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ALVISO — Ana Navarro lives with her husband and two young children in a 450-square-foot apartment. The kids — ages 10 and 3 — share a bedroom that’s more like a glorified closet.

The family pays $1,800 a month to live in its crowded flat across the street from an old landfill in this largely Latino enclave at the southern edge of San Francisco Bay, where the loudest noise can be the squawk of a seagull. Navarro works the night shift as a janitor at Stanford University, earning $15 an hour, while her husband drives a truck, for $20 an hour. Factor in the cost of food, gas, car insurance and other necessities, and making the rent becomes a monthly drama.

“I am stressed every single day — preoccupied,” Navarro said in Spanish, speaking through a translator. “I’m always calling my husband: `Next year we’ll have to pay even more. What do we do?’ ”

They plan to leave Alviso. It’s become too expensive for some — a striking transformation of this historically working-class community.

Long an affordable island of calm amid the Bay Area’s superheated economy, Alviso is becoming one more bedroom community for the steady influx of workers drawn to Silicon Valley. Its close proximity to the tech industry’s global nerve center makes it an attractive prospect for renters and homebuyers, who may not know a thing about its colorful history. But as tech money and gentrification become facts of life, locals — some whose families have lived here for generations — fear their home will lose a portion of the charm that drew them to Alviso in the first place.

Incorporated in 1852, Alviso originally thrived as a shipping port and transportation hub, with steamboats plying the bay to San Francisco, while dance halls and gambling establishments prospered during the 1920s and 1930s. What remains is a community that can seem frozen in time with its 19th-century landmarks, neighborhood groceries, mom-and-pop Mexican restaurants — and its stillness. The shoreline hiking trails in and around Alviso Marina County Park are lightly traversed. The South Bay Yacht Club is a social club without a marina — it closed years ago — but members still sit on the club’s deck, clutching mugs of coffee as they watch the sunset.

“You’re this close to the forefront of technology,” said Mike Hauser, 28, who rents in Alviso and works as a media producer in San Jose. “It’s like you’ve got the future right next to the past.”

Bounded by creeks, sloughs, a river and Highway 237 — next to which sheep could be seen grazing only a few years ago — Alviso officially became part of San Jose in 1968. Though physically and culturally separated from the rest of San Jose and other neighboring cities — Santa Clara, Sunnyvale and Milpitas — Alviso is now feeling the impact of the same economic forces that have transformed Silicon Valley and the region as a whole.

In the past few years, development has crept straight up North First Street to the Alviso border, and then across Highway 237 into town.

TiVo and Polycom have offices here. Two hotels are on the way: Homewood Suites by Hilton has broken ground on a 146-room complex, while Marriott plans a larger Residence Inn Fairfield Inn Suites, with 261 rooms. Apple and Google have purchased land tracts close to Alviso, and it’s not unusual to hear reports of larger Alviso apartments renting for $3,000 or more.

“The people who are arriving in the area — tech people, high-profile people — are building new houses near our church,” said the Rev. Hector Basanez, whose tiny Our Lady Star of the Sea Parish attracts working-class earners, including janitors, landscapers and construction workers. “This is a very poor parish, and some of the people are leaving — going to cheaper places.”

The median sale price of a single-family home in 2011 was $485,000. In 2016, it was $605,000 — still well below the Santa Clara County median of about $850,000. But as in many other neighborhoods that are affordable compared with the region’s priciest cities, newer and renovated houses lately have sold in Alviso for closer to $1 million, occasionally more.

“I can see the path to change,” said real estate agent Steven Tran, who recently listed a duplex in the heart of Alviso — some local residents still call it “the barrio” — for $1.2 million. The sale is now pending for more than $1 million.

He touted the hamlet — home to only about 2,000 people — as a commuter’s dream, minutes away from Levi’s Stadium and “still affordable.”

“It makes sense to buy a property,” Tran said. “You can charge the same rent as San Jose, even a little bit higher.”

Rick Smith, president of the Santa Clara County Association of Realtors, sees another “uptick” in home prices coming with the latest development proposal for Alviso: A Topgolf recreation complex, including a triple-deck driving range with restaurants, retail and a 200-room hotel. The complex is planned for 40 wide-open acres at the edge of downtown Alviso, with possible groundbreaking this summer and talk of 500 new jobs.

