8 million.”

The rental market “has completely slowed down. People are buying instead of renting,” Vigas added.

Single-family homes in the San Mateo, Burlingame and Hillsborough areas are selling “like crazy” but rentals are just sitting, he said.

Vigas owns several single-family rentals and manages some for clients. “I have three sitting on the market, beautiful homes, I can’t even get a bite,” Vigas said. He’s often approached by agents who want to buy the homes, but neither he nor his clients want to sell and incur capital gains tax. “I’d rather keep the homes for the long term,” he said.

Kathleen Pender is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: kpender@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kathpender

Article source: https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/Bay-Area-home-prices-hit-another-record-and-sales-15734562.php