Last month, The Bold Italic readers scrolled in horror as we debuted our new series, Sketchiest Bay Area Apartments You Can Rent Now. Readers really enjoyed seeing how dark the depths of Craigslist can get, from a chilling crawl space in an attic to a room you had to vacate on the weekends. Since the article was such a hit, the editors are trusting me with a monthly search for these rental gems.
Join me as we go down the rabbit hole that is the Bay Area rental market. And if you’ve come across any sketchy local rentals recently, let me know so I can share it!
For the affordable (?) amount of $1,062 a month, you can have your very own half of a living room to call your own! Privacy, you ask? Well, of course—this makeshift bedroom comes with its own curtain to divide your soon-to-be roommates’ movie night from your peaceful snooze fest.
Another converted living room here, this time located in the highly desirable SOMA. What’s that phrase realtors use? LOCATION! LOCATION! LOCATION! I mean, who needs an actual room when you’re in such prime real estate land (insert eye roll)? Like the one listed above, this place also grants you lots of privacy courtesy of tons of dividers.
Is this a tech cult? Possibly. You’ll share the sleeping quarters with five other members (not roommates, OK?) The trade-off? According to the website, you’ll have access to conference rooms, lounges, game rooms, outdoor patios with fire pits, a Jacuzzi, park spaces, rooftops, etc., all depending on which home you join. And you’ll never have to buy toilet paper ever again—the rent covers that.
Much like I warned last month, please stay away from sketchy listings like this one. Also, I wonder why the folks over at Craigslist aren’t vetting postings more carefully.
It’s safe to say that some of the rental listings you come across tend to stretch the reality of what the place actually looks like. This rental gives off more the vibe of sleeping quarters right after the apocalypse breaks loose than a cozy living space. I mean, do you think that your in-laws would be delighted to stay in there? My guess is no.
One day (or so I hope), Craigslist will catch up with these landlords and their misleading rental postings. This is another case of a “commuter” space, while is labeled a studio, but you get only a mini-fridge and a microwave, and you still have to pay for utilities as if you were occupying the place full-time and had a functional kitchen.
As I first shared last month, commuter rooms seem to be the latest layer added to the Bay Area housing crisis. There’s an increase in the number of these type of listings advertised compared to last month. While some rentals offer to let you stay at least until Friday, others, like this one in San Francisco, offer you a shared room for a max of three days, and you absolutely cannot leave any belongings behind.
This is a new type of rental that I came across while browsing the Marketplace section of Facebook, which is, indirectly, Craigslist’s competition. Starting at roughly $1,900 a month, you can rent a hotel room with a kitchenette through a third-party site called Anyplace. Is it cheaper than booking directly through the hotel’s site? Possibly. Is it sustainable long-term? Probably not.
See you next month for more of the Bay Area’s most undesirable, overpriced housing gems.
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Despite a booming economy, pleasant climate and natural treasures, nearly two-thirds of Bay Area residents say the quality of life here has gotten worse in the last five years, according to a new poll.
They cite a litany of reasons: high housing prices, traffic jams, the cost of living and homelessness. It’s so bad that about 44 percent say they are likely to move out of the Bay Area in the next few years, with 6 percent saying they have definite plans to leave this year.
The poll, conducted for this news organization and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, reflects the paradox of Bay Area life — how does a thriving job center with world-class universities and culture stir such dissatisfaction and misery in its people?
Home prices have risen at a record pace since early 2012. Commutes have grown longer and congestion has become worse as workers move farther away for affordable housing.
“It’s a mix of hopelessness and understanding,” said Clint Caldwell, 26, a recruiter at a San Francisco tech firm who grew up in the Bay Area and rents a home in Menlo Park with his wife and three children. “That’s the bargain you have to make living in the Bay Area.”
The dissatisfaction spreads across political parties and county lines, according to the poll of 1,568 registered voters in five counties. Just 7 percent of respondents said life has gotten better here in the past five years, and 23 percent said it’s stayed about the same.
Two-in-three renters sensed a decline in quality of life. And 64 percent of homeowners said things had gotten worse, despite massive and historic gains in property values and personal wealth since 2012.
San Francisco residents showed the most displeasure, with 72 percent saying life in the Bay Area has soured in recent years. Pessimism spread across ethnic groups, with black voters most often reporting a drop in the quality of life.
More than 7 in 10 respondents cited the high cost of housing and living, traffic congestion and homelessness as the region’s top problems.
“The Bay Area has tremendous challenges that we must address,” said Silicon Valley Leadership Group CEO Carl Guardino. “We should absolutely celebrate our strengths, but not working at our weaknesses will come at our own peril.”
