Archive for February, 2009
February 17, 2009
Welcome back to our new series, Building Profiles. Last time we took a good look at one of San Francisco’s older condo buildings, The Bellaire Tower. This time, we’re taking things into the 21st Century. As a matter of fact, this building was the first skyscraper to be completed in the 21st Century in San Francisco.
Part 5-star hotel, part luxury residences, the Four Seasons of San Francisco is a magnificent complex located at 757 Market between 3rd and 4th Streets. You can access the hotel from Stevenson Street, a small alleyway off of 3rd.
The Four Seasons San Francisco (courtesy of company website)
Stats and Scoops:
- The luxury condominiums within the building have an address of 765 Market Street
- Neighborhood: South of Market (SoMa) or Financial District South
- Year Built: 2001
- Style: Modern
- Height: 398 feet, 121 meters
- Layout: 419 hotel and condo units on 40 floors. 277 units are hotel rooms, 142 are luxury condominiums.
- Property Type: Mixed Use – Hotel, retail, and residential condominium
- Architects: Del Campo & Maru Architects, Handel Architects
- Other Notable Projects: Handel designed the new condos on Folsom, BLU, the new massive condo tower Millennium, and the Hokua condo tower in Honolulu.
- Non-linear viscous dampers limit wind impact (Emporis.com)
- The Four Seasons is the 44th tallest building in San Francisco.
- The Four Seasons is 1 meter taller than the Westin St. Francis at Union Square (the highrise, not the historic building).
- It would take 2.14 Four Seasons buildings stacked on top of each other to equal the height of the Transamerica Pyramid.
- The Four Seasons (121 meters) is nearly twice as tall as Coit Tower (64 meters).
- 555 California Street (237 meters) is nearly twice as tall as the Four Seasons.
- If the Four Seasons were moved to Chicago, it would be the 178th tallest building. In New York, it would rank #372.
- The Woolworth Building in NYC is twice as tall as the Four Seasons.
For real estate stats and pics, continue reading –> Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in Building Profiles, Financial District, Neighborhood Info, SoMa | Tagged 5-star, 765 market, four seasons, hotel, luxury condominiums, penthouse, san francisco, san francisco real estate | Leave a Comment »
February 16, 2009
The President of the National Association of Realtors, Charles McMillan, sent out a message yesterday (Sunday, February 15, 2009) regarding the Economic Stimulus Package. Here are the bullet points from the bill that President Obama is expected to sign tomorrow (Tuesday, February 17, 2009):
- “The loan limits will be raised to $727,000 in high cost areas.”
- “The tax credit will be raised to $8,000 with NO payback [a true credit].”
- “Interest rates have come down 125-150 basis points.”
- “The bill has over $50 billion in it for foreclosure mitigation, with Geitners Treasury plan signaling that the second half of TARP and TALF will be used to mitigate foreclosures through a government guarantee, drive down interest rates by buying another $200-300 billion of mortgage paper from the GSES’s thereby freeing them up to do the same with new mortgages.”
- “Fannie has just agreed to lift the cap of 4 investment properties eligible for loans and raise it to 10.”
Furthermore, the following have been preserved:
- Mortgage interest deductions
- Real estate tax deductions
- $250,000 (single) and $500,000 (married) capital gains exclusions
Clear!
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Posted in News | Tagged $727000, economic stimulus package, fannie mae, san francisco, san francisco real estate, tax credit, tax deduction | Leave a Comment »
February 13, 2009
Ever been curious about how much of our local condo market is comprised of studios? 1 bedroom units? 2 bedroom units? Well this post is for you.
How many bedrooms do YOU need?
We took a good look at the San Francisco condo market and calculated what percentage of condo sales were taking place at each bedroom level, and plotted them on a chart to see if any trends were identifiable. For example, are 2 bedroom units becoming more popular? Less? Unchanged? Let’s find out.
Continue reading to see the trends –> Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in Macro-Level Info, Nerdy RE Analysis | Tagged condo market, condominiums, condos, distribution, market share, number of bedrooms, san francisco, san francisco real estate, trends | 2 Comments »
February 13, 2009
With most Americans in penny-pinching mode, it’s especially tough times for interior decorators. The industry is changing and for those looking to get designer looks without paying a fortune, the time could be right. Here are a few resources we’ve run into lately that have cost-effective offerings in the interior design industry:
Even a person with sub-par math skills knows when it's time to pinch those pennies!
