The blog has been on hiatus due to the holidays.
But I wanted to take a moment to wish you all a happy 2010!
May you always have front row seats to all the amazing moments life has to offer!!! 🙂
Archives for December 2009
Noe Valley Starter Homes – $5!
If only Santa could really bring us real estate deals like these in San Francisco! 🙂
(Seen at The Garage Store on Sanchez Street at 24th.)
Single Female in Search of Home for Sale
The title of the post almost sounds like a personal ad, right?
Well I was taking a look at my list of San Francisco clients that are looking for a home or have recently purchased a home and I realized that about 35% of them are single women.
While it does appear that I tend to work with more single female home buyers than national averages, across the country, I did find some interesting statistics while searching the net:
Not bad for girl power, eh?
The demographic includes all women, including never married, divorced or widowed.
Each person’s motivations for buying a home is, without a doubt, different.
Past generations waited for Mr. Right to come along and give the poor helpless female financial security.
But TODAY’S woman is ready to take her financial destiny into her own hands. According to an older article from USA Today:
The trend is striking, because in 1981, the number of single women and single men home buyers was virtually the same. Since then, the percentage of buyers who are single women has almost doubled, while the percentage of single men buyers slipped 1 percentage point to 9% last year.
The article goes on to say:
“For the first time in history, women have access to the same resources men have always had — money, social status, power,” says Donald Hantula, professor of organizational psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia.
“Women can go and acquire them on their own rather than searching for a mate to provide them. These demographic and social changes are not in line with how we adapted in the hunter-gatherer era.”
In SF, women have a number of options when it comes to buying a home. My clients’ searches have included houses, condos, TIC’s, lofts, fixer-uppers, new construction, Victorian architecture, modern design and so many other variables that there’s just too many to list.
And now that we are seeing some better deals in the San Francisco housing market, I’ve been getting more calls from single women ready to take the plunge and buy a home. In fact, now that the real estate prices have softened in SF, I’ve gotten calls from some past single female clients that are ready to jump in and buy investment property, with a big enough down payment, they are actually able to see a positive net gain on a rental property in San Francisco.
If you’re a single woman and you’re thinking about buying property in San Francisco, whether for your primary residence or for investment purposes, give me a holler – I’m happy to help you decide whether now really is the right time for you to buy.
Oh, and the embedded video??? Just a gratuitous baby dancing to the Single Ladies song because who doesn’t like to watch babies boogie!
San Francisco Real Estate Fast Facts: November 2008 vs November 2009
For those of you that like your SF real estate market data without commentary, here ya go. Take a look, check it out, come to your own conclusions.
Or – you can always ask me questions.
Fast Facts
Single-Family Homes
Condos
2-4 Units
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NUMBER OF UNITS is the equivalent of number of sales/transactions. For condominiums, each unit is treated as a sale. For 2- to 4-unit buildings, the “building” is treated as a sale.
NUMBER SOLD is the number of properties in the market segment that closed escrow during the month.
NUMBER FOR SALE is the number of active properties on the market for one day or more during the month.
MEDIAN PRICE (SOLD) reflects the “middle” price point of a group of properties that have successfully closed escrow on a monthly basis, i.e. half sold for more and half sold for less than the median price. Tracking the movement of median prices over time provides a good indicator of the direction market forces are moving.
If the percentage change is positive between the two periods then there is upward pressure on prices in that market segment. If the percentage change is negative between the two periods then there is downward pressure on prices in that market segment.
AVERAGE DAYS ON MARKET (DOM) reflects how long it has been taking (on average) to draw an offer on a reasonably priced property exposed to the market. The AVERAGE DAYS ON MARKET is defined as: The average number of days it took all of the properties that went under contract during the period to accept a first position offer.
MONTH’S SUPPLY OF INVENTORY (MSI) is a measure of how long it would take, in months, to sell the existing inventory at the current sales rate for the specific neighborhood and property type. The MONTH’S SUPPLY OF INVENTORY is defined as: The number of active properties on the market for one day or more during the month, less the number of properties that have been withdrawn or expired, divided by the number of properties that have gone under contract during the month.
