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Real estate market's soft bottom throws up new median price
It may only be a soft bottom but it's nonetheless being (cautiously) heralded as a bottom to the real-estate downturn.
"Evidence is mounting that in some areas we've approached at least a soft bottom for home prices," the president of DataQuick, John Walsh said, on the release of the company's latest home sales figures. He warned that "the market remains vulnerable", however.
EBRDI 2009
This live/work loft in Emeryville is for sale at the new median price for northern California homes: $395,000.
According to DataQuick, the median home price jumped more than 12% to $395,000 from $352,000 in June across the nine-county area of Northern California, marking the fourth consecutive month that prices increased.
So what does that mean in practice? What will $395,000 buy you in the East Bay?
A condo is probably your best bet in that price range. And there's a pretty groovy live/work loft going in Emeryville in the Besler Building at 4053 Harlan St. It offers more than 1,000 square feet of space, a sleeping mezzanine, stainless-steel cabinetry, "huge" windows and 1-car parking. Price: $395,000 (add $236 monthly fee).
In Oakland's Jack London Square you can find a one-bedroom, one-bathroom condo in the Ellington building at 222 Broadway St. It will set you back $375,250 with monthly charges of $559.
Finally, in Berkeley, there's a one-bedroom top-floor condo for sale at 1767 Euclid Ave for $379,000. It's a couple of blocks from the UC campus and close to BART and the city's "gourmet ghetto".
| August 21 2009 at 03:19 PM
Oakland one of "hottest" real-estate markets?
Oakland 94606 has been named one of the top 10 "hottest" real-estate markets in the country. The trouble is it's not necessarily hot in the way you or I might interpret hot.
www.flickr.com/photos/respres
A glut of foreclosures is leading some areas to see bidding wars -- just like the old days.
Online real-estate company Zip Realty bestowed the "hottest" honor on this particular Oakland area based on the number of offers are coming in on homes that were higher than their lists prices. The reality is that these days this is principally happening when bargain-basement foreclosures prompt bidding wars between buyers.
Eight of Zip Realty's ten hottest markets are in California. While the cold markets, where offers are coming in at less than list price, are concentrated in the southeast, principally in Georgia and Florida.
The details of the company's second-quarter Home Hunter Report can be read here.
| July 27 2009 at 09:00 AM
Safeway's new plans for Rockridge rock the boat -- again
As disagreements continue to be voiced about plans for a new Safeway in one part of Rockridge, Oakland, a mooted design for another new Safeway, also in Rockridge, is causing consternation.
Many believe the latest designs for the Claremont Ave/College Ave Safeway are out of scale with the neighborhood which is primarily made up of smaller shops and boutiques.
www.docstoc.com
Safeway's proposal for the Broadway-Pleasant Valley Rd site in Rockridge is a cause of debate.
Now the blueprints for a redeveloped Safeway in the Rockridge Center Mall at Broadway and Pleasant Valley Rd are being described as "offensive" and "disrespectful".
The idea is to demolish the existing Safeway and Long's Drugs stores, along with other adjacent stores, and redevelop the site with a new Safeway store, a new CVS store, as well as other commercial buildings. The result would be approximately 304,000 sq ft of commercial space and 1,006 parking spaces.
John Gatewood, a co-founder of ULTRA (Urbanists for a Livable Temescal Rockridge Area) argues that rather than seize the opportunity to create a less auto-oriented, more pedestrian environment, the plans are proposing "a strip mall proposal that walls itself off from the neighborhoods". (Read his opinion here.)
There has been much discussion about the issue in the local blogosphere, much of it constructive. Read about the transit implications of the plans, for instance, on Transbay Blog.
A Planning Commission meeting will be held about the development tomorrow, on July 15.
| July 14 2009 at 11:06 AM
Three bedrooms, two bathrooms and guaranteed year-round sun
Should real-estate brokers include information about the weather in their listings? After all, the more savvy agents now offer data about local schools, public transit and walkability, so why not microclimates?
What's for sure is the Bay Area is full of them. In Sausalito, one particular spot is known as "banana alley" because of its unusually warm air. And, according to Realtor Stephen Bloom of Lawton Associates, "[Oakland's] Temescal has a great microclimate -- one of the warmest little quadrants of this part of the East Bay".
www.thefrontsteps.com
Thin red line: cold and windy to the west, warmer and windy to the east?
Now Fog City real-estate blog The Front Steps has made a stab at identifying likely weather patterns in specific parts of San Francisco.
The blog's author, Zephyr real-estate agent Alex Clark, put a ruler over a San Francisco Districts Map and drew a straight line from District 7a (Marina) to district 3J (Oceanview). The result? "Anything to the left (west), cold(er) and windy most of the year. Anything to the right (east), warm(er) and windy most of the year."
A more detailed second map includes a white fog line, yellow circled patches for sun, and blue wind arrows. While hardly conclusive, the maps certainly provide food for thought.
