homesmillbrae.com » Sunnyvale

Builders Can’t Keep Pace With Demand As Bay Area Housing Booms Again

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 13:10:21 +0000

SUNNYVALE (KCBS)— New townhome projects continue at a rapid pace in Sunnyvale, where home construction can barely keep up with demand. The 14 currently under construction probably won’t be empty for long. Home values increased nearly 11-percent nationwide over the last year, but homes in the Bay Area are getting even greater gains.

The Standard Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price index released Tuesday showed that all 20 cities measured by the report posted year-over-year gains for the third straight month.

And prices rose in 15 cities in March from February. That’s up from only 11 in the previous month. The monthly figures aren’t seasonally adjusted and may reflect the beginning of the spring buying season.

Prices rose in Phoenix by 22.5 percent over the past 12 months, the biggest gain among cities. It was followed by the Bay Area (22.2 percent) and Las Vegas (20.6 percent).

Niccole Beckerman said her family has been priced out of the Silicon Valley.

“It’s really expensive. My parents were trying to buy a house and it’s really expensive just because the schools are really good,” Beckerman said.

The story is the same throughout much of the Bay Area. According to the San Francisco Association Of Realtors, the median Bay Area price for a single-family home has crossed above the $1 million mark for the first time since 2007.

The Inventory of available homes remains extremely low according to San Jose realtor David Martz. He said there are only about 1,000 homes for sale in a population of nearly two-million people in the greater San Jose area.

“Combined with the fact that we currently have interest rates at an all-time low, it’s possible to get an interest rate close to three percent, which is driving demand, so the buyers are out there in force,” said Martz.

Martz said four out of every five homes that come on the market here receive multiple offers, with prices, in some cases, going up hundreds of thousands of dollars over asking.

Despite the gains, a limited number of homeowners are putting their houses on the market. That’s helped lift home prices. And it’s made builders more willing to ramp up construction. Applications for building permits rose in April to the highest level in nearly five years.

The supply of available homes jumped in April, but was still 14 percent below its level a year earlier.

Stan Humphries, chief economist at Zillow, a real estate data provider, said that the increase in the Case-Shiller index has been skewed higher by cities such as Phoenix and San Francisco. Fewer homes are available in those areas because many homeowners still owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. That makes it difficult to sell.

Still, even excluding those markets, home prices are rising steadily nationwide, Humphries said. The increases are “certainly confirmation that the housing market is experiencing a brisk recovery,” he added.

The housing recovery is creating more construction jobs and bolstering the economy in other ways. Higher home prices make homeowners feel wealthier and encourages them to spend more.

Rising prices also encourage more would-be buyers to purchase homes, before prices rise further. They also enable more homeowners to sell homes, by reducing the number of people who owe more on their mortgages than the homes are worth.

Prices have been increasing steadily since last summer. Still, they are about 29 percent below the peak reached in July 2006.

Banks have raised their credit standards since the housing bubble burst and are demanding larger down payments. That’s made it particularly hard for potential first-time buyers to get a mortgage.

Article source: http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/05/28/builders-cant-keep-pace-with-demand-as-bay-area-housing-booms-again/

A chat with commercial real estate broker Phil Mahoney

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 05:52:42 +0000

When a megadeal lands in Silicon Valley, there’s a decent chance veteran Bay Area commercial real estate broker Phil Mahoney had a hand in making it happen.

Google’s 715,000-square-foot lease in Sunnyvale. The 600,000-square-foot campus for LinkedIn in Sunnyvale. A Sunnyvale lease for 600,000 square feet for a new campus to be occupied by Amazon unit Lab 126. The just-concluded 100,000-square-foot deal for Softbank affiliate Starburst in San Carlos. Mahoney, an executive vice president with the Santa Clara office of Cornish Carey Commercial Newmark Knight Frank, helped guide all of these to a successful conclusion.

Each year, Mahoney kicks off the Cornish Carey annual forecast for the commercial property sector in the South Bay. This newspaper recently spoke with him about his outlook for the Silicon Valley commercial property sector. Mahoney’s comments have been edited for length and clarity.

Q How do you see the Silicon Valley market in 2013?

A There is no way that 2013 will repeat what occurred in 2011 and 2012. Those were incredible years, and there was so much space leased that it was not sustainable. We never expected that this year would be like either of those years. The market is taking a bit of a breather in that tenants have absorbed millions of square feet. Much of that square footage that was leased the last year is now being retrofitted for occupancy.