The project has emerged as the latest litmus test for Alviso’s future.

Opponents, whose lawsuit may delay the groundbreaking, fear added noise and traffic — and say the land would be better used for affordable housing.

“If Topgolf comes in, it’s just going to increase the rent here,” said Mark Espinoza, who grew up in Alviso during the 1970s and now heads the Organizacion Comunidad de Alviso, which has sued the developers.

But proponents say the project offers a chance to preserve a semblance of the old Alviso: “It’s the best use of the land — the most open space, the least congestion,” said Dick Santos, a businessman and property owner whose father was mayor of Alviso in the 1950s.

He argued that Topgolf will give a shot in the arm to Alviso’s downtown, drawing newcomers to the community’s old-school establishments, while giving locals a shot at those 500 jobs: “I’m a realist. We’re the last frontier, and this is our final hurrah.”

Old-timers are taken aback by the changes in their community, where crab feeds and an annual family car show count for homespun excitement.

“I remember us saying, `Nobody would pay $200,000 for a house in Alviso,’” said Mike Guerrera, 46, a heavy equipment operator who grew up in Alviso and rents from friends. “I have a better deal than most,” he said. “But I could not afford to buy the house I grew up in. It’s ridiculous.”

Guerrera had stopped by Vahl’s Restaurant and Cocktail Lounge — an old-school hangout, on the same corner since 1941 — for karaoke night. The ruins of a 19th-century stagecoach house and an abandoned, historic cannery, once the third-largest in the U.S., are within blocks of Vahl’s. The restaurant’s patrons described their community as “a time capsule” and “a ghost town” — and the next bastion for the tech industry.

Jill Smith, a former program manager at Sun Microsystems, moved to Alviso in 2000 with her husband, Charles Taylor, who works in information technology. They got a deal on a brand-new house — four bedrooms and 2,700 square feet — for about $500,000.

“It was just pre-peak,” Taylor remembered, saying the house is now worth around $850,000. “Housing everywhere else was a million dollars. Here it was just about half that. Plus, you could get a yard.”

Jill was pregnant with their son, who went to grade school in Alviso, and she is now president of the Alviso Neighborhood Group. Neither a newbie nor an old-timer in a town that’s filled with multigenerational families, she watches the changes around her with concern: “People who are getting ready to retire, they can up and sell to the higher bidder, who usually works in tech.”

The community is “clinging to the old Alviso,” she said. “But as people get older, they get sick of the rat race and just want to move out and leave. It’s a rare person who’s able to sell their place for $1 million and decides to sell it to someone who’s local and can only afford $400,000. Who’s going to sell it to the guy who can afford $400,000?”

Article source: http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/03/25/alviso-small-town-caught-in-silicon-valleys-real-estate-rat-race/

ALVISO — Ana Navarro lives with her husband and two young children in a 450-square-foot apartment. The kids — ages 10 and 3 — share a bedroom that’s more like a glorified closet.

The family pays $1,800 a month to live in its crowded flat across the street from an old landfill in this largely Latino enclave at the southern edge of San Francisco Bay, where the loudest noise can be the squawk of a seagull. Navarro works the night shift as a janitor at Stanford University, earning $15 an hour, while her husband drives a truck, for $20 an hour. Factor in the cost of food, gas, car insurance and other necessities, and making the rent becomes a monthly drama.

“I am stressed every single day — preoccupied,” Navarro said in Spanish, speaking through a translator. “I’m always calling my husband: `Next year we’ll have to pay even more. What do we do?’ ”

They plan to leave Alviso. It’s become too expensive for some — a striking transformation of this historically working-class community.

Long an affordable island of calm amid the Bay Area’s superheated economy, Alviso is becoming one more bedroom community for the steady influx of workers drawn to Silicon Valley. Its close proximity to the tech industry’s global nerve center makes it an attractive prospect for renters and homebuyers, who may not know a thing about its colorful history. But as tech money and gentrification become facts of life, locals — some whose families have lived here for generations — fear their home will lose a portion of the charm that drew them to Alviso in the first place.