A reader points out that solar companies tend to be well-informed about hyperlocal weather conditions -- so they are a good source of data. Meanwhile, you can always check in with online services such as Weather Underground for streaming weather information on particular neighborhoods you might be scouting out for a new home.
| June 29 2009 at 11:25 AM
New San Francisco prefab player to show its wares
Less than a month after Oakland prefab architect Michelle Kaufmann was forced to close up shop, another Bay Area prefab company, Zeta Communities, is about to unveil its first experimental house in Oakland.
Zeta (which stands for Zero Energy Technology and Architecture) aims to build market-rate, multi-unit homes that produce as much energy as they consume, also known as ""net-zero" homes.
Zeta Communities is planning to showcase its first prefab demonstration home in Oakland soon.
Zeta, which was launched last year, has not built anything yet, and it is not intending to do business directly with homeowners. Rather its business model is based on marketing itself to architects and developers by taking existing building plans and figuring out how to build them in modular pieces. The company estimates one of its 1,600 sq ft homes will cost around $400,000, substantially less than the San Francisco median home price which is about $600K.
According to Zeta, the demonstration home will feature a passive solar design, energy-efficient windows, super-strong insulation, and a control system that manages on-site energy usage. As a result, it says, "the building produces an energy load that's only 60% of what a standard similarly sized home would use". Zeta says its homes save on construction costs, too: "It's cheaper and twice as fast to build the multi-family house in a factory than to build it on-site," the company says. "A factory-built Zeta home also generates half the waste of an on-site home."
The company says that it is able to construct buildings in a variety of styles, ranging from European and American traditional to modern.
| June 16 2009 at 11:07 AM
Price cuts rife in select Bay Area markets
A new survey released last week shows the extent home prices are being reduced across the country. Nationwide, almost a quarter of homes on the market (23.6%) have experienced at least one price cut, totaling $27.4 billion in reductions.
We asked Trulia.com, who crunched the data, to drill down and produce the numbers for a selection of Bay Area markets, namely the North Bay, East Bay as well as San Francisco.
The data snapshot revealed that on a given day -- June 4 -- Berkeley was holding out best in terms of price reductions. The university city boasts the lowest number of listings being cut -- at 21%. The average listed price right now in Berkeley is almost exactly $1m and it's showing an average 9% reduction to $906,638.
The costly neighborhoods are seeing more price chops and the biggest cuts. For instance, 28% of listed homes in Tiburon were showing price reduction on June 4 and the average reduction is 19% of asking prices. Because we're talking homes that start out with an average $2.5m price ticket, that translates as an average $481K discount.
NORCAL MLS
The price of this Sausalito condo at 103 Lincoln Dr has been cut by 8% -- the current average for the area.
Sausalito and Mill Valley show considerably lower average reductions -- at 8% each -- but the number of homes with price cuts is still high, at 29% and 34% respectively. An example is the 3/2.5 Sausalito condo with harbor views at 103 Lincoln Dr whose price has been cut 8%, from $799,000 to $739,000.
The average reduction on a listed Oakland home (whose average price is $624,331) is $65,801, or 11%, and 27% of homes are currently reduced.
Finally, 28% of San Francisco listings are recording price chops with trimmings averaging 11% of the original price.
| June 08 2009 at 10:19 AM
Oakland architect with vision forced to shutter shop
Talk to most architects today and you'll hear a similar story: clients have pulled the plug on projects or put them on indefinite hold and on-the-board jobs have all but disappeared. It's a question of tightening belts, they say, and scraping by until those elusive green shoots become something more than theoretical.
For one Oakland architect firm, though, the housing downturn has proven even more serious than that: MK Designs, run by the Bay Area prefab guru Michelle Kaufmann, has been forced to shut up shop.
www.mkd-arc.com
Michelle Kaufmann's Glidehouse: prefab, sustainable and cute.
On her blog, Kaufmann writes: "Despite our best efforts, the financial meltdown and plunging home values have caught up with us. The recent closing of a factory partner as well as the gridlocked lending faced by homeowners, has proved more than our small company can bear."
The reason this is particular sad news is that Kaufmann seemed to be doing all the right things -- at least in terms of her vision for the future of housing.
Her expertise was in building sustainable, affordable prefabricated homes. The fact that they were also extremely beautiful helped. She was lauded in the media -- she created the Breezehouse in conjunction with Sunset Magazine -- won all sorts of awards for her green building credentials, was working with developers to create sustainable multi-unit communities, and was active in the industry lobbying for more environmentally responsible building practices.
I'm sure I wasn't the only one who had their eye on one of Kaufmann's home designs as a future retirement or vacation home once my winning lottery number was called.
| May 29 2009 at 09:36 AM
Oblivious to the downturn? The East Bay's most expensive homes
It's all about bargains these days right? At least that's what we're told if we keep up with real-estate news: it's a buyers' market and only a fool would pay the asking price for a home they covet.
But some people evidently didn't get the memo. For in a parallel universe, multi-million dollar homes glide onto the market, their price tags barely acknowledging our straitened economic times.
EBRDI 2009
Piedmont's most expensive home: this $6.8m English-style home.
True, those prices may have been even more generously proportioned a couple of years ago -- but if there's one thing the most expensive homes in the East Bay have in common, it's that they're out of range for the vast majority of prospective homebuyers -- bargain hunters or not.
