I’m always running into people in San Francisco that want to know what their home is worth.  It’s usually at a party after a glass of wine, and while there are some party tricks I can perform, an off the cuff evaluation of your property isn’t one of them.  To give you a property evaluation, I need to see your home, its views, its layout, its fixtures, its conditions, and THEN I can provide you with an honest and complete home evaluation.

The New York Times recently ran an article about sellers getting serious about selling their homes.

It talked a lot about both the subjective value of your property (what you think it’s worth) as well as the objective value (what recent sales indicate it’s worth) and the California Association of Realtors left readers with a few tips:

• REALTORS® and real estate appraisers are the best sources of information on current market conditions.  Consumers should begin the home valuation process by consulting with their REALTOR® or a local real estate appraiser.  REALTORS® can provide homeowners with a list of homes that recently have sold in the area, and use that data to help determine the most accurate and competitive price for the home.

• Homeowners also can contact their local tax assessor’s or county clerk’s office, many of which post real estate transactions on their Web site.  The records will indicate what properties have recently sold in the neighborhood and the respective sales prices.  Consumers should look for homes that have sold within the last six months for a more accurate picture of current market conditions.

• Online sites such as www.Zillow.com and www.trulia.com also provide free online home value estimators.  Consumers should be aware though that these sites derive some of their information from public records, including tax appraisals, and are subject to error.

• Some real estate experts recommend homeowners attend nearby open houses to see how their homes compare in size and amenities.  Consumers also can consult the Marshall & Swift Residential Cost Handbook, which professional appraisers use to assess the value of features such as fireplaces, three-car garages, and the like.  The handbook costs $300 and is available in some business school libraries.  An online site, www.swiftestimator.com, enables homeowners to conduct an item-by-item calculation of the value of the home.  Online sites and books only should be used as guidelines though, and homeowners are advised to contact a real estate professional to help determine the current value of their home.

It’s that time again!  OK, so it’s ALMOST that time again.  The holidays are around the corner.  It’s time for traditions like turkey, ham, festive family dinners, eggnog, cioppino (which is mostly a San Francisco tradition thanks to our fabulous and world famous crab!) and of course, ICE SKATING!!!

I’m not much of an ice skater, though I’d like to think I am.  I can go forward.  I can go backward.  I can turn, and occasionally, I can even stop.  Oh, and I fall really really well.

It looks like this year, the San Francisco Zoo is not hosting another outdoor ice rink (please correct me if I’m wrong) but there will be one at the Embarcadero Center and the Safeway sponsored rink in Union Square.  And of course, if the weather isn’t cooperative, well, then you can always trot down to the Yerba Buena Center.

If only they could bring back the old Ice Skating rink in the Outer Sunset, the rink they had at Sutro Baths or even the rink they used to have on the roof of the old Emporium building – now THAT would really make my holiday season something special.

But for now – I’ll just hope to make it down to one of the rinks above and get my skate on before they take the man-made ice away.

Here’s to the beginning of a happy holiday season! 

Oh – and if anyone has photos of the old ice rinks I mentioned that they’d like to share, send them on over! I’d love to share them with other readers!

I was going to try to PhotoShop a bunch of Realtor’s faces on the photo above, but frankly, I have no PhotoShop skills whatsoever.  I have all sorts of other talents, but PhotoShop isn’t one of them.

Real estate in San Francisco usually has sort of a rhythmic pattern.  In fact, it’s somewhat seasonal.  The beginning of the year, the beginning of summer and around Labor Day when the kiddies go back to school are typically the “busy” selling seasons when sales volume increases – and then things slow down around the Holidays, which means that typically, by the beginning of November, stagers, Realtors and transaction coordinators are all starting to take a little bit of a breather.

But this year seems to be different.  While buyers are normally taking a break, it looks like this year’s perfect storm of softened prices and lower interest rates have bought up a good portion the currently available inventory and are looking for MORE!

The current charts shows that the available Month’s Supply of Inventory is just 2.3 months, which indicates a strong seller’s market.  And with sellers typically holding back inventory during the holiday months of November and December, now just might be a good time to throw your home on the market if you’ve been considering selling.

In fact, just today, I’ve received 3 different emails from three different agents that are looking for homes for their buyers.  In fact, one such quote from an email was:

I have clients in search of a single family home in District 5.  They’re extremely well-qualified financially and have been looking for quite some time but to no avail.

Their price range  is $1.4m – 1.7m  but as you all know, it’s proving difficult to find a property of that type.

