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  A 10-acre island in Isleton, an hour south of Sacramento in the California Delta’s fresh-water Seven Mile Slough, is the site of Brannan’s Boat Marina.

  A 10-acre island in Isleton, an hour south of Sacramento in the California Delta’s fresh-water Seven Mile Slough, is the site of Brannan’s Boat Marina.

  
  Photo: Tony Wood
  

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A 10-acre island in Isleton, an hour south of Sacramento in the California Delta’s fresh-water Seven Mile Slough, is the site of Brannan’s Boat Marina.

A 10-acre island in Isleton, an hour south of Sacramento in the California Delta’s fresh-water Seven Mile Slough, is the site of Brannan’s Boat Marina.

Photo: Tony Wood

It sold for less than the price of a San Francisco condo.

A 10-acre island in Isleton, an hour south of Sacramento in the California Delta’s fresh-water Seven Mile Slough, is changing hands for $1.195 million. (SF’s median condo price is about $1.25 million.)

The buyer is Thai Tran, who owns a mini-chain of Vietnamese pho restaurants in Sacramento, and listing agent Tony Wood of KW Commercial says Tran and his family plan to transform the property at 1200 West Brannan Island Road into a destination.

“It’s going to be a place people want to come to again,” says Wood. “They haven’t made definitive plans, but they’re talking about camping, fishing, and maybe, eventually, a restaurant. It’s going to be a place people can bring their kids for the day and picnic, barbecue, swim and enjoy the park-like setting.”

Historic maps show the islet adjacent to Brannan Island was originally called Owl Island, and in the 1960s, Bruno’s Yacht Harbor turned it into a popular spot with boaters.

“That’s going way back,” says Wood. “People in the delta owned yachts then. They owned cabin cruisers. They cruised through hundreds of miles of delta channels between Sacramento and San Francisco and all points in between.”

Over the years, Bruno’s luster faded, and the island’s management collapsed. People illegally docked their boats and lived in them. Garbage and old boats were left behind. “Probably a third of it was covered with trash,” says Wood.

In 2013, Walnut Creek lender Owens Financial Group foreclosed on the owner’s $3 million loan and invested more than $1 million in the property.

“Almost immediately, after they took it back, they had to replace the crucial bridge to the island –that was $500,000,” says Wood. “Later, they had to replace the office, because it wasn’t up to code. Another $150,000. They committed to bring it back into operation so they could eventually sell it.”

Owens Financial rebuilt the facilities, hired staff, rebranded the operation as Brannan Island Marina, and then put it up for sale. The sale included the working marina with 175 boat slips, a boat lift, an office, restroom facilities, picnic grounds, as well as a yacht club and sailing school, which were both rented.

Finding a buyer was tough.

Wood heard from more than 100 interested people intrigued by the opportunity of scooping up an island for about $1 million in Northern California’s notoriously high-priced real estate market. But he says when people looked at the financials of it, they were scared away.

“Property taxes, insurance, maintenance and salaries literally equate to what the property brings in, in terms of gross revenue,” says Wood. “You’re buying an island that costs $250,000 [a year] to operate and it’s generating $250,000. Welcome to the party. So investors were trying to figure out, What can I do here?”

Wood says the new owner sees a future for Owl Island and appreciates its two most important features: the beauty of the location and the people who live in the area.

“Anyone who has ever enjoyed the delta and appreciated the wonders of the delta would love it out here. It’s beautiful with the channels that run on either side, the breeze, the birds,” he says. “Along with the natural beauty, there are the people. The people who love the delta are a special breed and they love nature and the delta life and they respect it, and you don’t meet people like that every day. The manager just caught a 7-foot sturgeon the other day. It’s a magical place.”

Amy Graff is a digital editor for SFGATE. Email her at agraff@sfgate.com.

Article source: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Brannan-s-Island-Marina-Delta-real-estate-14416818.php

FREMONT (KPIX) — Bay Area home sales in June were the lowest for that month in 11 years, according to the latest data from CoreLogic.

