A burned-out home in San Francisco is on the market for the ‘below market value’ of $800,000
A San Francisco homeowner is selling a burned-out house for about $800,000 — and the local housing market is so desperate, the house’s listing agent said the asking price was considerable low.
As reported in the Business Insider, a one-bedroom, one-bathroom house at 121 Gates Street in the popular Bernal Heights neighborhood, went on the market late October. The property was “completely gutted” in a 2016 fire, and the new owners will need to demolish what’s left, according to realtor Jim Laufenberg.
“I suspect it will sell for more than what I’m asking,” Laufenberg told Business Insider, noting that the seller listed the property below market value to gain more interest in the first few weeks.
The cost of the 1,700-square-foot lot demonstrates the housing bubble’s extent, where tech workers create demand quicker than the city can build new housing.
In the photos provided of the home, sunlight can be seen entering through holes in the ceiling, where an early-morning fire engulfed the property. Most of the furniture was destroyed in the fire and only a few filing cabinets were left intact.
There were no injuries in the fire which was caused by a wall-mounted gas heater, according to a San Francisco Fire Commission report.
Laufenberg said potential buyers won’t be looking into the home for its bones. He suggested that its location just north of Cortland Street — a main hub populated by small markets, cafes, restaurants, and nail salons — make it a steal in Bernal Heights.
The residential enclave has seen a spike in popularity in recent years, increasing the median sale price of a single-family home to $1.36 million, up 75% from just five years ago.
“It’s the location, it’s the land, it’s the opportunity to build,” Laufenberg said.
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As reported in a recent article in San Francisco Gate, a Richmond District alley was listed for $35,000.
This certainly makes for one of the most odd and affordable pieces of San Francisco real estate to hit the market recently.
The somewhat narrow stretch of pavement between 22nd and 24th avenues acts as a shared driveway that runs behind a row of homes a block from the Presidio. The alley must be accessible to the homeowners.
The challenge of attaining interested buyers is that there’s nothing you can do with this land. You can’t build on it or park your vehicle there, but you are required to pay taxes and insurance and keep it well-maintained.
So why would anyone ever want to own this alley?
“You can say you own a piece of San Francisco property, or just for fun,” said listing agent Fred Glick of Arrivva. “Actually, I really don’t know why anyone would want it, but there are a lot of people doing strange things out there.”
In a tongue-in-cheek blog post on Medium, Glick offered up some other outlandish ideas such as “Get a price to [remove] all of the driveway cement, sell off a piece of San Francisco to collectors around the world and pay for a new driveway and a profit.”
Glick said the current owner, who lives on the East Coast, bought the alley at a city tax auction without having seen it prior to purchasing it. Now he wants to sell it because he realized it would be a liability.
The listing agent explained that the entire block was originally owned by a corporation and when the individual homes were sold off, the company kept the drive.
“Then one day, the corporation disappeared, for a reason I don’t know,” Glick added, “And the property went up as a tax sale.”
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Longtime residents of Bayview have voiced their concerns over the sudden trend/change that they fear will eventually push them out of their San Francisco neighborhoods.
The fear is attributed to the rapid renovation and growth of home prices as well as the introduction of the tech bus transit system that was resurrected down the 3rd street corridor, according to an article by the SF Bay Area CBS.
Matt Fuller, president of the San Francisco Association of Realtors, attributed the sudden transformation to the impact from Silicon Valley.
“Part of it has been kind of the shift south in the center of gravity of San Francisco real estate,” Fuller said. “People used to want to be in our central or north central neighborhoods as their first choice, now because of Silicon Valley, people would prefer to be on the south side of the city because it will save them 30 minutes on their commute.”
Al Norman, a resident of Bay View, is not happy with what he describes as this gentrification, which seems is trying to push him and his neighbors out.
Others like resident Shamann Walton, who is the current president of the San Francisco Board of Education, understands Norman’s trepidation.
“It’s definitely hard to overstate the change, especially up and down the 3rd street corridor,” said Walton.
It wasn’t that long ago that a median home at Bay View was listed at $360,000. Currently those same homes are now priced at $750,000, a 108 percent increase.
The same issue arose in the Mission District and the city is trying to prevent that same situation where new residents squared off against those who have called the neighborhood home for years.
“Nobody is going to be against economic opportunity or economic drivers and jobs,” Walton said. “But what we have to do is make sure that opportunity that comes is available to the people who have been here forever.”
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Feeling like you are overpaying for rent in today’s market?
