60,000 New Residential Units in SF Mapped Out
San Francisco has a pretty big pipeline of new residential unit projects coming into the city—either as approved and being built or in the approval or proposal stages. These projects represent a sig...
THE BUZZ BLOG
July 19, 2018
July 18, 2018SF Multi-Unit Residential Income Market
The Multi-Unit Residential Property Markets of San Francisco, Alameda & Marin Counties This report generally separates out the 2-4 unit and the 5+ unit apartment building markets, since they typi...
July 16, 2018Hotel Room Boom is Upon San Francisco
San Francisco—one of the most visited cities in the world—is in the midst of a hotel room boom after several years of slack growth hotel-wise. The largest room increase was back in 2008 with the I...
July 13, 2018The Symbiotic Affect of a Hot Job Market in SF and Rising Home Prices
The ecology of San Francisco includes more than its Golden Gate Park and small park flora, and trees along streets and rooftop and inner courtyard gardens. It includes a less helpful symbiotic relatio...
July 12, 2018What Costs How Much Where in San Francisco
Median sales price is that price at which half the sales occurred for less and half for more. Average dollar per square foot reflects the livable interior space of a home and does not include garages...
July 11, 2018San Francisco—a Great City of Adventurous Alleys
A story out of sfweekly.com took on the cultural, cartographical importance of alleys in San Francisco, which is a city chock full of such, as it turns out. Anybody who regularly drives around and thr...
July 9, 2018Office Rents Are Rising in SF for First Time in Two Years
In the rising tide of prices in San Francisco you can now see office rents among the boats being lifted up. It’s been over two years since such increases were visible. Now, as of the second quarter ...
July 9, 20182018 YTD: A Wild Ride for San Francisco Real Estate
By any measure, the heat of the San Francisco market in the first half of 2018 has been among the most blistering ever. Probably only 3 or 4 other periods over the past 50 years have seen a comparabl...
July 6, 2018Local Architects Sculpting San Francisco’s Skyline
Architect firms local to the Bay Area are up front and center in the structural designing and interior designing of some of our most notable and prized local buildings, both here in SF and over to the...
July 2, 2018Is Home Cooking Going Extinct – Replaced by Ordering Online
Home cooking can be enjoyable—even contemplative—a way to relax and connect with things important about being human, being a couple or being a family. Yet, for many it is a responsibility, a chore...
June 30, 2018San Francisco Professional Workers Looking For Work-Life Balance
What are employees looking for in their work culture and environment in San Francisco, and, indeed, the entire Bay Area and across the country? The stereotype is lots of free food (healthy as an opt...
June 26, 2018Slowing Rent Growth in San Francisco – Why?
The rate of rent growth in San Francisco has been dropping pretty significantly since 2015. And that is a puzzle, considering the super expensive buying environment in SF. Over the past three years th...
June 21, 2018Eat Your Way Through All The New Restaurants – SoMa and Mission Bay.
The numbers are a bit surprising, but for a foodie town like San Francisco, maybe not. Despite all the high costs and pretty daunting permitting processes to jump through new restaurants and cafes cro...
June 19, 2018Win the Ugliest Dog Contest Up in Petaluma This Saturday
Hey you with the ugliest dog in San Francisco, and you know who you are. Your dog is toothless or hairless or has a shockingly scrunched up face that you love to death, or hanging skin and a corkscrew...
June 17, 2018Record Fast Time For Sales of Homes in San Francisco
Fast times are here in San Francisco – if you’re selling your house. In fact, across the entire Bay Area the sale of a home is so fast from listing to closing that our SF Bay Area holds the fastes...
June 15, 2018The Most Expensive Construction Projects in SF Now
San Francisco’s pretty skyline—even with fog moistly rolling in—is being remolded as we speak, so to speak. There are cranes all over the place, and a few big-ticket projects have come online, l...
June 13, 2018Pacific Heights Dream House Goes for $1.6 Million Over Asking
Now there’s a cosmic coincidence. A Pacific Heights home was asking $8 million, and just sold for $9.6 million, $1.6 million or 20 percent over asking. That number $1.6 million is also the average p...
June 12, 2018San Francisco’s Toilet Kiosks to Get Jetson-like Makeover
Say “ciao” to the old SF green JC Decaux public toilets. They’re going, well… “down the toilet.” Swooping in from a sort of Jetson’s futuristic techno and environmentally-friendly blend ...
June 8, 2018A Marriage Made in Heaven? – Work Plus Living In Same High Rise
Well, it’s probably the easiest home to work commute, outside of just working from inside your home. Just walk to work on the same floor you live on in a high rise—at least that’s the new idea f...
June 6, 2018Upcoming Stern Grove Festival – Free and Fabulous
Summer concerts are zinging in on us in the SF Bay Area and our own San Francisco is putting on very special outdoor concert shows including the Stern Grove Festival: ten Sundays of absolutely free (d...