- Instant/Space. Offering: Instant/Space applies professional design services remotely, saving both designer and client time and money. Basically you take photographs of the room(s) you would like decorated, fill out a questionnaire, and submit electronically. Instant/Space then decorates the room by sending you the fabric swatches, color scheme, and shopping list of pieces (which can be bought at popular stores in your locale or online). Price? They charge different prices by room. For example, a living room consultation costs $1,495.
- Rafe Black Interiors. Offering: Rafe Black is a San Francisco designer who is offering a $495 flat fee to design a room. Design services include a space plan, furniture selection, paint, fabric and color palette. At $495 per room, this is a tough deal to beat.
- Decorati. Offering: Decorati.com doesn’t have a specific “deal” like the others do, but they do give consumers access to product lines, pieces, and showrooms that were traditionally only available to industry professionals. You can sign up and browse their catalogs, which have design elements in all price ranges.
- Design Staff. We’ve all been to a Home Depot or Ethan Allen and seen the design consultants working with customers. These people aid in choosing elements and colors that work well together without having to hire a designer at all. Sure, it’s not the attention to detail you’ll get with an interior decorator, but they do add value to those with very basic needs.
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Posted in News, Tips | Tagged budget, decorati, designer, instant space, interior decorator, interior design, rafe black, san francisco real estate | Leave a Comment »
February 12, 2009
In case you hadn’t figured it out yet, we spend a lot of time building and looking at spreadsheets over here at InsideSFRealEstate. We’re constantly looking at ways of improving our analysis in our search for truth. A criticism we have of our own analysis is always looking at things on an annual scale. Generally, this is okay. But 2008 was a weird year. Very weird… particularly the last quarter.
How bad was the dive at the end of 2008?
For this reason, we decided to break Q4 off from the rest of the year and compare it to Q4′s of years past. We felt that this might give us more insight into just how dramatic the end of ’08 really was. And oh boy, did we discover a dive! Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in Macro-Level Info, Nerdy RE Analysis | Tagged decline, depreciation, dive, fourth quarter, median sales price, median values, q4, san francisco, san francisco real estate, Tips, trends | Leave a Comment »
February 12, 2009
What is a pocket listing? A pocket listing is a home that is not being advertised to the general public through the MLS or a listing that will come on the market in the future but right now is still a secret. Many homes in San Francisco sell while off the open market, so pocket listing culture is a big deal. Every week, we’ll be sharing info about pocket listings that we know about. Information on pocket listings is sparse and secretive, so pardon us if we seem short on details for the purposes of our blog. If you are interested in learning more, you can click HERE to contact us. Without further adieu, here are this week’s pocket listings:
- Out of our pocket and over to you
To see this week’s pocket listings, continue reading –>
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Posted in Pocket Listings, Tips | Tagged not on mls, off market listings, Pocket Listings, private listings, san francisco, san francisco real estate | Leave a Comment »
February 10, 2009
A fairly common question we come across in everyday business is “How do 1-bedroom condos perform when compared to 2-bedroom condos?“
It’s an interesting question, and we set out to identify some trends. We looked at all condo sales in San Francisco dating back to 1995, and separated them out by number of bedrooms into four groups: Studios, 1-bedroom, 2-bedrooms, and 3-bedrooms. What we found was somewhat revealing about the condo market in general. *Please keep in mind, we have adjusted the median values for inflation to get a more accurate view of the market.
Can the number of bedrooms keep your property value afloat?
- Studio medians peaked in 2005 and are down 12.84% since.
- 1-bedroom medians peaked in 2005 and are down 9.04% since.
- 2-bedroom medians peaked in 2005 and are down Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in Macro-Level Info, Nerdy RE Analysis | Tagged 1-bedroom, 2-bedrooms, 3-bedrooms, condominiums, condos, days on market, dom, median sales price, medians, san francisco, san francisco real estate, stats, studio, trends | Leave a Comment »
February 10, 2009
A fellow real estate statistics nerd (actually, this guy’s a developer, Realtor, AND attorney), wrote an interesting article recently on his blog, Misha’s Musings. He put an old hypothesis to the test with San Francisco’s market data. The hypothesis? When marketing times go up, sales prices go down.
Interested to see if the inverse correlation was proven? Click HERE to check out the article.
World's tiniest inverse correlation...
