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Technology has taken the reigns of many positions once held exclusively by humans. From self-checkout lanes to automated phone operators, tech-driven interactions are becoming commonplace.

Works with your schedule

To start, buyers submit their mortgage pre-approval paperwork on the app. After documents have been verified and approved by a Reali employee, users can get started sifting through available houses.

If a particular house piques your interest, you can schedule an “on-demand open house.” And rather than being met at the front door by a real estate agent, you’ll have the ability to unlock the door yourself.

Bluetooth beacons

Flat fee

Reali charges a flat $2,950 administrative fee. At close of escrow, 2.5% of the selling price gets returned to the buyer as cash back. On a $1.7 million property, the company estimates that buyers would get back around $40,000.

Article source: https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/reali-app-lets-home-buyers-skip-the-real-estate-agent-102516.html

After a long and painful slide following the real estate collapse in 2008, Seattle’s property market is enjoying one of the sharpest rises anywhere in the United States. Buoyed by a rapidly expanding economy that has brought tens of thousands of high-paying jobs to the city, real estate values have nearly doubled since 2009, according to the online real estate database Zillow.

Yet while technology billionaires gobble up estates from Puget Sound to Lake Washington, Jim Conlan, a real estate broker with Century 21 North Homes Realty in Seattle, said the real catalyst for the dramatic upswing can be found in China.

“To be honest, Chinese buyers have been flooding this market the past few years,” said Conlan, who has been selling homes in Seattle for more than 30 years. “Some of them buy homes sight unseen, while others travel here for a kind of real estate tourism and buy real estate after only one viewing.”

Seattle is not alone. For the fourth year in a row, buyers from China ranked first among foreign nationals purchasing property in the United States, according to a survey by the National Association of Realtors (NAR). U.S. home sales to Chinese nationals totaled $27.3 billion – exceeding the total dollar sales figure of the next four countries in the rankings combined, the survey showed.

Chinese investment in U.S. real estate could hit $50 billion by 2025, according to a report by the Rosen Consulting Group and the Asia Society.

While the influx of investment from China is lifting some markets, it is reshaping many others, real estate experts say. The torrent of cash is fueling sharply rising prices and dwindling housing supply while keeping homeownership out of reach of first-time buyers in some of the country’s most important real estate markets.

In San Francisco Bay-area locations such as Palo Alto and Woodside, home prices have risen by double digits in the past three years, while the number of buyers from China has nearly doubled since 2012, said Penelope Huang, a broker with Re/Max Distinctive Properties. The increased demand is making the area one of the toughest for younger buyers, she said.

“Listings are snapped up in a week or sometimes less in this market,” she said. “That kind of pace of sales directly affects first-time buyers.”

In New York, where big-spending financiers typically make real estate headlines in Manhattan, Chinese investors are increasingly gobbling up property farther away from the spotlight.

In middle-class areas of Brooklyn and Queens, the number of Chinese buyers has nearly doubled since 2012, estimates Jennifer Hsu, a broker with Halstead Property in Queens. “They’re now competing with buyers at the middle of this market,” she said, “and that added competition is making life tougher for people looking to buy their first home.”

The spending spree is also upending real estate fundamentals in smaller and midsize markets from Portland, Oregon, to Cambridge, Massachusetts, with local would-be buyers increasingly being disconnected from the economies of their own cities.

Factors that typically influence real estate sales in most places, such as income levels and the strength of local economies, do not mean as much when large numbers of outside buyers from places such as China invade a market, said Nela Richardson, chief economist at national realty brokerage Redfin. “Local fundamentals aren’t necessarily the driving factors when that happens,” Richardson said. “That affects buyers who live in these places and can lead to locals essentially being priced out of their own markets.”

Real estate in the District of Columbia area has long been viewed as a gateway for foreign investment, mostly from Europe and the Middle East. But thanks to its relative affordability, increasing numbers of Chinese buyers have trickled into the D.C. housing market in the past few years, said Michael Rankin, managing partner of TTR Sotheby’s International Realty in Washington.

“D.C. lacks the newer condo properties that you see in New York and Miami that typically appeal to buyers from China,” said Rankin, who estimates that foreign nationals overall make up about 20 percent of the D.C. market, up from about 15 percent five years ago. “But as we see more condo development, and prices here remain lower than other big cities, you’re likely to see more Asian buyers land in this market.”

Danielle Hale, managing director of housing research at the NAR, said that in many cases, Chinese buyers are also bidding up prices in markets where demand is already high. “That can cause prices to rise sharply and make it that much more difficult for locals to find a home to buy,” she said. “That’s particularly the case for many first-time home buyers looking for moderately priced homes.”

Chinese nationals started buying U.S. property in large numbers in the years after the real estate crash, when home prices plummeted in many U.S. markets.

Driven by expanding wealth in China and a desire for a haven against political instability, busloads of Chinese buyers began popping up in markets from California to New York.

