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How can agents, tech companies and brokerages all move Faster, Better, Together? Learn how next week at Inman Connect San Francisco. Buy your ticket here, and remember that Select members get a $100 discount. Thinking of bringing your team? There are special onsite perks and discounts when you buy those tickets together too. Just contact us to find out more.

Compass now claims to be the top brokerage by sales volume in the blistering hot real estate market of San Francisco. On Monday, the technology-focused brokerage announced the acquisition of San Francisco-based Paragon Real Estate Group, growing its Bay Area team to 500 agents representing more than $4.5 billion in sales volume last year.

Compass founder and CEO Robert Reffkin with leaders from Paragon Real Estate Group.

“As we began to look for ways to expand in San Francisco, the opportunity to pair Paragon and their agents’ expertise and close community ties across the entire Bay Area with the technology, marketing and support we provide to our agents at Compass, was an ideal one,” said Ori Allon, Compass’s founder and executive chairman, in a statement.

Paragon was originally founded in 2004 and was the 86th ranked brokerage on the Real Trends 500 with 1,591 transaction sides — good for third in the San Francisco market behind Pacific Union International and Zephyr Real Estate. Pacific Union International closed more than $14 billion in sales volume in the state of California last year according to Real Trends, but the company declined to provide a market-specific breakdown. 

In a statement, Paragon CEO Bob Dadkura praised Compass’s focus on technology as a main reason for joining the ever-growing company.

“Compass’s focus on arming their agents with world-class technology and support resonates with our commitment to continually providing outstanding service and advice to our clients,” Dadkura said. “Joining Compass’s impressive San Francisco team and national network of luxury brokers opens an array of new opportunities for our agents and the chance to be a part of the future of the real estate industry in San Francisco and beyond.”

Compass broke into the San Francisco market with a splash in September 2016, snatching up two of the market’s top agents — Malin Giddings, a top agent formerly with Coldwell Banker, and the agent team TeedHaze, led by Butch Haze and Rick Teed, a top team formerly with Sotheby’s International Realty.

The company has continued its impressive growth in recent weeks with acquisitions and expansions in Chicago and smaller markets in Florida and Tahoe — moving closer toward its stated goal of achieving 20 percent of market share in the top 20 markets in the country by 2020.

Compass currently has offices in: New York City; Los Angeles; San Francisco; Boston; Washington, D.C.; Chicago; San Diego; Dallas; Miami; Orange County, California;  the Hamptons in New York; Aspen; and Santa Barbara and Montecito, California.

Seattle, Phoenix, Austin, Houston, Atlanta, Charlotte and Philadelphia are all part of the company’s plans for expansion.

Email Patrick Kearns

Article source: https://www.inman.com/2018/07/09/compass-acquires-paragon-seeks-san-francisco-market-supremacy/

WASHINGTON, July 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — Climb Real Estate, a leading real estate firm in the San Francisco Bay Area in innovation, has selected Contactually, the intelligent Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software designed for real estate agents and has seen strong adoption and usage numbers within the first two quarters. Contactually reports that Climb outperformed the industry benchmark of monthly activity by 24 percent, showing that Climb’s agents are actively using the CRM to grow their businesses. Founded in 2010, Climb has grown to over 250 agents in six offices around the Bay Area. The company-branded CRM is designed to help agents get more value from their existing relationships.

“Technology has always been central to our company,” said Chris Lim, founder and CEO of Climb Real Estate. “In a city like San Francisco, the bar is set very high to have the latest tech tools for our agents. Contactually is truly an intelligent CRM that suits our brokerage needs.”

Contactually manages more than 220 million relationships for real estate agents around the US. Designed to be intuitive, Contactually has an overall adoption rate of 70% among agents across brokerages nationwide. Contactually provides rich content templates, automation, and actionable insights so agents can leverage their network and take their career to the next level.

“Climb has built a reputation for making smart technology choices over the years and our data shows their agents are highly engaged online,” said Contactually CEO Zvi Band. “We know the digital experience is important to them and we are excited to be part of their tech solutions.”

About Climb Real Estate

Climb Real Estate is an innovative full-service residential real estate brokerage that leverages the latest technology to serve clients in emerging, established, and luxury neighborhoods in San Francisco and around the Bay Area. Climb is part of NRT LLC, the nation’s leading residential real estate brokerage. Climb is part of the private label strategy of NRT, which owns and operates companies in 50 of the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the country, with approximately 780 offices and 50,000 independent sales associates. NRT, a subsidiary of Realogy Holdings Corp. (NYSE: RLGY), operates Realogy’s company-owned real estate brokerage offices.

About Contactually

Contactually provides a SaaS-based intelligent customer relationship management (CRM) platform for real estate agents and brokerages. In simply minutes a day, Contactually’s easy-to-use platform enables personal engagement at scale, resulting in more leads, referrals, and increased business. Proudly located in Washington, DC, Contactually employs approximately 70 people and has raised $12 million in capital to date from Grotech Ventures, Rally Ventures, Bull City Venture Partners, Middleland Capital, and others. For more information please visit us at https://www.contactually.com/.

Contact: press@lionandorb.com

SOURCE Contactually

Related Links

www.contactually.com

Article source: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/climb-real-estate-partners-with-contactually-on-intelligent-crm-for-their-agents-300680516.html

I could use some insight from someone with real estate knowledge. I recently graduated from college with a degree in electrical engineering and landed a job with a major tech company based in Silicon Valley. I couldn’t be more excited about it.