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Data provided by Terradatum.
Newsom Facebook's his Press Release about Treasure Island Transfer from Navy to SF
According to a Facebook update (yes, I’m Gavin’s FB friend, I’d like to think we’re actually really close and he reads my status updates and laughs. 😉 ):
[Mayor Newsom] just announced an agreement with the Navy to transfer Treasure Island (TI) to San Francisco. The development of TI will create thousands of jobs and one of the most environmentally sustainable developments in US history.
Um, pretty cool!
In fact, if you haven’t heard about the plans for Treasure Island, Inhabitat.com had some good details about the path to a green and sustainable mini City. It could be one of SF’s new awesome AND green neighborhoods in the near future!
So if you’re a real estate developer planning on, say, selling any awesome new green developments in the next 50 years in that area and need an awesome San Francisco realtor, give me a holler so that I can fit you into my business plan. 😀
You can read the press release (I found the link in the FB post) HERE.
How to Tell You're in a Safe SF Neighborhood
I hate to say it, but the title of this post is kinda of misleading. It’s actually a bit of a trick question.
Why?
Well, everyone has a different idea of what makes a neighborhood “safe.” Frankly, each person has a different tolerance to risk.
I live in the Outer Sunset where we seem have a higher than average amount of auto break-ins and thefts and grafitti tends to be fairly common (my fence AND my garbage can got tagged recently AND I chased down two teens I saw tagging on EVERYTHING they saw on the street) but I still tend to consider it a “safe” neighborhood. Other neighborhoods have higher rates of drug dealing or prostitution. Others, still, have a high rate of murders and homicides. Others still have gang violence.
San Francisco is diverse, and if you’re thinking about buying real estate here, you really need to examine YOUR tolerances.
What YOU consider to be a safe neighborhood depends primarily on your personal aversion to risk. Your standard of safety is not necessarily my standard of safety. (Though I’d be so bold as to go out on a limb and say that most people feel less safe in areas with high murder rates, just sayin’.)
But that doesn’t mean that you need to jeopardize your safety by wandering the streets at night looking for crime.
To find out about crime in SF, you need only look as far as your computer!
You can easily find statistics about San Francisco crime by pointing, clicking and filling out some parameters.
CrimeMapping.com, according to their site, “is a site developed by The Omega Group to help law enforcement agencies throughout North America provide the public with valuable information about recent crime activity in their neighborhood. Our goal is to assist police departments in reducing crime through a better-informed citizenry. Creating more self-reliance among community members is a great benefit to community oriented policing efforts everywhere and has been proven effective in combating crime.”
CrimeReports.com claims to be the world leader in online crime mapping, with over 600 law enforcement partners across North America. It also features sex offender data and allows you to create email alerts about crime in a specific area.
SF Crime Maps is a site that’s hosted by our very own sfgov.org. To use the site, check out the various FAQ’s and then scroll down to the bottom of the page and click “I Agree.” From there, click the crimes you want to search for (you’ll notice homicides are conspicuously missing from the list!) and select the area parameters. You can search up to the last 90 days.
San Francisco Crime Blog picks up where SF Crime Maps leaves off. The SF Crime Blog covers a variety of crimes in the blog section but really focuses on the murders that have occurred in SF. In addition to a countdown of the homicides that have occurred, you’ll find a map that details those homicides for 2007 and 2008. *While I liked the format of this blog, a little birdie dropped a note in the comments that informed me of some potential copyright type issues surrounding the blog, and since I HATE it when people copy my content and put it all over the internet (y’all know who you are), I removed the link.*
Once you have access to statistics, you can make your own decisions whether the neighborhood you want to live in is safe enough for you.
Just in Case I Need to Sell Houses in the Afterlife…
…I can announce my arrival with a business card that doubles as a head stone. (padum, bump)
I’ve been sick with a cold/swamped with work duties the last few days (almost all performed from the comfort of my couch/recovery bed), so have nothing awesome, or even interesting to report about San Francisco Real Estate.
