Coronavirus San Francisco: How it’s affected Bay Area housing market

Despite ups and downs, San Francisco’s housing market has seemed invincible in recent years, such that it would take a crisis of unprecedented proportions to call its fundamentals into question. Then one happened.

Only two weeks ago, realtors and analysts were cautious yet confident about the short-term future of the business, telling Curbed SF that, while the novel coronavirus outbreak was bad for some home listings and that high-end luxury markets might suffer after stock market woes, when push comes to shove a San Francisco home is still an incredibly valuable commodity.

But that was before San Francisco, soon followed by the entire state of California, issued a shelter-in-place order that, in effect, turns listed homes into the equivalent of buried treasure: valuable, but nigh impossible to reach.

A housebound realtor can no longer show homes in person, nor can appraisers visit homes on the market to make assessments. Stagers and photographers can’t travel to properties. And, of course, even if such tasks could be accomplished, no potential buyers would want to visit for tours.

“With open houses and public meetings banned [and] keeping six feet away a must, new listings all but vanished,” Alexander Clark of the Front Steps tells Curbed SF, noting that he’s “cursing my choice not to put more money in San Francisco real estate over the past couple of years instead of the stock market” after the beating that trade shares took in recent weeks.

Last week the San Francisco Association of Realtors banned all in-person showings of homes and shut its offices. The agency also advised, “Please encourage realtors not to judge or publicly chastise people who have a difference of opinion on how to address this crisis.”

The California Association of Realtors (CAR) polled its members last week and found that large majorities expect the outbreak to quash prices, home sales, and inventory. Socketsite reports that SF’s listing inventory dropped 20 percent in just three days on account of so many people suddenly pulling homes off the market.

“Before the coronavirus outbreak hit the state so severely, California’s housing market was getting a strong foothold,” CAR reported in its February market summary, with sales across the Bay Area down somewhat at 1.3 percent, but median prices up five percent. In San Francisco, the year-over-year price bump was more than ten percent last month.

However, according to CAR economist Leslie Appleton-Young, “the housing market condition is expected to deteriorate” in the coming months. She projects that sellers will hold off listing new homes until pastures grow greener again.

That downturn will almost certainly be national. Real estate site Redfin, who lists California as one of six states where home tours are off limits, barred open houses on all of its listings nationwide last week. In places where in-person showings are still allowed, “anyone with a sniffle” should be turned away, CEO Glen Kelman tells agents.

Despite every possible ill omen, some parties remain hopeful for a rally—or perhaps just sticking to the basic principles of salesmanship by not confessing potential weakness.

Brett Jennings, founder of Real Estate Experts, tells Curbed SF that “our market is still thriving” in Santa Clara County, seeing only a few cancellations despite shelter-in-place conditions and the fact that “we have one of the highest counts of active COVID-19 cases in California.”

Michelle Kim of Mosaik Real Estate says lenders “are experiencing a surge in demand” as opportunistic buyers move to take advantage of low mortgage rates.

And Clark of the Front Steps—who bases his analysis on the current predicament as analogous to seasonal market slowdowns during the holidays rather than the potential a much longer-term freeze—puts a brave face, saying, “a shutdown is not forever, and a shutdown does not mean things have tanked.”

Of course, sales can only happen if buyers get some kind of access to homes. Redfin has pushed agents to adopt virtual open houses using navigable 3D models of homes. The SF-based rental platform Zumper has followed suit by adding videos and virtual walkthroughs to listings on its site.

While this tech is hardly new, it’s always been seen as secondary to in-person showings—now the future of the entire market might depend on making potential buyers feel it’s an acceptable substitute.

There’s some history that suggests that hope for a rebound isn’t just wishful thinking. Svenja Gudell, chief economist for Zillow, examined pandemic histories ranging from the 1918 flu epidemic to the 2003 SARS outbreak and noted that economies “snapped back quickly once the epidemic was over.”

When Hong Kong, a hyper-lux market like the Bay Area, faced the threat of SARS, a disease that called for similar isolation practices we’re now facing, Gudell found that although transaction volume plummeted up to 72 percent, “house prices did not fall significantly”—nor did they fall in China during novel coronavirus spread there only a few months ago.

Article source: https://sf.curbed.com/2020/3/23/21188781/sf-housing-market-coronavirus-covid-19

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No Sign Of Slowdown For Bay Area Industrial Pipeline

The Bay Area as a whole could see nearly 9M SF of industrial real estate deliveries this year, a new report shows. 

