homesmillbrae.com

Square feet

3,657 sq feet

Article source: https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2021/real-estate-quiz-berkeley-rockridge/

“(Housing and Community Development) is concerned that the (city’s) actions are indicative of review processes that may be constraining the provision of housing in San Francisco,” West said in the letter. “It is well known that California is experiencing a housing crisis, and the provision of housing remains of the utmost priority.”

The letter comes less than a month after the Board of Supervisors voted 8-3 to uphold an appeal of the Planning Commission’s approval of 469 Stevenson, a proposed 27-story high-rise with 495 housing units. The vote didn’t kill the project outright, but it asked the city to redo the development’s 1,100 page environmental impact report, which could delay the housing approvals by two years. Environmental impact reports — which study a development’s impact on subjects like wind, shadow, traffic, air quality — are required under the California Environmental Quality Act, known as CEQA.

A month earlier the board voted unanimously to uphold an appeal of 450 O’Farrell, a 316-unit tower that would be erected on the site owned by Fifth Church of Christ, Scientist. That project, which has 43 affordable units, would also include a new church and Christian Science reading room.

Planning Department Chief of Staff Dan Sider said the department had been expecting the letter and would complete “findings” well within the 30-day time limit.

“It’s a fair request and something we are on track to provide,” he said. “The department strongly supported both projects, and the board clearly felt otherwise. That is their right and prerogative.”

Lou Vasquez, whose company Build Inc. is the developer of the Stevenson Street project, said that he is eagerly awaiting a concrete explanation as to why the board felt the project’s environmental study was inadequate.

“We think it was an abuse of CEQA — nobody has pointed to something specific in the EIR,” he said. “We are eager to get this thing back on track.”

In the letter, West said the Board of Supervisors “cited various vague concerns” — including seismic concerns, shadows and gentrification — but “no written findings have been published or provided to the project applicant nor has any substantial evidence in support of these findings been identified.”

The letter comes at a time when the state is finalizing each city and county’s housing production requirements for the next eight years, a process called the Regional Housing Needs Allocation, or RHNA. But unlike past RHNA cycles, when the majority of cities ignored their production goals, the state now has an enforcement unit tasked with making sure housing is approved as long as it meets local zoning and general plan goals.

In her letter, West said the state “has significant concerns” that the votes may have violated the state Housing Accountability Act, which forces cities to approve any project that “complies with applicable, objective general plan, zoning, and subdivision standards and criteria, including design review standards.”

“While these projects have sought different types of approval, they share the circumstance of having prior Planning Commission approvals of significant housing projects being overturned by the Board of Supervisors without any documented findings,” wrote West.

On the O’Farrell vote West’s letter suggests that forcing the developer to hold further public hearings on the housing proposal would also violate a state law that restricts municipalities from holding more than five public meetings on any given residential development. There have already been six public hearings on the O’Farrell project, she said.

Also on Monday the lead appellant in the Stevenson project, the South of Market nonprofit landlord TODCO, filed a lawsuit against the Association of Bay Area Governments and Metropolitan Transportation Commission over its Plan Bay Area 2050, meant to be a long-term roadmap for real estate development and transit in the nine-county region.

The suit argues that the plan fails to “adequately address the chief crises facing the region: homelessness, housing, and protecting the frontline communities of color most at risk of climate change-related displacement.”

“PBA 2050 completely misses the mark,” said TODCO President John Elberling. “It fails to include protection for vulnerable inner-city communities and offers no substantive strategy to invest in our affordable housing stock. If adopted as written, the plan will almost certainly result in the disappearance of the Bay Area’s working class communities of color and displace hundreds of thousands of long-term residents from their homes.”

Square feet

3600 sq feet

Article source: https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2021/real-estate-quiz-outer-richmond/

BioMed Realty acquired an office complex and a swath of adjacent vacant land from Oracle Corp. for $160 million, a deal that gives BioMed more than 200,000 square feet of existing space with life-science conversion potential and the opportunity to build a new campus next door.

At the end of August, BioMed, a Blackstone portfolio company, bought a three-building office property at 301 and 401 Island Parkway in Belmont and 501 Island Parkway in Redwood City for about $144.6 million, or about $630 a square foot, and 6.5 acres of vacant land next door for about $15.4 million.

The seller in the pair of separate transactions was Oracle, which had owned both the vacant land and the site of the approximately 229,000-square-foot office complex since the late 1990s, according to Old Republic Title records. The deals, which had not been previously reported, were recorded in the San Mateo County Clerk-Recorder’s Office on Aug. 31.

A BioMed spokesperson confirmed the information in the deed documents but said the company didn’t have additional information to share. An Oracle spokesperson declined to comment.

