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SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) – A new report shows that some of the most expensive zip codes in the United States are right here in the Bay Area.

According to Property Shark, the number one most expensive zip code was 94027 in San Mateo County — Atherton.

For the fifth year in a row, Atherton landed the number one spot with a median home sale price of nearly $7.5 million.

The report shows that for the first time in history, the top 10 zip codes were above the $4-million mark.

The Bay Area, L.A. County, and New York City dominated the list — California had 70% of the zip codes on the list, including six in the top 10.

According to the report, the Bay Area remained the ‘priciest metro’ area with 47 zip codes on the list — Three were in the top 10: Atherton, Ross, and Los Altos.

“San Francisco has the highest concentration of expensive zip codes of any city,” the report said.

For the full report, visit the Property Shark website.

Below is the list of Bay Area zip codes that made the top 100 list:

“(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,” said West 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 studies 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 of studios that would be erected on the site owned by First 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 which is 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 (ABAG) and Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) over its 2050 Plan Bay Area, mean 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 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.”

Amazon took more than 300,000 square feet of industrial space in Oakland that it plans to open to workers this month. It’s the single largest industrial lease signed in the Bay Area’s nine-city Interstate 880 corridor this year.

The e-commerce company agreed to rent a 336,680-square-foot warehouse at 5800 Coliseum Way, expanding the company’s industrial presence in the Bay Area, spokesperson Natalie Wolfrom said Monday. The building will enable Amazon to operate its Amazon Logistics service, the delivery arm of its business, Wolfrom said.

The company was mainly attracted to the Coliseum Way building due to its proximity to freeways and public transit, she said. The Prologis-owned property is nestled between Interstate 880 and State Route 185 and has a pair of BART stations within a two-mile radius. It’s also less than five miles from the Port of Oakland and the city’s airport.

Amazon signed a long-term lease on the building, Wolfrom said, although she declined to disclose how much Amazon is paying to rent the space or the exact length of its term.

According to CompStak, a property records website, the company signed a 10-year lease that expires in 2031. The lease, which hasn’t been previously reported, was signed in April, Amazon said. It was the largest lease of its kind in terms of square footage in the Bay Area’s I-880 industrial real estate market this year, according to a person with knowledge of the deal who wasn’t allowed to talk publicly about it.

That market, which includes Oakland and eight other cities, is strong due to record-high property values and low inventory, according to commercial real estate firm Lee Associates’ third-quarter I-880 corridor report.

Amazon said it’s too soon to know how it specifically plans to use the Coliseum Way warehouse and did not have job creation numbers to share, although Wolfrom said she hopes to have that data soon. It expects to open the site to employees sometime this month, Wolfrom said.

Last month, the company acquired the site of a four-building office and research campus in Milpitas in Silicon Valley for $123 million. It will likely redevelop the property, which has been vacant since 2015, although it hasn’t solidified plans for what it intends to build there, Wolfrom said last month. Elsewhere in the Bay Area, Amazon intends to build a distribution center on almost 60 acres of undeveloped land in the Tri-Valley city of Pleasanton.

The company last month reported slower annual revenue growth of 15 percent in the third quarter, compared with 37 percent growth in the third quarter of 2020. Yet it’s pushing forward on plans to continue expanding its operations in the Bay Area. It will submit a formal proposal to the city and county of San Francisco on Nov. 15 to build a warehouse and shipping center with 650,000 square feet of delivery space, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The project represents Amazon’s largest warehouse in San Francisco.

JLL represented landlord Prologis in Amazon’s lease on 5800 Coliseum Way, while John McManus of Cushman Wakefield represented the tenant. McManus declined to comment, while JLL representatives did not respond to emails seeking comment.

UPDATE: This story has been updated to add in fifth paragraph that Amazon said it signed the lease in April.

Article source: https://therealdeal.com/sanfrancisco/2021/11/09/amazon-leases-336k-sf-industrial-building-in-oakland-plans-to-open-it-this-month/

It was built in the 1920s by Conrad Alfred Meussdorffer, who also designed the St. Regis apartments in Lafayette Park (the Beaux Arts beauty of which catapulted Meussdorffer’s career among the city’s elite), as well as 2006 Washington Street.