Vanessa Chan said she viewed the U.S. market as a solid real estate investment when she bought a Manhattan apartment two years ago. The Hong Kong-based technology executive paid $1.25 million for a condo in a new tower in Midtown. “New York is a lot like Hong Kong in terms of prices, but the housing quality is a lot better,” said Chan, 37. “I also knew Manhattan property would appreciate much faster than some real estate investments in Asia.”

Chan’s broker, Elizabeth Schwartz of Compass, has worked with dozens of buyers from China. Although Chinese billionaires receive a lot of attention for purchasing trophy properties, she said that most Chinese buyers are looking for more moderately priced homes that give them a better return on their money.

“There’s a huge population of hardworking, educated Chinese who look to the U.S. for real estate investment,” Schwartz said. “But they come to this market not with money to just throw around, but rather to make informed, well-reasoned investment choices.”

In recent years, as their numbers have grown, Chinese buyers have targeted the higher end of many markets. The average home price for Chinese buyers in 2015 was $831,800, compared with $499,600 for all other international buyers, the study from Rosen Consulting Group shows.

That stream of cash at the top is fueling expensive housing projects in many markets.

Although the San Francisco Bay area has long been a sought-after location for Asian buyers, a flurry of high-end condominium projects is actively targeting wealthy foreign nationals from China.

“Many buyers from China simply want to diversify their assets outside of what is still a communist country,” said Alan P. Mark, president of the Mark Co., a sales and marketing firm that has launched four residential developments in San Francisco this year. “That means they’re looking for projects in prime locations that will rapidly appreciate.”

Among the new projects being touted by the Mark Co. is 181 Fremont Residences, a 70-story, mixed-use tower with 67 condo units occupying the building’s top 16 floors.

The $665 million project, designed by Orlando Diaz-Azcuy Design Associates, includes homes ranging in price from $3 million to $15 million. Those prices rank among the highest for condominiums in San Francisco.

“Chinese buyers make up a small portion of the overall market here, but it’s a critical part of the luxury sector,” said Mark McLaughlin, chief executive of San Francisco-based Pacific Union. The real estate brokerage spends about $400,000 annually on corporate marketing in China, including having a Chinese-language website and advertising in Asian papers. McLaughlin estimates that buyers from China account for 15 to 20 percent of the San Francisco real estate market.

Wealthy buyers from South America have long fueled rising prices in Miami. But as their numbers dwindle – thanks to slumping economies in places such as Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina – developers are increasingly setting their sights on China.

“Prices in Miami look relatively cheap compared with places like New York and San Francisco,” said Vanessa Grout, president of CMC Real Estate. CMC Group is developing Brickell Flatiron, a 549-unit condo building in downtown Miami with prices ranging from $400,000 to more than $14 million. The project is being marketed to Chinese buyers via local brokerages, Grout says.

Although only about 2 percent of international buyers in Miami come from China, according to the Miami Association of Realtors, Grout said the Chinese share of the market is poised to grow.

“Chinese buyers typically buy in groups and buy more than one unit at a time,” said Grout, who attended the Beijing Luxury Properties Showcase last year. The trade show attracts thousands of wealthy Chinese looking at international properties. “We’ve learned quite a bit about the market for Chinese buyers coming to Miami, and we think it will only grow.”

Article source: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2016/oct/24/chinese-buyers-driving-up-real-estate-values-in-ci/

Soaring apartment costs in Silicon Valley are fueling popular support for an idea bitterly opposed by many landlords in America’s technology capital: rent controls.

Voters in five small and midsize cities in the Bay Area are set to decide Nov. 8 on whether to enact various forms of rent regulation that would keep rent increases for existing…

Article source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-new-real-estate-war-in-silicon-valley-1476829387

ENLARGE

Soaring apartment costs in Silicon Valley are fueling popular support for an idea bitterly opposed by many landlords in America’s technology capital: rent controls.

Voters in five small and midsize cities in the Bay Area are set to decide Nov. 8 on whether to enact various forms of rent regulation that would keep rent increases for existing tenants pegged near the rate of inflation.

Tenant organizations, unions and church groups are knocking on thousands of doors in an effort to drum up support for measures designed to protect apartment dwellers from runaway rents.

ENLARGE

On the other side, landlords and real-state agents are pouring money into mailers and television ads in a vigorous effort to battle the initiatives.

“We’re taking it very seriously,” said Thomas Bannon, chief executive of the California Apartment Association, a landlords group. “We are engaged in some pretty aggressive campaigning to get the word out as to why rent control is not the answer.”

In all, the proposals’ opponents have raised more than $1.8 million against the measures in the five cities, according to campaign finance records, largely from groups like the National Association of Realtors and an array of landlords including apartment giant Equity Residential.
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That far outstrips the roughly $200,000 reported raised by various groups supporting rent control.

