Connect with Luba’s Real Estate Blog on Facebook!

Connect with Luba's Real Estate Blog on Facebook

I’m sure you’re noticed the blogging here has been getting less and less frequent.  And had as I try to keep up, life sort of keeps getting in the way of posting.

But – I’ve realized that’s not really a terrible thing.

You see – for those of know that know me personally, you know I’m a workaholic.  My priorities have been working with clients, blogging, writing newsletter, and then somewhere near the bottom of the list was my family, my relationship, my friends and my dog. 

And again, for those others that know me personally, you know that I lost a dear friend to colon cancer earlier this year.  She was in her early 30’s.

And frankly, the shock of it all make me start thinking…

I love San Francisco real estate.  I love what I do for a living.  But frankly, I need to be a person first and a Realtor second.  Most of my business comes from referral and so as I’ve gotten busier the blog as taken a backburner so that I can reprioritize myself. 

Family, relationship, the dog, friends – these are now my priorities.  Taking care of my clients is almost as high on that list.  But blogging and newsletter writing have fallen way down on the scale of importance. 

But, I’m not gone.  I’m still here, I’m still working, and I’m still blogging from time to time.  But mostly, these days you’ll find short updates on the market and on what’s going on in SF on my facebook business page.

If you haven’t liked it or become a fan or whatever it is you’re supposed to do these days, you should.  You won’t get the in-depth commentary you used to find here (and will still find here on occasion.  But you will get to keep up with happenings in San Francisco and my random thoughts on the real estate market. 

So head on over to my facebook business page, like it, fan it, and again, start keeping up with the quick thoughts about this amazing city, its real estate and all it has to offer!

Hope to see you there!!!

Gangs of San Francisco (On a T-Shirt)

Happy Friday, Folks!

Thought I’d share a fun, and not too well known (at least not yet) site that features some AWESOME San Francisco T-shirts.

The site is www.gangsofsanfrancisco.com and their shirts rock!

From the site’s “about me” page:

Gangs of San Francisco is a one man operation out of San Francisco’s Outer Richmond. A work in progress, it is run by me, Laureano Faedi. A self taught maker of things, I do all the design work, silkscreening, shipping and research. Having migrated to the Bay Area from Buenos Aires 30 years ago I have found San Francisco to be one of the best cities in the world to live in. This project serves as an outlet for my learning of it’s history as well as a way to teach myself silkscreening. I hope that not only will people enjoy my products but that it might also inspire them to learn more about the city.

His collection is a great start, but I’d LOVE to see more!  Let’s not forget about the various racetracks in the City, the brothels (oh yeah, we had those), the cemetaries (all over the west side of SF until they were moved out to Colma) and even old sports teams like the San Francisco Seals!

Anyhow – the shirts are cool, the shirt maker is a small local business man, and what better way to dress your weekend best than in a comfy shirt that celebrates your San Francisco pride!

Enjoy your weekend!  And buy a shirt!

PG&E – San Francisco’s Big Bad Wolf

I hate meter reading day.  In fact, my alarm just went off to notify me that it’s time for me to call PG&E and give them my gas & electricity meter reading. 

But, I hate meter reading day.  Sometimes, I forget.  And the rest of the time, it’s just a pain in the ass. 

Unfortunately, my meters are located in places where PG&E can’t see them from outside my house.

So when I heard about PG&E Smartmeters, I was SUPER excited.

But the wind has been taken out of my sails somewhat.  Seems PG&E’s mew smart meters aren’t that smart.  They’re full of errors.  BOOOOOO!

In fact, apparently there’s SO many errors that the San Francisco City Attorney has asked them to slow their roll.

For the full article, click here. 

And of course, whether you own SF real estate, or rent in the City, you might be affected by this too. 

In my fantasy world, PG&E will work out the kinks, fix the errors and make my meter reading life easy.

Till then, I’ll be calling it in manually. Bah humbug.