It may be assumed that what people paid for housing over a century and a half ago pales in comparison to what housing costs are now.
After researching about the history of where you live, the results of our current reality compared to back in the old days, may be shocking.
The reality is sure to give you a better understanding and appreciation for how much you’re currently paying to rent here.
Housing shortages, steep rents and overpriced groceries are issues that San Francisco residents have dealt with for a long time.
As reported in a somewhat recent article in the San Francisco Gate, it was during the Gold Rush that the city was a society and economy like no other city in America.
Before 1849, San Francisco was a sleepy town with a population of 500, but by August it had ballooned to 6,000. The following year, the population blew up to 25,000 residents. Such a fast, radical shift meant that living quarters were at a premium.
In one example, a lot of land that cost $23,000 in 1848 was sold for $300,000 the next year. Adjusted for inflation, that’s more than $8 million dollars.
As for food, some of it sent all the way around the horn, some of it a rare local product, was also in high demand. One egg could cost as much as $90 in present-day prices.
If San Franciscans are still curious about how much basic goods and services cost in Gold Rush-era San Francisco, some 1850s prices including inflation-adjusted prices in the modern day can easily be found.
It might just put things in perspective and give one peace of mind when shopping at Whole Foods, for instance.
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Home ownership versus renting is up in San Francisco over the last few years, but making monthly mortgage payments is more difficult than ever.
The San Francisco Chronicle considered the minimum income you’d need to purchase a home, including condos, in 19 popular neighborhoods. That number is a whopping median home price just under $1 million.
So where can the average San Franciscan earner live in 2016?
Curbed magazine did the math to figure that out. First, the San Francisco Health Improvement Partnership projects a median household income of just over $84,000 in 2016.
While the federal government has long prescribed spending only 30 percent of monthly income on housing, we’re increasing that margin to 50 percent today because that’s more realistic.
Our median household can probably afford a home in any neighborhood that can extend a monthly mortgage cost of $3,500 a month.
The Chronicle used Trulia data for the last six months to calculate a cost based on a 20 percent down payment, 30-year mortgage, and 3.75 percent interest rate.
The results show that only two neighborhoods – the Tenderloin and the Bayview – manage to be attainable using these figures.
The census does provide a higher median San Francisco income of more than $88,500 a year but even using that figure isn’t enough to be able to afford the average home in the next least expensive neighborhood, the Excelsior.
Curbed then researched condos for more neighborhood options which is when prospects became a little better in that market. Using 2016 condo sales figures from
Paragon Real Estate, the same 20/30/3.75 formula from before, and the highest of the available income estimates ($88,500), a few extra neighborhoods popped up including the Outer Richmond, Civic Center, Ingleside Heights, Hunters Point, and Candlestick Point, Visitacion Valley, Ocean View, and Silver Terrace.
That’s ten neighborhoods most San Franciscans can potentially buy, assuming a generous definition of the median wage, decent loan terms, and that locals are willing to commit way more to housing than is usually recommended.
If that doesn’t tell you just how much most people here want to keep living in San Francisco, nothing will.
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California Gov. Jerry Brown has signed a state senate bill allowing public school districts to provide subsidized housing for teachers and school employees, potentially offering a reprieve for San Francisco area educators.
Senate Bill 1413, also known as the Teacher Housing Act, was sponsored by Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) and signed into law on Sept. 27 by Gov. Brown. The legislation cites California’s dwindling teacher population as a driving force behind the act, saying the state’s supply of teachers has reached a 12-year low.
In San Francisco, more than 700 teachers had to be hired before the start of the 2015-2016 school year to meet the needs of students. The plight of school faculty in the San Francisco Unified School District is similar to that of employees in districts across the state: rising housing costs.
In order to combat the pressure expensive housing is putting on educators and keep them from moving away, districts are now able to offer affordable rental housing to employees.
The Teacher Housing Act opens up the possibility of districts using available federal, state, and local funds, as well as partnering with private developers, to create rent-based housing complexes for faculty.
The bill essentially greenlights existing plans in San Francisco, where the Examiner reports the SFUSD is already working with the Mayor’s Office of Housing to construct teacher housing after January of 2017.
Sen. Leno said he believes the enactment of his legislation will “help school districts directly address the housing affordability challenges facing teachers and reduce high turnover rates.”
“When high quality teachers can’t afford to live where they work, the entire community suffers,” he also said.
Currently, the average rent in San Francisco is nearly $4,000 a month, according to Rent Jungle.
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