About two-thirds of blue collar workers said they were likely to leave the region, far more than white collar professionals (43 percent) and service workers (44 percent). And more than half of the Latino residents and 7 in 10 black residents polled said they planned to move in the next few years.
Louise Compton, a mental health professional living in Clayton, said she and her husband expect to move after they retire. “I really like the area, of course. It’s really beautiful,” said Compton, 63. “Financially, it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to stay here.”
David Metz, president of FM3 Research, which conducted the poll, said locals felt a similar angst about Bay Area life during the dot-com era in the early 2000s, but this new poll suggests those fears are stronger today.
Wage growth is falling behind the rapid escalation of housing prices, and the middle class is slipping farther behind high-earners in the Bay Area. “That gap is yawning,” Metz said.
Even homeowners watching their personal wealth grow with soaring real estate prices feel isolated, he said. Family and friends can’t afford to move here, and parents doubt their children will be able to stay. “There’s this invisible wall around you,” Metz said.
Many respondents shared stories of struggle and persistence to stay despite mounting challenges.
Deborah Acosta, a retired chief innovation officer for the City of San Leandro, grew up in the Bay Area. At times, she’s struggled financially — a bank foreclosed on her home in the Oakland Hills after a divorce and the subprime mortgage crisis.
Too many people in the Bay Area can’t afford a home or apartment, especially seniors and others on fixed incomes, Acosta said. And high costs will slow economic growth and hinder the recruitment of talented young people, she said. She worries about the region’s inability to provide for the homeless.
But Acosta, 64, said she won’t move, despite worsening traffic and high costs. She bought a manufactured home in a 55-plus community in San Leandro, close to her son in Oakland. “I have a toe-hold,” she said. “I can breathe again.”
Renters also feel their Bay Area dream is taking a dark turn.
“You don’t really want to leave. There’s so much to do around here, and opportunities,” said Caldwell, who grew up in Redwood City, graduated from UC Davis and moved back home to find a job in the tech industry.
Caldwell and his wife found a Menlo Park home with below-market rent, but he knows he’ll have to earn more if he wants to support his family in the Bay Area.
Roughly 80 percent of respondents in Alameda, Contra Costa and San Mateo counties called traffic a serious problem. About three-quarters of respondents in Santa Clara County and 70 percent in San Francisco County agreed.
As Bay Area moves left, these conservative voters are moving out –Read the article
Voters complained in interviews about unreliable public rail and buses, high-density apartments and condos adding traffic, and the steady rise in transportation taxes and fees that never seem to make highways and transit faster and better.
Diego Vela, a software engineer, commutes from Dublin to his office in San Francisco on BART. Some days it takes as long as 90 minutes to come and go from work. It’s time spent away from his wife and infant daughter, and he hates it.
Vela, 30, has a good salary that could be the envy of friends and family back home in Texas. But then he explains to outsiders the high cost of living in California. “It looks nice,” he said, “until you factor in reality.”
But there’s also a stubborn attachment to the Bay Area and the struggle to make it.
Rich Fellner, 61, has navigated the tech world for 35 years, switching jobs, adding new engineering skills and adapting to the changing currents of Silicon Valley commerce and innovation. The region is always changing, and he likes it that way, he said.
“It’s very competitive,” said Fellner, a homeowner in San Jose. “You really have to work.”
For some, the area is losing something more basic — community.
Mark Ruzon, 46, earned his doctorate in computer science from Stanford in the 1990s and chose to stay and start a career. Ruzon, his wife and four children live in Mountain View. He bikes to work at nearby Google.
But Ruzon, a native of Illinois, misses the institutions and traditions in the Midwest that bind communities together. In Silicon Valley, he said, it’s hard to find a decent Fourth of July parade. Despite its vast wealth, the region lacks a civic core, he said.
“We’ve tried to put down roots,” Ruzon said. “It’s been very difficult to put down deep roots.”
The poll of 1,568 registered voters in Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, San Mateo and San Francisco counties, was conducted by FM3 Research for the Silicon Valley Leadership Group and Bay Area News Group. The poll, conducted Feb. 14-24, has a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percent.
An iconic 1890 Queen Anne in West Oakland known as the Hume-Willcutt estate is an Oakland Historic Landmark.
An iconic 1890 Queen Anne in West Oakland known as the Hume-Willcutt estate is an Oakland Historic Landmark.
Photo: Open Homes Photography
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An iconic 1890 Queen Anne in West Oakland known as the Hume-Willcutt estate is an Oakland Historic Landmark.