Between the Peninsula and North, South and East Bay areas, the region has about 8.6M SF of industrial space scheduled to deliver in 2020, putting it well within a list of the top 10 markets in the nation, according to CommercialCafé.

The new inventory will follow enhanced fundamentals in most Bay Area submarkets, especially the North Bay and Silicon Valley, both of which saw year-over-year rents climbing in the last quarter of 2019.

Silicon Valley’s average asking rents for industrial space ticked up to $1.15 per SF on a monthly triple-net basis last year, while rates in the North Bay’s Marin, Sonoma and Napa Counties finished 2019 at $1.29/SF, $1.05/SF and $1.33/SF, respectively, according to Cushman Wakefield

Napa County alone will add nearly 20% of the region’s new inventory when developers DivcoWest and Orchard Partners complete the three-building Phase 2 of Napa Logistics Park, the fifth-largest industrial project underway in the country, according to CommercialCafé. 

Developers leased the first part of that project, a 644K SF building, in 2017 to furniture retailer IKEA, which sought it for more e-commerce potential

Even with Napa Logistics Park, most of what is to come in the Bay Area will open in the East and South Bay, where a combined 6.5M SF of industrial space is slated to open this year, according to Cushman Wakefield.  

Overall, the industrial space due this year for the Bay Area still pales in comparison to the amount coming to the Inland Empire and the Dallas markets, both of which are expected to see about 25M SF of new inventory come online this year, CommercialCafé forecasts.

The ongoing growth in the Bay Area runs parallel to what is seen across the U.S., with industrial property completions nationwide slated to increase 29% this year, leading to 186M SF of new inventory across 627 properties.

Article source: https://www.bisnow.com/san-francisco/news/industrial/bay-area-industrial-pipeline-picks-up-103527

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Coronavirus complications slow down real estate market – KGO

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — The coronavirus has prompted many employees to work from home — so does that mean they might want to buy a new home to work from? Going into the crisis, Zillow was predicting a hot real estate market in the Bay Area. Inventory was down 15% from last year and mortgage rates were at a historic low. Now predictions are harder to come by.

“It is sort of supply and a demand shock, it could cause a lot of sellers to pull back and buyers to pull back,” says Jeff Tuck, an economist with Zillow. “In that case, the price impact is pretty ambiguous. We don’t really know what to expect.”

The National Association of Realtors says there’s a good chance the market will remain hot for some, but cool for others.

“Because high-end buyers have large holdings in the equity markets and therefore they may be somewhat softer,” says The National Association of Realtors’ Chief Economist Lawrence Yun, “but for the starter homes or mid-priced homes, maybe it will be a very brisk number of buyers.”

He says, “If some sellers are pulling out, it may mean quite a competitive environment where there could be a multiple bid process.”

Some sellers might not want to go through the process right now.

“Twenty percent of the home sellers indicating they are pulling a listing off or stop holding open houses because they do not want strangers visiting their homes,” says Yun.

So what is coming next? It is hard to know. I asked Zillow’s Jeff Tuck what has surprised him most.

“Mainly seeing the term ‘hand sanitizer’ everywhere,” he told me, “and maybe the only really surprising then about that to me is all these real estate agents were able to get their hands on hand sanitizer before it all sold out last week.”

Real estate agents are resourceful and people want to buy homes, but there is that: a potentially slowing economy.

Take a look at more stories and videos by Michael Finney and 7 On Your Side.

Article source: https://abc7news.com/6011352

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Billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of Bay Area jobs at risk from the coronavirus

Nearly a half a million people work in Bay Area restaurants, stores and venues that have been required to shut down or drastically scale back operations to help curb the spread of the coronavirus, a Chronicle review of federal data released by the Associated Press found.

Another 69,500 people work in the hotel and air travel industries, which have been severely hampered by a sharp drop in tourism and flights, data show.

Those employees received about $4.7 billion in wages during the first quarter of 2019, underscoring the severe blow the pandemic could cause to the local service economy. Countless more in the nine Bay Area counties have been affected by the shuttering of nonessential businesses in other sectors, such as commercial construction and manufacturing.

“When you’re a small business and you have an immediate drop in revenue, it’s completely paralyzing,” said Lauren Crabbe, who co-owns Andytown Coffee Roasters in San Francisco with her husband.

