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The Bay Area job market powered to robust gains during February, an upbeat report that arrives just ahead of what’s expected to be a coronavirus-spawned string of grim setbacks and brutal employment losses for the region’s economy.

Bay Area employers added 8,000 jobs in February, gains that were led by Santa Clara County and the San Francisco-San Mateo region, but the timing of when state officials conducted their research doesn’t reflect job losses that are already underway due to the coronavirus outbreak.

In February, Santa Clara County gained 4,000 jobs, the San Francisco-San Mateo region added 3,200, while the East Bay gained 200, the state Employment Development Department reported Friday. The gains extended to all seven metro areas in the region. Santa Cruz County added 1,000 jobs while Monterey County gained 500. All the numbers were adjusted for seasonal fluctuations.

“The Bay Area is in a great position as it enters the coronavirus downturn,” said veteran economist Christopher Thornberg, a Beacon Economics founding partner. “The at-risk jobs that are being affected are in lower quantity than other regions.”

California added 29,000 non-farm payroll jobs during February, while the statewide unemployment rate remained at an all-time record low of 3.9 percent, the EDD reported.

Echoing the Bay Area prospects, California has entered the regimen of job losses due to the coronavirus in good shape, according to a joint assessment of the Golden State’s economy by Beacon and UC Riverside.

“Like everywhere in the country, the Bay Area will experience short-term disruption, but it does enter this crisis from a position of unparalleled economic strength, which should make its recovery quicker than in other places,” said Taner Osman, research director for Beacon Economics.

Even some commercial real estate sectors in the Bay Area might weather the economic catastrophe that now lurks, said economists with CBRE, a commercial real estate firm.

“Some office markets may be more insulated, based on their main industry drivers of leasing activity,” said Richard Barkham, CBRE’s global chief economist. Numerous studies and reports identify the tech industry as the primary propellant for office leases and property purchases in the Bay Area, and notably, Silicon Valley.

Still, the coronavirus has imperiled California’s record-setting performance and unprecedented economic expansion, if Gov. Gavin Newsom is correct with his estimate that state agencies have received roughly 1 million applications for unemployment benefits over a roughly two-week period starting around March 13.

In February, California had 759,000 unemployed residents who were part of a total labor force of 19.5 million in the state. That means the number of unemployed residents might currently be in the range of 1.8 million people.

If the number of unemployed residents was to reach the 1.8 million range, and the labor force remained at the same level of 19.5 million, that would point to a jobless rate of 9 percent, which would be on the cusp of the double-digit unemployment levels that are often associated with a severe economic downturn — or worse.

The prospect of job cuts in the Bay Area and nearby regions has already emerged, according to a state agency’s labor report this week.

Hotels, spas, stores, and restaurants in Northern California are among the employers that revealed plans this week for job cuts totaling in the thousands for the Bay Area and nearby regions amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Rosewood CordeValle of San Martin, Carmel Valley Ranch of Carmel, and Ventana Big Sur were some of the high-profile names that issued warnings they were planning layoffs, the latest grim reminder of the economic devastation spawned by the coronavirus.

In most instances, these businesses were planning temporary closures or layoffs, typically citing the economic impact of the coronavirus situation as a key factor.

Although the Bay Area is poised to ward off at least some of the effects of the coronavirus, it nevertheless is home to an array of industries that are particularly vulnerable, according to Mark Vitner, Wells Fargo senior economist.

“Hotels, restaurants, stores, companies involved with travel and international trouble, are being hit hard in the Bay Area,” Vitner said. “But the tech sector should hold up reasonably well. Large tech companies are holding off on layoffs because they want to hang on to their employees.”

Thornberg made it clear that the coronavirus poses severe hazards for the nation’s economy.

“Clearly, the coronavirus is the most substantive true negative shock to the economy in the last 10 years,” Thornberg said. “By far and away, this is the real deal, if the disease gets out of control. But that’s the whole point of what we are doing, to prevent that from happening. As soon as we turn the economy back on, for the most part the jobs will come back.”

The timing for a rebound for the U.S. economy could be as soon as the July-through-September period, after a severe plunge in the April-through June quarter, Thornberg predicted.

“Beacon Economics is predicting a very negative second quarter and a very positive third quarter,” Thornberg said. “By 2021, this will be a distant memory.”

Thornberg also emphasized that the distributed nature of the tech sector could bolster the Bay Area as job cuts loom.

“It is no big deal for the tech employees to work from home,” Thornberg said. “The Bay Area’s tech workers have higher wages, so they are better protected from this.”

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Article source: https://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-job-market-soars-february-coronavirus-layoff-tech-hotel-retail-restaurant-economy

With sweeping shelter-in-place orders in effect, interest in signing a lease for a new home isn’t at the forefront of most people’s minds—especially in one of the country’s most expensive markets.

