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The mansion’s extravagant visuals — from the second-floor “green room” that features gold ceiling accents and a chandelier to the third-floor bathroom with pearl ceramic sinks — make it an “Instagram dream,” Herman Chan, the owner’s agent, said. “Every room is a different backdrop.”

No corner of the mansion is spared from lavishness — even the dog wash in its fourth-floor laundry room is coated with navy blue marble tiles.

Yet, the nearly 11,000-square-foot mansion has been on the market since December 2019, according to Zillow. The prolonged listing shows the complexities around how the pandemic has affected the sales of high-end, luxury homes.

Throughout the nation, sales of these lavish properties increased during the pandemic, with listings site Redfin showing a 60% increase in luxury home sales from 2020 to 2021. The jump in those sales is largely attributed to people wanting more space or privacy during a pandemic, but it also illustrated how the wealthy were still spending at a time of economic uncertainty for many Americans.

Yet, in San Francisco the sale of luxury homes (defined by listings of $4.5 million or more) increased by “only” 31% during that same time frame. Meanwhile, the median sale price for luxury homes in San Francisco decreased by 3.2%, the only city among the nation’s 49 most populous with a decline in that category. (New York City was excluded in the data.)

“There has been a little bit of a reticence” from buyers, Chan said. “A lot of that can be attributed to the pandemic. For the past year, I think people who are ultra, ultra high net worth are exploring other cities.”

Through the market fluctuations, the mansion at 2698 Pacific Ave. remained unsold — though not for lack of attention.

A video tour of the mansion by a popular real estate YouTuber has more than 1 million views with thousands of comments from viewers who admired its “breathtaking” interior designs.

The owner’s agents regularly field booking requests. Influencers drawn to the mansion’s exorbitant backdrops want it to be the site of their next photo shoot. Couples looking to celebrate their nuptials in grand fashion want to walk down the mansion’s third-floor grand staircase. Startup companies hoping for a big fundraising haul want to court donors with its palatial excess.

Most requests are turned down politely, Chan said, though a movie production company of a “major Hollywood star” is tentatively scheduled to film a scene at the mansion this summer.

About a dozen members of that film’s production crew recently toured what was once called the “Mack Mansion” — named after Julius Mack, the oil magnate and financier whom the estate was initially built for by the famed father-son team Newsom Newsom. The film crew became enamored with the home’s top-floor views of the bay, Chan said.

Much of the mansion’s recent fanfare came after it hosted the prestigious Decorator Showcase in the spring of 2017. A team of 28 elite interior decorators descended on the mansion, each picking a room in the home to renovate. A second-floor bathroom now features all-black walls with turquoise tiling and a marble sink with gold faucets. The library room across from the mansion’s green room includes modern, orbital-like light fixtures with a wood-beam ceiling.

The interior designs, much of which remain in place, wooed the current owners, who no longer live in the home. They purchased the mansion for $16 million in fall 2017 after attending the Decorator Showcase earlier that year.

Now, they’re asking $25.8 million for the next owner, a price Chan said is in line with another luxury mansion on the market that hosted the 2019 showcase.

The Mack Mansion and its elegant backdrops have drawn a following on social media over the years. The property, however, has been on the market since before San Francisco’s first shelter-in-place orders.

Though there’s no single answer as to why, Chan said the pandemic likely has played a prominent role.

But, Chan said, “there’s still an appetite for beautiful, beautiful properties, especially for legacy families in the Bay Area.”

Rent vs. buy: No simple answer

The primary consideration is an individual’s personal and financial situation. There are many factors and variables to consider, including current income and debt, personal assets, credit score, downpayment funds, mortgage interest rate, purchase price and the location and type of property.

Home ownership is the way to go for long-term investment and equity, if an individual has the wherewithal to get into the market. But for those looking to make a head-to-head financial comparison between renting and buying in the nearer term, there are tools available to try this out.