“I think that people are going to look at that data and think the sky is falling but it is not, the sky is not falling,” said real estate broker Nancie Allen. “We’re not in the same place we were back in 2007, where we had all the bad loans and everything else, that’s what created that. This is just an adjustment.”

Allen, who is also president of Bay East Association of Realtors, tells us that last year’s red-hot real estate market, particularly in the East Bay, hasn’t been able to sustain itself. Overall, there are more homes on the market and prices have slumped a bit. Still, there is plenty of activity but the market is more gentle.

In the East Bay, Allen says Fremont, Pleasanton and Alameda remain strong markets.

The Lakharas were busy moving into their new home Friday evening. They are first time home buyers and closed on a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom town home in Fremont at $790,000. They paid $25,000 dollars over asking.

“It’s about the locality as such so Fremont is between San Francisco and San Jose. From a work perspective, I can always go to San Francisco or San Jose wherever I work,” said homeowner Nathan Lakhara.

Allen says the home sold in a week and received three offers — a sign of a healthy market.

CoreLogic says that, despite low mortgage rates and a strong economy, Bay Area home sales this June dropped nearly 13 percent below June 2018 sales.

“Last year was a frenzy … and people were jumping in and getting whatever they could. This year buyers are much more relaxed, more calm, they’re going in, they’re looking at the property,” said Allen. “If they really love it then they’re going to put an offer in, otherwise they’re being more particular.”

The inventory level in the Bay Area has gone from a seller’s market to a more neutral market, according to CoreLogic.

“This was within our budget so we went for it. We just hope prices don’t drop anymore because now we have a house,” said Lakhara.

Article source: https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/07/26/data-bay-area-drop-home-sales/

And that makes it a year.

A slide in the number of homes sold across the Bay Area that began in July of 2018 stretched through its 12th consecutive month at the end of July 2019, according to figures from the Orange County-based data firm Core Logic.

July was also the third straight month where home prices declined compared to the same time the previous year, although prices increased in San Francisco.

Across all nine counties, 7,404 homes sold in July, down 2.2 percent from the 7,570 figure last year. The median price declined 4.1 percent, from $850,000 to $815,000.

Note that this is the lowest sales inventory figure for July since 2011, which moved only 7,014 homes.

“Last month, six of the region’s nine counties logged year-over-year declines in their medians ranging from two percent to 4.6 percent percent, marking the first month since February 2012 in which this many counties posted annual declines,” economist Andrew LePage writes.

The biggest slip in the number of homes sold was in Alameda County, down eight percent to 1,512. Sales volume was up in a majority of counties, dropping only in Alameda, Contra Costa County, Santa Clara County, and San Francisco. But those four counties account for the majority of homes in the Bay Area.

The largest decline in median home price was in Napa County, down 4.6 percent. San Francisco saw its median for July up year over year by 3.8 percent to $1.35 million (a difference of only about $50,000).

Note that Core Logic is an outlier with some of these figures, as sources like the California Association of Realtors (CAR) and the real estate group Compass both found SF prices down in July.

However, CAR only measures single-family homes specifically, and Compass analyzes house and condos individually, whereas Core Logic combines sales of all types of homes into a single statistic, which creates a much different trend.

Article source: https://sf.curbed.com/2019/9/3/20847657/bay-area-home-sales-2019-july-san-francisco

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  The San Francisco Saloon, a Bay Area sports bar located in Los Angeles.

  The San Francisco Saloon, a Bay Area sports bar located in Los Angeles.

  
  Photo: Sean Cooley/SFGate
  

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The San Francisco Saloon, a Bay Area sports bar located in Los Angeles.

The San Francisco Saloon, a Bay Area sports bar located in Los Angeles.

Photo: Sean Cooley/SFGate

No matter how hard you look, you will not find an LA Rams bar in San Francisco.

Charger bars in SF? Not entirely positive they even have LA Chargers bars in LA (maybe a Shakey’s pizza buffet has the game on?).

Dodgers bar in the Bay? Hahaha nope.

Yet the opposite NorCal-to-SoCal polarity exists, as a diehard branch of Niners Nation — replete with Irish coffee-swilling, marching band drum-banging fans — is thriving in Los Angeles’s Sawtelle neighborhood: the San Francisco Saloon.