But I have been reading articles and commentary about the newest rule change at the National Association of Realtors and pondering the move.
I would have LOVED it is it was something like forced transparency to the public on every level, or something that would help our rep instead of hurt it.
Instead, they made a new policy that allows the use of the REALTOR(R) trademark on headstones. Yup. Just in case you get up to the pearly gates of heaven and you realize you forgot your business card, you can just point down to earth right at your headstone.
Um, no thanks, not for me. Besides, I’d rather end up as fertilizer than as landfill, so I won’t need much of a headstone when I’m gone someday anyway.
Oh, and the article that I think best sums up a variety of reasons we don’t want to do cheesy things like this points out that:
In a Harris Poll released in August it was noted:
“[in] a survey of thousands of consumers ask[ed] to talk about different job classifications [] it used to be that Real Estate agents were ahead of used car salesman but now they are dead last.”
It gets worse. Another report released this year by Readers Digest (Australia) asked respondents to list the most trusted professions. Domestic cleaners, bartenders and sex workers topped real estate agents.
Sigh. I guess soon we can replace lawyer jokes with REALTOR(R) jokes. Thanks for helping the image, NAR, thanks.
San Francisco Real Estate – SOLD!
Want to know know what sold in San Francisco in the last 30 days? Sign up for The City Update(TM) – San Francisco’s Friendliest Newsletter. You’ll get the details, and then some, in your inbox (almost) every Friday.
If you just want the round numbers, you can check them out below.
Sold Listings 11/09/09 – 12/10/09
| Neighborhood | Total Listings | Average Price | Average DOM |
| Alamo Square | 1 | $1,030,000 | 169 |
| Anza Vista | 4 | $1,007,500 | 36 |
| Balboa Terrace | 1 | $890,000 | 47 |
| Bayview | 4 | $312,475 | 27 |
| Bayview Heights | 7 | $437,117 | 47 |
| Bernal Heights | 21 | $791,143 | 67 |
| Buena Vista Park | 6 | $818,667 | 58 |
| Central Richmond | 7 | $913,857 | 52 |
| Central Sunset | 10 | $772,138 | 49 |
| Central Waterfront | 4 | $686,750 | 116 |
| Clarendon Heights | 2 | $1,788,889 | 30 |
| Corona Heights | 9 | $976,444 | 78 |
| Cow Hollow | 6 | $838,500 | 50 |
| Crocker Amazon | 4 | $502,000 | 23 |
| Diamond Heights | 11 | $553,508 | 78 |
| Downtown | 13 | $361,269 | 176 |
| Duboce Triangle | 5 | $618,400 | 61 |
| Eureka V./Dolores Hts | 12 | $1,204,750 | 34 |
| Excelsior | 8 | $439,102 | 113 |
| Financial District | 1 | $1,195,000 | 43 |
| Forest Hill | 6 | $1,398,000 | 43 |
| Forest Hill Extension | 1 | $1,060,000 | 28 |
| Forest Knolls | 5 | $699,200 | 76 |
| Glen Park | 10 | $936,650 | 68 |
| Golden Gate Heights | 2 | $801,250 | 48 |
| Haight Ashbury | 5 | $1,452,500 | 78 |
| Hayes Valley | 9 | $947,861 | 55 |
| Ingleside | 3 | $538,000 | 40 |
| Ingleside Heights | 5 | $438,400 | 17 |
| Ingleside Terrace | 1 | $822,500 | 55 |
| Inner Mission | 16 | $805,758 | 81 |
| Inner Parkside | 3 | $666,667 | 48 |
| Inner Richmond | 3 | $1,423,333 | 83 |
| Inner Sunset | 7 | $1,181,929 | 44 |
| Lake | 2 | $1,113,000 | 40 |
| Lake Shore | 5 | $923,200 | 95 |
| Lone Mountain | 6 | $1,532,000 | 79 |
| Lower Pacific Heights | 6 | $399,150 | 43 |
| Marina | 3 | $1,627,462 | 66 |