By plugging in common variables to rent-vs.-buy calculators from NerdWallet, SmartAsset and Realtor.com, The Chronicle identified some key trends for people considering becoming homeowners (or considering exiting homeownership). The exercise found that it takes longer to realize investment in home ownership in the Bay Area’s biggest cities than in the nation at large.

For the three largest Bay Area cities (San Jose, San Francisco and Oakland), these data points were factored in:

• Median household income from the U.S. Census.

• Typical two-bedroom home value from real estate listings site Zillow from February, 2022.

• Estimate of two-bedroom apartment rent from Apartment List from February 2022. Apartment List uses Census Bureau and Department of Housing and Urban Development statistics.

We entered these values into a rent vs. buy calculator, adjusted home appreciation to 5%, set mortgage interest rate to 5.1%, which was the national average as of Sunday, and assumed a 20% down payment on a house.

In all three cities, it’s less costly to rent in the shorter term — no surprise, given the upfront costs necessary for homeownership. But the break-even point occurs at a different moment for the three cities, and later than the national average, especially in San Francisco.

Calculating the break-even point

NerdWallet’s calculator shows that in Oakland, the point at which buying is financially superior to renting comes at the 11-year mark. (This assumes a household income of $80,143, a two-bedroom home priced at $820,376, and a two-bedroom rent estimate of $1,939.)

Raise the monthly rent input by 10%, and it decreases to nine years. A 20% monthly rental increase allows the buyer to break even in seven years.

Conversely, if the home price goes up 10%, buying is again never cheaper than renting unless your rent is much higher.

In San Francisco, using the average numbers for household income ($119,136), two-bedroom home price ($1.48 million) and rental price ($2,713), you break even in 26 years, according to the calculator.

If the rent is increased 10%, the break-even point is 22 years, and a rental increase of 20% puts that milestone at 18 years. But raise the home price by 10% and you won’t break even for 30 years.

In San Jose, inputting the median household income of $117,324, a two-bedroom home price of $893,119 and rent estimate of $2,331, you break even in nine years.

Raise the monthly rent by 10% and the homeownership break-even mark comes at seven years, while increasing rent 20% makes it six years. But again, increase the San Jose home price by 10% and you’re better off renting.

Buying a home becomes the better financial bet much sooner when all the numbers are based on national averages. With a median household income of $64,994, a home priced at the typical two-bedroom home value of $245,552, a two-bedroom rent estimate of $1,295 and 3% home appreciation rate, the break-even point is just four years. Raise the rent 10% and the break-even point is reached in three years, and the same with a 20% increase in rent.

These calculators are limited in their scope, and experts say it all really depends on your end goal. Results depend on estimating and assuming many variables that can vary widely from region to region, person to person, and scenario to scenario.

“If you are in a rent control apartment and have been renting for a long time, then renting will always be cheaper,” said Jeannie Gant, a

San Francisco real estate broker and president of the San Francisco Association of Realtors. “But you will not have the many advantages of owning a home and building equity. If you are renting at today’s rental market price, then you will start to see the curve bend towards buying as a better option.”

Other factors to consider

Gant said the primary reason for home ownership is to “build equity and provide housing stability.”

Rob Warnock, senior research associate for Apartment List, pointed to the attractiveness of “passive investment” as one reason for buying a home, even if renting is cheaper.

“A lot of household wealth creation is based on mortgage payments that convert into equity, which can be used to access more capital,” he wrote in an email.

In order for a renter to achieve these gains, “they would need to calculate their monthly savings compared to homeownership, invest those savings, and achieve a return that matches or exceeds home price appreciation.”

“While certainly not impossible, wealth-creation in this way is far more demanding as a renter,” he said. “This is a drawback to these (rent-vs.-buy) calculators I think, which focus on how much you spend rather than how much wealth you generate.”

Still, there are benefits to renting including overall lower monthly costs, the flexibility to pick up and move wherever you want, not having to deal with surprise housing expenses, and being able to live in more urban areas that typically have more units for rent, Warnock said.

