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Good morning, Bay Area. It’s Thursday, Jan. 30, and if you think you’ve gotten a parking ticket unfairly, wait until you hear this San Franciscan’s story. Here’s what you need to know to start your day.

Ripple effect

A day after federal officials arrested and charged San Francisco’s Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru with fraud, the impact of the allegations continued to reverberate around San Francisco.

The Chronicle has learned the real estate developer who allegedly provided San Francisco Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru with lavish hotel stays and a $2,070 bottle of wine is chief executive of one of the world’s biggest luxury hotel owners, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

Later on Wednesday, the longtime San Francisco International Airport commissioner whom federal officials allege Nuru and restaurateur Nick Bovis sought to bribe resigned, citing health issues.

Who is Nick Bovis? The restaurateur tied to Nuru in alleged fraud was “too generous,” friends say. But he also had a criminal record few of his high-profile San Francisco backers knew about.

No exceptions

Anthony Edgar De Guzman spent 15 days in the hospital after a stranger robbed and stabbed him on the steps of his house in San Francisco’s Excelsior district.

Then the city dealt him another fresh wound: a $79 parking ticket for not moving his car from a street-sweeping zone — which became active only after he was taken to the hospital.

Now De Guzman and his family are increasingly frustrated by San Francisco turning down requests to drop the citation, though De Guzman’s niece told them her uncle had been violently stabbed moments after parking the car. But the odds of overturning a parking citation in the city are not favorable.

President Biden?

During his campaign for president, former Vice President Joe Biden has outlined plans for immigration, infrastructure and transportation that are in line with California’s — in some cases.

In others, Biden would be injecting the federal government into areas that are already the subject of fierce debate in the state.

John Wildermuth reports on what a Joe Biden presidency would mean for California.

Previously: What an Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders presidency would mean for California.

Stay informed ahead of the March primary: Subscribe to The Chronicle’s Political Punch newsletter.

If you suddenly need some Niners facts

Psst.

Don’t care about the 49ers? Yes you.

Skipping over the Super Bowl item in Bay Briefing for days? We have a guide for you.

The good news: San Francisco has an interesting team, and we’ve collected a pack of facts about the 49ers that transcend the usual sports talk radio blather. Read it and pretend to be a fan, or actually start being one. Hop aboard the bandwagon here.

Meanwhile, for the Faithful:

• How Kyle Shanahan quickly figured out how to connect with his players.

• 49ers’ Richard Sherman lashes out at NFL’s “hypocrisy” in seeking longer season.

• Crossover: Joe Garofoli’s guide to the most political Super Bowl ever.

• Fifth Mission podcast: It’s Super Bowl week in Miami — and Ann Killion and Eric Branch are reporting from the three-ring circus.

Existential memo to PGE

Exactly one year after PGE filed for bankruptcy, Gov. Gavin Newsom said the embattled utility “no longer exists” and doubled down on a state takeover if the utility doesn’t shape up by June 30.

“There’s going to be a new company or the state of California will take it over,” Newsom said on Wednesday.

Mallory Moench and J.D. Morris report on why Newsom said the bankruptcy has become an “extraordinary opportunity for the state.”

More: Judge approves PGE Tubbs Fire settlements.

Around the Bay

• SB50 voted down: A contentious bill to increase the housing supply in California by boosting dense construction around public transit and in wealthy suburbs was defeated in the state Senate on Wednesday after a year-long battle.

• Coronavirus updates: An infectious disease expert at UCSF is working on a quick diagnostic test for the deadly coronavirus. Apple, Amazon announce business travel restrictions to China and United stops eight SFO flights to China. Background: Here’s what Bay Area residents need to know.

• Minor league deal for the Panda: Giants bringing back Pablo Sandoval. Giants Splash podcast: Hear from the Panda himself.

• Home security video systems too: After mountain lion attack, authorities flooded with calls.

• S.F. institution closes: John Vanderslice’s Tiny Telephone recording studio succumbs to economic reality.

• Question time: Kamala Harris, Dianne Feinstein are heard from but not seen in Trump trial.

• Power meal hot spot: San Francisco’s Allegro Romano closes in Russian Hill.

• Big, necessary ask: California Supreme Court wants panel to tackle racial discrimination in jury selection.

• Harmony’s end: Bob Shane, founding member of S.F.’s Kingston Trio, dies at 85.

The Culture Desk

Each year on Dec. 29, Pat and Alicia Moorehead travel to Lake Elsinore in Southern California to celebrate a friend’s birthday party — in midair, while freefalling at terminal velocity. It’s a group skydiving affair made up of seemingly unlikely adrenaline junkies: senior citizens.

“There was a guy there this time who was under 30,” says 88-year-old Pat. “I don’t know how he snuck in.”

He’s become something of a figurehead of a global subcommunity of athletes who are pushing the limits of extreme sport into old age. And he’s nowhere close to slowing down.

Bay Briefing is written by Taylor Kate Brown and sent to readers’ email inboxes on weekday mornings. Sign up for the newsletter here, and contact Brown at taylor.brown@sfchronicle.com.