Q How long might this breather

last?

A We see 2014 returning to a very strong leasing mode when companies have digested what they took in in 2011 and 2012. Late 2013 and into 2014 should be very good.

Q What is driving the leasing?

A This is all underpinned by a strong economy, a good tech economy. The economy is strong enough to withstand problems, whether they be things such as North Korea or budget sequestration.

Q Is it helpful that there is a breather?

A If you are a property owner with a big empty building, now is not a good time to take a breather. But it is healthy in that it gives transportation infrastructure time to catch up to all the leasing that has occurred. And if you get into an overheated situation, you can get an overbuilt market, which isn’t good.

Q San Francisco’s mayor has said his city is the innovation capital of the world, which suggests San Francisco overshadows Silicon Valley. Is that assessment on target, or off target?

A I’d say the reports of San Francisco becoming the new Silicon Valley are overdone. Quietly, some of the larger tech companies are starting to push back a little bit on the whole San Francisco scene. There is a little bit of a wait and see about how it all works out. Some of companies have deferred major expansions in San Francisco and are doing it in the Santa Clara Valley proper instead.

Q Is the current surge in tech leasing like the dot-com boom that became a bubble, or is this the real deal?

A There is no comparison. This time there are no Pets.com, no Webvan. There is very little fluff we can see. These are real companies with real revenues and real profits. They don’t just depend on eyeballs looking at their websites.

Q How strong is the current crop of tenants?

A Never in my 30 years have I seen this number of creditworthy tenants in the market. Amazon, Google, Apple, LinkedIn, Facebook, Microsoft, Juniper, these are strong multibillion-dollar companies with healthy balance sheets.

Q This tech boom looks to be here for a while?

A This definitely has legs. We are probably in the middle innings of a recovery in Silicon Valley.

Contact George Avalos at 408-373-3556 or 925-977-8477. Follow him at Twitter.com/george_avalos.

Phil Mahoney
Age: 53
Birthplace: Cambridge, Mass.
Company: Cornish Carey Newmark Knight Frank
Position: Executive vice president
Residence: Los Altos Hills

Five things about Phil Mahoney
He was a lifeguard on Cape Cod while in college.
He is a former college football player, a starting defensive end with Stanford University and a teammate of NFL Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway.
He has lived in England, in a small town on the Thames River as part of a Stanford overseas program.
He once skied in Scotland.
When he began his current career, he had three jobs: commercial real estate broker, a mover for a moving company, and a bouncer at a Palo Alto night club

Article source: http://www.insidebayarea.com/breaking-news/ci_23115274/chat-commercial-real-estate-broker-phil-mahoney

Peninsula rents going the way of SF and Manhattan

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 02:05:27 +0000

San Francisco and Manhattan are famously unaffordable cities to rent in– not that such information discourages people from renting in either location. High demand, of course, is part of the sky high prices.
But according to a new study by Apartment List.com, Peninsula rents are quickly rising to rival those of San Francisco proper. Over both 12-month and 18-month periods in the area as a whole, rents have risen an average of 10% and 18%, respectively. Here’s a run down of their data, showing rent changes for different sized units. (UPDATE: This chart is a corrected version of the previous one that contained incorrect percentage numbers.)

Rents going up…and up! Data via ApartmentList.com

In terms of where to find the highest demand, Apartment List doesn’t have data on every city on the Peninsula, but reports that Mountain View jumped 45%, San Mateo jumped 54% and Sunnyvale jumped 40%.Over the last 12 months, the cities rank in this order (aggregate rise = 10%)

Clearly, the recent tech boom has a lot to do with this rent spike. The high salaries of this industry creates a competitive rental market, whereby landlords can ask higher rents. Tenants may end up offering even more than that rent, in order to stand out from the dozens of other people applying for an apartment.

John Kobs, CEO of Apartment List points out that another big factor is inventory of homes for sale. “For the past two years the available inventory of for sale homes in the Bay Area has been at an all-time low.” As a result, many people who want to buy are forced to become renters instead, unable to find a home for sale. And logically, “these people who are able to buy have higher income on average than renters, and are therefore able (and willing to) pay more rent. The supply side of for sale housing is a key driver in the increase in rents.”