An iconic 1890 Queen Anne in West Oakland known as the Hume-Willcutt estate is an Oakland Historic Landmark.
Photo: Open Homes Photography
Preserved Victorian homes are becoming a rarity in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The exteriors are often restored to their original glory, but the interiors are more often gutted, the original redwood windows replaced, the moldings pulled off and everything painted white.
A largely intact grand Queen Anne on a double-lot in West Oakland listed for $1.175 million comes as a pleasant surprise to those who appreciate historic architecture. It looks much the way it did when it was built built in 1890.
With an exterior out of storybooks, 918 18th St. is adorned with intricate gingerbread trim, a peaked gable and a turret topped by a witch’s hat roof. The home is 3,000 square feet with four bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms. Inside, you’ll find most of the architectural details have been preserved.
“The chandeliers are all original, and there are five fireplaces,” says listing agent Daniel Clark of Compass. “There’s wood-pressed wallpaper that has never been painted over, and all the walls and windows are natural redwood. There’s a stained-glass window in the grand staircase. It’s quite exquisite.”
ALSO: SF’s famed ‘Full House’ house is returning to the market
While the floor plan has never been changed, it has an open feel for Victorian architecture, which often features small compartmentalized rooms.
“There are two parlors that feed into each other with redwood sliding doors and they also feed into the dining room,” says Clark.
Local real estate experts Lamisse Droubi and Patrick Carlisle talk about factors that lead to bidding wars on homes in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Media: Katie Wood / SFGATE
While the O’Keefe and Merritt stove remains in the kitchen, the cabinets and countertops have been replaced and appear dated — not because they’re over 100 years old but because they were probably added in the 1990s.
The property was designated an Oakland Historic Landmark in 1983 and is officially known as the Hume-Willcutt House. It’s named for Lizzie Hume, who briefly lived there after it was built, and the man she sold it to, Joseph L. Willcutt, an executive with the Southern Pacific Railroad. Due to its landmark status, a new owner would need to maintain the home’s historic architectural integrity.
Orange County-based data firm Core Logic reports in its latest suite of housing numbers that, for the ninth month in a row, the number of homes sold in the Bay Area has fallen year over year, with February’s 4,993 homes sold marking the lowest figure since 2008.
According to Core Logic economist Andrew LePage, this is the third month in a row that represents an 11-year low.
However, LePage also notes in the report that “the year-over-year decline in sales has ratcheted down the past two months,” from a gasp-inducing 21.6 percent in December to a less drastic 13 percent in February.
San Francisco’s decline remained among the smallest regionally. Meanwhile, the actual price of a home in SF in February was flat year over year. Some highlights of Lepage’s February findings:
The number of homes sold in SF in February was 303, down 8.5 percent from 331 in February of the previous year. The median price of a home in SF—both condos and single family units—was $1.25 million, a zero percent change from the same time in 2018. In January, the price rose slightly year over year (up five percent to $1.15 million) in Core Logic’s report.
Across all nine counties, the number of homes sold dropped 12.8 percent compared to February 2018, while the Bay Area median price bounced up 2.7 percent from $750,000 to $770,000 across all types of units.
The county with the biggest year-over-year depreciation in February was Sonoma County, where the number of homes sold slid 21.1 percent and the price dipped 4.4 percent (to a median of $540,000).
Marin County was the only place in the region where sales were up from 2018, rising 7.1 percent year over year and spiking prices 15.7 percent to a median of just over $1 million. However, Marin County also had the second smallest number of homes sold—and thus the second smallest and most volatile sample size in the region—at 180 in February.
Median price was down year over year in four counties: Napa, San Mateo, Sonoma, and Santa Clara (1.7 percent, 4.3, 4.4, and 7.4 respectively). LePage concludes that “declines likely reflect a combination of a slower market and a rise in buyers’ negotiating power, as well as changes in market mix in some areas, where sales in higher-end communities represent a lower share of all activity.”
Core Logic’s monthly report reflects all public sales of homes in the Bay Area for the month of February.
The California Association of Realtors’ (CAR) monthly report breaks down just the sales of single-family homes in the Bay Area. According to CAR, single-family home sales activity in February was almost the exact inverse of what Core Logic reports, up 8.9 percent in San Francisco year over year.
Meanwhile, the price of an SF house declined more than 13 percent compared to 2018. Taken together, both reports suggest a significant decline in sales of condos but increasingly aggressive interest in larger homes.
According to the city’s most recent Housing Inventory Report released earlier this month, SF added only 37 new single family units in all of 2018, whereas “new housing units added over the past five years continues to be overwhelmingly (90.4 percent) in buildings with 20 or more units.”
