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Check out the stories on the Hot List: The controversy over phony service animals, the tax burden of Bay Area homeowners and too many stickers causing trouble in the diamond lane

SUNNYVALE — The small, unassuming home in the Cherry Chase neighborhood was on the market just two days before it sold for $2 million, a whopping $550,000 over its asking price.

In this red-hot real estate market, the price tag barely caused a stir. What did was the other number that turned the home into another Bay Area record-breaker: It sold for the highest square-foot price recorded in Sunnyvale — a stunning $2,358, according to MLSListings, which tracks homes sales going back to 2000.

The jaw-dropping price tag suggests Sunnyvale, which has traditionally been less expensive than neighboring cities Cupertino or Palo Alto, is becoming a real estate destination in itself.

“I was blown away by it,” Doug Larson of Coldwell Banker, the real estate agent who sold the home, said of the price it fetched.

There’s nothing particularly breathtaking about the modest, one-story house on quiet, tree-lined Plymouth Drive. But it sits nestled at the center of one of the country’s most expensive real estate markets. As prices continue to increase throughout the Bay Area, pushing out even some highly paid tech workers, experts say more residents are flocking to relatively affordable Sunnyvale, driving up prices there.

“It’s become the new hot market,” said Jim Harrison, president and CEO of MLSListings.

Homes in Sunnyvale sold for a median price of $1.57 million in January, according to Zillow. That’s affordable compared to neighboring Cupertino, with a median sale price of $2.2 million, or Palo Alto, with a median price of $3 million.

But it may not stay that way for long. So far this year, homes in Sunnyvale are selling for an average of 28 percent over their listed price and are spending just nine days on the market, Harrison said. A four-bedroom, two-bath, 2,000 square foot house in the city recently sold for close to $800,000 over its listing price, fetching $2.47 million.

The Plymouth Drive house is small by comparison, just 848 square feet, which contributed to its high per-square-foot price. But it’s on a large lot — 6,000 square feet. That makes it a prime candidate for the new owner to tear it down and build something else, Harrison said.

Realtor Juliana Lee of Keller Williams, who represents the buyer of the Plymouth Drive home, declined to comment on behalf of herself and her client.

Listing photos of the home show a small, beige house with a huge backyard, hardwood floors and a large front window with white shutters. Before the sale, the most expensive per-square-foot price recorded in Sunnyvale was $2,175, according to MLSListings. That was for a 1,839-square-foot, two-bedroom home on a 36,155 square foot lot, which sold for $4 million.

Sunnyvale has become popular in part because of its proximity to Silicon Valley’s tech jobs, said realtor James Morris of James Morris Homes, which has offices in San Jose and Saratoga. LinkedIn is headquartered in the city, Apple is just next door in Cupertino, and Google is on the other side in Mountain View.

Millennials don’t want to endure long commutes on the Bay Area’s clogged freeways, Morris said.

“They will pay that premium to be close to their jobs and not have to drive,” he said.

When Larson put the Plymouth Drive house on the market on Feb. 7, he asked for $1.45 million and assumed his client would get about $1.6 million. The next day, he opened the house for a realtor tour so the community’s agents could check out the property and determine if it was something their clients might want. It generated a lot of interest, Larson said, with some agents indicating they had buyers willing to offer as much as $1.8 million.

Friday morning, a realtor called Larson and told him she was sending over an offer. Larson told her his client wasn’t accepting offers until the following Wednesday, but the persistent realtor refused to take no for an answer and sent her client’s offer that afternoon.

It was too tempting to pass up — $2 million, all cash, closing in 10 days. The seller was shocked.

“She said, ‘What?’” Larson said. “She was as taken aback as I was.”

Article source: https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/03/02/sunnyvale-home-shatters-new-record-with-enormous-price-tag/

Are you thinking about leaving the Bay Area and its crushing housing costs and mind-numbing commutes behind?

The move could cost you.

Highlighting the recent push to flee Silicon Valley, moving-truck rental company U-Haul charges much higher rates — in some cases more than 10 times higher — for travelers leaving the Bay Area, compared to those entering it.