Article source: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Bay-Briefing-Impact-of-SF-official-s-arrest-15015214.php

It’s possibly the cheapest house sold in San Francisco in years. A single-family home sold for just over a half million dollars.

The home has everything people usually look for in a dream home: a charming storybook-style cottage nestled into the hillside with a terraced yard on a quiet street. But it also has a dream price tag: $535,000 — a steal, for San Francisco anyway.

“It’s a good thing you can find something for $500,000 in San Francisco,” resident David Maloney said. “I mean, that’s kind of amazing.”

Local

The home is also the least expensive in San Francisco.

“But if that’s the cheapest, that’s kind of scary as well,” Maloney said.

The home’s online listing said the one-bedroom, 800-square-foot fixer upper, was built in the Excelsior District after the 1906 earthquake. It has been handed down to family over the years.

The home was originally listed in November at $888,000, but sold for $350,000 less.

“I was very surprised to see it,” said John Asdourian with Maguire Real Estate.

Asdourian, director of the San Francisco Association of Realtors, said it’s an aberration. Home prices in the Bay Area are slowing down, but not going down.

“A slowdown in the increase in prices. There’s nothing which indicates to me that prices will slide downward,” Asdourian said. “It’s a slowdown in the curve of prices going up.”

Even at $535,000, potential homebuyers like David Maloney said it is still too much.

“I wouldn’t even pay $535 even for that,” Maloney said.

Still, the home could be worth $1.5 million after renovation, according to experts.

Article source: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/making-it-in-the-bay/san-francisco-steal-single-family-home-sells-for-535000/2223144/

Southern California home-flipping giant Wedgewood Inc. was thrust into the spotlight last month when homeless mothers from Moms4Housing began squatting in a vacant West Oakland home owned by the company and refused to leave. It’s an unusual situation for Wedgewood, which until recently, had received little public attention or scrutiny in Northern California.

Attorneys representing Moms4Housing argued in Alameda County Superior Court on Monday that housing is a human right and the mothers should be allowed to stay because of the ongoing homelessness crisis in Oakland. Judge Patrick McKinney is expected to release a ruling in the coming days.

While
all eyes are focused on the battle for control of the three-bedroom home on
Magnolia Street, scant attention has been paid to Wedgewood’s other activity in
the region, which has faced legal challenges from tenants and opposition from
housing advocates.

Local

An
NBC Bay Area analysis of property records and legal filings revealed
Wedgewood’s Bay Area real-estate portfolio is far more extensive than the
Magnolia Street home they purchased out of foreclosure in August. The home
represents less than one percent of Wedgewood’s Bay Area holdings, and a much
smaller fraction of what the company owns nationally.

Determining the extent of Wedgewood’s property ownership in the Bay Area and elsewhere is difficult because the company conducts business through a sprawling network of LLCs, such as Catamount Properties 2018, LLC, which owns the home currently occupied by the homeless mothers. 

But
Catamount Properties 2018 is just one of 98 active LLCs NBC Bay Area traced
back to Wedgewood using secretary of state business filings and a database of
property records from Santa Clara County and San Mateo County. While the LLCs
have different names, they share one common characteristic connecting them to
Wedgewood: The mailing address of the company’s Redondo Beach headquarters.

Wedgewood currently owns at least 125 properties across eight Bay Area counties through its network of LLCs, according to a review of assessor and recorder records. That tally doesn’t include any properties the company might own in Solano County, which said it could not provide ownership records over the phone. It’s also possible there are additional LLCs tied to the company not identified in NBC Bay Area’s search.

Of those 98 active LLCs, 31 Wedgewood entities appear to have owned property in Bay Area counties since 2015, according to assessor and recorder records. The other entities appear to perform separate functions for the vertically integrated company.

When it comes to finding a job, the same mantra that applies to real estate can also be used for those in the job-hunting market: It’s all about location, location, location.

And some of the best locations in the country for finding a job remain in the Bay Area.

That’s the gist of a study from personal finance and information site WalletHub, which on Friday released a report on what are supposed to be the best cities in the United States for finding a job in 2020. According to WalletHub, San Francisco is the third-best city in the country for jobs searchers, Fremont comes in at No. 5 and San Jose took 15th place among the 182 cities in the study.

San Francisco trails only Scottsdale, Arizona and Burlington, Vermont on WalletHub’s list. Detroit came in 182nd place for best cities for jobs.

Other Bay Area and Northern California cities in the WalletHub rankings included Sacramento at No. 36, Oakland in 64th place and Santa Rosa at No. 73.

WalletHub said it based its rankings on two main areas: job market and socio-economics. Job market factors included items such as job opportunities, employment growth, unemployment rate and access to employment benefits. Socio-economic topics included median annual income, average work and commute time and affordability of housing.

WalletHub found that Fremont is the best city in the country when it comes to workers living below the poverty line, as only 1.84% of the city’s workforce qualifies as living in poverty. San Jose took the top spot for highest monthly average starting salary, with $6,019 a month. To put that number in some perspective, San Jose’s montly average starting salary is 3.2 times higher than that of Brownsville, Texas, which came in last place with an average starting salary of $1,876 a month.