Incorporated in 1852, Alviso originally thrived as a shipping port and transportation hub, with steamboats plying the bay to San Francisco, while dance halls and gambling establishments prospered during the 1920s and 1930s. What remains is a community that can seem frozen in time with its 19th-century landmarks, neighborhood groceries, mom-and-pop Mexican restaurants — and its stillness. The shoreline hiking trails in and around Alviso Marina County Park are lightly traversed. The South Bay Yacht Club is a social club without a marina — it closed years ago — but members still sit on the club’s deck, clutching mugs of coffee as they watch the sunset.

“You’re this close to the forefront of technology,” said Mike Hauser, 28, who rents in Alviso and works as a media producer in San Jose. “It’s like you’ve got the future right next to the past.”

Bounded by creeks, sloughs, a river and Highway 237 — next to which sheep could be seen grazing only a few years ago — Alviso officially became part of San Jose in 1968. Though physically and culturally separated from the rest of San Jose and other neighboring cities — Santa Clara, Sunnyvale and Milpitas — Alviso is now feeling the impact of the same economic forces that have transformed Silicon Valley and the region as a whole.

In the past few years, development has crept straight up North First Street to the Alviso border, and then across Highway 237 into town.

TiVo and Polycom have offices here. Two hotels are on the way: Homewood Suites by Hilton has broken ground on a 146-room complex, while Marriott plans a larger Residence Inn Fairfield Inn Suites, with 261 rooms. Apple and Google have purchased land tracts close to Alviso, and it’s not unusual to hear reports of larger Alviso apartments renting for $3,000 or more.

“The people who are arriving in the area — tech people, high-profile people — are building new houses near our church,” said the Rev. Hector Basanez, whose tiny Our Lady Star of the Sea Parish attracts working-class earners, including janitors, landscapers and construction workers. “This is a very poor parish, and some of the people are leaving — going to cheaper places.”

The median sale price of a single-family home in 2011 was $485,000. In 2016, it was $605,000 — still well below the Santa Clara County median of about $850,000. But as in many other neighborhoods that are affordable compared with the region’s priciest cities, newer and renovated houses lately have sold in Alviso for closer to $1 million, occasionally more.

“I can see the path to change,” said real estate agent Steven Tran, who recently listed a duplex in the heart of Alviso — some local residents still call it “the barrio” — for $1.2 million. The sale is now pending for more than $1 million.

He touted the hamlet — home to only about 2,000 people — as a commuter’s dream, minutes away from Levi’s Stadium and “still affordable.”

“It makes sense to buy a property,” Tran said. “You can charge the same rent as San Jose, even a little bit higher.”

Rick Smith, president of the Santa Clara County Association of Realtors, sees another “uptick” in home prices coming with the latest development proposal for Alviso: A Topgolf recreation complex, including a triple-deck driving range with restaurants, retail and a 200-room hotel. The complex is planned for 40 wide-open acres at the edge of downtown Alviso, with possible groundbreaking this summer and talk of 500 new jobs.

The project has emerged as the latest litmus test for Alviso’s future.

Opponents, whose lawsuit may delay the groundbreaking, fear added noise and traffic — and say the land would be better used for affordable housing.

“If Topgolf comes in, it’s just going to increase the rent here,” said Mark Espinoza, who grew up in Alviso during the 1970s and now heads the Organizacion Comunidad de Alviso, which has sued the developers.

But proponents say the project offers a chance to preserve a semblance of the old Alviso: “It’s the best use of the land — the most open space, the least congestion,” said Dick Santos, a businessman and property owner whose father was mayor of Alviso in the 1950s.

He argued that Topgolf will give a shot in the arm to Alviso’s downtown, drawing newcomers to the community’s old-school establishments, while giving locals a shot at those 500 jobs: “I’m a realist. We’re the last frontier, and this is our final hurrah.”

Old-timers are taken aback by the changes in their community, where crab feeds and an annual family car show count for homespun excitement.

“I remember us saying, `Nobody would pay $200,000 for a house in Alviso,’” said Mike Guerrera, 46, a heavy equipment operator who grew up in Alviso and rents from friends. “I have a better deal than most,” he said. “But I could not afford to buy the house I grew up in. It’s ridiculous.”

Guerrera had stopped by Vahl’s Restaurant and Cocktail Lounge — an old-school hangout, on the same corner since 1941 — for karaoke night. The ruins of a 19th-century stagecoach house and an abandoned, historic cannery, once the third-largest in the U.S., are within blocks of Vahl’s. The restaurant’s patrons described their community as “a time capsule” and “a ghost town” — and the next bastion for the tech industry.