So, sellers, while typically, we’d be advising you to sit tight for the holiday season, it looks like this year, Santa and his reindeer just might be bringing you some buyers for your home.

If you’ve been thinking about selling your home but aren’t sure if now if the right time for YOU, shoot me an email at luba@zephyrsf.com or call me at 415-307-1392 and I’ll provide you with a free analysis to help you determine if now might be the time for you to profit from the fact that there are lots of hungry buyers out there with very little good inventory to go around.

Sold Real Estate Data

I’m not knocking Redfin for their latest idea.  In fact, it’s rather brilliant, and they have the capital behind it to back their ideas up.

But before I tell you all about it, I DO want to point out that yours truly, as well as several other local San Francisco Realtors, have been providing the same information to their clients for years now.

Redfin has relaunched their website so that now, if you register with their site, you’ll have access to sold real estate data from several areas in the country.  According to the news from the AgencyLogic blog:

With this upgrade, Redfin’s most important of the year, consumers get crucial powers that had previously been limited to real estate agents. “Comparative Market Analyses are one of the real estate industry’s ‘killer applications,’” said Michael Smedberg, leader of Redfin’s query & statistics team, “but they’re often shrouded in mystery; agents have direct access to data such as prices and photos for just-sold homes, but buyers rarely do. Without that direct access, consumers have had to rely on the expertise and availability of their agent, and this in turn made it hard to figure out on their own what to offer or ask for a listing. Now Redfin has given consumers the tools to investigate selling prices on their own, which they can couple with a real estate agent’s expertise as they see fit. If a house sold last week, all the sales data will be on Redfin.com. It’s a big leap in consumer independence.”

Well, I’m all for transparency in the industry – and as I mentioned, I’m not the only one!  Several other local agents in San Francisco have been providing this SAME data on a smaller scale for some time now.  The only problem is that just like with Redfin’s service, you need to register to receive the data. (I’m not sure why, but my only conclusion is that the San Francisco MLS apparently still believes we need to keep consumers ignorant to keep them using REALTORS, while I think that the more info REALTORS provide, the more valuable we are to the public.)

In my case, I provide an (almost) weekly newsletter that provides you with 30 days worth of sold data.  You can sign up for it at www.thecityupdate.com.

To be frank, I like my clients to be armed with information, no matter where they get it.  The reason being is that an informed consumer can make intelligent decisions based on full information.  I do my best to provide clients with all the data they need to be informed (whether buying OR selling a home), but frankly, the more options out there, the better.

So thanks Redfin for making our jobs as San Francisco real estate agents a little easier and giving those agents that don’t already provide sold data to their clients a way to stay informed. 

Aerial video – San Francisco from Jason Lam on Vimeo.

I ran across this awesome video on a blog I recently discovered – Spots Unknown.

Jeff Diehl (the blog’s author) tells us about this video:

With the ability to fly super close to the ground and surrounding objects, this really does provide a unique feel, like a free-floating crane or steady-cam. Pretty hot.

Jason Lam makes these videos for a company called SkyShutter, using “a camera equipped with ‘gyro-stabilized remote-controlled gimbals,’ along with a live streaming video connection.”

I thought it was an awesome way to fall in love with San Francisco all over again on a Monday morning.

Enjoy!

And if you have any pics, video, or links about San Francisco, real estate related or not, shoot me a tip.  I love to hear from readers.

I got a very disturbing email from a friend today.  It went like this:

Last night as I was coming home from meeting a friend, I got mugged by two guys. It happened right outside my building. I’m okay, but they roughed me up a bit and it was obviously a scary situation. I think I’m still in shock, as I’m always very self-aware of my surroundings (and have always been paranoid about people following me too closely when I’m walking by myself) and can’t really believe that this happened.

I knew there was someone behind me who had been matching my pace for a couple of blocks. When I sped up, he sped up. It was dark and no one was outside. I thought about stopping outside the restaurant at the corner of my block, where there were diners in the window but no one outside. I didn’t, because I didn’t want to act like anything was wrong or make myself seem vulnerable, which was the same reason I didn’t look over my shoulder. I live half a block up, so I just kept going and walked faster.

Of course, that was really stupid. As I was outside my building putting my keys in, one of the guys approached me very calmly as though he just happened to have the same destination. He even said, “Excuse me ma’am,” before they started overpowering me.

The second dumb thing I did was not give them my purse. I didn’t even realize that I was doing it, because they were extremely violent and I was just trying to protect myself. I didn’t know I was still holding on to my bag.