And while San Francisco ranked highly for factors such as monthly starting salaries and a low overall unemployment rate, the city came in 181st place for workers having the longest average commute and work times. San Francisco also ranked No. 179 in terms of least affordable housing, ahead of just Miami, Boston and New York.

The WalletHub study comes as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recently said the national unemployment rate in December was 3.6%, and remains near the 50-year-low rate of 3.5% that was reported in September.

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Article source: http://www.mercurynews.com/now-hiring-3-bay-area-cities-among-best-for-jobs-in-2020

As the new decade is starting to unfold, many investors are thinking of how to start it off on the right foot and find the perfect opportunity to multiply last year’s earnings. Whether you’re a Bay Area resident or you’ve heard that this is one of the best locations in the U.S. for investments, San Francisco and the surrounding area can be a great place for you to make a profit. The San Francisco Bay Area has a GDP of $535 billion and, with a growth rate twice as high as the rest of U.S. cities, it would rank 19^th in the world, even compared to national economies.

This immense growth has definitely put the Bay Area on investors’ radars, but what specific part of the region’s economy makes for prime investments? Should you stick with traditional investment opportunities such as real estate, or should you take advantage of San Francisco’s innovative tech scene and invest in one of its many startups?

Luckily for you, both of these are viable options. Whether you prefer traditional investments or you’re more interested in exploring alternative investments, you’ll find the Bay Area to be a great location. However, depending on your long-term plans, risk appetite, and desired return on investment, there are some things to keep in mind.

2020 is still a good time to invest in Bay Area real estate

According to a recent PwC study, San Francisco and the Bay Area remain one of the most attractive destinations for real estate investors in 2020, along with emerging markets such as Austin, Nashville, and Boston, which have growing economies that attract the young workforce. In fact, the Bay Area has become even more attractive, because prices have been slowly coming down from the 2018 highs. Compared to two years ago, property prices are down up to 15% and the median single-family house is now easier to afford. If in 2018 you would have had to pay around $930K on a home, now the price is down to $875K.

It’s also worth mentioning that mortgage rates have dropped, so this may be a good time for you to explore the Bay Area residential market. You can expect some competition, however. Experts estimate that the first half of 2020 will see a surge in real estate investments because the employees of companies that went public in 2019 will be able to sell their shares and redirect the money somewhere else.

Even if the U.S. economy stalls next year, San Francisco will continue to be a safe location for real estate. In fact, with geopolitical uncertainty at the horizon, experts expect the real estate sector to grow thanks to risk-averse investors.

If you’re looking for an apartment, consider San Jose, in the Southern Bay Area. Here, the number of new apartments is expected to triple and Google’s plans to transform 60 acres and become the largest private employer in the Bay Area will attract young residents. Millennials, who are now in their 30s and have been saving for a down payment, are ready to make their first real estate purchase and, to them, San Francisco is more attractive than New York and Washington. At the same time, Gen Z, who is graduating from college and entering the workplace, will flock towards the giant tech employers in the Bay Area, so rental properties are expected to become more popular too.

That being said, properties in the Bay Area are still very expensive and they’re not the best idea if you’re looking for immediate return on your investment. In general, primary residences should be held for at least ten years if you want to make a profit and, for rental properties, the recommended holding time is a minimum of two years. If you find the high costs of Bay Area real estate too off-putting, then you can consider smaller suburbs, which require a smaller initial investment but can generate the same returns as more expensive homes in San Francisco or San Jose.

Bay Area startups foster innovation and attract record investments

Whether you’re more interested in alternative investments or you want to diversify your portfolio, the Bay Area offers plenty of opportunities, as it continues to be at the center of the tech world and attract most VC investments.

The Bay Area is an innovation hub where you can find both tech giants and promising new start-ups. Leveraging the power of emerging technologies such as AI, Big Data, augmented reality, and Blockchain, local startups are revolutionizing healthcare, finance, and the fight for a cleaner environment. If you believe in the future of tech, or you’re a seasoned investor who practices high leverage Forex trading and is familiar with alternative investments, the Bay Area can be a land of opportunity.

In 2019, San Francisco emerged as one of the biggest competitors of Silicon Valley, drawing record sums of capital despite its much smaller size. It’s not exactly a surprise that most funding goes towards the tech sector. For example, Copper, which develops CRM software for companies that use G Suite, became one of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S., gained $102 million in funding and was even backed by funds from Google Ventures. Another example is Harness, an AI-based platform that helps developers release apps much faster thanks to machine learning. But, apart from tech, other industries are booming too: Grove Collaborative, which reached Inc’s 5000 List, is a subscription-based service for sustainable household products. Branch International, which secured more than $264 in funding and already has offices in four countries, helps users gain funding via a mobile app.

Whether you believe in the potential of new technologies or you want to support an idea that resonates with you, there’s always a startup you can fund in the Bay Area. Just remember to do your research and invest in a company whose mission statement you trust, but also has realistic growth chances.

Article source: https://www.sfexaminer.com/marketplace/traditional-vs-alternative-how-to-invest-in-the-bay-area/