A co-op is a distinct type of property. Unlike with a condo, in which the owner owns both the unit and a common share of the property, in a co-op the owner doesn’t technically own the property at all. These sales can be complex, as prospective buyers must meet the approval of a co-op board, and buyers should expect sizable HOA fees. Financing can be tricky, too: Some lenders don’t offer co-op loans when there are rules limiting how or to whom you can sell your shares.

But none of that mattered for this apartment, which sold for its record-breaking asking price.

Anna Marie Erwert writes from both the renter and new buyer perspective, having (finally) achieved both statuses. She focuses on national real estate trends, specializing in the San Francisco Bay Area and Pacific Northwest. Follow Anna on Twitter: @AnnaMarieErwert. 

Article source: https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/record-sale-at-Pacific-Heights-co-op-16618574.php

The vacancy rate for the Bay Area’s nine counties was 5.5 units per 100 in 2020, down from 6.4 in 2010. That compares to a national vacancy rate of 9.7 units per 100 in 2020, which declined from 11.4 in 2010. The map below shows vacancy rates by census tract, neighborhood-size regions of about 1,200 to 8,000 people created by the U.S. government.

Vacancy rates have fallen in six out of the Bay Area’s nine counties since 2010. However, vacancies increased slightly in San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.

Though generally lower than in 2010, most counties still have higher vacancy rates than in 2000. That’s largely because the 2008 mortgage crisis and its aftermath caused a surge in vacancy rates that are evident in the 2010 numbers.

Additionally, the 2020 census was taken during the initial phase of the coronavirus pandemic, which means that vacancy rates could be higher in urban hubs like downtown San Francisco, which many individuals left for relatives’ or vacation homes, and neighborhoods with lots of then-remote college students, like south Berkeley or the area around San Francisco State University.

Vacancy rates can be a useful data point in understanding the health of a region’s housing market, according to Sarah Karlinsky, senior adviser on housing policy at SPUR, a Bay Area-focused think tank.

“A higher vacancy rate means that housing is likely to be more affordable because there’s more slack in the market,” Karlinsky told The Chronicle. “And a tighter vacancy rate means housing is more scarce and therefore more expensive.” This suggests the Bay Area’s relatively low vacancy rates are a bug, not a feature of the region’s housing market.

But in general, higher vacancy rates only help housing affordability when the vacant units in question are on the market, according to Darrell Owens, data and policy analyst at California YIMBY and housing commissioner for the city of Berkeley.

The census divides housing units into five primary types: for-rent or for-sale, rented or sold but not yet occupied, seasonal vacancies (i.e. vacation homes or dorms), migrant worker housing, and other vacancies, which refer to dilapidated housing, housing under construction or renovation, or housing that is vacant for any other reason.

Increasing the vacancies of the first type of home, units available for sale or lease, may help make housing more affordable and available in the Bay Area, Owens said. But high vacancy rates in other categories — particularly seasonal and “other” — are less useful in that regard, as they take up land area without offering shelter to additional people.

The latest census doesn’t include detailed data on the types of housing vacancies in each region, but the U.S. census’ American Community Survey provides estimates that should be close to accurate, according to Owens.

According to data collected from 2015 to 2019 for the survey, available housing (i.e. on the market for sale or rent) made up just under a third of vacancies across the Bay, while seasonal and “other” vacancies made up nearly 60% of the combined vacancies. However, these figures varied widely at the county level: For instance, in Napa and Sonoma counties seasonal vacancies made up around half the total vacancies and for-sale or for-rent properties made up under one-fifth.

Part of the reason so many seasonal and “other” vacancies exist, Owens said, is that California law does not disincentivize those kinds of vacancies. For instance, Proposition 13, a law that mandates small and measured increases on property tax rates over time, can keep taxes on vacant properties so low that their owners are not motivated to find renters or buyers for those properties. Prop. 13 also tends to keep tax rates lower for the types of pricey vacation homes that make up many seasonal vacancies in Napa and Sonoma counties.

Whether by repealing Prop. 13 or by instituting taxes on long-term vacant properties, Owens said, lowering the number of vacancies that are not useful for controlling housing prices will require a change to current policies.

“Wealthy people who own a house in the Berkeley hills and an apartment or condo in SoMa (that they’re using) as a vacation home, that is something you wanna tax,” he said.

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