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$250K is average down payment needed to buy a home in San Francisco

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SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) – Do you have a quarter of a million dollars lying around? Because on average, that is what it will take to buy a home in San Francisco.

That money is attributed to the one-time cost associated with buying a home.

It is no secret that the Bay Area is one of the most expensive places to buy a home in the United States. What some first-time home buyers may not know is that the sticker shock doesn’t end with the sale price.

That is just the beginning.

When it comes to one-time costs like down payments, the Bay Area is in a class by itself.

“That’s just 20 percent,” Keller Williams Realtor Andres Restrepo said. “So, if we are talking about a $1.5 million dollar condo, $1.5 million dollar home, that’s going to be $300,000 out the door.”

A $300,000 down payment could buy a home outright in most real-estate markets, but not in The Bay Area, says Restrepo.

He talks about some of the other one-time fees in addition to the down payment.

“Those closing costs can be anywhere from one-to-two points depending on the property,” Restrepo said. “So, if we’re talking a million dollar home, which in San Francisco the median price is 1.6 (million), I am just using a million. You’re looking at $15,000-to-$20,000.”

He is just getting started.

“Your property inspection that’s going to range from $400 to $1,200,” Restrepo said. “Then, you’re going to have your loan origination fee. That’s going to be about $10,000.”

Don’t forget the transfer tax.

“The transfer tax is the cost associated with transferring the property from the seller to the buyer,” Restrepo said. “That can be anywhere from $15,000-to-$20,000.”

That is $250,000-to-$350,000 in upfront costs depending on a sales price of $1 million-to-$1.5 Million.

The reason for the high cost of Bay Area real estate is simple–supply and demand.

“Is the low inventory due to that, there is a high demand, people want to get in,” Restrepo said. “That’s why things are so expensive.”

If you’re still interested in buying your first home in the Bay Area after hearing all of that, he has some advice for you.

“No. 1–get you a top agent,” Restrepo said. “No. 2–have your finances in order and know what you can afford from the get-go. No. 3, when you find a property that you love, act fast. Do not wait. Somebody else is going to come and going to get it.”

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Article source: https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/-250k-is-average-down-payment-needed-to-buy-a-home-in-san-francisco/1493219141

SEATTLE and SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 2, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — Buying a home is one of the most expensive transactions someone will ever make, and home shoppers can expect to spend $40,000 on average in one-time fees on the typical U.S. home, according to a new analysis from RealEstate.com, a Zillow® Group brand, and Thumbtack.

For first-time buyers, understanding their home-buying budget can be a stressful process. It can be easy to focus on the listed price or monthly mortgage payments for a home, but there are several one-off costs that buyers also should be aware of. In addition to budgeting for the down payment, buyers should be prepared to pay for closing costs and move-in projects before they settle into a new home.

RealEstate.com and Thumbtack partnered to help homebuyers understand how much it costs to not only buy a house, but also to tackle those projects that make the house their home.

The down payment is the largest single cost that buyers will face during the purchase process. The typical first-time buyer puts down 15 percent as a down payment, according to the Zillow Group Report on Consumer Housing Trends 2018. That would be $32,700 for the typical U.S. home, worth $218,000 in July.

Closing costs add thousands more to the total amount buyers should be prepared to pay. These costs frequently include the origination fee, appraisal, transfer taxes, the first year of homeowners insurance, title insurance, and more. These add about $6,250 to buyers’ expenses on the home purchase for the median home.

Preparing and moving into a new home can also be pricey for the new owners. Thumbtack data show that these projects – eight hours of local moving, installing new locks, mounting a TV and full interior and yard cleaning – cost $1,130 on average.

The one-time costs associated with buying a new home are highest in the San Francisco Bay Area, in large part due to the high overall costs of homes and labor there. It would cost buyers in San Jose nearly $203,000 on average in one-time payments alone, which is more than the median home value in 11 major markets.

“Buying a home, especially for the first time, is an exciting but stressful experience,” said Justin LaJoie, RealEstate.com General Manager. “Some of that stress can be eased by making sure you know all of the costs that come with buying and owning a home, so you can budget appropriately and not get caught off guard well into the buying process.”

“It’s imperative first-time homebuyers do their research around unexpected homeownership costs, including projects that help them prepare for the big move,” said Thumbtack Lead Economist Lucas Puente. “While there may be some initial sticker shock, these projects can help get a house move-in ready.”

After buying a home, homeowners can pay thousands in recurring annual costs on top of their monthly mortgage payments. To help buyers better understand the overall costs of owning a home, the RealEstate.com All-In Monthly Price search includes mortgage payments, property taxes and utility costs. Similarly, Thumbtack offers a series of interactive price calculators that homebuyers can use to estimate the approximate costs of different projects involved with the moving process in their area.