June 5, 2018Bay Area Market Survey: From Billionaires in Mansions to Flippers & Fixer-Uppers
The county and city appreciation percentages in the chart above were calculated by averaging changes in both median sales prices and average dollar per square foot values. We also incorporated S&...
June 4, 2018Women Are Better Tippers Than Men, Even With Subpar Service
We in San Francisco are good tippers, even very good tippers at our ginormous array of restaurants. We often plunk down 20% or near that. We appreciate good, attentive service and the hard work of ser...
June 2, 2018Nearly 50% of SF Bay Area Residents Planning on Moving Away
According to a survey of registered voters by the business-sponsored Bay Area Council conducted across the nine counties of the SF Bay Area, there are 46% of us who are planning to move out of the are...
May 31, 2018Tiny, Affordable Apartments Going Up in The Tenderloin
Tiny as a meme for how-to-live-in—as in tiny house—is catching fire in the city apartment living tableau in American cities where affordable housing is a chronic situation. Now in SF’s Tenderloi...
May 31, 2018Affordability & the Cost of Housing in the SF Bay Area
The California Association of Realtors recently released its Housing Affordability Index (HAI) for the 1st quarter of 2018, which measures the percentage of households that can afford to buy the medi...
May 29, 2018Street Artist Honeys Up Side of Building in SoMa
Maybe you’ve already heard of him, the anonymous SF street artist who goes by the nom du plume of fnnch, pronounced as “finch.” If so, his latest paint-and-brush project at 1263 Mission Street i...
May 27, 2018Kaiser Permanente Puts Up $200M to Fight Homelessness
Homelessness in San Francisco remains an escalating society challenge and even worry among San Franciscans. In certain street areas homeless people and conditions are making a bad rep for the city amo...
May 24, 2018San Francisco Luxury House, Luxury Condo, Co-op and TIC Markets
As seen in the chart below, so far in 2018, SF luxury home sales have been very strong, higher than in any previous year since the recovery began in 2012. The recent stock market volatility notwithst...
May 24, 20182-Day Carnaval in Mission District Blasts Off This Weekend
San Francisco has its own Carnaval street celebration—not quite the size of New Orleans, but still a cultural/social/cuisine blast. Our Carnaval has been dancing and eating and music-playing its way...
May 21, 2018SF Cultural Enclaves Moving Toward Heritage Preservation
The district of Bayview in San Francisco is a neighborhood of working class housing, retail shops and small hometown restaurants. It used to be a place of grittiness and patches of poverty. But like t...
May 18, 2018Wow – Need $333K a Year to Buy a Home in San Francisco
It’s an easy number to remember: $333,000. So, if you’re talking at a party or around the cooler, you can make a weighty dialectical point by stating, “Buying a home in San Francisco—house, or...
May 15, 2018Amazon Cashier-Free Grocery Stores Coming to SF and Chicago
Well, it’s a dubious honor, and another first for San Francisco, city of cultural experimentation ever since the Barbary Coast days. Amazon, with its love-hate relationship with consumers, is coming...
May 13, 2018Twelve for Twelve in San Francisco Real Estate Neighborhoods
Across the U.S. the average increase in housing pricing is about 7 percent from 2011 on to where we are now in May 2018. In San Francisco that appreciation rate is running 12 percent since 2011 and th...
May 10, 2018San Francisco Homes Earn More Per Hour Than Average U.S. Workers
If you own a home or condo in San Francisco, then its accruing market value is chugging up around the clock, kind of like a money printing machine. In fact, the upward growth of value in a San Francis...
May 7, 2018Another Beer Haus Suds it Up in San Francisco
Beer is uber popular in San Francisco, and the Bavarian tradition of combining barrel-pulled beer and hearty German food in a long-table atmosphere under a haus roof is further promulgating in SF. We ...
May 4, 2018Historic Designation Pushes Back Big Development in North SF
The Laurel Heights neighborhood is lovely, leafy and now embroiled in a battle between the Laurel Heights Improvement Association (LHIA) and developers Prado Group and SKS. The developers are wanting ...
May 4, 2018SF Residential Newsletter: Hottest SF Neighborhood Markets
Before discussing neighborhood values, appreciation rates and market cycles, here are 3 overview charts on the entire city market. Citywide Home Values & Trends On a 3-month-rolling basis, median...
May 2, 2018SF.curbed Puts SF Home Goods & Design Shops on Digital Map
Ah, the joy of shopping for new home goods or furniture in San Francisco. This is a city to really get into the world of maximalism or euro-chic or traditional Victorian for your home or apartment mak...
April 30, 2018Airbnb’s Payne Mansion Transforming to Hotel and Restaurant
1409 Sutter Street last year was Airbnb’s most expensive listing, a real SF mansion with all the perks of ritzy living. The Airbnb listing was simultaneous with the Payne Mansion being on the market...
April 29, 2018SoMa Neighborhood’s The Avery Condo Tower Starting Sales Soon
SoMa is unleashing another condo buying opportunity for San Franciscans, with sales starting in June 2018 for The Avery, a 118-condo tower at 420-488 Folsom Street in the Transbay area. This continues...