Jill Smith, a former program manager at Sun Microsystems, moved to Alviso in 2000 with her husband, Charles Taylor, who works in information technology. They got a deal on a brand-new house — four bedrooms and 2,700 square feet — for about $500,000.

“It was just pre-peak,” Taylor remembered, saying the house is now worth around $850,000. “Housing everywhere else was a million dollars. Here it was just about half that. Plus, you could get a yard.”

Jill was pregnant with their son, who went to grade school in Alviso, and she is now president of the Alviso Neighborhood Group. Neither a newbie nor an old-timer in a town that’s filled with multigenerational families, she watches the changes around her with concern: “People who are getting ready to retire, they can up and sell to the higher bidder, who usually works in tech.”

The community is “clinging to the old Alviso,” she said. “But as people get older, they get sick of the rat race and just want to move out and leave. It’s a rare person who’s able to sell their place for $1 million and decides to sell it to someone who’s local and can only afford $400,000. Who’s going to sell it to the guy who can afford $400,000?”

Article source: http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/03/25/alviso-small-town-caught-in-silicon-valleys-real-estate-rat-race/

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North Marin office real estate: Subleases swell as companies exit, but rents and prices rise

Like elsewhere in the San Francisco Bay Area, northern Marin County’s office market is experiencing a wave of availabilities as companies give up space, but demand from other employers is firming up rents and sale prices, writes Haden Ongaro of Newmark Cornish Carey.

Article source: http://www.northbaybusinessjournal.com/crereports17

Declining Bay Area home sales last month made it the most sluggish February in nine years, but prices jumped sharply as buyers bid on a shrinking supply of single-family homes.

Prices soared 11.4 percent higher across the nine-county region compared with the same month of the prior year, reaching a median price of $675,000 — the largest such increase in more than a year.

“It’s the first double-digit price gain since January 2016, when the median went up 14 percent,” said Andrew LePage, a research analyst with the CoreLogic real estate information service, which published the figures Thursday in its monthly report.

Only 3,272 home sales closed across the region, 21 percent below the February average going back nearly three decades. But short supply and high demand turned the February market into a pressure cooker as prices moved back toward peak levels in some areas.

“It’s pretty much a seller’s market right now,” said William Doerlich, president of the Bay East Association of Realtors.

In Santa Clara County, the median price of a single-family home rose 11.4 percent from a year earlier to $960,000 — 4 percent under last spring’s $1 million peak. Bucking the region’s sluggish sales trend, transactions in Santa Clara County actually rose 11.2 percent over the same period. The market is “frothy,” especially for entry-level homes, said Pacific Union agent Adam Touni, who is based in Palo Alto, where a so-called starter home can cost $2.5 million. “I haven’t seen this kind of activity in two years.”

In Alameda County, the median home price climbed 12.3 percent from a year earlier to $730,000 — 4.9 percent under the May 2016 peak of $767,500.

In San Mateo County, the median price rose 16.2 percent to $1,162,000 — a mile-high price, though still 8.1 percent below last October’s peak of $1,265,000.

In Contra Costa County, the median rose 9 percent to $501,250, but remained well below its pre-recession record of $654,000.

Earlier this week, Trulia, the real estate website, issued a report stating that the Bay Area housing supply has dramatically contracted. Over the past five years, Trulia said, total inventory — including starter homes, mid-tier trade-up homes and luxury homes — has declined 59.6 percent in Alameda and Contra Costa counties; 63.5 percent in Santa Clara and San Benito counties; and 62 percent in San Francisco and San Mateo counties.

Yet job growth continues in the region and competition for homes is a natural outcome. In tech-centric hot spots like Sunnyvale, bidding can get out of hand. Alain Pinel agent Mark Wong noted a dozen Sunnyvale homes that sold last month for between $202,000 and $401,000 over the asking price.

“It’s scary, right?” he asked. “The listing price doesn’t mean anything.”

Tell that to his clients Shue Pun, a marriage and family therapist, and her husband Heman Pun, a graphic artist. Last fall, they sold their townhouse in Cupertino for $1.05 million and rented a one-bedroom apartment in San Jose, biding their time before commencing the hunt for a single-family house.