Zillow Group

Zillow Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:Z) (NASDAQ:ZG) houses a portfolio of the largest real estate and home-related brands on mobile and the web, which focus on all stages of the home lifecycle: renting, buying, selling and financing. Zillow Group is committed to empowering consumers with unparalleled data, inspiration and knowledge around homes, and connecting them with great real estate professionals. The Zillow Group portfolio of consumer brands includes real estate and rental marketplaces Zillow®, Trulia®, StreetEasy®, HotPads®, Naked Apartments®, RealEstate.com and Out East®. In addition, Zillow Group provides a comprehensive suite of marketing software and technology solutions to help real estate professionals maximize business opportunities and connect with millions of consumers. Zillow Offers™ provides homeowners in some metropolitan areas with the opportunity to receive offers from Zillow. When Zillow buys a home, it will make necessary updates and list the home for resale on the open market. The company operates a number of business brands for real estate, rental and mortgage professionals, including Mortech®, dotloop®, Bridge Interactive® and New Home Feed®. The company is headquartered in Seattle.

Zillow, Mortech, Bridge Interactive, StreetEasy, HotPads, Out East and New Home Feed are registered trademarks of Zillow, Inc. Zillow Offers is a trademark of Zillow, Inc. Trulia is a registered trademark of Trulia, LLC. dotloop is a registered trademark of DotLoop, LLC. Naked Apartments is a registered trademark of Naked Apartments, LLC.

About Thumbtack

Powering the businesses of hundreds of thousands of local professionals, Thumbtack offers nearly 1,000 categories of occupations, with a working professional in every county in the U.S. Thumbtack has helped customers complete millions of jobs — from plumbing and catering, to personal training and math tutoring. Founded in 2008, Thumbtack is headquartered in San Francisco. For more information, please visit: www.thumbtack.com.

View original content: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-homeowners-pay-40-000-on-average-to-buy-and-move-into-a-new-home-300722382.html

SOURCE Zillow Group

Article source: https://pilotonline.com/business/jobs/article_a024c0ec-1181-51d6-a141-fdfeb813a91c.html

Mast says ensuring reliable and predictable partners/capital providers is critical to success.

SAN FRANCISCO—JP Morgan Real Estate Banking group recently hired Alex Mast as the Northern California market manager. With more than 12 years of experience in commercial real estate finance, Mast joins the firm from Bank of America’s commercial real estate group, where he helped establish a strong foothold in the Northern California region, nearly doubling the bank’s loan commitments and revenue.

Article source: https://www.globest.com/2018/10/01/how-can-investors-stay-successful-in-current-cycle/

Welcome to another episode of the top-rated game show, “Who Can Really Afford to Rent in the Bay Area?” I’m your host, It Beats the Heck Out of Me.

In the last episode, the audience got to play the role of a distressed renter attempting to survive in a city where a landlord would brazenly demolish your apartment before you can move out.

In today’s episode, the audience gets to play the role of a distressed renter who has 27 days to find another apartment.

Crystal Chandler doesn’t know where she’s going to live next month. That’s because all of the tenants in the 28-unit building on Parkside Drive in Concord where she lives were served 60-day eviction notices in August by new owners who want to renovate the place.

Chandler, a single mother of a 12-year-old daughter, works as a full-time dental assistant. Chandler told me she earns about $2,600 a month, maybe $2,800 if the dental office is busier than usual. She gets paid hourly, and sometimes she works extra jobs to keep food on the table.

“I don’t want to have to work a steady two or three jobs,” Chandler said. “I’d never see my child. I would never be home.”

She made enough to afford the $1,200, two-bedroom apartment she’s lived in for seven years.

Barely.

“I don’t get any help from the state, because the state says I make too much money,” she said. “The housing is so high they don’t take into account what we pay for rent. This is something that’s a serious issue that’s been going on for such a long time.”

Chandler’s apartment complex and an adjacent single-family home were purchased in July by PTLA Real Estate, a Walnut Creek business that touts itself as a real estate investment and management company. According to the company’s website, the company acquires and manages multifamily real estate properties.

On Aug. 29, Chandler came home from work at 8 p.m. to find a letter taped to her door. She thought PTLA would raise the rent or make her sign a new lease. Instead, she was given the 60-day eviction notice.

She said she has to move by Oct. 28.

Concord doesn’t have rent control or just-cause eviction protections for renters, which means renters in the city of about 122,000 can be evicted at any time and without reason.

The average rent in Concord, a city about 30 miles east of San Francisco, is $1,876, according to rentcafe.com, a real estate tracking website. A two-bedroom is $2,048.

According to a report by the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy and Central County Regional Group of First 5 Contra Costa, rental prices in Concord have increased 61 percent since 2011.

Peter Wilson, PTLA’s president, told me residents were offered apartments at other properties owned by the company in addition to a $3,000 payment. Some residents have accepted the offer while others like Chandler are attempting to negotiate a better settlement with the company.

