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Having bottomed out at the end of April, at which point they were down nearly 50 percent on a year-over-year basis, the number of homes in contract to be sold started to rebound in May and turned positive, on a year-over-year basis, last month.

In fact, pending home sales activity is currently up around 40 percent versus the same time last year, which should result in strong July and August sales volumes, at least on a relative basis.

That being said, the rebound in “pent up” sales activity appears to have already plateaued with contract activity having slipped a few percent over the past week. And on a year-to-date basis, pending home sales activity is still down over 10 percent with the peak of the typical spring buying/selling season having passed, driving listed inventory up to near recession era levels.

Article source: https://socketsite.com/archives/2020/07/pending-home-sales-plateau-in-san-francisco.html

The same supply constraints that have buoyed San Francisco’s condo market amid the pandemic could also be a lifeline for Oakland’s.

Though Oakland remains a stronghold for Bay Area apartment growth, condos in the East Bay have been a much different story. Oakland and Emeryville saw a combined 246 condo deliveries in 2019, a fraction of the nearly 2,500 new apartments that came online last year, according to Polaris Pacific research.

That lopsidedness is expected to continue, which will serve current condo sellers well, Polaris Pacific partner Paul Zeger said. 

“The reality of the East Bay right now is there’s a much smaller pipeline of new condominium developments,” he said. “Most of the product being delivered in Oakland in the near future will be apartments.”

Like with apartments in San Francisco, apartments in Oakland have tended to be more financially feasible for builders than condos, according to Zeger. While REITs and other national developers that build many of Oakland’s new apartments often accept single-digit returns, condo builders are still looking to get returns well into the double digits, a task made challenging by the Bay Area’s ever-growing construction costs. 

“Right now, you pretty much have to get $1,100 or $1,200 per SF to justify new concrete construction in the East Bay,” Zeger said. “And right now the market is probably more in the $1K to $1,100 SF range, which means you’re not generating a lot of new product.”

As of June, Oakland had 353 condos approved or under construction versus 12,209 such apartments, Polaris Pacific’s latest report shows. All told, Oakland and Emeryville currently have 127 new condos on the market spread across three projects.

One of those projects, The Pauls Corp.’s 901 Jefferson, hit the market in May with 75 new residences, two of which were under contract as of last month, with sales being led by Polaris Pacific.  

The other two projects with new available units, City Ventures‘ Ice House community in West Oakland and Discovery Builders‘ Skyview community in the Oakland Hills, hit the market in 2018 and have 24% and 40% of their residences available, respectively, according to Polaris Pacific’s June report. 

Oakland’s median condo price during a three-month period ending May 31 was $625K, according to Polaris Pacific. 

Article source: https://www.bisnow.com/oakland/news/commercial-real-estate/east-bay-condos-105204

Former San Francisco 49er tight end Brent Jones is letting go of his Lake Tahoe getaway in Incline Village, NV. The mountain home is now on the market for $10.9 million. 

The three-time Super Bowl champ retired in 1997 after an 11-year career with the Niners. Since then, he’s been active in a number of real estate transactions.

Jones purchased this coveted parcel of land on the lake’s north shore in 2012 for $1.3 million. A custom dwelling was built by Brink Custom Homes in late 2014.

Located across the street from Burnt Cedar Beach, the glass and stone structure provides lovely lake views.

With 6,442 square feet of living space, the home has five bedrooms, five bathrooms, and two half-baths.

The great room features a 27-foot ceiling, massive granite hearth, and custom ironwork. The space includes a living area, dining area, and open kitchen, all with access to the outdoors.

A master bedroom wing boasts “shelter in place amenities,” with a library in the foyer, office overlooking the lake, en suite bedroom, walk-in closet, and private deck. Other luxe amenities in the rustic retreat include a home theater and wine room.

The half-acre property features landscaping with fountains, fire pits, and areas for lounging and dining.

The area is a ski mecca in winter, but the vacation spot offers all-season outdoor activities, including hiking, boating, and swimming. 

Jones, 57, is a Bay Area legend who played college football at Santa Clara University. As a critical part of the 49ers offense in the late ’80s and early ’90s, he made the Pro Bowl four times.

Off the field, he founded a venture capital firm with teammates in 2000. He has since sold the business and, in 2017, invested in a condo in the Millennium Tower in San Francisco for $4.15 million.

That same year, Jones also placed his Diablo, CA, home on the market for $2.8 million. He had bought the pad in 2015 for $2.3 million. It looks to have sold for slightly below list price. As of 2018, the Bay Area native had apparently moved to Dallas. 

Kerry Donovan, Megan Parr Warren, and Debbie Hansen with Donovan Group Luxury Sales hold the listing.

Article source: https://www.realtor.com/news/celebrity-real-estate/brent-jones-selling-tahoe-retreat/

On a Saturday in April, several executives from SoundCommerce rented a U-Haul, drove it to their office in Seattle and loaded up the truck with stand-up desks, 48-inch monitors and various other gadgets and personal belongings. For two days, they traversed town, dropping the items off at employees’ houses and apartments.

With the coronavirus forcing non-essential employees to shelter in place, it had been weeks since any the start-up’s 20 or so staffers had worked at the office. It was clear they wouldn’t be going back.

The lease expires July 31, and SoundCommerce CEO Eric Best said the company did not extend its contract.