Built in 1934 on a triangular stretch along Pico Boulevard that was formerly pea patch farmland, the Saloon is a safe haven for Bay Area fans wishing for a reprieve from the glitz and glamor (read: vanity and entitlement) of sports-agnostic Hollywood.

This year’s 49ers season opener can’t come soon enough for Saloon General Manager Brian Conroy. Over the course of my Friday happy hour visit to the bar, Conroy shows me the outside Golden Gate Bridge mural on the side of the bar, only to have a distracted SUV nearly swerve into us a foot off the curb. After hopping out of LA traffic, through the swinging saloon doors, we find a patron attempting to eat alongside an unlicensed “service” Pomeranian. Conroy approaches her, and in the most diplomatic way imaginable, asks that she keep the dog off the table, you know, where people typically eat.

“At least she was nice about the little fluffy, furry thing,” concedes Conroy, an affable self-described codger who’s an even-keeled presence contrasting the rowdy patrons found at the Saloon come game time.

It’s hard not to daydream about NFL Sunday when the likes of Pomeranian lady would be subbed out for a table of 49ers faithful bobbing their heads to E-40′s “Yay Area,” or flashing back to Super Bowl XLVII when the hostile SUV driver would have had to detour around the droves of overflow fans watching on a TV outside the at-capacity bar to see the Harbaugh brothers go to battle.

A Slice of SF

The Saloon has had San Francisco bones dating back to the early 1970s when the layout was a fern bar with 27 potted and hanging plants, couches, and coffee tables amenable to a yuppie crowd. It wasn’t long until Conroy, at the behest of new ownership, ditched the foliage thereby showing off more of the interior features of the Saloon. Made in the Henry Africa mold — with stained glass lampshades and dark wood floor-to-ceiling — today, one could easily mistake the layout for Buena Vista Cafe (see: the slideshow above).

For more Bay Area bonafides, you’ll find shades of Shakedown Street with a Haight Ashbury-graffitied guitar, a national cash register propping up Giants tile coasters, and a back bar built from a salvaged saloon in Petaluma — a bar whose legacy will be well-preserved … once anyone can manage to recall said bar’s name. On the walls hang mariner maps and reproduced prints of turn-of-the-century buildings and earthquake damage courtesy of the San Francisco Historical Society.

Of course, transitioning away from ferns also freed up more real estate to put in TVs and turn the Saloon into a cozier sports bar. Opening the gate to many electric nights with the 49ers, Giants and Warriors dynastic runs.

“The bar has a real district neighborhood kind of vibe, which doesn’t happen all that often in LA,” says Conroy.

Over the years the bar has even survived dumpster fires — not just the Chip Kelly era, actual dumpster fires from a neighborhood arsonist in the summer of 2007.

Home Away from Home

The SF Saloon owner, Bruce Beach, a California convert by way of Connecticut, can recall the officiating in the 2013 49ers-Seahawks NFC Championship game with vivid detail (and disgust).

“Oof, the refs were terrible, what a missed call on roughing the kicker and then the extra time added onto the next drive,” says Beach.

Hence the reason to curate one of the best sports bars west of the 405 where fans can commiserate and celebrate, sharing in that same diehard passion.

“The San Francisco fans are another breed,” says Beach. “They’re resilient, even when their teams are down, the love of the sport is very important for them.”

On any given Sunday, the tailgate atmosphere inside the bar builds at 9am when the SF Saloon Squad, official fan chapter of the 49ers, turn out in full regalia, jerseys, t-shirts, scarves, some in helmets, and one with a “defense” drum. You’re certain to find Squad President Alycia Jones sipping on her patented off-menu Alycia Margarita made with pineapple juice. The sole exception being when the Rams host San Francisco and the club turns Coliseum Lot 5 into Candlestick South.

Having grown up in Pasadena, the red-and-gold sheep in a family of Raiders fans, Jones frequents the SF Saloon for its familial camaraderie that welcomes seasoned transplants and passing-through visitors alike.