Bay Area home prices edged up in February and sales slowed as buyers and sellers wait to see what impact an onslaught of initial public offerings will have on the real estate market.
“Everyone I talk to is aware they have a window before the IPOs come to pass,” said Cooper Gaines, a Zephyr agent in San Francisco. “Sometimes it’s almost tangible, their sense of urgency.”
The median price paid for a Bay Area home or condo rose to $770,000 in February, up 5.5 percent from January and up 2.7 percent from February a year ago, research firm CoreLogic said Thursday.
The number of new and existing homes and condos sold in the nine-county area was 4,354, up 12.9 percent from January but down 12.8 percent year over year.
February is not a particularly good bellwether for the real estate market. Most of those deals were entered into in January and February, which are “two of the slower months and tend not to be predictive of the year,” said Andrew LePage, an analyst with CoreLogic.
Everyone now is waiting to see what will happen next as the busy spring selling season gets under way amid an expected rush of initial public offerings and a sharp drop in mortgage rates.
One of Cooper’s clients who works at Lyft just bought a home in Oakland to avoid competing against more senior employees. “He said, ‘I have to buy now, I can’t compete with people ahead of me in options.’”
Another client, John Marino, is waiting to put his condo in Hayes Valley, a stone’s throw from Uber headquarters, on the market. “It seems San Francisco is going toward being a huge tech city. So therefore I want to see how it all fleshes out,” Marino said.
“I’m trying to figure out long-term do I want to stay in corporate America or do I want to get rid of all the stress and anxiety, simplify my life, buy a home in Palm Springs and not have a mortgage,” he added.
Marino bought the condo with parking 10 years ago when it was new. “I just know if I waited until Uber and Lyft go public, I would have a better chance of increasing the value of my condo. It has already tripled in price.”
Marino, 58, said one of his “biggest apprehensions” is that “if I leave the San Francisco market I will never get back in. I need to be committed to moving.”
Renaissance Capital estimates that 180 companies will go public on U.S. exchanges this year, raising a total of $60 billion. That includes Levi Strauss, which went public last week, and Lyft, which debuts Friday.
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Housing is the Bay Area’s most troubling issue. Whether you are a buyer, seller, renter, landlord, builder or investor, the availability and affordability of housing are everyday concerns. As part of its continuing coverage, The Chronicle wants to hear the story of your housing experience.
Tell us your story: www.sfchronicle.com/housingstories
It also includes likely IPO candidates Uber, Pinterest, Slack and Postmates, all based in San Francisco, and Zoom in San Jose. It does not include a few large Bay Area companies such as Airbnb and Palantir, which could go public this year but probably won’t, said Matthew Kennedy, a strategist with Renaissance, which manages IPO-focused exchange traded funds.
Kennedy said 2019 probably won’t surpass 2000, the record year for IPOs, when 406 companies raised almost $97 billion. Of course, many of those IPOs went belly up not long after.
Andy Hart, a managing partner with Delegate Advisors in San Francisco, said he thinks there will be “a scramble for homes” in the $1 million to $4 million range in San Francisco and surrounding counties. He warns clients, however, not to buy homes based on how much they think their stock is worth before the lockup period expires. “I’ve seen that rodeo before, when people thought they had a certain amount of money and then they didn’t.” He advises them “to be patient.”
Recent research shows that IPOs do raise home prices somewhat, with the biggest gains coming closest to the headquarters of companies going public. The impact fades the farther you get in distance and time from the IPO.
Most employees can’t sell their company stock or options until a lockup period, typically six months, expires. Somewhat fortunately for buyers, the IPO bonanza is coming at a time when the real estate market is taking a breather and mortgage rates are dropping.
“The intensity of the market we had a few years ago is not there right now,” said Jeannie Anderson, an agent with Alain Pinel (soon to be Compass) in San Francisco and Orinda. “A lot of the foreign money we had a few years ago isn’t there. That has made somewhat of a difference. A lot of people who did extremely well with their investment have sold their properties, taking the money while they can. A lot of people have gone out of state,” she said.
Anderson has represented five separate families moving from the Bay Area to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, in the last three years in search of cheaper housing.
Freddie Mac reported Thursday that the average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage dropped to 4.06 percent this week, down from 4.28 percent last week. That was its steepest drop in a decade. In mid-October, that rate got as high as 4.9 percent. Mortgage rates follow the 10-year Treasury yield, which took a dive last week after the Federal Reserve voiced concerns about a slowing economy.
Kathleen Pender is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: kpender@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kathpender