The third thing I did was start screaming. Incidentally, I found out later that most of my neighbors thought the source of the screaming was from tourists on the cable car going down the hill. But the two dudes kept beating me, so then I started screaming, “Help!” over and over again. That’s when they ran away, and when my neighbors came out.

I just wanted to share what happened because I think we could all use a reminder of what to do if you ever find yourself in a similar situation. Lots of times I’ve stopped in a populated area and waited for the person to pass, and it was stupid of me not to do that last night. I also should have just given them my bag and I could have avoided violence, but I just didn’t think. Also, remember to scream for help. Even my neighbors who didn’t think about the cable car screamers got their asses outside when they heard a woman screaming for help and realized it was serious.

I also wanted to mention this because my cousin was mugged with her friend at gunpoint in the Inner Richmond a few months ago (they were smart and handed their stuff over right away). There have also been a couple of other muggings in my neighborhood that I’ve heard about. One women got punched in the face right in front of the fire station on a weekday afternoon–an anomaly, I’m sure, but still.

Be careful, and feel free to pass this on to your friends.

So.  Short of packing an illegal weapon, what CAN a woman (or anyone for that matter) do to protect oneself?

Well – one is learning self-defense.  I’m a big fan of Krav Maga - a no-nonsense martial art.  I’ve only taken a few lessons, but this incident reminded me that it’s time I take more.  I also contacted them to see if they’d be willing to pass on some specials to readers of this blog and my newsletter.  You MUST mention my name (Luba) to get the specials….

• First off – FREE 3 day pass.  Unlimited access to 60+ classes 7 days/week! Krav Maga – Strength Training – Yoga…etc.
• Secondly – Sign up for a 6-month or 1year contract and pay only $1 for the months of November & December!

And if you think you don’t want to take a lesson, or would like something to protect yourself in the meantime, you may want to consider some sort of personal protection.  A taser is actually legal, and unlike pepper spray, works even if your attacker’s face is covered.  One of my clients purchased the C2 version and thinks it’s great.  We’re hoping to get them to offer our blog readers a discount – but we haven’t heard confirmation from them yet.

But even if you know how to protect yourself, remember, nothing beats common sense and listening to your instincts. 

San Francisco may be the best place on earth to live, but even in a typically safe neighborhood like Nob Hill, where this incident occurred – you need to be aware that there are bad people out there and be ready to protect yourself.  And if that means screaming “HELP” or even screaming “FIRE”, then you do it.  And give up your stuff - it’s NOT worth your life.

As I do every month (albeit sometimes rather late), I ran the latest San Francisco real estate sales figures from the month of October for you. Here’s the data for October, raw and unfiltered, just how you like it.

This month, Single family volume is up from September and median price is UP too.  List to Sales price ratio is also up.  AND days on market is down (a good thing – since things are selling FASTER!)

Condo sales however have stayed pretty steady from last month on all fronts.  And TIC’s have such a small sample that median price usually has more to do with the inventory than an indication of where values are headed.  However, the days on market in the TIC niche dropped significantly – which means they are closing faster.

Overall – it just looks like the market is moving faster and as I said last month, multiple offers are BACK and list price to ask price ratio is up – all signs of a market coming back to life.

So here’s this month’s summary of home sales pulled directly from the MLS. Remember, these are all closed sales and not pending sales.

Check back monthly to get the latest facts and figures – and if you have any questions about these statistics, or the market in general, feel free to give me a holler! I’m always happy to talk “real estate!”

Here’s a quick snapshot of the market from October 1, 2009 through October 31, 2009:

Single Family Homes

• 217  Homes Sold
• Median Sale Price was $760,000
• Minimum Sale Price was $200,000
• Maximum Sale Price was $9,000,000
• Median Selling Price was 104% of asking price
• Median Days on Market was 36
• Median Selling Price for homes that sold within 30 days was 104.5% of asking price

Condominiums, Lofts & Co-ops

• 171 Homes Sold
• Median Sale Price was $690,000
• Minimum Sale Price was $157,000
• Maximum Sale Price was $2,242,000
• Median Selling Price was 99% of asking price
• Median Days on Market was 58
• Median Selling Price for homes that sold within 30 days was 99% of asking price

TIC’s

• 44 Homes Sold
• Median Sale Price was $484,500
• Minimum Sale Price was $231,000
• Maximum Sale Price was $1,650,000
• Median Selling Price was 100% of asking price
• Median Days on Market was 51
• Median Selling Price for homes that sold within 30 days was 101% of asking price