Crabbe had to cut hours for 45 employees and shut down two of her four stores due to weeks of falling sales as many of her customers were asked to work from home — first by employers, then the city. She’s trying to keep money flowing to the business and its workers through a virtual tip jar and a website that lets people buy pastries and coffee for health care employees, but if the drop in business stretches for months, she worries the company won’t be able to rebound.

“If Andytown fails, it will completely destroy our lives. It will devastate us,” Crabbe said. “And most small businesses in San Francisco are all in the same boat.”

Not everything in the Bay Area is closed or dealing with a loss of business. Hospitals, residential construction sites, grocery stores, some manufacturing plants and other companies providing essential services can stay open. Many offices have physically shut their doors but continue to operate as scores of employees work remotely — a luxury most food vendors and retail stores don’t have.

The Chronicle analysis focused on restaurants, bars, sports venues, museums and certain retail stores because the service sector has been hit particularly hard by the shelter-in-place policies, experts said. Not all 465,000 employees in those industries are out of a job, but many hourly workers have been laid off or had their shifts reduced, while small-business owners have watched their revenues plummet.

Unite Here, the largest labor union for hospitality workers, said Wednesday that it expects 80 to 90 percent of its 300,000 members to be out of work.

Anand Singh, president of Unite Here Local 2, which represents 14,000 hospitality employees in San Francisco and San Mateo counties, said that 4,000 members were laid off last week, and that the number is expected to double this week, with large hotels closing down. Many workers are struggling to live without a paycheck in one of the most expensive areas in the country, Singh said.

 Billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of Bay Area jobs at risk from the coronavirus

“With the income disparity, wage gap and high cost of living in the Bay Area, I think this can have a particularly devastating impact on working people and people in the service sector,” he said.

Under the current orders, all nonessential businesses in the Bay Area are to remain closed until early April. Depending on the length of closures and travel restrictions, economists have given varying forecasts about what the outbreak could mean long term.

The pandemic hit when the economy was in a record expansion. Consumer debt and low-quality business debt, which can be signs of economic stress, were rising, but so were personal savings.

“All these rolling shutdowns are going to add up to a very sharp drop in Bay Area economic growth,” said Scott Anderson, chief economist with Bank of the West in San Francisco. “Psychologically it’s doing a lot of damage.”

Anderson said he expects a U.S. recession to start in March and last until the end of the year. Unemployment will rise, but not as high as it did during the great recession, he said.

But Christopher Thornberg, founding partner of the research firm Beacon Economics, said that if the restrictions are in place for a relatively short period, forecasts of a severe recession will likely be overblown. “We have a much more resilient economy right now than we did in 2008,” Thornberg said. “These aren’t lost jobs; these are furloughed jobs.”

Amanda Rotondo, who owns Bark Avenue Doggy Daycare in San Francisco, said she originally planned on staying open to care for the roughly 50 dogs that get dropped off at her facilities each day. But when nonessential businesses were ordered to close, Rotondo had to lay off her 18 employees, some of whom had been working for her business since it opened eight years ago.

“It was heartbreaking,” Rotondo said. “My staff is all younger and they live in the Bay Area, and it is already so hard anyway to live here with a paycheck.”

Rotondo, 39, said she has been helping her former employees file for unemployment benefits while also navigating the process herself. In the meantime, she said she has not heard back about whether her landlord will defer the thousands of dollars in rent that she owes each month.

“I’m just worried because I don’t know how long this is going to last,” Rotondo said. “And I don’t know how long it is going to take to recoup these losses.”

Assistance plans and protections are being provided at the federal, state and local level, including a low-interest disaster assistance loan program, an extension on filing taxes and a temporary ban on certain residential evictions in California and commercial evictions in San Francisco.

President Trump signed a multibillion-dollar emergency aid package Wednesday that will give paid sick leave to hourly employees and expand unemployment insurance and food assistance.

While those programs are helpful, San Francisco Supervisor Gordon Mar said business owners and workers in his district — which includes two Andytown Coffee Roasters stores — have more urgent needs that aren’t being met.

“Increasing debt or deferring the payment of taxes or fees is just pushing their problems down the road,” Mar said. “What they really need is immediate financial support.”

San Francisco Chronicle staff writers Carolyn Said and Kathleen Pender contributed to this report.