That was until my close friend was telling me about how hard it would be to find affordable housing. My starting salary is pretty competitive but I also have considerable loans to repay, so I won’t be able to pocket much of my income or use it for expensive housing.

He was saying that real estate values have done nothing but rise for years and encouraged me to do some research. He said Bay Area prices were some of the highest in the world, right up there with Sydney, Australia and Hong Kong, China. Is that really a fair comparison?

Congratulations! Earning your bachelor’s degree is no trivial achievement. Inc. recently published a compelling article highlighting how a STEM degree can be valuable to virtually any industry. Graduates who focused their collegiate studies on science, technology, engineering, and/or mathematics (STEM) are prized among the world’s most competitive employers. That being said, you also entered the workforce at the height of global competitiveness. Sharon Florentine at CIO reported as much two years ago when she cautioned graduates to prepare for a cutthroat job market. Managing to land on your feet despite that reality is certainly something to celebrate.

All that being said, your friend’s comparison isn’t far from the truth. Living affordably in the San Francisco Bay Area is likely to be extremely difficult if not impossible. To be clear, however, specific comparisons are hard to validate given the variability in published results. For instance, Alison Millington at Business Insider publicized a list of the top ten most expensive cities in the world, which included multiple American cities, all of which were in California. Try contrasting that with the shortlist composed by James Chrisman at Thrillist. He doesn’t cite a single American city in his top ten and explains that the declining value of the US dollar is primarily to blame. You will notice, however, that both Sydney, Australia and Hong Kong, China were referenced by both writers.

Whether or not the cost of living in San Francisco is directly comparable to the cost of living in Sydney, Australia is almost irrelevant. What matters is that they are both unreasonably expensive cities for the grand majority of their residents. The consequences of that shared reality are similar if not identical for anyone of little means. In places like Sydney, Australia, that meant larger shares of people have had to consider home loans from Bankwest to compensate for the skyrocketing real estate prices. Only more recently have things in that market begun to turn around. You also have to remember that those real estate values were increasing for well over a decade. In other words, it wasn’t something you could easily wait out.

Expect to find a similar story in San Francisco’s Bay Area. Mike Moffitt at SFGate already did you the favor of disclosing exactly how much you should earn to live comfortably in San Francisco. As it turns out, he refers to a study that reveals San Francisco is, indeed, the most expensive American city–even more so than New York and Washington, DC. Fortunately, Peter Jacobs at Business Insider declared that STEM majors earn the most money after graduation. Your competitive starting salary combined with greater earning potential gives you a distinct advantage. Combine that with patience, parsimony, and prudent saving. Time will fly by faster than you think and before you know it, you’ll be in a much better position.

Article source: https://universe.byu.edu/2018/07/12/australian-real-estate-report/

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Article source: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4186703-trouble-ahead-u-s-housing-market

The number of U.S. families with children owning homes fell by 3.6 million over the last decade, as rising housing prices pushed many out of the market.

The San Francisco metro area, including the East Bay, saw 31,000 fewer home-owning families between 2006 and 2016, a decline of 10 percent, according to a recent survey by Rent Cafe. The number of families renting homes in San Francisco and Oakland grew by 57,000, or 33 percent.

When given a choice between high rent or a higher mortgage, families are choosing to rent. “They basically can’t afford the costs,” said Florentina Sarac, a researcher for Rent Cafe. Many families also lost homes during the wave of foreclosures in the 2008 recession, and have been unable to purchase another house, she said.

Families face a tough economic reality: Bay Area rents rose 39 percent between 2006 and 2016, home prices rose 80 percent. “The choice is pretty clear,” Sarac said.

The survey did not study the San Jose metro area, where median sale prices for homes have been rising steadily for six years and now top $1 million in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties.

High housing prices have had an impact on local schools. Santa Clara County Superintendent of Schools Mary Ann Dewan said districts throughout the county are seeing lower enrollment as young families leave for more affordable cities.

Schools have noticed a rise in multiple families sharing a rented single family home, she said. Other families are living in cars and RVs, adding to the stress on young children.

“The unknown can weigh as a heavy burden on a young person’s mental ability,” Dewan said. The pressure can lead to behavior and learning problems, as students enter school tired and hungry.

The Ravenswood City School District in East Palo Alto has seen a growing number of its students displaced or living in temporary housing. About 40 percent of the students in the small district are considered homeless by federal standards.

The transient housing for many students has led the district to offer more services to families — food pantries, a free laundromat and ad hoc fundraising campaigns.

“A child can’t focus on his or her lesson plan if they’re couch surfing,” said Rolando Bonilla, a spokesman for the district. “We’ve seen the disruption.”

Nationally, the number of families with children renting grew 16 percent, while the number of owners fell 14 percent, according to the Rent Cafe analysis of census and real estate data. A lower U.S. birthrate has also contributed to fewer families purchasing homes.

New York, Los Angeles and Chicago also saw significant drops in family home ownership. Charlotte, N.C. saw the greatest jump in family rentals during the decade, with a 73 percent increase.

Developers have responded to the growing demand for family apartments. Construction on apartment buildings with two, three and four bedroom units has increased, according to real estate data firm Yardi Matrix. About 43 percent of the new apartments built in the last decade in the San Francisco metro have been two bedrooms or more.

Developers built 14,477 apartments in San Francisco and 16,659 units in San Jose between 2006 and 2016, according to Yardi Matrix.

Article source: https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/07/11/fewer-families-affording-buying-homes/