“We polled the team and, for the vast majority, they prefer to remain at home,” said Best, who co-founded the software company in 2018. “We’re not making any decision for the long term right now. We’re thinking about what do we do for the next six to 12 months in terms of maximum safety of team and maximum flexibility of the company.”

In the tech hubs of Seattle, Silicon Valley, New York and elsewhere, many CEOs are coming to the same conclusion — real estate is not a worthwhile expense. Start-ups that never intended to be fully distributed are letting leases end or looking for ways to get out of longer deals, while bigger employers are closing facilities, consolidating space and exploring ways to provide workers with flexible arrangements and options closer to home to avoid long commutes.

In May, CBRE was predicting about a 7% drop in office rents per square foot from the first quarter to the fourth quarter. It expected vacancy rates to rise as high as 14.9% in the first quarter of 2021, up from 12.3% in first three months of 2020. Since then, the number of Covid-19 infections in the U.S. has skyrocketed, and states including Florida and Texas continue to see daily record highs.

Facebook, Twitter, Okta and Box are among the tech companies that have announced a more permanent shift to a hybrid approach. Many others are likely to follow as extended school closures or shortened days make remote options essential. Officials in Los Angeles and San Diego announced on Monday that schools will start online-only in the fall.

With that ominous backdrop and no vaccine expected anytime soon, office workers who can be productive at home are showing little desire to leave, and in many parts of the country they don’t even have the option. 

At SoundCommerce, the office cost was equivalent to the salary for one to two full-time employees, Best said. His company, whose software provides real-time data to online retailers, raised a $6.5 million seed round about a year ago, and now has more options with how to spend its money.

“We could forego the space and either buy additional cash runway, which is important for a start-up,” Best said. “Or hire additional engineering capacity, which is even more important for a start-up.”

Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/13/tech-companies-curb-real-estate-expenses-end-leases-merge-offices.html

By Debra Ballinger and Poncho Guevara

Last month, the State of California released the Bay Area’s next Regional Housing Needs Determination (RHND) which says our region must plan for 450,000 new homes over the next eight years. That’s about 2.3 times larger than the current RHND.

We organize in two different places in the Bay Area—one suburban, one urban—yet both face a housing crisis that disproportionately impacts low-income communities of color and is exacerbated by the COVID pandemic.

We are concerned that the eye-popping total RHND will conceal the most important goal: that 57% of those homes (256,500) must be truly affordable for the hundreds of thousands of people and families left behind in the last three decades.

Let’s work together to ensure that they have stable, affordable homes. We can do it if we make true affordability the goal of planning and development processes in every city.

Now is the time for our region to step up, because only halfway through the current RHND, the Bay Area has already completed 126% of the market-rate development goals, but only 21% of the total below-market housing goals.

Why does the “RHNA” matter?

Each city receives a Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) which is a share of the RHND.

Concord is a somewhat typical suburb of the region with a population of about 130,000 residents. Its current RHNA is 3,478 homes . More than half of those homes must be affordable, yet Concord has only permitted 1.4% of its affordable allocations. Concord is home to immigrants who are increasingly displaced because of skyrocketing rents made more unaffordable by high rates of COVID and job loss.

Despite our advocacy for more affordable housing on vacant city-owned lands, the city has focused on developing market-rate homes. With one luxury complex nearing completion in downtown Concord and a second one under construction close to BART, the city must now focus on housing for our essential workers.

San Jose is one of the three largest urban cities of the Bay Area with over 1 million residents, but operates like a suburb. Its current RHNA is a whopping 35,080 homes, of which nearly 21,000 need to be affordable. The city has a large population of homeowners in spread-out neighborhoods who are resistant to any new housing near them. This forces development into the areas that have historically been home to communities of color and lower-income residents. The planned Google development near Diridon Station gets all the headlines, but every major development project in recent memory has happened in these areas, driving housing costs out of reach for working families. Meanwhile, the city continues to site rare affordable projects in the same neighborhoods, stressing outdated infrastructure and further segregating a city where working families and other low-income neighbors face instability.

What are the solutions?

We believe the larger RHND will help ensure that exclusive cities will do their fair share and commit to building more homes that are affordable to working families.

For a suburb like Concord that means keeping lower income residents and people of color in Concord by prioritizing city-owned land for affordable housing.

For San Jose that means building density in Willow Glen, the Rose Garden and west San Jose, and committing to affordable projects in every council district. But we also know that a larger RHND will increase the market rate development pressure in already-at risk communities. We are concerned that the RHND can cause more gentrification and displacement in suburban and urban communities.

In the end, it is the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) that will decide where these 450,000 new homes will go in the Bay Area.

We urge ABAG board members to allocate significant shares of affordable homes in all Bay Area suburban and urban cities, and minimize market rate housing in cities where residents are at risk of displacement.

The COVID crisis has exposed just how critical housing is for our communities. We all should be looking forward to how we build a stronger Bay Area that is just, affordable, and inclusive so we can recover and thrive together.

Debra Ballinger is director of Monument Impact, a nonprofit organization in Concord, CA serving immigrants, refugees and low-income community members and Poncho Guevara is director of Sacred Heart Community Service, a community organization based in San Jose, CA

Article source: https://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/450000-new-homes-for-the-bay-area-where-will-they-go-and-who-will-decide/