| Merced Heights | 1 | $628,000 | 17 |
| Miraloma Park | 4 | $824,375 | 68 |
| Mission Bay | 6 | $862,000 | 100 |
| Mission Dolores | 11 | $908,636 | 63 |
| Mission Terrace | 4 | $676,000 | 55 |
| Monterey Heights | 1 | $1,170,000 | 97 |
| Nob Hill | 7 | $739,429 | 98 |
| Noe Valley | 21 | $906,653 | 124 |
| North Beach | 4 | $750,000 | 87 |
| North Panhandle | 6 | $666,767 | 45 |
| North Waterfront | 1 | $740,000 | 70 |
| Outer Mission | 7 | $546,361 | 85 |
| Outer Parkside | 7 | $672,270 | 36 |
| Outer Richmond | 6 | $750,833 | 80 |
| Outer Sunset | 5 | $619,800 | 70 |
| Pacific Heights | 20 | $1,299,000 | 72 |
| Parkside | 9 | $783,611 | 60 |
| Parnassus/Ashbury Hts | 4 | $1,113,625 | 37 |
| Portola | 4 | $570,125 | 66 |
| Potrero Hill | 6 | $849,167 | 96 |
| Presidio Heights | 2 | $6,400,000 | 90 |
| Russian Hill | 9 | $1,701,556 | 73 |
| Sea Cliff | 2 | $5,662,500 | 140 |
| Sherwood Forest | 1 | $989,000 | 85 |
| Silver Terrace | 3 | $477,667 | 37 |
| South Beach | 13 | $640,954 | 86 |
| South of Market | 23 | $972,075 | 90 |
| St. Francis Wood | 1 | $1,455,000 | 24 |
| Sunnyside | 3 | $651,667 | 37 |
| Telegraph Hill | 4 | $1,000,000 | 102 |
| Tenderloin | 1 | $530,000 | 95 |
| Twin Peaks | 1 | $424,000 | 76 |
| Van Ness/Civic Center | 13 | $552,596 | 54 |
| Visitacion Valley | 7 | $430,286 | 26 |
| West Portal | 2 | $874,500 | 46 |
| Western Addition | 2 | $599,500 | 36 |
| Westwood Park | 1 | $880,000 | 118 |
Swine Flue Vaccine Update – Kids Need a 2nd Shot!
You got your kids an H1N1 vaccination. You thought they were safe, but apparently, one shot is NOT enough!
I got an update from San Francisco’s Supervisor Carmen Chu the other day, and she asked that we spread the news widely:
The Department of Public Health will be holding the mass vaccination clinic December 22, 2009 at the Bill Graham Auditorium from 10am-7pm. I believe the booster shots will be allocated on a first come first served basis. The follow-up booster is actually the exact same vaccine as the initial shot.
If you have a blog, a Twitter account, a Facebook account, etc. and live in San Francisco, please repost this wherever you can! The swine flu is pretty nasty and a lot of parents think their kids are safe right now after the first shot!
San Francisco Real Estate Charts and Stats
To continue with the good news from today’s earlier post and since a pic is worth a thousand words, I thought I’d just throw a couple of charts and stats from the Polaris Group’s report about current San Francisco real estate market trends.
So here ya go, short, sweet and pretty. 🙂
While the number of resale condominiums in November (as opposed to new construction) is still down 14% over the same time period in 2007, it is UP 98% over November 2008.
Put that together with the fact that 14 new developments sold out in 2009 and several more are close to selling out. Few new developments are coming on the market in 2010, and the balance between supply and demand is setting the stage for a good balanced SF housing market!
So, in a nutshell, while there’s no guarantees, looking at the charts above points to an indication that 2010 is looking pretty positive for SF real estate. And if the number of new buyers that have contacted me in the last week alone is any sign of what’s to come next year, I’d agree with the charts!
