256 PAGE STREET, SAN FRANCISCO CALIFORNIA

My first full moon open house – the reluctant star fleetingly appears. From the subject of livingabovesf.com.com. #living415

21 Jan 2019

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Condo in the Center of It All

256 PAGE STREET,
SAN FRANCISCO CALIFORNIA

>Offered at $1,398,000

Showing schedule:

Tuesday, January 29th from 11:30pm - 1:00pm

Offers, if any, will be reviewed at 12:00pm on Wednesday, January 30th, 2019.

Hyper-central location near the Octavia corridor
3 bedrooms/1.5 baths + laundry room
Elegant double-parlor Living/Dining combination with decorative historic fireplace
Parisian feel eat-in kitchen with exposed brick, professional grade appliances and granite counters
New designer lighting and paint throughout
Newly refinished softwood floors
Sunny shared deck for entertaining and BBQing
1 car parking + storage at the back on Lily Street with access to home from garage through the garden
Immediate entry to the freeway south and steps to transit downtown + shuttles
Striking high ceilings, exquisite mouldings and other Victorian details
Condominium HOA Dues: $350 per month
Year built: 1885
Square footage: 1,832 per tax record
Great Walk/Bike/Transit Score: 96/95/82

Living Hayes Valley: In the Center of it All

Can you imagine that once all of San Francisco, from Van Ness to Ocean Beach, was undeveloped? Imagine the feelings of those first few home owners as they planned the details of their stunning modern masterpieces in the Eastlake Stick Style. You can feel how excited they must have been in their enthusiasm for all the little details (many of them ordered from a catalog) that provided so many ways to personalize their new home.

133 Years Later …

Now located in the geographical and cultural center of San Francisco, 256 Page offers delightful period details in abundance along with modern conveniences like its wonderful remodeled eat-in kitchen with a Viking Range, built in fridge and wine chiller, Nest controlled central heat, in-home laundry, and an exotic Indian slate bathroom with oversized soaking tub. Its gracious high ceilings, warm wide-plank wood floors and spacious rooms will give you respite from the City even as you enjoy being at its very center.

The location is amazing. You can be on the freeway south or the train downtown in mere seconds but walk to enjoy meditation at the SF Zen Center, coffee at Mercury Cafe, brunch at Straw and dinner at Revelry Cafe – and that’s all without leaving the block! Other places beckon – think Zuni Cafe, Suppenkuche, Il Borgo, or the Blue Bottle in Linden Alley. And culture also abounds – from hanging in Patricia’s Green, to enjoying music at the San Francisco Jazz Center or the San Francisco Symphony, a lecture at City Arts & Lectures (what else!) to the SF Opera or the Ballet – all within a few minutes walk.

18 Jan 2019

Blog, Listings, Properties

San Francisco Real Estate Market Update: 2018 in Review

For the first time in seven years, the trend line shifted from up to down for single family home sold prices in San Francisco. They eked out a 0.5% increase* for the year.

Likewise, median condo sold prices peaked in March and ended the year with anannual appreciation of 3.6%.

In retrospect, 2018 was probably the start of the leveling off of the very frothy San Francisco housing market. This is a natural part of the real estate cycle, as the affordability gap widens between rising prices and wage gains. Real estate is a highly cyclical segment of the economy and a seven year run of rising prices is a very long up-leg on that cycle.

Because inventory remains critically low, it is still a sellers market. Expect 2019 to remain highly competitive for buyers, but probably with less exuberant overbid levels.

18 Jan 2019

Blog, Market News

Property Taxes Around The Country

Do you ever wonder about property taxes in other places? I know I have. Property taxes are used to fund state government and pay for things like schools, jails and county health services. CNN has put together this handy interactive map using data from the Tax Policy Center. Predictably, when you leave the map set to “dollars” the Bay Area has some of the higher tax bills. But when you set the map to “% of home price” we are among the lowest – only 0.59% in San Francisco! Many places nationally pay over 2% on average annually. Take a look! read more →

18 Jan 2019

Why is the value of tenant occupied property in SF so low compared to the rest of the market?