Joaquin Palomino and Cynthia Dizikes are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: jpalomino@sfchronicle.com, cdizikes@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JoaquinPalomino, @cdizikes

Correction

A caption in an earlier version of this story gave an incorrect name for Misha Zatsman.

Article source: https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Billions-of-dollars-hundreds-of-thousands-of-Bay-15144521.php

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Mortgage rates head up again, another blow to real estate market

So much for record-low mortgage rates. After hitting an all-time low two weeks ago, the average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage jumped 0.3% this week to 3.65%, the highest it’s been since mid-January.

That’s still lower than a year ago when it was 4.28%, according to Freddie Mac’s weekly survey released Thursday. But the real estate industry was hoping that record low rates would bolster demand for houses at a time when buyers are increasingly concerned about collapsing stock prices and rising joblessness caused by the coronavirus.

Not surprisingly, a survey of California Realtors found they are more pessimistic than they were a week before. In a statewide survey taken March 14 to 16, before most Bay Area counties issued shelter-in-place orders, 78% of the nearly 1,100 respondents said the coronavirus will have a negative impact on home sales, up from 53% the week before. As for home prices, 58% expected a negative impact, up from 40%. A quarter said they’re doing more virtual tours.

Also, 54% said they had clients back out from a home purchase and 45% had clients back out of a sale.

Sara Anwar, a dentist who can’t work now because of the pandemic, canceled a contract to buy a $1 million home in San Jose on Wednesday. She stands to lose her $30,000 deposit, but felt she had no choice.

“I’m on the verge of losing my job; without that monthly income I can’t pay the mortgage,” she said. “The 20% I was planning to put down was pretty much all my savings. I’m afraid to let go of that.”

In the Bay Area, open houses and broker tours have come to a halt in counties with a shelter-in-place order and many sellers are freezing their listings.

Since the beginning of March, 193 homes were listed for sale in San Francisco, but 172 went from “active” to “hold,” meaning they are no longer being marketed. Only 14 homes went from active to hold in all of January and February combined, said Jay Cheng, spokesman for the San Francisco Association of Realtors.

Those homes could still be sold — the San Francisco recorder’s office is closed but recording sales electronically — but putting them on hold freezes the number of days on the market. Some buyers shy away from homes that have lingered too long.

In San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San Benito and Monterey counties, since March 1 there have been 2,224 new listings, 1,229 homes sold, 345 listings canceled and 280 withdrawn, according to MLSListings. In addition, 281 transactions fell through.

Some real estate companies that offer to buy homes outright and sell them later — known as iBuyers — have halted that activity. Redfin said on Wednesday it “will temporarily pause making offers on homes.” Zillow said it’s still doing it, for now.

In a blog post, Redfin CEO Glen Kelman said his company has canceled open houses nationwide and has stopped buying advertising to promote itself, but is still advertising customers’ houses.

Referring to the uptick in mortgage rates, he wrote, “One bullet that the government fired to help housing this week didn’t hit its mark.”

Two weeks ago, the average rate on a 30-year mortgage had dropped to 3.29%, a record low since 1971, as panic selling of stocks and panic buying of bonds sent the 10-year Treasury yield below 1% for the first time. Mortgage rates tend to follow the 10-year Treasury, but not always in lockstep.

The sharp drop in rates set off a surge of refinance applications and to control volume, some lenders raised rates such that the average ticked up to 3.36% last week.

Then came upheaval in the bond market. After hitting a record low close of 0.54% on March 9, the yield on the 10-year Treasury began climbing again as investors dumped those securities for something even safer — cash or its equivalent. That drove bond prices down and yields, which move in the opposite direction, up.

Congress “is discussing more than $1 trillion worth of stimulus.” To fund that, “the government will have to sell massive amounts of new (bonds) to an audience that is not interested in buying government paper right now at rock bottom yields,” said Keith Gumbinger, a vice president at mortgage tracking firm HSH Associations.

The Federal Reserve slashed its benchmark interest rate to near zero Sunday and said it would buy $700 billion in Treasury and mortgage-backed securities in an effort to steady the markets. But the 10-year Treasury yield settled around 1.12% Thursday, still higher than Friday.

Leslie Appleton-Young, the Realtors association chief economist, said the uptick in mortgage rates shouldn’t last long because they are higher than they normally would be given where Treasury yields are now.

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

Article source: https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/Mortgage-rates-head-up-again-another-blow-to-15144304.php

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