“When we sold, the market was going down, and we thought, `Oh, it’s good that we’re waiting,’” Shue said. “But after Jan. 1, when we started looking – it was really a shocker. Things were pricey, and we felt almost hopeless.”

They bid on one home in San Jose — a fixer-upper that listed for $499,000. It attracted 40 bidders and sold for about $750,000. Other frustrations followed. But finally, the Puns discovered a modest house in the city’s Burbank neighborhood that listed for $720,000: three bedrooms, 1,100 square feet, with avocado, peach and lemon trees in the yard. It felt like home and they pulled the plug, making a cash offer for $735,000 that beat out four or five other bidders.

The deal closed last month.

“Our prayers were answered,” Shue said.

Ameen Paul, Doerlich’s client, is still praying. Retired from a career in corporate sales, he and his wife Lorna are looking to move from the far-flung suburbs to the heart of the East Bay.

Nearly a decade ago, they bought their three-bedroom, 1,800-square-foot house in Mountain House for $225,000. But Lorna, who works as a lab technician in Pleasanton, is fed up with the commute: “It just grinds to a halt and she has nothing to do but just sit in traffic until it moves,” Ameen explained.

Last weekend, they listed their house for $475,000 and had “good traffic” through an open house. They figure it will sell. But moving to Pleasanton, Dublin or Livermore — close to Lorna’s job — presents a challenge. Modest homes of just 900 or 1,000 square feet cost “over $500,000,” Ameen said, sounding somewhat forlorn. “The place is so small, my wife and I will be bumping into each other. But that’s life. We’re looking to downsize, and whatever we get is not going to be as good as what we have.”

Article source: http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/03/23/sjm-housing-0324/

Bay Area home sales dipped in February, but median prices rose once again from the year before as buyers competed for the region’s chronically thin supply of homes.

There were 4,767 homes sold last month, down 3.3 percent on a year-over-year basis. It was the slowest February in nine years, according to the CoreLogic real estate information service which issued its monthly report.

At the same time, the median price for all homes sold in the nine-county region — single family homes, condominiums and townhouses — was $662,000, up 7.6 percent from $615,000 in February 2016. On a year-over-year basis, it was the 59th consecutive month of increases in the median price. That run of increases began in April 2012, as the housing market was beginning its recovery from the recession.

“February 2017 sales were fairly weak — the lowest for a February in nine years,” said Andrew LePage, research analyst for CoreLogic, “and about 21 percent below the average February sales tally over the last 30 years. Sales have been restrained by declining affordability caused by both higher prices and, more recently, higher mortgage interest rates, as well as a tight inventory of homes for sale and, possibly, the very wet winter.”

The nearly 8 percent year-over-year growth of the median price was the highest in four months, he added. Around the region, homes sales of $500,000 or more accounted for 65.6 percent of all sales — solid evidence of just how costly the Bay Area market has become.

On the Peninsula, sales rose year-over-year by 7.1 percent in Santa Clara County where the median price hit $845,000, up 9.0 percent from February 2016. San Mateo County was a different story with sales down 7.7 percent. The median, however, rose 14.3 percent to $1,032,500.

In the East Bay, sales rose 4.4 percent in Alameda County where the median reached $682,000, up 6.6 percent year-over-year. In Contra Costa County, sales slipped 2.7 percent while the median rose 6.9 percent to $508,000.

In San Francisco, where inventory is exceptionally tight, sales slipped 27.2 percent from a year earlier and the median fell 2.0 percent to $1,120,000.

Similar patterns played out in the single-family home market, with sales down 2.0 percent across the region and price gains edging into double digits. The median price of a single-family home in the Bay Area last month was $675,000, up 11.4 percent year-over-year.

Sales of single-family homes rose 11.2 percent in Santa Clara County, while the median there rose 11.4 percent to $960,000. In San Mateo County, sales fell 1.4 percent, but the median gained 16.2 percent to hit $1,162,000.

Alameda County sales dipped 3.0 percent, while the median price leaped 12.3 percent to $730,000. Contra Costa County sales fell 4.4 percent, while the median rose 9.0 percent to $501,250.

In San Francisco, sales slid 5.9 percent, but, again, the median price rose 5.7 percent to $1,150,000.

Article source: http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/03/23/sjm-housing-0324/