It’s simple supply and demand, says Mark Perry, a finance and economics professor at the University of Michigan and scholar with the American Enterprise Institute think tank. As the Bay Area exodus continues, U-Haul is watching its trucks drive out of the region and not return — leaving the company with a shortage in the area, Perry wrote in a blog post. So the company is raising and lowering its prices accordingly.

“They’re almost paying people to get the trucks back into San Jose,” he said in an interview. That suggests “there’s a huge outflow, and a lot of outbound moves leaving the area, and very few moves coming in.”

Moving from San Jose to Las Vegas, Nevada? You’ll shell out $945 to rent a 10-foot U-Haul truck, and $1,990 to rent a 26-foot truck, for up to four days, according to the U-Haul website. But make the move in the other direction, and you’ll pay $119 for a 10-foot truck and $132 for a 26-foot truck.

Moving from Phoenix, Arizona to San Jose is the same — $119 for the smallest truck, and $132 for the largest. But a trip from San Jose to Phoenix costs $618 and $1,301.

Moves to and from San Francisco, and to and from Oakland, saw a similar price difference.

U-Haul’s varying rates depend on several factors, including supply and demand, a company spokesman wrote in an emailed statement.

“U-Haul utilizes a proprietary rates and distribution system, and a management team that considers many factors when determining pricing for equipment rentals from one location to another, not the least of which is supply and demand,” Jeff Lockridge wrote. “We endeavor to make our equipment available at the lowest cost to everyone, regardless of where customers are traveling in the U.S. or Canada.”

In the fourth quarter of last year, the San Francisco metro area was the region in the U.S. with the most residents looking to move elsewhere, according to a recent study by real estate website Redfin. The study, which analyzed 1 million users looking for new homes, found 15,489 — or more than 19 percent — of San Francisco-area residents surveyed were planning to move out of the area, with the most popular destinations being Sacramento and Seattle, Washington.

U-Haul charges $517 and $680 to rent a truck for a move from Seattle to San Jose, and $1,654 and $3,482 for a trip from San Jose to Seattle. Sacramento to San Jose costs $85 and $110, while San Jose to Sacramento costs  $259 and $370.

Moving company North American Van Lines, which publishes an annual report on migration trends, last year found California was one of the top five states people left — a distinction the state has never had before. In 2017, 60 percent of moves involving the state were people leaving, and 40 percent were people arriving, according to the study.

Article source: https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/03/08/u-haul-prices-reflect-growing-push-to-leave-silicon-valley/

Housing prices and taxes are driving residents out of San Francisco in droves — and their exodus is even driving up the prices of U-Haul rentals, Business Insider is reporting.

Citing data from Redfin, the tech capital saw a net loss of 15,849 residents — the most of any city in the United States.

The resident drain was 24 per cent higher than the second-place city, New York.

“People leaving coastal hubs in search of affordability has been a consistent trend for the last five years,” says Redfin chief economist Nela Richardson when the report was issued in February. “Late last year there was a twist. Many of the popular migration paths that we saw Redfin.com users exploring yielded tax benefits along with increased affordability.”

So many people are leaving that it now costs $2,000 to rent a U-Haul from San Jose to Las Vegas — even though it costs only $100 to do the trip in reverse, Business Insider says.

The story also quotes the public-relations firm Edelman, which says that almost half of Bay Area residents might leave the area.

Business Insider says that while the cost of living in San Francisco has always put pressure on people, “the recent tax reform has made life even more expensive for residents, pushing entrepreneurs (and their ideas) toward fast-growing metros.”

Ironically, technology is making it easier for people to work remotely from different cities. The article mentions Slack, the Vancouver-based company, that makes communicating with co-workers easy, even when your cubicles are next to each other (as the Courier can attest.)

The New York Times is reporting that other cities in America are trying to lure tech companies and start-ups away from the Bay Area.

“I’m a little over San Francisco,” said Patrick McKenna, the founder of High Ridge Venture Partners, told the New York Times during a bus tour through the Midwest. “It’s so expensive, it’s so congested, and frankly, you also see opportunities in other places.”