Piedmont, of course, takes the prize for top-price home: 33 Tyson Circle is an 8,000 sq ft (yes, 8,000) "English-style" home with views, a pool, full-size tennis court and "many outdoor entertainment areas" including a patio and waterfall. Set on 1.25 acres, the home has six bedrooms and six bathrooms and has been listed for 20 days, price: $6,800,000 ($849/sq ft).
EBRDI 2009
Oakland's most expensive home: 7080 Kenilworth Rd at $3.9m.
In second place: an Oakland hills home that has been on the market for 120 days and has seen a $260,000 price chop. 7080 Kenilworth Rd, a 5/4.5, 5,000 sq ft "minimalist contemporary", started out in January with an asking price of $4,250,000 and is now going for $3,999,000.
EBRDI 2009
And Berkeley's top-price home: 2970 Avalon Rd at $2.9m.
Which all makes $2,950,000 seem eminently reasonable. This is what is being asked for 2970 Avalon Rd in Berkeley's Claremont Court neighborhood -- an English Tudor and "proud representation of beauty, character and craftsmanship". There are five bedrooms and five and a half bathrooms, a pretty garden -- and the new owner will enjoy a "complete array of state-of-the-art conveniences". It's been listed for 34 days.
Tomorrow we'll skip through the tunnel to see what Lamorinda has on offer for the gilded set.
| May 21 2009 at 10:16 AM
Home sellers and home buyers don't see eye to eye on pricing
The troubling housing market doesn't seem to have helped align the opinions of home sellers and home buyers when it comes to pricing. Although people putting their home on the market today are more realistic about what it might fetch, especially compared to the "good old days", buyers still tend to think homes are overpriced and want to see more bargains.
And, perhaps unsurprisingly given their propensity to always see a silver lining, Realtors are generally expressing optimism about the housing market -- all this according to a second-quarter nationwide survey of 1,150 Realtors conducted by the Emeryville-based home values website HomeGain.
The survey shows that 36% of homeowners think their homes should be listed 10-20% higher than the price their Realtors are recommending, down from 45% in the first quarter. Conversely, 64% of homebuyers think that homes are overpriced (versus 59% who believed the same in the first quarter).
"The results ... indicate that home sellers seem to be getting the message that perhaps their homes are not worth as much as they thought they were, while buyers are expecting to find a bargain on every corner, " said Louis Cammarosano, general manager of HomeGain.
BayEast 2009
From $660K to $500K for this 3-bed home on Carson St in Oakland: perhaps a case of sellers and buyers having different price expectations.
The disparity could explain, at least in part, the steady stream of homes seeing price reductions -- such as this three-bedroom home at 4461 Carson St in Oakland's Redwood Heights neighborhood which has seen its price drop from $660,000 to $500,000; or this 3-bedroom contemporary on Santa Barbara Rd in north Berkeley which has just seen $100K knocked off its original $1,099,000 asking price.
The Realtors surveyed expressed more optimism on the direction of home prices in the second quarter survey than in the first quarter with 22% thinking that home values will rise in the next six months compared to just 11% who believed that three months ago. And 29% believe that home prices will fall in the next six months versus 53% who believed the same in the first quarter survey.
It's interesting to compare the results of this survey with one conducted recently by Zillow which showed that 60% of homeowners believed their properties had lost value over the last twelve months.
The complete survey results, including regional breakdown and real estate agent commentary, can be found here.
| May 18 2009 at 10:07 AM
The greener the house the higher the rental premium
Spending $20,000 to install solar panels on your home can sound like a painful financial outlay. But it's one that doesn't feel so bad when your energy bills plummet from, say, $200 to $10 a month, and you can see a clear long-term cost benefit.
Green features can bring financial gain in other ways, too, as a new report from the Henley Business School in the UK found when examining the rental prices of regular, non-green homes in the US versus those with LEED certification. (LEED being the US Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design system which rates buildings according to how sustainable they are.)
McNichols/Paul Ivey/Mike McDonald
The Margarido House in Oakland: its LEED Platinum rating should ensure it can command a higher than average rental price.
The study found that LEED certified buildings can command a rental premium of up to 31% and that the more highly rated the buildings are, the greater the premium. The report did not ascertain exactly why people would pay more to live in a LEED home. Its conclusion? "It is not established whether the premiums observed are due to the benefits of a better image, higher productivity or lower operating costs." One can only hope this question will be addressed in the school's next report.
At the moment LEED-certified homes are few and far between, although California has its fair share. There are a smattering of Silver and Gold certified homes across the Bay Area -- and Oakland boasts at least two homes with the top Platinum rating: the Margarido House in upper Rockridge, custom built by design-builder Mike McDonald; and a renovated Craftsman bungalow also in Rockridge which was described as "the greenest little house in America" recently in Metropolitan Home magazine.
While in southern California Living Homes is committed to building homes that have at a minimum a Silver LEED certification.
And, slowly, more LEED homes will appear -- like, for instance, the Eichler remodel a couple are working on in Monte Sereno. Not only are they adding an entire lower story to the house, they are aiming for the finished project to be awarded a LEED Platinum certification.
| May 12 2009 at 10:06 AM