Community organizers and unions won efforts this year to put measures on the ballot box in five municipalities scattered across Silicon Valley and near Oakland in the East Bay: Google Inc.’s home of Mountain View, Burlingame, San Mateo, Alameda and Richmond.

ENLARGE

While the largest cities in the area—San Jose, San Francisco and Oakland, have had such controls for decades, the fact that midsize suburbs now are pondering these market controls shows how the region is struggling to manage its rapid growth in prosperity.

Amid a six-year boom in employment by giants like Apple Inc.
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and Facebook Inc.,
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cities like San Jose and East Palo Alto are feuding publicly with neighboring cities they say are adding too many jobs without enough housing. Others, like Palo Alto, are looking to halt or significantly slow growth of office space altogether.

At the root of the issue is that there isn’t nearly enough housing for all the new jobs. Between 2008 and 2015, the four counties that make up the heart of the region added 400,000 jobs, while permits were issued for just 86,000 new housing units.

Rents for an average apartment in the San Jose region have jumped 37% in the past five years to more than $2,700 a month, according to research firm Axiometrics. While the increases have slowed amid some supply growth, few predict rents will undergo a significant drop without an economic downturn.

Many service workers and teachers have had to move far away from their workplaces, a problem that landlords, tenants and policy makers all agree has no an easy answer.

The measures call for rent increases on some or most rental apartments to be capped, generally to a few percentage points a year, for existing tenants. When tenants leave, rents could reset to market rates.

Proponents acknowledge the measures won’t fix the situation, but argue they would help existing residents.

“There’s a lot of support—people feel the pain very deeply,” said Jennifer Martinez, executive director of Faith in Action Bay Area, a group pushing the rent-control ballot measure in San Mateo.

In response, the real-estate industry has mobilized landlords and agents to get involved, and they have begun to blanket neighborhoods with fliers and advertisements.

The industry’s message: Rent controls won’t bring down rents; they are inefficient and won’t increase new supply, which is the only way to address demand.

Mr. Bannon, of the California Apartment Association, acknowledged the group had an “uphill climb.” He said polling indicated that people were inclined to support rent control until they understood more about the association’s position, one reason it is investing so heavily in ads.

Rent regulations have been embraced at various times in U.S. cities, including during major housing crunches after both World Wars, and many large cities like New York and Washington still have far-reaching rent regulations today.

Economists widely criticize such laws because of inefficiencies they produce: Tenants generally get to keep their rents steady regardless of income, allowing some wealthy residents to get choice apartments for low rent as long as they remain in them for years.

“It’s not necessarily helping those that need it most,” said Christopher Palmer, an economist at University of California Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, who has studied rent control. Property improvements and overall property values also tend to be held back by such regulations, he said.

Still, housing-policy makers in cities with low housing vacancy generally support the regulations as an imperfect fix because they give existing residents and neighborhoods a sense of stability and remove the fear of needing to move every time a lease comes up for renewal.

“For the people that end up in these apartments, their situation is going to be better going forward,” Mr. Palmer said.

—Laura Kusisto contributed to this article.

Write to Eliot Brown at eliot.brown@wsj.com

Corrections Amplifications:
The largest cities in the Bay Area—San Jose, San Francisco and Oakland—have had rent control measures for decades. An earlier version of this article incorrectly omitted San Jose. (Oct. 20, 2016)

Article source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-new-real-estate-war-in-silicon-valley-1476829387

SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX) — If you spend over a million dollars for a piece of real estate in town, you might expect to get a house or some kind of structure but — as San Francisco real estate falls farther down the rabbit hole — that’s not always the case.

Case in point: 477 Eucalyptus Dr., where $1.6 million will buy you a cozy, yet crumbling concrete pad. Shabby chic, indeed.

And tucked behind a fence in the central Richmond District is a dream spot for gardeners — so long as they love weeding. The price: $1 million.

Yes, in San Francisco real estate, even dirt fetches seven figures.

“There was someone in the 1880s who said there’s ‘gold in them thar hills’ and I’ve always said ‘those thar hills *are* gold’ because … it’s extremely valuable dirt we have here,” said Arrian Binnings, with Pacific Union Christie’s International Real Estate.

According to Binnings, the land-to-house ratio in the Bay Area — and San Francisco in particular — is flip-flopped.

“We’re talking 80 percent of the value of any given property in San Francisco, 80 percent of that value, is the dirt and only 20 percent is the building,” Binnings said.

That’s not the case outside the City by the Bay.

“In Dallas, for example, the value of the land versus the overall property value is only about 10 percent,” Binnings says.

A plot at 19 Arguello, near the entrance to the Presidio, is $5.5 million. At least it comes with plans for a mansion.

There are only 18 vacant lots for sale in the city and Binnings says the risk may be greater for a buyer than a fixer-upper.

“If they’re getting hosed on the land acquisition itself, that doesn’t leave very much wiggle room for mistakes in the construction process,” Binnings said.

Article source: http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/10/21/san-francisco-vacant-lots-millions/