“We don’t want families with nowhere to go,” Wilson told me Friday afternoon.

Residents will have the opportunity to move back into the Parkside Drive complex once renovations are completed, but they will have to qualify financially and pay a higher rent. Wilson said a two-bedroom would cost $2,000.

When Chandler, who relocated to the Bay Area from Nebraska in 2010 in search of employment opportunities, first moved into the complex the rent was $925 per month. For the first five years she lived there, the rent wasn’t raised. In the past two years, she said she’s received three rent increases.

Chandler’s a distressed renter with a good full-time job, and she can’t afford to live in the Bay Area. And to move into another apartment — one that, say, costs the Concord average of $1,876, she’d need to come up with nearly $4,000 to cover the first and last month’s rent and security deposit. That’s money she doesn’t have.

Chandler doesn’t know where she’s going to move. She’s considering leaving California.

“I’ve spoken to a couple friends just to see what I could do and maybe stay with them and pay rent with them for a little while, but that’s not a long-term thing,” she said.

Rising rents have displaced many Bay Area residents, even pushing some into homelessness. For example, when Alameda County did its point-in-time homeless count, homeless people were asked what might have prevented their homelessness. Forty-two percent of respondents said rent assistance.

A report on protecting the state’s renters released last month by UC Berkeley’s Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society argues that rent control is necessary to ensure people like Chandler continue to have access to affordable housing. The report was authored by Nicole Montojo, Stephen Barton and Eli Moore.

“The damage that gets done to people by displacement and by being forced into poverty by high rents taking so much of people’s income is much more severe than people normally seem to think,” Barton told me.

According to their analysis, they estimate that 54 percent of the state’s renters are overburdened by housing costs. What’s more, they found that 73 percent of all jobs in California pay too little to cover rent.

I’m a renter, and those numbers really scared the heck out of me.

“It sounds too light even to say that it’s scary,” Montojo said. “These are the numbers that when we actually realize the scope of the crisis makes it clear we need to respond right now.”

The researchers acknowledge that rent control won’t solve the housing affordability crisis on its own, but Montojo said, “The conversation that’s happening on rent control right now is really limited, and we need to expand it and think more broadly.”

Are landlords willing to listen?

C’mon, folks, you know my name: It Beats the Heck Out of Me. Have a good morning, and please join us next time on “Who Can Really Afford to Rent in the Bay Area?”

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor Jr. appears Mondays and Thursdays. Email: otaylor@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @otisrtaylorjr

Article source: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/otisrtaylorjr/article/So-you-got-an-eviction-notice-and-have-a-few-13270312.php

Data firm Core Logic released its latest Bay Area home sales report on Thursday, compiling the total number of home sales across the nine counties for August and finding a nearly double digit decline.

In San Francisco County, the number of homes sold dropped 5.9 percent compared to August 2017.

Although we should note that this is a difference of only 29 actual homes in all; the downward trend was consistent across almost the entire Bay Area:

• Alameda County: -12.6 percent (-234 homes)
• Contra Costa County: -12.6 percent (-222 homes)
• Santa Clara County: -9.3 percent (-173 homes)
• San Francisco County: -5.9 percent (-29 homes)
• San Mateo County: -10.4 percent (-70 homes)
• Solano County: -15.9 percent (-117 homes)
• Sonoma County: -3.5 percent (-24 homes)

Only Napa and Marin County saw a year over year increase in home sales, up 8.7 and 4.1 percent for August respectively in the CoreLogic numbers.

Overall sales across the Bay Area were down 9.9 percent, a difference of 845 homes compared to the same time last year.

Over the same period, regional housing prices were up 12.2 percent compared to the previous year, with SF prices up 7.2 percent.

The biggest price spike was—unsurprisingly—Santa Clara County, a remarkable and wearying 19.8 percent, but SF still had the highest average home sale price at $1.31 million.

According to an emailed statement from the data firm’s analyst Andrew LePage, August marked the third monthly regional decline in a row.

LePage blames “the lack of affordable inventory on the market” for the slowdown, noting that unlike previous high markets during the 21st century “many struggling to buy today don’t have the option to stretch financially with [...] subprime and other risky financing that fueled a lot of homebuying late in the last cycle.” Yikes.

CoreLogic’s assessment is mostly similar to that made by the California Association of Realtors [CAR] earlier in September, although the specific figures vary.

CAR estimated a 10.3 percent year over year decline in sales for August in SF, even as prices jumped up 12.3 percent. CAR also puts SF’s median price in August at $1.65 million.

But note that CAR’s figures do not include condos, which probably accounts for most of the variation. Overall, both analyses agree that sales have contracted several months in a row.

• SF Bay Area Data Briefs [CoreLogic]
• SF Housing Price Drops [Curbed SF]

Article source: https://sf.curbed.com/2018/9/28/17915044/home-sales-corelogic-august-2018-sf-prices-affordability