“But despite these benefits, our research suggests that most renters rent because they can’t afford not to, and specifically it’s the up-front costs that makes homeownership unaffordable,” he said.

The pandemic has made the home buying market especially tough in the Bay Area, which was already notorious for high prices and low inventory.

“The pandemic increased the demand for single family homes as buyers moved away from bigger condo complexes and preferred outdoor space and single dwellings,” Gant said. “Therefore the appreciation rate for single family homes went up over 10% from 2021 to 2022.”

Especially fierce competition in some parts of the Bay Area has led to “bidding wars, all-cash offers, institutional investors, waived inspection contingencies,” Warnock noted.

“Unfortunately I think the competitiveness of today’s Bay Area home market is making obsolete a lot of conventional wisdom about what it takes to buy a home,” he said. “It’s one thing for the market to be expensive…but historically low inventory and a rush to capitalize on low interest rates has created a competitiveness that poses new challenges to potential homebuyers.”

He added that the pandemic “has increased demand for owned homes while also interrupting new home construction.”

That said, Gant said prospective buyers can still find homes if “they are willing to forego some amenities”: In San Francisco, for instance, “you can pay about $100,000 less for a home without parking.”

Kellie Hwang is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kellie.hwang@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @KellieHwang

Out of nearly 30 applicants, the finalists include: Rize Up Bakery, Calaca Coffee, The Uncreamery, Whack Donuts, and Kiss My Boba

SAN FRANCISCO, April 12, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Raydiant, the leading in-store experience management platform for brick-and-mortar enterprises, today announced the five finalists for its “Rising Entrepreneur” contest. Finalists will pitch to a panel of judges on Friday, April 15th at Raydiant’s San Francisco HQ in a Shark Tank-inspired contest setting. One winner will receive the opportunity to open their own brick-and-mortar retail location at 35 Stillman Street – a commercial real estate package valued at over $50,000.

While the finalists represent unique retail offerings or concepts, they all share a passion to grow in their entrepreneurial journey and to invest in the SoMa community where the new retail space would be located. The finalists include:

Rize Up Bakery, founded by Azikiwee Anderson, is a fledgling San Francisco based Black-owned bakery focused on reinventing and rethinking the traditional sourdough. Anderson has scaled his business and recently opened a new commercial kitchen space in Fisherman’s Wharf, and is looking to the Rising Entrepreneur opportunity to establish his first owned brick-and-mortar location.

Calaca Coffee was founded by Bay Area Natives Christian Soto and José Rodriguez with a passion for food and an interest for mixing all the flavors and cultures they were surrounded by in their hometown of San Francisco. They took over an abandoned lot in Crockett, CA and converted it into the Bay Area’s first Latino-owned coffee garden space. The contest will give them the ability to operate year-round (regardless of weather) and amplify their brand.

Soto and Rodriguez are true hustlers who are excited for the opportunity to expand their small business. “We’re not new to being a big fish in a small pond and going against the current. We started Calaca Coffee at the height of the pandemic, and have already been featured in a variety of press, from The San Francisco Chronicle to Eater SF, and were invited to be a vendor at the SF Coffee Festival, all before our one-year anniversary. The Rising Entrepreneur contest will help us open our first brick-and-mortar location in our home town, and with Raydiant’s POS-powered digital signage, we’ll be able to experiment with an ever-changing menu, and really bring our brand to life.”

The Uncreamery, founded by Lisa Myaf and Mark Charette, is San Francisco’s first vegan creamery that makes shockingly delicious vegan cheeses that slice, shred and melt like their dairy counterparts. A participant of La Cocina’s incubator kitchen nonprofit working to solve problems of equity in business ownership for women, immigrants and people of color, The Uncreamery has grown to offer their vegan cheese products across a variety of Bay Area grocery and retail outlets, as well as nationwide specialty shops and online retailers. Lisa and Mark’s cheeses won the hearts of many customers, including celebrities such as Brie Larson and Tabitha Brown. Raydiant’s offering will offer Lisa and Mark their first dedicated brick-and-mortar space for San Francisco‘ s first and only Vegan Deli and Cheese Shop, which will provide the opportunity for other small artisanal brands to be represented along their wonderful plant-based offerings. While the vegan market is heavily dominated by big name brands, it is small artisanal producers that bring innovation, unmatched quality and utmost care for their product to the table.