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Posted in Macro-Level Info, Nerdy RE Analysis | Tagged days on market, dom, inverse correlation, misha's musings, sales price, san francisco, san francisco real estate, statistics, stats | Leave a Comment »
February 10, 2009
We’ve been reading a lot lately about the $15,000 home buyer tax credit proposal that is currently in the Senate’s version of the economic stimulus bill (phew, that’s a mouthful!) What we have yet to run across, however, is something that clearly spells out who this is for and what the implications are to the typical person. The folks at The Wall Street Journal have put together an informative “FAQ” that makes the details in the bill easy to understand. Continue reading to see the snipit.
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Posted in News | Tagged $15000 tax credit, bill, economic stimulus, home buyer, san francisco, san francisco real estate, senate | 1 Comment »
February 9, 2009
South Beach is an interesting part of the City to analyze. There has been so much development occurring in the past couple decades to make it a poster-child for urban renaissance. However, with rapid change comes big gambling. Big winners and in some cases, big losers.
"I've got a pair of South Beaches and a pair of Nob Hills... what 'chu got?"
We took a close look at the South Beach condominium market (which includes lofts) to see what types of trends are going on in the ‘hood. We’ve looked at trends here before, but we’ve taken the analysis a step further by 1) inflation-adjusting the values to account for the changing value of the dollar, and 2) overlaid the neighborhood trend with that of the entire City to gain a sense of relation.
Before we take a look at the trends, a few points about the data must be made. First, the data comes from MLS (like all of our analysis). Developers who are selling brand new condos (for example, at the Infinity) do not put their sales prices in the MLS. This is kept secret so they can adjust their sales prices on the fly, based on demand. You can thank them for that… it’s not our doing! Even though new development sales are left out of the analysis does not render the data useless, however. Resales (sales from one person to another) are tracked in the MLS, and it’s the resale market owners should be most concerned with.
With that said, here’s a look at what’s going on with South Beach condos on the whole: Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in Appreciation and Hold Times, Getting Granular, Market Check Up, Micro-Level Info, Neighborhood Info, Nerdy RE Analysis, South Beach | Tagged condominiums, condos, infinity, lofts, medians, san francisco, san francisco real estate, soma, south beach, south of market, trends, values | 1 Comment »
February 6, 2009
What’s going on in Potrero Hill lately? We’ve seen a few interesting single family home listings in the area as of late and were curious as to what they are up against in today’s market. As we learned in a previous post, single family homes have come down 9.9% since peak (inflation adjusted), and 7.4% if you leave out District 10. So how does Potrero Hill’s single family home market compare to that? Has it dodged bullets or sputtered and stalled? That’s what you’re about to find out.
Are single family homes sputtering in Potrero Hill?
Continue reading to see the trend –> Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in Getting Granular, Micro-Level Info, Neighborhood Info, Nerdy RE Analysis, Potrero Hill | Tagged analysis, houses, median sales price, potrero hill, sales, san francisco, san francisco real estate, single family homes, Tips, trends | Leave a Comment »
February 4, 2009
One can often tell how hot or cold a real estate market is by how long it takes a typical home to sell. When homes are selling within a few weeks of hitting the market, things are pretty hot. Conversely, when homes sit on the shelf for a while, the market is cold. The duration of time a home is on the market is known as “marketing time”, “days on market”, or “DOM” for short.
In any given U.S. market, marketing times averaging less than 30 days signal a red hot market where properties are selling like hot cakes. Average marketing times between 31 and 59 days signal a strong market. When marketing times are between 60 and 180 days, the market is believed to be in balance.
Remember when homes were selling like hotcakes?
Once average marketing times surpass 180 days, however, things are looking grim and signal a weakening of the market in question.
How do we know these cutoffs are reliable indicators of market conditions? Well, we didn’t just make these numbers up– they’re actually what the banks have set forth as their guidelines. Matter of fact, average marketing times are printed right there in the appraisal report, which the lender scrutinizes carefully (especially these days).
Appraisal report snipit (click to enlarge)
Now that we’ve discussed marketing times and what a hot market, a market in balance, and a cold market look like, how would you like to see some trends in San Francisco? Well that’s just what we’ve done. We plotted average and median marketing times for all property types in the City and looked at the trends over a 14-year history. Here’s the chart:
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Posted in Home Buying, Home Selling, Macro-Level Info, Nerdy RE Analysis, Tips | Tagged analysis, days on market, dom, history, marketing times, san francisco, san francisco real estate, Tips, trends | 1 Comment »
February 4, 2009
What is a pocket listing? A pocket listing is a home that is not being advertised to the general public through the MLS or a listing that will come on the market in the future but right now is still a secret. Many homes in San Francisco sell while off the open market, so pocket listing culture is a big deal. Every week, we’ll be sharing info about pocket listings that we know about. Information on pocket listings is sparse and secretive, so pardon us if we seem short on details for the purposes of our blog. If you are interested in learning more, you can click HERE to contact us. Without further adieu, here are this week’s pocket listings:
- Out of our pocket and over to you
To see this week’s pocket listings, continue reading –>
Read the rest of this entry ?