More News on San Francisco Pay to Play Condo Converstion Policy

So I got a GREAT email from Plan C.  And while I usually love to add my two cents, they pretty much said it ALL for me.  So here it is, verbatim, for your condo conversion supporting pleasure:

We have good news to report regarding the proposed one time “condo bypass” for TIC owners, originally proposed in 2009 by Supervisor Elsbernd: the Mayor has included the condo bypass proposal as part of this year’s budget.

The details of the proposal are as follows:   TICs must have participated in the 2010 condo conversion lottery in order to be eligible for the condo bypass.  The fee for the bypass starts at $20,000 per unit for those who first participated in the lottery in 2010, and declines by 20% for each previous year of unsuccessful lottery participation. So, if 2010 was the first year your TIC participated in the lottery, your fee will be $20,000 per unit in the building. If 2010 was your second year, your fee will be $16,000 per unit. If 2010 was your third year of participation your fee with be $12,000 per unit. If 2010 was your fourth year $8,000/unit, and if it was your fifth year and beyond, $4,000/unit.  Note:  If your TIC only qualified to participate in the last 25 units which were drawn from Pool B of the 2010 lottery (because of eviction history), you are not eligible for the one-time bypass.

Plan C has worked with the Mayor’s office on this issue since it was first proposed, and we are very pleased that the Mayor has included the plan in the budget.  The proposal will bring significant revenue (likely in excess of $8M) to the city during this time of budget crisis – money that will provide funding to affordable and supportive housing programs that might otherwise be cut.  At the same time the legislation will bring much needed ownership and mortgage relief to middle income San Franciscans that owner occupy their TICs.  This is sensible legislation that helps everyone – it addresses the needs of TIC owners AND provides funding to low-income residents with special housing needs.  Tenants are also protected – to be eligible to participate in the lottery, the TIC building must not have been subject to recent Ellis Act evictions, must not have evicted any protected tenants and must not have more than one no fault eviction.

How you can help!

Email the Mayor and Key Supervisors. The Mayor and the Supervisors need to hear from us – contact them today by clicking here – let them know that you support the one-time condo bypass. Tell them that the program would help thousands of first-time homeowners, would hurt no one, and that it would help solve the City’s budget mess. And then tell them that you support overall reform of the completely broken condo conversion process! If you have the time and desire to call them, do that too. (contact information available here).

Attend the budget hearing on June 21.  The condo bypass will be considered at the budget hearing at City Hall on June 21. The hearing starts at 10AM, and the Condo Bypass is Item Number 4.  We don’t expect the Board to get to Item 4 until at least noon.  Please come and speak in public comment – tell the supervisors that you support the condo bypass! We know that the opponents of this program will be out in force – so it is critical to have supporters there as well.  If you are able to attend the hearing, let us know by email at info@plancsf.org- we may be able to give you better information as to exactly when to show up as it gets closer to June 21.

 

And We’re Back….

So you may have noticed I have been MIA for a while. 

Some of you sent sweet emails asking if everything was OK.  Big hugs to you!

Some of you sent crappy emails telling me you were never reading my blog again since I hadn’t posted in a while.  No hard feelings, but you also won’t really be missed.  I wish you the best, and I’m sure you have found a new real estate blog that will keep you happy.

Frankly – sometimes life comes first.  Things like being there for family and taking care of my clients are more important than blogging.  I’m a human first, a realtor second, and a blogger third.  So when something ha

Bug that being said – life has calmed down and so, it’s time to blog again.  I’m not promising daily posts, but I’ll try to keep you aprised of all the goodies that are going down in the San Francisco real estate market. 

Stay tuned – real life real estate  info is heading your way!

Dolla Dolla Billz Changing the San Francisco Real Estate Game

So sales of homes in San Francisco are well, moving like hotcakes, at least relative to the last year or two. 

Socketsite reported that “recorded home sales volume in San Francisco was up 50.6% on a year-over-year basis last month“ and that “median sales price in March was $675,000, up 11.0% compared to March ’09 ($608,000) and up 7.6% compared to the month prior.”

Not enough evidence for you that we may have seen the bottom of the market? 