Whack Donuts, founded by San Francisco-native Vandor Hill, is a vegan doughnut bakery trying to flip the stigma that making vegan pastry without animal products, like eggs, can’t be delicious – and so far, he’s winning over both vegans and non-vegans alike. Hill has scaled his footprint by popping up across the Bay, from coffee shops to public markets to other vegan eateries (like Oakland’s Malibu’s Burgers), being featured in SFGATE and VegOutSF‘s best spots for vegan donuts, and is ready to take the next step in his entrepreneurial journey by opening his own dedicated brick-and-mortar space.

Hill shares, “A lot of people were like, ‘Oh, I had something vegan and it was disgusting’ – I’m trying to kill that stigma. Once people find out that my doughnuts are vegan, they honestly can’t tell the difference.’” Whack Donuts has recently partnered with Pastel to expand through delivery services across the Bay Area.

Kiss My Boba is a Tongan-owned family business started by husband-and-wife team Chelsea and Willy Tatola. The Tatolas were so passionate about their product that they decided to buy their own food truck so they could drive around and bring Bay Area residents joy via a cold cuppa tea. They’ve now expanded to Off the Grid, other public markets, launched a catering offering, and most recently, opened their first brick-and-mortar location in San Bruno at 221 El Camino Real. The Rising Entrepreneur contest will give them the opportunity to continue spreading the boba tea love through San Francisco with a dedicated location in SoMa.

“We were overwhelmed by the volume of applications we received for our Rising Entrepreneur contest,” shares Bobby Marhamat, CEO at Raydiant. “We’re feeling really good about our five finalists and know it will be a tough choice come Friday! They’re all incredibly talented, passionate, hungry, and ready for this next exciting chapter in their entrepreneurial journey.” Marhamat will serve as a judge alongside a panel of industry experts, including Akash Kapoor, CEO and Founder of Curry Up Now, and Danny Stoller, CEO and Co-founder of Square Pie Guys. Finalists will give a 10-minute pitch covering their journey, passion for the concept, vision for the retail space, and how they will continue to cultivate community in their new SoMa/South Park neighborhood.

The Rising Entrepreneur contest prize is valued at over $50,000. The package includes up to a 12-month commercial retail lease at Raydiant’s HQ, 35 Stillman Street, a busy SoMa side street near the Giants stadium and South Park. Raydiant will cover costs associated with the structural build out and work with the chosen entrepreneur to design the layout and aesthetic to their liking. Raydiant will offer the winner a $10,000 stipend to be used towards marketing and operational expenses to get their business up and running, and outfit their retail space with Raydiant-powered tech and digital signage. Raydiant’s platform will empower the chosen retailer to display digital menus, integrate with POS systems, and even power contactless check-out experiences.

Once a winner is chosen, Raydiant will kick off construction and build out with plans for the retail space to be open to the public by July 1, 2022.

About Raydiant
Raydiant is the AI-powered, in-store experience management platform of choice for the world’s largest brands in restaurant, retail, banking and more. With Raydiant, franchise managers, IT, marketing and communications executives can more effectively scale their brick-and-mortar operations, reduce anxiety from outdated technology oversight, and seamlessly create more engaging and personalized in-store experiences that keeps customers coming back and buying more. Raydiant works with nearly 4,500 brands, from SMB to enterprise, including First Bank, Dickey’s BBQ, Harvard University, The Salvation Army, Red Bull, Chick-Fil-A, Thomson Reuters, and Wahlburgers. Founded in April 2017, Raydiant is headquartered in San Francisco, California and has raised a total of $50 million from 8VC, Atomic Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, Mark Wahlberg Investments, Bloomberg Beta, Gaingels, Illuminate Ventures, Transmedia Capital, and Ron Conway. To learn more, visit www.raydiant.com.