Local Experiences

Many of us have friends looking for apartments now reporting back with horror stories– or maybe we have those horror stories ourselves: incredibly high rents, hundreds of people looking at available units, desperate applicants offering everything from home baked cookies to cold, hard cash to sweeten their chances. But can it all continue? Readers, is there any end in sight for rising rents in the Bay Area?

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: http://blog.sfgate.com/ontheblock/2012/08/16/peninsula-rents-going-the-way-of-sf-and-manhattan/

Hundreds attend Bay Area vigil in memory of Sikh temple shooting victims

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 00:51:43 +0000

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Hundreds attend San Jose Vigil

Mourners gather at Sikh Gurdwara San Jose on Wednesday, Aug. 8, 2012, for a candlelight vigil in memory of the six Sikhs killed Aug. 5 by a white supremacist in Wisconsin. (Erchi Zhang / SFGate)

Junaid Shaikh, president of the Northern California Islamic Council, attends the vigil with his family at Sikh Gurdwara San Jose. (Erchi Zhang / SFGate)

Pradeep Singh (left), of San Jose, attends the vigil with his cousin Jasmeet Singh (right). (Erchi Zhang / SFGate)

Bay Area residents gather in front of the Sikh Gurdwara temple during a candlelight vigil in memory of the six Sikhs killed Aug. 5 in Wisconsin. (Erchi Zhang / SFGate)

Gurpreet Singh, 5, of Sunnyvale, attends the candlelight vigil with his family. (Erchi Zhang / SFGate)

Various religious groups, including Muslims, Jews and Christians, gather at Sikh Gurdwara San Jose for a candlelight vigil in memory of the six victims fatally shot Aug. 5 in Wisconsin. (Erchi Zhang / SFGate)

Julie Celebi, who represents the First Unitarian Church of San Jose, says that, even though she is not a Sikh, she can understand the senselessness of the tragedy and show her support. (Erchi Zhang / SFGate)

People put candles around a fountain during a candlelight vigil at Sikh Gurdwara San Jose. (Erchi Zhang / SFGate)

Manjot Longia, 15, of San Jose, places candles around a fountain during a candlelight vigil at Sikh Gurdwara San Jose. (Erchi Zhang / SFGate)

Mohinder Singh Bajwa, the priest at Sikh Gurdwara San Jose, leads the crowd to pray for the victims of the Sikh temple shooting. (Erchi Zhang / SFGate)

Hundreds of people gathered at Sikh Gurdwara San Jose Wednesday night for an interfaith vigil to remember the six victims fatally shot Sunday in Wisconsin.

“We have had hate crimes against the Sikhs since 9/11,” said Sukhdev Singh Bainiwal, one of the directors of the Sikh Temple in San Jose, referring to the murder of a gas station owner in Arizona on Sept. 15, 2001. “But we never thought a big tragedy like this would hit the Sikh community,” Bainiwal said in an interview.

As one of the organizers of the vigil, Bainiwal said the message the Sikh community wants to deliver is that all Americans should “come together” and “get that hatred out of us.”

He estimated that more than a thousand people had come to the temple Wednesday night, partly because of the close tie between the Sikh communities in Wisconsin and San Jose. Two priests who died in the shooting had preached in San Jose in previous years.

In the crowd, many come from various religious groups other than Sikhs. Julie Celebi, who represents the First Unitarian Church of San Jose, said she had no idea there was such a large Sikh community in the Bay Area before attending the vigil. But she said that it’s “inspiring” to see so many people come together to show their support.

“Even though I’m not a Sikh,” Celebi said. “I can understand the senselessness of the tragedy and show my support for their loss, regardless of my faith background.”

At least two other cities in the Bay Area, Fremont and Hayward, held similar vigils Wednesday night, as part of a nationwide remembrance for the shooting.

Bainiwal admits that there is still a lot of work to do to educate Americans who the Sikh Americans are. Sikhs have been in California since the 19th century. They helped build California railroads, and many settled in Central Valley, Los Angeles and the Bay Area.

Now at a big price, “a lot of Americans do know who the Sikh community is,” Bainiwal said. “And hopefully the misconception that who the Sikhs are will be subdued.”

Article source: http://blog.sfgate.com/stew/2012/08/09/hundreds-attend-bay-area-vigil-in-memory-of-sikh-temple-shooting-victims/