$3,300 a Month Gets You These Rentals in SF Now

If you have about $3,300 a month to spend on a rental place in SF, sf.curbed.com has put together a potpourri of offerings for that specific amount. It’s an interesting way to sample what different SF neighborhoods offer for specific price amounts.

First off is a 788 square-foot one-bath studio at the Wilson Building at 973 Market Street. Wilson is a really pretty building with a grass turf communal hangout space on the roof sporting a fine view. The studio is actually pretty spacious and almost feels like a full apartment. And you can bring your pet.

Next are the apartments over in the North Beach neighborhood at 1050 Columbus. Tons of tile on the floor, yet the unit include a full bedroom and bath for the price, but you can’t bring Rin Tin Tin or Paws along.

Three more interesting comparisons are featured in the article.

Click here for the full article.

Stunning Video Showing San Francisco Skyline Over Past 128 Years

Very nice CGI graphics tricks enable us to have a view no San Franciscans have experienced before: the time lapse (and rotating) unfolding of tall buildings being erected through computer animation in our city from 1890 up to year 2016. That is 128 years of skyscraper growth in the Financial District, Market Street area and in SoMa.

The video was produced by Commercial Café, a national website for commercial real estate listings, and can be seen on YouTube. See the link below.

The tallest building now in SF is the Salesforce Tower at 1,070 feet, part of the 3 million square feet of office space that’s opened up over the past year.

Over the next five years there are a number of projects slated to appear on our skyline, including the Park Tower, the Oceanwide Center and the Transbay Block 8.

Click here for bizjournals.com story and video.

Racist Statue at Civic Center Closer to Official Removal

The Pioneer Monument at the Civic Center is an 1894 sculpture ensemble that features as one of its multiple scenes a down-on-the-ground Native American Indian (dressed in plains tribes’ attire, not California native attire) cowering before a conquering Spaniard and a self-righteous missionary. Native American groups have been lobbying for decades to have the offensive scene (called Early Days) removed.

Now, the seven-person Historic Preservation Commission voted en masse to remove this particular statue from the Pioneer Monument which also features gold rush miners and classical goddess figures representing commerce and agriculture.

The next step for the official removal is the sign off from the San Francisco Art Commission. It is expected that they will agree that the Early Days statue on the eastern part of the ensemble needs to be removed. Many San Franciscans over the past decades have labeled the statue racist, stating it whitewashes the conquering of California tribes by depicting the conquest as their salvation.

Middle Class Home Buying in SF Needs $303,000 Yearly Income

A new report out from Paragon Real Estate makes a startling conclusion: that if you’re middle class in San Francisco, working toward buying a median-priced home in the city, then you’re going to need to be making $303,000 a year, as of December 2017. Either as an individual or as a couple. Not surprisingly, this is an all time high.

In terms of the households in San Francisco, this works out to 12% of them being able to afford a median-priced house or condo. A median-priced home is now about $1.5 million and with a 20% down payment, affordability is available only to the few.

The takeaways from this report includes the observation that low housing affordability is the most critical economic and social issue in San Francisco and the Bay Area, and tech workers who have to have housing when they come here to work can’t even afford to live in the Bay Area.

4 San Franciscan Make Forbes 30 Under 30 Food List

The Forbes 30 Under 30 food and drink list is pretty well appreciated by its audience and well coveted by those who make the list: recognizing young game changers and innovative thinkers in the food sphere. This year the Forbes 30 Under 30 food and drink list included four outstanding denizens of San Francisco. That’s four out of six in the Bay Area right here in our beloved city.

The list goes beyond chefs in that it recognizes innovation in general food enterprise. For instance Benjamin Chesler and Ben Simon have taken off-grade produce to new heights by selling “ugly” produce to buyers at steep discounts, thus putting a dent in our city’s food waste.

Another food waste recycling duo are Daniel Kurzrock and Jordan Schwartz of Regrained who are turning grain leftover from beer crafting into edible bars super dense with nutrients and sold at popular retail outlets. They’re trying to hit $1 million in revenue.

Click here for the full article and slide show.

Still Going Up: Bay Area Home Prices Zoom 12% in January

Easy to predict this: the cost of buying a home in the Bay area went up a staggering 12% in January compared to last year’s January prices. So, if you bought a home in SF for $1 mil last year in January, that same home would cost you $1,120,000 now. So, why? Because of the lack of homes or condos to buy in the city or the rest of the Bay Area. Inventory is at a 3-year low. Too few houses available with a lot of money chasing those few dictates much higher prices.

The median price for a Bay Area home is now $880,000. For a home or condo in San Francisco, the median is $1.2 million.

Reports from Zillow state that inventory in the Bay Area has dropped 27% over the past year. Homes and condos under $2 million are particularly hard hit, with those around $1 million being the least in supply, while homes or condos between $2 million and $3 million went up in inventory.

SF’s New Transbay Transit Center Delayed to Summer Opening

The much ballyhooed, and mega price-tagged Transbay Transit Center is San Francisco’s mass transit hub to all Bay Area destinations served by the system. It will bring 11 transit systems into a central station. Coming in at $2.4 billion, the now-named Salesforce Transit Center began construction in 2011 toward a five-story building with bus plaza, an eye-popping 5.4 acre rooftop park and cavernous retail pop-up spaces and 6 million square feet of office space. It’s estimated 7,000 new residents will come into the center’s architecture.

It was supposed to open in June with great areas of construction done in late 2017, but that date could be pushed back to August or September this year because of construction challenges. That was the announcement from the Transbay Joint Powers Authority a few days ago. There is some hope the facility will open its doors on June 1^st, but the certainty of construction timelines is not quite dead on.

Rare Sighting of Condo For Sale in Tendernob

Here we go with a very rare condo being put on the SF real estate market in the desirable, name-amalgamated area of the Tendernob. What is the Tendernob? Well, the area of San Francisco between Nob Hill to the north and the Tenderloin to the south. Hey. Makes sense. And it is a fine, fine area to live in the city. And now, a condo’s just come up for sale in one of the finer buildings along Sutter Street in the Tendernob, as sf.curbed.com reports.

The Bavaria building, a classic, red-brick Beaux-Arts architecture from Frederic Herman Meyer, sits at 795 Sutter Street. And one of its corner unit condos has now elbowed its way onto the SF market, taking a pretty prominent place among residences asking for over a $1 million. The condo’s full price is $1,295,000, which is not too bad considering what you’re getting, and the location.

The unit spreads across 1,784 square feet of opulence spilling into three beds and two baths. The interior amenities include arched windows, wood accents, glass pocket doors, modernized kitchen and baths.

How You in SF Can Make a Difference: 25 Ways

In moments of introspection, pique or worry, we ask the question: What can I do to improve things in San Francisco, this city I live in? A good, meaningful question. And often we don’t exactly know what we can do to be a make-better citizen. And this doesn’t mean big, life-changing stuff, as sf.curbed.com notes in its story on 25 small ways to make a difference in San Francisco.

They break down the efforts into five categories: From Your Home, In Your Neighborhood, Along Your Route, In Your Community, and With a Group.

#1 for From Your Home is staying informed of local SF news, including local blogs and specialty media sources such as Hoodline or San Francisco Magazine.

In In Your Neighborhood, the first item to make a difference is to learn your neighborhood’s history. This makes for some fascinating reading and context. For instance Presidio Terrace used to purposely be an all-white neighborhood.

Also in this section: donate old books to the library, including the Little Free Library; attend neighborhood meetings; wave to tourists when they pass by you on cable cars or visitor buses (sf.curbed says they love that).

Get much, much more here at the full list of 25.