Media Contact:
Morgan Chaney, VP of Marketing at Raydiant
morgan.chaney@raydiant.com

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Both single-family homes are listed at about the median price for what a single-family home in San Francisco sells for these days — $1.5 million.

In a state as vast as California, where home prices have soared during the pandemic to a statewide median of $771,270, single-family homes listed at $1.5 million take different shapes.

How different? Here’s a tour of five recent listings in five California cities.

San Francisco: A sunny 4-bedroom a short walk from Stern Grove

Location is one of the main attractions behind the detached Outer Sunset home that’s listed at $1,495,000.

The home on 22nd Avenue is less than two blocks from Stern Grove Park to the south and Muni’s L rail line to the north. It’s also next to the 19th Avenue corridor — one of the Sunset’s three main north-south arterials connecting westside residents to I-280.

“It’s close to the beach and the park, and especially since COVID the last couple of years, a lot of people want more outdoor space,” listing agent Jason Chan said of the 4-bed, 4-bath property. “So this is really the ideal home.”

The living room includes a fireplace and wide windows that bathe the room in natrual sunlight. Its backyard features a second-floor tiled deck with a staircase leading to a backyard that can be used for gardening. The home’s late owner, a contractor, built additional rooms on the first floor, though the home still has a one-car garage and storage space.

The 2,300-square-foot listing is the kind of home attracting many young families to the city’s Parkside neighborhood, including first-time homebuyers, Chan said.

“It’s a very family friendly neighborhood,” he said.

Santa Rosa: A suburban home luring Bay Area families northward

In Santa Rosa, the five-bedroom home listed at $1,495,000 is the type of place that’s attracted interest from families in San Francisco and the South Bay who are looking to move north in search of bigger properties within close proximity.

That trend has been par for the course in recent years, realtor Karen Webb said, though that migration pattern has only grown stronger since the pandemic and the rise of hybrid and telework.

“That’s what’s so tempting for people, especially if they have these new hybrid work situations where they can keep a nice high-paying job and move up here and have a house that’s three times the size of what they had in the city,” Webb said.

The 4,000-square-foot home, featuring a three-car garage and backyard hot tub, is adjacent to Santa Rosa’s Skyhawk Park and is about an hour drive from San Francisco.

There’s wide variance of homes listed in Sonoma County listed at around $1.5 million, Webb said. Similar priced properties toward the North Bay coast are likely to have smaller homes plopped in more acreage.

But migration from the Bay Area’s inner core continues to drive home prices in the North Bay.

“We are getting a giant influx of people moving north, which is pushing our market,” Webb said. “So there’s people who have lived here for a long time who are selling, cashing out and moving north or somewhere else.”

Sacramento: A home where $1.5 million listings have become common

For years, much of the Bay Area’s outmigration has led homebuyers to Sacramento and its sprawling suburbs.

The migration to the region has made $1.5 million home listings in Sacramento more common in recent years. Still, “$1.5 million will get you an amazing house here,” realtor Kendra Knauer said.

Knauer last Thursday listed a three-bedroom, three-bathroom home near the city’s wealthy “Fab 40s” neighborhood in east Sacramento. The 2,400-square-foot home, which includes a spacious backyard shaded by the trees that proliferate across the city, attracted about 100 people to its open houses over the weekend, including some would-be Bay Area buyers.

The listing is expected to have a sale pending within the next week, Knauer said.

“This price point, especially in the last year or two, is a much more common price point than we’ve been used to seeing in Sacramento,” Knauer said. “Four or five years ago, there wasn’t a ton of $1.5 million houses in Sacramento.”

L.A.: A remodeled three-bedroom home close to the ocean

Situated on a dead-end street near Interstates 10 and 405, this remodeled three-bedroom, 1,300-square-foot home is the standard listing in Los Angeles around the $1.5 million price range, realtor Karla Zapata said.