Here in British Columbia, the Central Okanagan Economic Development Commission is boasting that the Okanagan is the province’s fastest-growing metropolitan area. Its website boasts an average commuting time of 15 minutes, extensive bike paths and an abundance of wineries.

Housing starts were up 63 per cent in 2017 compared to the previous year.

The district’s median home price is $619,500 while the average cost per square foot of Vancouver condo is nearly $1,000. The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the Okanagan is $1,151 compared to the City of Vancouver’s “affordable” two-bedroom rental pegged at $2,505.

Article source: http://www.burnabynow.com/real-estate/as-san-francisco-goes-so-goeth-metro-vancouver-1.23194868

SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — The San Francisco Bay Area is losing more residents than any other United States metro area, according to real-estate site Redfin.

In 2017, 19.4 percent of Bay Area residents were searching for housing elsewhere, the report said.

Of the 15,489 people who moved out of the area, most of them settled in the Sacramento area in-state, Redfin said. The top out-of-state destination for former Bay Area residents was the Seattle area.

The San Francisco metro ranked ahead of New York (No. 2) and Los Angeles (No. 3).

The report also said Bay Area residents are moving to Portland, Oregon; and Austin, Texas.

View the full report here: https://www.redfin.com/blog/2018/02/q4-migration-report.html

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Article source: http://kron4.com/2018/03/07/study-san-francisco-bay-area-losing-more-residents-than-any-other-us-metro-area/

• More residents are leaving San Francisco than any other US city, according to data from real-estate site Redfin.
• A growing number of those considering the move are Silicon Valley investors, The New York Times reports.
• The migration has become so intense that it’s creating a shortage of U-Haul vans and inflating prices so that it costs thousands to go from San Jose to Las Vegas — but only $100 to go in the opposite direction.
• Startup founders and venture capitalists have little reason to stay and invest in expensive real estate, especially since today’s technology makes working remotely so seamless.

The sky-high rent and cost of living that we’ve come to expect from the Bay Area might have finally taken their toll on a large proportion of residents. A huge wave of people are considering more affordable cities outside the world’s tech capital, and they’re taking their startups and investors with them, as Kevin Roose reported for The New York Times.

San Francisco lost more residents than any other city in the US in the last quarter of 2017, according to data from real-estate site Redfin, which sampled a million users. The data factored in the number of residents that cities gained, meaning San Francisco lost a net 15,489 residents; about 24% more than the next-highest loser on the list, New York City.

This is expected to continue into 2018, considering that, as of February, 49% of Bay Area residents were looking to move out of San Francisco, according to a survey by public-relations firm Edelman.

If that data isn’t enough evidence of a heavy migration, consider the shortage of U-Haul moving vans in the Bay Area, which has inflated costs so much that it costs $2,000 to rent a truck from San Jose to Las Vegas — but only costs $100 the other way around, according to local news reporter Michelle Robertson from SFGate.

In fact, it costs twice as much to rent a truck from San Jose to almost any other destination city than to rent the same vehicle in the opposite direction.

The migration from San Francisco isn’t a new phenomenon, since rent has been increasing at an incredible rate for years. But the recent tax reform has made life even more expensive for residents, pushing entrepreneurs (and their ideas) toward fast-growing metros. Others, like Peter Thiel, who can afford the price to live there, have attributed their move to a more left-leaning and less tolerant cultural atmosphere that leaves little room for freedom of opinion.

Many investors, like those referenced in Roose’s Times article, are finding that cities other cities are thriving with opportunity. Startup founders and venture capitalists have little reason to stay and invest in expensive real estate, especially since applications like Slack, the inter-company messaging platform, and video-conferencing tools make working remotely more seamless.

You can read more about how Silicon Valley investors are feeling about life outside of the Bay Area over at The Times.

Article source: http://www.businessinsider.com/san-francisco-bay-area-residents-moving-away-increase-u-haul-rental-prices-2018-3