Posted in Pocket Listings, Tips | Tagged not on mls, off market listings, Pocket Listings, private listings, san francisco, san francisco real estate | Leave a Comment »
February 3, 2009
You may be wondering what on earth we’re talking about with a question like that. What we are referring to is the total dollar amount of real estate sales during a given year.
For example, did you know that there was $5.196 billion in real estate sales last year in San Francisco (per MLS)? Add to that a few for-sale-by-owners, a couple private sales, and a decent number of developer sales that are not reflected in MLS, and you’ve got yourself a decent-sized industry. Or do you?
In order to put things in perspective, we’ve compared last year’s total (we’ll just call it around $5.5 to $6 billion) to ten other entities and the results make good food for thought (not to mention great cocktail party conversation).
Mmmm... food for thought...
1. Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company (yes, the chewing gum company that owns brands such as Lifesavers and Orbit): 2007 Total Sales = $5.4 billion. That’s some serious candy.
2. Major League Baseball: Total revenues in 2007 = $6.07 billion. Hot dog and beer revenues = $20 billion. Just kidding about that last part.
3. Ford Motor Company: LOST $5.9 billion in cash reserves during Q4 of 2008. Ouch.
4. Bill Gates net worth 2008: $58 billion. That would equal TEN and a HALF years of all of San Francisco’s real estate agents and brokers working at today’s pace to generate that amount of money. How’s that for putting into perspective how wealthy Gates is, and for that matter, how little we are? FYI – there are an estimated 2,500 to 3,000 agents that do business in San Francisco.
5. Bail-outs anyone? How about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which could tap the the US Treasury for $51 billion in the coming weeks. Again, that’s about 10 years worth of every agent and broker’s efforts (at today’s levels).
6. RIM (they manufacture Blackberry phones): Hit $6.01 billion in revenue for 2008. Who would’ve thought the phones we agents use outdo all of us? Hehe…
7. Bay Area video games company Electronic Arts predicts revenue of $6 billion by 2011.
8. Levi Strauss & Company: $4.4 billion annual revenue in 2007. Who’s wearing the pants now, Levi’s?
9. Amazon.com: $6.7 billion in Q4 of 2008. So us agents and brokers are producing less than a quarter of what Amazon does annually. Anyone else humbled by this?
10. The total value of Notre Dame’s endowment fund: $6 billion. I wish I had a little endowment fund…
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Posted in Countdowns & Rankings, Macro-Level Info, Neat Stuff & Gadgets, Nerdy RE Analysis | Tagged 2008, agents, brokers, gross sales, rankings, revenue, sales revenue, san francisco, san francisco real estate, total sales | Leave a Comment »
February 2, 2009
We’re having fun with our new formulas that give us the ability to adjust sales prices based on the Consumer Price Index. Just what is inflation adjusting?
Let’s say your parents bought a place in 1990 for $100,000 and today it is worth $500,000. One might assume that the value has increased $400,000. However, the value of the dollar has changed over the past 18 years, so we need to correct for those changes in order to determine how much true appreciation their home has accrued. What we find when we adjust for inflation is that $100,000 in 1990 is equivalent to $162,529 today. This changes the appreciation rate a bit. The home has actually appreciated $337,471 in real terms, not $400,000. Adjusting for inflation gives us a more accurate depiction of what the market is doing.
Balloons aren't the only things that inflate...
We wanted to revisit an old post that was one of our most popular on the blog to date. We discussed how much home prices have come down in San Francisco, and have since taken the data, inflation adjusted it, and have some new numbers (although very similar conclusions to last time).
Keep reading, this is good stuff!
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Posted in Home Buying, Home Selling, Macro-Level Info, Market Check Up, Nerdy RE Analysis, Tips | Tagged analysis, appreciation, depreciation, districts, median, median sales price, rankings, san francisco, san francisco real estate, Tips, trends, values | 2 Comments »