Rental site Rent Cafe published its most recent numbers illustrating that, as the COVID-19 outbreak spread, the number of people using its platform to search for Bay Area apartments swiftly plummeted. The biggest drop, unsurprisingly, came after shelter-in-place orders went into effect locally.

Nationwide

Writer Sanziana Bona reports that the number of users nationwide dropped an average of 25 percent week over week between March 11 and March 17, with the biggest drops happening on March 16 and 17 when traffic cratered by 37 percent on both days.

The number of users searching for homes on the platform dropped by 48 percent. Bona notes that Google searches for phrases that include the word “apartment” diminished by similar margins last week as well.

In a survey of 6,000 site users, Rent Cafe found that 56 percent of those called finding a home “a priority” even under the current circumstances, but notes that 25 percent of those polled have decided to either cancel or defer previously planned moves.

Asked whether their rental priorities had changed, 49 percent said no, while 28 percent said they’re now looking for a cheaper home, and 15 percent confessed new preoccupation with cleanliness in the unit. Just four percent said they’re giving up roommates for health-related reasons.

San Francisco / Bay Area

What about in the San Francisco Bay Area? Rent Cafe spokesperson Adrian Rosenberg tells Curbed SF that the trend here is even more stark.

SF-centric traffic on Rent Cafe was down 30 percent on average. The decline on Monday and Tuesday of last week—when the city announced and implemented the shelter-in-place order—diminished 45 and 41 percent. respectively.

Google trends also showed a marked decline at the same time for the search terms like “San Francisco apartment,” “SF apartments,” and “San Francisco rent.”

The fact that only Rent Cafe has reported a dip in traffic doesn’t necessarily reflect a wider trend; none of Rent Cafe’s platform competitors have yet responded to questions about whether user behavior on their sites responded the same way. It’s also unclear whether the downturn in site use is momentary or the beginning of a slide.

However, under the circumstances it would be remarkable if people didn’t change their apartment browsing habits; there’s also been a similar downward turn on the home sales market locally.

Notably, the city’s definition of “essential business” includes moving companies, so even with a public health crisis unfolding, people are still permitted to change residences. Depending on how long the current status quo continues, some people could be forced to move depending on circumstances, even though a temporary eviction moratorium is in place.

If you have received an eviction notice during the shelter-in-place order, please read Curbed SF’s guide to rent relief during to coronavirus crisis.

Article source: https://sf.curbed.com/2020/3/25/21194326/sf-coronavirus-apartment-market-rent-rentals

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  A Gold Coast original, both preserved and updated since its late 1800s birthday, could be yours for $2.690M

  A Gold Coast original, both preserved and updated since its late 1800s birthday, could be yours for $2.690M

  
  Photo: Aerial Canvas
  

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A Gold Coast original, both preserved and updated since its late 1800s birthday, could be yours for $2.690M

A Gold Coast original, both preserved and updated since its late 1800s birthday, could be yours for $2.690M

Photo: Aerial Canvas

Built-in 1898, by A.W. Pattiani, a prolific Bay Area architect/builder, the historic Alameda home at 1421 San Antonio is asking $2.69 million.

Throughout the first half of the 20th century it housed some illustrious Alameda residents. In the 1930s, George Wright (head attorney at S.F. law firm Wright Wright Larson) lived here. Later, the Krusi family, the son of whom made news in the Oakland Tribune in 1942 for barely escaping the war with his life. Then the Murphys, a family who had “14 kids, conducted political meetings in the living room, and Girl Scout meetings in the basement,” listing agent Herman Chan told SFGATE. After that it was the Moonies (Barbara Moonie raised her family here while also running Jay’s Coffee, Tea, and Treats a block away).

Today, the current sellers present a home they’ve “re-envisioned for 2020 while paying homage to its historic past.”

That past is shown in the colonial style still intact with the hardwood floors, leaded glass, built-ins and exquisitely carved banister and stairwell.

ALSO: Kevin Durant’s Oakland Hills mansion hits the market for $6M

New features include an additional 1,000 square feet, a transformed backyard, updated baths, a modern chef’s kitchen, and a refinished attic and basement. The 4,500 square feet also features a library, six bedrooms, three full baths and two half baths.

There’s also a one-car garage on the .25 acre lot.

The home is adjacent to Franklin Park and a short hop to Alameda amenities.

In 2017, the property listed for $1.799 million and sold three months later for $1.6 million. Three years later, it’s asking $1 million more.

See the complete listing here.

Anna Marie Erwert writes from both the renter and new buyer perspective, having (finally) achieved both statuses. She focuses on national real estate trends, specializing in the San Francisco Bay Area and Pacific Northwest. Follow Anna on Twitter: @AnnaMarieErwert. 

Article source: https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/Gold-Coast-original-in-Alameda-has-history-15208671.php

What You’ll Pay

In 2019, the median sale price for a home in the East Cut was $1.506 million, with 211 home sales, according to the San Francisco Association of Realtors. That’s a climb from the 166 sales recorded in 2016, but not so much from the $1.494 million median sales price that year.