Well, how’s the evidence that multiple offers are on the rise again?  Out of the last 8 offers I’ve written for clients, 7 properties received multiple offers. 

But what’s MORE interesting, at least in my opinion, is that we seem to be seeing a major resurgence of the all cash offer! 

Yup.  In the last few weeks, the words “all cash offer” are a phrase I’m hearing on a daily basis.  Lenders are talking about it.  Escrow officers are talking about it.  And without a doubt, real estate agents are talking about it. 

But what does this all MEAN? 

Someone asked me the other day, “Why the hell would enyone ever tie up so much money in San Francisco real estate?”  Well, I’m going to go out on a limb here, but it might mean that the folks that are smart enough (or lucky enough) to amass a giant pile of cold hard cash seem to think that dumping all of their dough into real estate RIGHT NOW is a smart investment decision. 

Prices don’t seem to be going any lower and with sales spiking upwards and prices creeping upwards, it might be safe to deduce that the bottom of the SF housing market has come and gone.

I’d love to hear from some of you cash buyers, or even agents with cash buyers whether my theories are sorta correct or completely far fetched.  You can drop a note in the comments, or if you want to keep yourself anonymous, email me.

Spend Less Green to Go More Green in San Francisco

Good news my earth loving, tree hugging, composting, recycling, reusing San Franciscans! 

From the San Francisco Association of Realtors:

San Francisco Homeowners Have New Way to Pay for Going Green

San Francisco homeowners have a new way of paying for solar panels, energy-efficient appliances and low-flow toilets.

A new city-run program, GreenFinanceSF, will give San Franciscans the money to pay for such projects up front and let them pay it back through installments on their property tax bills. Berkeley pioneered the idea in 2007, and since then, hundreds of cities, counties and states have adopted their own versions.

For more details, visit https://greenfinancesf.org/systems/energy.

That’s great news for you, your pocket, your carbon footprint, global warming and all that.  If you’ve been thinking of making some environmentally friendly upgrades to your home, you may have just run out of excuses.

March 2010 San Francisco Housing Sales Data is Here!

Yet again, Luba’s San Francisco Real Estate Blog brings you latest San Francisco Real Estate market report here. (You can also view previous market updates by selecting the archives on the upper right portion of the screen). Heres’s a little glimpse of the report:

Property Sales up Sharply in March

Sales of single-family, re-sale homes were up 87.5% from February. Year-over-year, home sales were up 66.7%. This is the ninth month in a row home sales have been higher than the year before.

The median price for homes gained 13.5% from February, and was up 14,5% year-over-year.

Sales of lofts/condos also increased sharply last month, rising 51.1% from February, and up 82.1% year-over-year.

The median price for lofts/condos rose 3.1% from February, and was up 3.2% year-over-year.

The increase in sales was welcome and put home sales up 39.9% year-to-date. For lofts/condos, sales are up 73.8%.

With the new state tax credit and the federal tax credit still in effect until the end of April, we expect sales for the Spring selling season to be strong.

Read on for full details.

Getting Real – Truth in Advertising

On this wet and rainy Monday, I thought I’d share a refreshing little listing that put the “real” back in “realtor!”

Real estate agents are known for some serious fluff in our marketing pieces.  We use words like “cozy” when we mean “tiny”.  Or we say it has “potential” when we mean “once you rip out the kitchen, the bathrooms, the wallpaper, and that hideous statue it’ll be exactly what you want.”  

I could go on with the examples, but you get the point.

But for once, I found a little something something that was about as honest as it gets.

The listing agent’s marketing remarks:

Needs everything, not just TLC… but everything! Not to be even concidered unless you are a contractor. Still want to see it? Be prepared to walk lightly because you may fall through the floor. Nice roof just a few years old,at least something is good on the thing.

High five for a nice dose of reality! 

Full details on the bargain priced fixer (Just $350,000) located at 522 Athens in San Francisco can be found by clicking here.

30 Days of Sold San Francisco Properties

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 03/08/10 – 04/08/10