Why is tenant occupied property harder to sell and less valuable than vacant property in San Francisco? There are a few different factors making tenant occupied property less valuable and/or harder to sell.

#1: Property condition

In San Francisco the majority of properties are prepped to sell to the hilt to achieve maximum value. New paint, refinished floors and staging are the starting point. But often we change the light fixtures, fix anything that’s broken and even may go so far as to remodel the kitchen and/or baths to get the highest price. We might also do significant landscaping. In the last year I have renovated/remodeled more than six homes before putting them on the market. Some examples of before and after values:

One in the Sunset: would have sold for 1.2 and we got 1.465M= 265k or + 22%

One in NOPA: would have sold for 1.1 and we got 1.5M= 400k or + 36%

One in Pacifica: would have sold for maybe 650 because it was moldy and we got 1015k= 365k or + 56%

In each case, the investment on the part of the owner was less than 50k and you cannot make these improvements with tenants in the home.

#2: Difficulty for the new owner to occupy the property

Many people are willing to buy a home where the tenant has previously be evicted or bought out but they would never undertake this themselves. Here are some reasons why:

-they are morally opposed

-it just makes them uncomfortable

-This is the big one: they are spending everything they’ve got just to buy the house and the financial risk that the tenant might not move is too much for them.

Roughly, the process of doing an owner move in eviction costs 18k+/- and will take a minimum of 2 months based on statutory requirements. It is generally wise to budget 25k and 4 months. The tenants may want to be bought out at a higher than statutory rate because they think they have a way of fighting the OMI. The fact that in order to occupy the property they will have to go through an legal process with an uncertain outcome is something most buyers cannot stomach and this decreases the value of the property in proportion to the perceived risk.

There is a lot more to say on this subject and you can find more info here: https://g3mh.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/2018-Tenant-Eviction-FAQs.pdf

#3: Rents are low

This is important especially in multi unit where you have investor buyers. The value of a property is related to the cap rate or gross rent multiplier (“GRM”) and this is based on the rents for the units. Buildings in Sf sell for between approximately 14 and 22 GRM depending on the outlook for turnover, banked rents, etc. The GRM is the number of years it would take to pay back the purchase price based solely on the gross rent (without subtracting expenses). So if you have a property with rent of 2500/month, the value will be between 420k and 660k to an investor if they cannot see an easy way to raise the rents.

#4: Harder to show the property and people looking are just uncomfortable

Some tenants are lovely and make it easy to want to keep them in possession of their homes. They clean up, make the bed, and serve homemade piroshki to the realtors (true story). Other tenants – not so much. There might be threatening signs, deliberately bad housekeeping, or shouting. You name it, I’ve seen it. I was followed through a SFH in the sunset with a movie camera, a movie light with a a boom microphone flapping in my face. Most tenants are somewhere in the middle. Whatever the case, most buyers are uncomfortable with the feeling they are invading someone’s home – and perhaps rightly so! I think it is easy to see why this causes the property to sell for less.

How does all of this affect value? When I’ve studied SFH, tenant occupied homes without illegal in-laws sell for about 30% less than their value. Tenant occupied SFH with occupied illegal units can sell for as low as 50% of their vacant, improved value. With the median price of a SFH at about 1.6MM, this is a lot of money.

I have done extensive research into 2 unit buildings in particular and I found that a single vacant unit increased the value of the building by about 20% and that having both units vacant increased the value about 25%. This is in cases where the building was not remodeled. If an owner is able to, as in #1 above, stage and improve the home, the difference can be far greater.

If you have questions about a property you own or are interested in, I am happy to weigh in on the potential. Just give me a call or shoot me a text at 415-269-4663. read more →

17 Jan 2019