April 27, 2018SFRealEstateBuzz – Will the Last One Out Please Close the Door
Hello My Favorite People! This Buzz is going to focus exclusively on why people leave San Francisco and where they are going . And especially talk about how many are really moving away. But first, l...
April 26, 2018San Francisco Bay Area S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Updates
Since Case-Shiller Indices cover large areas – 5 counties in the SF Metro Area – which themselves contain communities and neighborhoods of widely varying home prices, the C-S chart number...
April 25, 2018Bringing New Vigor to Fisherman’s Wharf Struggling Businesses
Fisherman’s Wharf is probably San Francisco’s most well known iconic location, a 30-block neighborhood that is a blast from SF’s briny past and a modern dynamo of clichéd tourism. But the retai...
April 23, 2018Shake Shack About to Take Up a Stake in San Francisco
Shake Shack is a burger, fries and shakes joint out of Madison Square Park in New York City with a massive following in California, and is now about to have its first diner in San Francisco. Shake Sha...
April 20, 2018Electric Scooters Run Afoul of Human Traffic and the Law
Small, stand-up electric scooters are the new transport startup craze in San Francisco, with three companies vying for the market to grab-and-go from point A to point B and drop-off. The three compani...
April 17, 2018Wine Fraud Solved by SF Wine Advisors Using Blockchain?
Wine fraud is not as infrequent as you may think. The market is now at $300 billion and by the early 2020’s will be over $400 billion. Niche markets are very expensive, which means fraud can be lucr...
April 13, 2018An Epidemic of Vacant Businesses in San Francisco
It’s hard to miss the number of retail and commercial business properties that are empty and forlorn in certain areas of San Francisco’s street landscape. It’s hard real estate to sell and the e...
April 11, 2018Median Price For Homes in SF Rocket Skyward
While rentals in San Francisco are smoothing out somewhat and heading down in many neighborhoods, the median cost of buying a house in the city has zoomed up to $1.61 million. That’s a new record fo...
April 10, 2018Yet Another Dramatic Jump in San Francisco Median House Price to over $1,600,000
Consumer confidence is still soaring, and buyers continue to push aside concerns about recent financial market volatility, federal tax law changes affecting Bay Area homeowners, and interest rate inc...
April 10, 2018Here’s the Scoop on SF’s Iconic AT&T Park
Baseball By The Bay could be a romanticized catch phrase found in a novel about a baseball-loving fan who lives in San Francisco. Because that is what we have: one of the most admired and picturesque ...
April 6, 2018Millennium Tower Condo Takes a Haircut of $1 Million
San Francisco’s own Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Millennium Tower, which is sinking and leaning at notable and lawsuit-generating rates, just had a deal close on its most expensive condo—and it’s ...
April 5, 2018Bay Area Real Estate Market Cycles
Out of recession comes recovery; recovery builds into market over-exuberance; over-exuberance leads to negative adjustment; negative adjustment sparks recession. Begin again.The scale, length and tri...
April 4, 2018Spectacular SF Victorian Grand Dame Reopens for Tours
San Francisco aesthetes and especially Victorian house lovers know that one of the most beautiful, charming, and iconoclastic Victorians in the city is the 1886 Queen Anne at 2007 Franklin Street. The...
April 3, 2018Economic Context Factors Underlying Housing Markets
The real estate markets in the SF Bay Area are parts in an overall economic reality that includes a number of financial, demographic and psychological components – all of which are impacting each o...
April 2, 2018Cheapest Places to Currently Rent in San Francisco
Cheap and San Francisco are not words often found together, but there is relatively cheap, and that works. It turns out that rents are becoming more stable in the city, rather than the gravity-busting...
March 30, 2018Interactive Map of 11 Best Beaches in the Bay Area
Yes, it’s beach time – at least according to the balmy, getting pretty warm and clear weather we’re having nowadays. So, you live in San Francisco, and you’re wondering what are the best coast...
March 29, 2018Does A Butler Come With My Rent – Yes in SoMa, SF
That’s a question I wouldn’t normally think of: does a butler come with my monthly rental check to you? Well, down in the white hot competitive market for renters in SoMa, the new 33 Tehama Street...
March 28, 2018Media Reports Suggest Major Bay Area Decline
The sources of the data behind the below (and many more) articles: an online survey by a PR company; an analysis of traffic on a real estate website; the alleged cost of a U-Haul to Las Vegas; anecdo...
March 26, 2018San Francisco’s Seawall Up For Redo to Avoid Waterfront Disaster
One 2016 report that should make San Franciscans sit up or leap up in alarm is the one from the SF Port Commission stating that more than $77 billion worth of SF waterfront real estate will be under w...
March 26, 2018A Selection of Charts about Debt
Most of the charts below come from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. We have not had time to comment on each chart and what we believe its significance to be (and, in any case, we are probably u...