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It’s hard to feign surprise when a teardown home in the Bay Area sells for well over the asking price. This real estate narrative is no longer an anomaly. It’s de rigueur. It is, by design, the norm.

Politicians and longtime homeowners continue to collude to keep zoning exclusionary, which results in astronomical housing costs that price out low- to mid-income residents desperate for habitat.

On that note, let’s take a look at yet another house that fetched above and beyond its initial asking: a condemned property in Fremont’s Mission neighborhood that nabbed $1,230,000.

To state the obvious, the money for this uninhabitable home is for the 9,408-square-foot lot upon which the teardown sits.

Realtor Larry Gallegos listed the home in January for $1 million. In one week, he received five offers before closing the sale—all of them cash.

Gallegos cites the job market and the good schools as the primary reasons people are flocking to the area as the dearth of affordable housing in Bay Area cities—see: Cupertino, Palo Alto— has pushed interest to outlying cities. It’s also near a BART station, making it even more desirable to those with jobs in San Francisco.

“It’s typically an expensive area, but I’ve seen houses almost double in price within the last two years,” Gallegos tells Curbed SF. “This is happening all over the East Bay.”

Most recently, a charred San Jose teardown landed on the market for $799,000. According to NBC Bay Area, the realtor of that pile of rubble “has six offers in hand, all well over asking price.”

• What is exclusionary zoning? [Vox]
• Blame Zoning, Not Tech, for San Francisco’s Housing Crisis [CityLab]
• Cupertino mayor says housing crisis ‘not dire’ [Curbed SF]
• Marin County’s anti-growth mindset keeps minorities and low-income residents out [Curbed SF]
• Berkeley’s zoning laws wall off communities of color, seniors, low-income people and others [Berkeleyside]
• Cupertino teardown sells for $2 million [Curbed SF]

Article source: https://sf.curbed.com/2018/4/17/17247626/teardown-condemned-house-bay-area-fremont-cash-sold

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Home prices in San Jose rose at a rate of $100 per hour of every work day in 2017, according to real estate database Zillow. One symbol of the soaring market: A burned out house in Willow Glen is priced at $800,000. https://t.co/5KPkylTSHG pic.twitter.com/x1O5XgPmnm

— NBC Bay Area (@nbcbayarea)
April 10, 2018

People are freaking out about a burned house in the SF Bay Area that’s selling for $800,000. 

The dilapidated old place, surrounded by chain-link fence and looking like an abandoned meth lab, is located in San Jose’s posh Willow Glen community. 

Like most housing, the bulk of the price tag arises not because of the property’s intrinsic value, the beauty of its design, or the quality of materials used, but rather its location. The house is smack in the center of Silicon Valley’s ever expanding mega-district of tech behemoths and self-driving urban sprawl. 

The smoldering abode is perhaps emblematic of the Bay Area’s housing crisis: Thousands of low-income and working class families have been displaced in recent decades. In two years, the homelessness rate in San Jose jumped 13 percent. 

Michael Rawson, director of the Public Interest Law Project, spoke to Newsweek recently and told them that the Willow Glen house is “symptomatic of the whole problem in the Bay Area.”

“We need to look at it like we’re looking at climate change,” Rawson continued. “We’re at a tipping point. We need to recognize that things are way out of control, or we’re going to lose—or maybe we’ve already lost and will continue to lose—an entire generation of people. “ 

People on Twitter were both amused and exasperated at the image of the house and its six-figure price tag. 

White Picket Fence included?

— TommyRulz (@tbond111)
April 11, 2018

Cosy. Has that charming layer of patina.

— JFhksar (@jfhksar88)
April 11, 2018

Foreign investors will buy this, tear it down, rebuild, and sell or rent for a profit. Or a tech person with disposable income. Normal people can not afford to buy property in the Bay Area.

— Eric the Red (@eportenier)
April 11, 2018

The Bay Area finds itself in this housing predicament at the tail end of a long chain of events: unchecked growth in the tech industry, local residents who don’t want new housing, city governments that are slow to approve new development, and a lack of monetary incentives for developers. This creates a perfect collision of forces that push housing prices up and low-income people out. 

The housing crisis in the Bay Area and beyond have certainly reached a tipping point. Only when human beings can outgrow their primal NIMBYism and developers can be given better options can we stem the now worldwide rising tide of housing costs. 

Banner image credit: Pixabay, paulbr75

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Article source: https://www.carbonated.tv/viral/burned-out-house-is-selling-for-800000-in-the-sf-bay-area

Article source: https://48hills.org/2018/04/wieners-real-estate-bill-gets-first-senate-hearing/

The typical San Francisco or San Jose home earns more money per hour than actual human beings working average jobs in most of the country, according to real estate site Zillow.

In a report published last week, Zillow considers how the value of a median U.S. home changed year over year:

The typical U.S. home appreciated 7.6 percent over the past year, from a median value of $195,400 in February 2017 to $210,200 at the end of February 2018. That $14,800 bump in value translates to a gain in home equity of $7.09 for every hour the typical U.S. homeowner was at the office last year (assuming a standard 40-hour work week), a shade less than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.

Of course, homes have the advantage that they’re earning (i.e., accruing value) essentially all the time when markets are in an upswing.

If we assume a 24-hour workday for a home, the annual $14,800 bump is more like $1.68/hour, closer to the federal minimum wage of $1.60 that was in place from 1968 to 1974 (not adjusted for inflation)—which is still a bit unsettling.

Zillow also considered the case of some of the country’s most expensive markets:

The median U.S. household earned roughly $60,000 in 2017 ($58,978 to be exact), or a little more than $28 per hour. But in six U.S. cities—New York, San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, Seattle and Oakland—owners of the median-valued local home gained more than that in home equity alone.

As Zillow crunches the numbers, earnings for Bay Area cities are rather startling. A typical San Jose home appreciated at $99.81 per hour, again assuming that the per day appreciation is condensed into the period of an eight-hour workday. For a San Francisco home, it gained $60.13/hour. And in Oakland, it earned $38.57/hour.

Note that Zillow relies on estimations of home values, which are not necessarily equivalent to home prices. However, actual price data is likely to send some workers into an existential crisis.

According to the California Association of Realtors, the median sale price of a San Francisco home increased by $454,000 between February 2017 and February 2018.

That’s more than 30 times what a worker at the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour earns in 52 working weeks at 40 hours per week. ($15,080 before taxes.)

It’s also nearly 7.7 times the median U.S. per hour income of $28. And it’s more than four times San Francisco’s estimated median income of $103,801 in 2016, which is among the highest in the country.

• Homes Earn Minimum Wage or More [Zillow]
• US Minimum Wage Chart [Department of Labor]
• County Sales Activity [CAR]
• Census: SF Wealthier Than Ever [Curbed SF]

Article source: https://sf.curbed.com/2018/4/13/17230856/san-francisco-home-value-appreciation-minimum-wage-zillow

Article source: https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2018/04/12/1469471/0/en/Zephyr-Real-Estate-Marin-Hosts-Workshop-Series-for-Bay-Area-Homeowners.html