Oracle disclosed in a regulatory filing last December that it had changed its corporate headquarters from Redwood City, California, to Austin, Texas. The next month, the technology giant reportedly put the trio of Island Parkway buildings and the adjacent 6.5-acre site as well as a 17-story Class A office building in downtown San Jose on the market. Lane Partners, a Northern California commercial real estate firm, purchased the San Jose building and a surface parking lot across from it from Oracle for $155 million in May, later selling the parking lot to an affordable housing developer for $1.3 million.

For BioMed, the second-largest U.S. owner of life-science buildings, its purchase of Oracle’s Island Parkway complex and four undeveloped parcels next door may help create some breathing room in the Bay Area’s tight life-science real estate market. The vacancy rate for that type of space in the region was 5.6 percent as of August, according to Newmark’s 2021 mid-year life-science report.

In San Mateo County, which includes Belmont, Redwood City, and 18 other cities and towns, the vacancy rate for such properties was even lower — just over 3 percent at the end of the second quarter, according to Kidder Mathews.

However, under the city of Belmont’s zoning guidelines, life sciences isn’t an allowed use for either the site of the Island Parkway complex or the adjacent swath of vacant land BioMed acquired, Carlos de Melo, Belmont’s community development director, said in an interview on Tuesday. The company has provided the city with “draft language” that could potentially serve as an application to rezone the land underlying the office complex to accommodate life-science tenants, de Melo said. Those zoning changes could come in the form of changes to the text in Belmont’s General Plan and its zoning ordinance, although the exact scope of the company’s application is still being contemplated, de Melo said.

BioMed has approached the city about its plans for only the built-out portion of the properties it acquired, de Melo said. The company is looking to make tenant improvements to the existing structures at 401 and 501 Island Parkway, each of which offers 87,756 square feet, “for at least we know,” he said. It has not shared its vision for the 6.5-acre swath of land directly west of those buildings with the city, he said.

The Blackstone company describes the existing office complex along Island Parkway on its website as having “life-science conversion potential.” And because of a development agreement with the city of Belmont that was in place before it acquired the vacant swath of land next door, it has the option to build up to 235,000 square feet of new development on that land, according to a copy of the property’s offering memorandum. That entire developable amount can be just commercial space, de Melo said.

Greg Cioth, Paul Nelson and Nate Jones, who oversee Eastdil Secured’s San Francisco and Silicon Valley offices, led sales efforts for both properties. Cioth did not respond to requests for comment.

Article source: https://therealdeal.com/sanfrancisco/2021/10/27/biomed-realty-buys-bay-area-office-complex-undeveloped-land-from-oracle-for-160m/

The residential real estate market in the San Francisco Bay Area has exploded over the last 30 years, with median sale prices growing more than 500% in some areas during that time, according to a report Wednesday from Compass. 

Although all counties in the region saw price appreciation, San Francisco, Santa Clara and San Mateo topped the list, the data showed. Median house prices in those counties were up 532%, 513% and 506%, respectively. 

“The three counties that appreciated most were the three counties at the absolute heart of the various high-tech booms…which isn’t surprising,” Patrick Carlisle, Compass’s chief market analyst in the region, told Mansion Global. That includes the dot-com boom in the 1990s and the high-tech boom that’s been underway for the greater part of the last decade. 

More: San Francisco Area’s New Launches: Home Buyers and Developers Are Looking Beyond the City

Two of the counties make up Silicon Valley. San Mateo is just south of San Francisco, while Santa Clara includes San Jose; Palo Alto, home to Stanford University; and Mountain View, where Google is headquartered. 

Although there was a dip in some markets when the dot-com bubble burst in 2001, some counties weren’t affected at all, the report said. The fallout later that decade from the subprime mortgage crisis was far more severe, disproportionately affecting the lower end of the market. For example, in San Francisco, prices declined between 20% and 45%, depending on the neighborhood. 

Prices in the region have steadily recovered since, fueled by the second high-tech boom. Between 2012 and 2020, median house sale prices more than doubled in San Francisco, Santa Clara and San Mateo. 

The Covid-19 pandemic ushered in a new era, and prices have skyrocketed throughout the region. Since spring 2020, median prices were up 32% in San Mateo, 31% in Santa Clara and 20% in San Francisco, according to the data. 

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“Even San Francisco, which comes in on the low end…still [saw] an increase of $200,000 in the median house price,” Mr. Carlisle said. “Some of the counties saw appreciation rates in excess of 30%. Those are staggering appreciation rates in a relatively short period of time.”

Mr. Carlisle noted that the strength of the luxury market has helped push prices higher. 

“Luxury home sales have surged disproportionately since the pandemic,” he said. “And, of course, if you have a disproportionate amount of higher price home sales, that is a factor in pulling median sales prices up.”

Article source: https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/some-san-francisco-bay-area-counties-have-seen-prices-rise-more-than-500-in-last-30-years-01635370302