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The Sea Ranch, a remote community along the Sonoma Coast in Northern California, was the zip code with the biggest increase in real estate prices in 2021 at about 38%, according to data from Zillow. The community is known for its unique, modern architecture, stunning Pacific Ocean views and 50 miles of hiking trails.

A prime example of the region’s steeply increasing values is the Halperin home, which was on the market in September for $8 million. In a matter of weeks it sold for $12 million.

It was already the highest asking price of any property to date at The Sea Ranch, a community known for its minimalist architecture built in sync with its natural surroundings. At 5.1 acres, it was also the largest property in the 10-mile span of homes on the Northern California coast.

Making the two-bedroom, two-bath, 2,121-square-foot home (plus a separate studio) even more special is its provenance: it was a second home to one of the Sea Ranch master planners, Lawrence Halprin. He lived and worked with his family on the property for more than 40 years.

Halprin began the Sea Ranch project in the early ‘60s when a group of idealistic architects from the University of California at Berkeley who got together to create what they saw as a modern, minimalist development that would “live lightly on the land.” Homeowners would respect the ecology of the area, and neighbors would respect each other, keeping trash cans and cars out of sight, sharing community centers, and landscaping with only native plants—no flower beds, no lawns.

An impressive property to be sure, but it’s probably fair to say that no one imagined it would sell for nearly 67% higher than the asking price.

Coming in second at 28% is another seaside town, Bolinas, that sits 30 miles north of San Francisco in Marin County. A third waterfront community, Bethel Island in Contra Costa County, had the third highest home value increase of 27%.

Article source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristenphilipkoski/2021/12/31/the-sea-ranch-had-the-largest-real-estate-price-increase-in-the-sf-bay-area-in-2021/

The data backs up Dorsch’s observations. In 2020 and 2021, moves from San Francisco to Montana increased by 140% compared to the previous two years — making Montana the state that saw the biggest increase in new San Franciscans during the pandemic.

Overall moves from the Bay Area increased by 51% during that time as well, according to data on migration patterns from the California Policy Lab, a research group based out of the University of California.

The data tracks movements of all Californian adults with active credit information. In order to analyze moves over the same time periods, we looked at data from the first seven quarters of 2020-2021 and compared them to the same period in 2018-2019.

While the S.F.-to-Montana increase was large in terms of percentage, the data only shows 360 total moves from San Francisco to Montana in 2020 and the first three quarters of 2021, so it’s not like the city is overwhelming Montana on its own. (Nearly 2,400 Bay Area residents moved to the state in 2020-2021, excluding Napa County, which didn’t have enough data for us to include in our analysis.)

But while San Francisco saw the biggest pandemic-era percent increase to Montana, all 10 of California’s most populous counties saw move-outs to the state increase significantly. And based on the 32 counties with enough data for us to measure, at least 13,000 Californians moved to Montana over the last two years — not a small number for a state of just over 1 million residents by the latest census count.

The reasons for this new influx of Californians to Montana are varied. One obvious one is California’s ever-more-prohibitive housing costs, which has contributed to pushing residents out-of-state at record levels during the pandemic.

For more financially secure ex-Californians who can now work remotely, like many of the tech-sector clients with whom Dorsch works, the Big Sky state’s spaciousness, scenic vistas and ample outdoor activities all contributed to its pandemic-era allure. The city of Bozeman has seen an especially large influx of Bay Area tech workers, according to Dorsch, because of its proximity to an international airport and relative connectivity compared to more rural parts of the state.

“Bozeman has kind of become a little Silicon Valley,” she said.

Not everyone is happy about the California-to-Big Sky pipeline. In the public Facebook group “Moving to Bozeman, Montana,” for instance, one user, posting a question about moving logistics in November 2021, apologized for being from California. Another user, responding to her post, warned her not to “California” her new home state.

A large share of Montanans’ frustration with incoming Californians appears to be economically based. From January 2020 through December 2021, home prices in Montana increased by 39% — the fourth-largest increase, by percentage, of any state over that time period.

“It’s insanity,” said Kelly Martin, a real estate agent at Windermere’s downtown Bozeman office. “Half the homes in Bozeman are well over a million and that’s definitely the out-of-staters coming in and paying cash…People born and raised in Montana, it’s almost like they’re completely priced out.”

He said that while the state is building homes “as fast as they can,” shortages of both homebuilding materials and construction workers have slowed the process down, further contributing to the low supply.

“There’s rows of houses that can’t be listed because they can’t get refrigerators in, or stoves. A lot of them are selling with no garage doors, just plywood [over the garages],” he said.

Dorsch agreed that out-of-staters, particularly Californians, are having an impact on the local housing market, and that this is partly what’s frustrating local Montanans.

“It’s very easy to point the finger at Californians who came from million-dollar houses that were little two-bedroom 700 square foot houses and [have helped] drive the price up,” she said.

But some of the tension is cultural, too. Dorsch, who grew up in Montana, still remembers when she moved back home from San Diego with her husband in 1993.

“And the same feeling existed then that exists now, with those who’ve been born and raised in Bozeman, for example, or Montana,” she said. “I don’t want to say they don’t like change, but when change happens, sometimes it’s challenging to embrace.”

Part of what Dorsch sees as her role, then, is to try and ease some of that tension on both sides.

“The conversation we have as realtor[s], with all our past clients and clients moving in, is you’re not moving in to change the way Montanans live,” she said. “Likewise, with locals who live here, understand that change is healthy, change is good, and if we don’t have change then we might be dying from a standpoint of economy.”

Susie Neilson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: susie.neilson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @susieneilson

The East Bay, for example, which includes Berkeley, Oakland and the surrounding suburbs, saw stronger price growth. “Oakland was the market that saw the biggest increase in demand,” said Daryl Fairweather, the chief economist for Redfin. “Everyone was leaving the city and going across the bridge.”

The median sale price of a single-family home in Alameda County, which includes Oakland and Berkeley, was $1.3 million in November 2021 — up 24 percent, from $1.05 million, in November 2020, according to data from the California Association of Realtors. In San Francisco, by comparison, the median sale price for a single-family home was $1.9 million, an increase of 12 percent, from $1.67 million, a year before.

“It was crazy all year long,” said Daniel Stea, a broker and lawyer who owns Stea Realty Group and works in Oakland and Berkeley. That is, with the exception of a brief slowdown in June, he said, when bidding-war fatigue seemed to set in and some buyers may have headed out of town, post-vaccination. But demand picked up sharply later in the summer, he added, with move-in ready homes that had work-from-home space and backyards often getting a dozen or more offers.

Sacramento was one of the most in-demand destinations for buyers seeking bigger homes at relatively affordable prices. The “typical” value of a single-family home there in 2021 was $472,000, according to Zillow’s estimate — up 22.3 percent from 2020, but still far less than the statewide average. “The area has newer and bigger homes than its coastal neighbor to the west,” Mr. Tucker said, referring to San Francisco. “That’s a good example we saw of the trend in a lot of the country.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/31/realestate/the-pricey-california-market-in-2021-it-got-pricier.html

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Article source: https://therealdeal.com/sanfrancisco/2022/01/27/gene-editing-firm-signs-85k-sf-lease-to-relocate-expand-south-sf-headquarters/

What can I do to prevent this in the future?

If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware.

If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices.

Article source: https://therealdeal.com/sanfrancisco/2022/01/26/bostons-lighthouse-real-estate-buys-site-of-lab-project-in-sfs-mission-district/