The Spanish-style home, first built in 1936, comes with a two-car garage, backyard pool and front open-air courtyard with a manicured front lawn.

Both single-family homes are listed at about the median price for what a single-family home in San Francisco sells for these days — $1.5 million.

In a state as vast as California, where home prices have soared during the pandemic to a statewide median of $771,270, single-family homes listed at $1.5 million take different shapes.

How different? Here’s a tour of five recent listings in five California cities.

San Francisco: A sunny 4-bedroom a short walk from Stern Grove

Location is one of the main attractions behind the detached Outer Sunset home that’s listed at $1,495,000.

The home on 22nd Avenue is less than two blocks from Stern Grove Park to the south and Muni’s L rail line to the north. It’s also next to the 19th Avenue corridor — one of the Sunset’s three main north-south arterials connecting westside residents to I-280.

“It’s close to the beach and the park, and especially since COVID the last couple of years, a lot of people want more outdoor space,” listing agent Jason Chan said of the 4-bed, 4-bath property. “So this is really the ideal home.”

The living room includes a fireplace and wide windows that bathe the room in natrual sunlight. Its backyard features a second-floor tiled deck with a staircase leading to a backyard that can be used for gardening. The home’s late owner, a contractor, built additional rooms on the first floor, though the home still has a one-car garage and storage space.

The 2,300-square-foot listing is the kind of home attracting many young families to the city’s Parkside neighborhood, including first-time homebuyers, Chan said.

“It’s a very family friendly neighborhood,” he said.

Santa Rosa: A suburban home luring Bay Area families northward

In Santa Rosa, the five-bedroom home listed at $1,495,000 is the type of place that’s attracted interest from families in San Francisco and the South Bay who are looking to move north in search of bigger properties within close proximity.

That trend has been par for the course in recent years, realtor Karen Webb said, though that migration pattern has only grown stronger since the pandemic and the rise of hybrid and telework.

“That’s what’s so tempting for people, especially if they have these new hybrid work situations where they can keep a nice high-paying job and move up here and have a house that’s three times the size of what they had in the city,” Webb said.

The 4,000-square-foot home, featuring a three-car garage and backyard hot tub, is adjacent to Santa Rosa’s Skyhawk Park and is about an hour drive from San Francisco.

There’s wide variance of homes listed in Sonoma County listed at around $1.5 million, Webb said. Similar priced properties toward the North Bay coast are likely to have smaller homes plopped in more acreage.

But migration from the Bay Area’s inner core continues to drive home prices in the North Bay.

“We are getting a giant influx of people moving north, which is pushing our market,” Webb said. “So there’s people who have lived here for a long time who are selling, cashing out and moving north or somewhere else.”

Sacramento: A home where $1.5 million listings have become common

For years, much of the Bay Area’s outmigration has led homebuyers to Sacramento and its sprawling suburbs.

The migration to the region has made $1.5 million home listings in Sacramento more common in recent years. Still, “$1.5 million will get you an amazing house here,” realtor Kendra Knauer said.

Knauer last Thursday listed a three-bedroom, three-bathroom home near the city’s wealthy “Fab 40s” neighborhood in east Sacramento. The 2,400-square-foot home, which includes a spacious backyard shaded by the trees that proliferate across the city, attracted about 100 people to its open houses over the weekend, including some would-be Bay Area buyers.

The listing is expected to have a sale pending within the next week, Knauer said.

“This price point, especially in the last year or two, is a much more common price point than we’ve been used to seeing in Sacramento,” Knauer said. “Four or five years ago, there wasn’t a ton of $1.5 million houses in Sacramento.”

L.A.: A remodeled three-bedroom home close to the ocean

Situated on a dead-end street near Interstates 10 and 405, this remodeled three-bedroom, 1,300-square-foot home is the standard listing in Los Angeles around the $1.5 million price range, realtor Karla Zapata said.

The Spanish-style home, first built in 1936, comes with a two-car garage, backyard pool and front open-air courtyard with a manicured front lawn.