“There are a lot of people from the Bay Area that turn out for games, at first it’s almost like a Disneyland theme park, like you’re in San Francisco surrounded by fans,” says Jones.

For Jones and the Niners Faithful, the upcoming NFL season carries the promise of their team’s return to glory and a breakout season from Jimmy Garoppolo.

“Our pride in the team is off the charts and I’m excited for how we’re looking, hopefully we can return to those glory years and finish our quest for that sixth ring,” says Jones.

Sean Cooley is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles. Twitter: @seancooley

Article source: https://www.sfgate.com/sports/article/Where-to-watch-49ers-Giants-Warriors-in-LA-14411344.php

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  AUSTIN

  Located in East Austin, this three-bedroom home is on the market very close to the median price of $377,000. It has a unique asymmetrical facade, concrete and bamboo floors and a carport.

  AUSTIN

  Located in East Austin, this three-bedroom home is on the market very close to the median price of $377,000. It has a unique asymmetrical facade, concrete and bamboo floors and a carport.

  
  Photo: MLS
  

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AUSTIN

Located in East Austin, this three-bedroom home is on the market very close to the median price of $377,000. It has a unique asymmetrical facade, concrete and bamboo floors and a carport.

AUSTIN

Located in East Austin, this three-bedroom home is on the market very close to the median price of $377,000. It has a unique asymmetrical facade, concrete and bamboo floors and a carport.

Photo: MLS

Scroll through the gallery above to see what the median price of a home in Austin, Philadelphia and San Francisco buys you in each of these cities.

We all know home prices are high in San Francisco, but sometimes we forget just how much higher they are than in other parts of the country until a handy chart comes along to remind us.

Among the fascinating data in the latest Bay Area Market Report from Compass, the graph that compares median-priced three-bedroom homes in selected cities across the country (see above) really stuck out.

With a median price of $1.57 million, San Francisco was far and away the most expensive, easily beating out other expensive markets like Manhattan ($1 million), Honolulu ($913,000) and Seattle ($748,000). But seeing how San Francisco compares to significantly more affordable markets like Philadelphia, Houston and Charlotte really gives one pause.

ALSO: You need to make $343,000 to afford a home in San Francisco, new study says

To be sure, these figures are on a very macro level and don’t take into account neighborhoods, which impact prices significantly, or the size of the homes. (A three-bedroom home in Manhattan is likely to be considerably smaller than a three-bedroom here.)

But they do give a picture of just how much more buyers could be getting in other markets. San Francisco buyers could buy 12 three-bedroom homes in Philadelphia or four in Austin for the same price as one here. (Take a look at what you can get in those markets at the median price in the gallery above.)

The Compass report also shows that many in San Francisco and Silicon Valley are being lured to these other markets because of their affordability. A significant number chose to move to more affordable Bay Area counties. Nearly 8,000 moved to Solono, Sonoma, Napa or Santa Cruz between 2012 and 2016, according to the report. Over 20,000 moved to the California’s Central Valley—not surprising given the median three-bedroom home price in Sacramento is just over $300,000.

Texas is another big draw; over 3,000 moved to Dallas, Austin and Houston. Reno and Las Vegas attracted slightly fewer Bay Area residents at 2,800. More affordable Portland proved to be slightly more attractive than Seattle, bringing in just under 2,000 compared to just over 1,500 for its northern neighbor.

But during the same time period a significant number of newcomers arrived in the Bay Area. Southern California residents (just over 4,300 from Los Angeles and 3,600 from San Diego) and those from New York and New Jersey (just over 4,600) provided a significant influx. But those were dwarfed by the 87,000 from other countries, including over 50,000 from Asia, nearly 16,000 from Europe and nearly 10,000 from Latin America.

“Domestically, more people leave the Bay Area than come to it, though many leaving stay nearby or within CA,” according to the report. “Foreign immigration tips the Bay Area into positive population growth.”

With more people comes more demand, meaning prices are unlikely to come down significantly any time soon.

Emily Landes is a writer and editor who is obsessed with all things real estate.

Article source: https://www.sfgate.com/ontheblock/article/San-Francisco-real-estate-report-date-median-price-14399428.php