The median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the area was $4,317 a month in 2019, up 4.7 percent from 2016, according to rental data from Apartment List. That compares with a median San Francisco rent of $2,475 for a one-bedroom, which grew 2.2 percent over the same period. (Apartment List calculated median rents for the San Francisco ZIP code that includes most of the East Cut.)

Justina Colunga, a real estate agent with Vanguard Properties, said she tells clients who are looking to buy new construction that supplementary tax costs for neighborhood improvements are especially high and will be in place for the next 23 years. (The taxes could run an additional $20,000 a year on a 2,200-square-foot condo, she said.) Newer buildings in the area also tend to have smaller square footage and higher homeowners association fees than older buildings, but come with more amenities — a trade-off buyers need to weigh. (HOA fees at new buildings typically start at around $1,000 a month for the smallest units and rise from there.)

The Vibe

The East Cut, which covers about seven square blocks, is dominated by blue and green glass skyscrapers, giving it a different feel from most of the rest San Francisco, where new construction is relatively rare and low-rise, and historic architecture is the norm. There are buildings like 181 Fremont, an 800-foot tower that includes offices for Facebook on the lower floors and 55 luxury condos on the higher floors, including a $46 million penthouse with interiors by Mary Ta and Lars Hypko of Los Angeles-based MASS Beverly.

With newly designed pedestrian plazas and streetscapes, the East Cut feels a little like an architectural rendering of a futuristic city. There’s a newness to everything.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/31/realestate/east-cut-san-francisco-a-newly-rebranded-neighborhood-takes-a-bow.html

© Via Shutterstock

Market watchers in the Bay Area are curious to see what the ongoing pandemic will do to home sales in the near future.

Even for those unable to buy or sell property, what happens to home value is a critical indicator of what’s happening to the rest of the economy. In March, Compass Real Estate updated its exhaustive map of sales activity across the Bay Area, crunching median sales prices for the previous 12 months.

What’s most interesting here is the timing: These numbers represent activity up through the second week of March—shortly before the Bay Area began sheltering in place. That means that when we compare the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak on the home market (whatever they may be), these numbers are what we’ll be comparing them to, a time capsule of Bay Area homes as they were just days before everything changed.

Here’s what the market looked liked shortly before shelter-in-place orders went into effect/.

• In San Francisco, the 12-month average for a single-family house was $1.6 million. Breaking things down by neighborhood reveals a vast spectrum of prices, all the way up to $5.7 million for a house in Pac Heights on the high end, which was the second highest house price in the entire Bay Area. Note that the gap between Pac Heights and the rest of the city remains particularly dramatic; SF’s second priciest block was St. Francis Wood, where a home cost more than $3.2 million
• SF’s cheapest place to buy was in Bayview, with a median price of $994,500 making it the only San Francisco neighborhood still averaging less than a $1 million for a house. Even in the Excelsior, the average cost of housing climbed to more than $1.16 million. A more detailed SF map that breaks Bayview down to smaller sub-neighborhoods finds houses cheapest in Bayview Heights ($945,000).
• If anyone’s curious, the sole SF neighborhood with a median roughly the same as the city was Bernal Heights, with a $1.6 million average. The Outer Richmond was close to the middle mark with $1.58 million.

• The most expensive place for homes in the Bay Area was Atherton, which, over the course of a year, averaged $6 million for a homes—no surprise, as this small, exclusive Peninsula city often gets singled out as the single most expensive place to buy nationwide.
• The most affordable place to buy regionally was Vallejo at $427,000. In Contra Costa County, the most affordable redoubt was Pittsburg ($462,000). And in Alameda County, the subregion of southeast Oakland was cheapest at $496,000.
• In the North Bay, southeast Santa Rosa was the cheapest spot at $620,000, while Belvedere proved priciest at $3.58 million.
• San Jose’s average was $1.1 million, with the highest prices coming in the Almaden Valley neighborhood (more than $1.52 million), with Alum Rock the cheapest ($770,000).

The Compass figures were similar to the California Association of Realtors (CAR)’s figures from the same time, although CAR’s numbers are less comprehensive and represent monthly sales data instead of longer trends.

For example, the CAR average for SF houses sold in February was $1.61 million, nearly the same number as the Compass report and up $105,000 from the same time last year. With the exception of Contra Costa County, which dipped 2.2 percent from February 2019, every Bay Area County saw significant price appreciation year over year, up to 15.4 percent in Santa Clara County.

Almost all prices were up, just as has been the case consistently for years. But then, over the course of just a few weeks, almost everything about life in the Bay Area changed, and where we go from here remains to be seen.

Article source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/here-s-how-much-it-costs-to-buy-a-house-in-the-bay-area/ar-BB12oK9O?ocid=hplocalnews