The San Francisco Real Estate Blog

Out of fashion: Prada ditches headquarters - San Francisco - MSNBC.com

A British real estate group has purchased 185 Post St. from Prada for roughly $11 million and plans to overhaul the eyesore located one block from Union Square.

Grosvenor Group's purchase officially kills Prada's plans to establish its West Coast headquarters with a 10-story, übermodernist structure designed by Rem Koolhaas at the corner of Grant and Post streets.

Posted by Bill Quick at 09:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Sprucing up the places where houses are sold

While agents extol the value and glamour of real property, most real estate offices say something quite the opposite. Traditionally, they have operated out of rented storefronts with threadbare carpets and dog-eared displays in the windows. (Last time I visited, my very successful agent's office was downright dilapidated.) Interiors tend to resemble those offices that house the businesses of necessary torture: dentistry and tax accounting.

Posted by Bill Quick at 09:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I occasionally get mail asking me why I am so downbeat on my own local market. I am a real estate sales agent, I am reminded. Am I not supposed to be an optimist? How can I sell real estate if I think real estate is potentially a disastrous investment?

Good questions. However, they don't really encompass my actual position. I don't think that real estate per se is a bad investment, but I do think that people have been buying local real estate by means of potentially disastrous methods.

I suppose a gung-ho agent would have no problems in selling a house to a buyer who would have to load up on an interest-only ARM that still sucked up seventy percent of his take-home income, leaving him teetering on the edge of disaster even if nothing should ever go wrong, and the economic situtation remains absolutely rosy as far as the eye can see.

I'm not that agent. There is something to be said for telling your clients "No, you can't afford that - unless you want to risk your credit, your kid's educations, your peace of mind, and your happiness all to move into a house you could lose in a heartbeat - along with everything else."

Thirty year fixed mortgage deals with decent down payments and income streams sufficient to service them can still be arragned for some people, although not very many in the San Francisco area. To put it bluntly, by sane standards, housing here is simply not, in general, affordable. For myself, I would rather spend my time putting together deals that let my clients sleep well at night, and permit me to look at myself in the mirror in the morning.

It's that simple.

Posted by Bill Quick at 04:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Inman Real Estate News - Riskiest real estate markets in U.S. pinpointed

Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco are the riskiest housing markets in the country, with high probabilities of declines in housing prices over the next two years, according to a list based on the PMI Risk Index.

The list considered job growth, population, median income and affordability in identifying the 13 riskiest real estate markets. It was published in the August Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine and was based on the PMI Risk Index.

Posted by Bill Quick at 04:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)

Inman Real Estate News - Paperless real estate guru has a touch of music in him

Darren Ross is no stranger to the paperless real estate transaction. As director of electronic commerce for Stewart Information Services Corp., Ross is active in the research, development and implementation of paperless real estate transactions, electronic mortgage transactions and e-closings utilizing enforceable electronic documents, digital signatures, and secure virtual transaction folders for all real estate transaction participants.

Posted by Bill Quick at 10:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A fast-moving brush fire filled the Bayview-Hunter's Point neighborhood of San Francisco with thick, choking smoke for ninety minutes Monday afternoon. More than a dozen engine companies responded to the blaze, which started around 3:30 PM. Neighborhood fears that the fire was inside the Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard, a location with a history of toxic blazes, turned out to be groundless, although for about thirty minutes the smoke was so thick visibility was reduced to less than a hundred yards.

No injuries or major property damage were reported. The blaze was confined to an area several hundred yards wide on a hillside just to the west of the Mariner's Village condominium complex.

The blaze was extinguished by 4:30, although two engine companies remained on the scene afterwards to guard against a renewal of the blaze.

Note to Firefox users: If you want to see the video, you'll have to make sure your browser has the Windows Media Player plugin installed. If not, you can get complete instructions and all necessary files here.

Video taken with the Samsung SC105L and edited with Windows Movie Maker.

UPDATE: Their times are a bit off, but KTVU Channel Two does have an aerial photo of the fire.

Posted by Bill Quick at 03:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Retail scene picking up N.Y. accent - San Francisco - MSNBC.com

Blame Bay Area cosmopolitanism and the area's relative density for retailers' decision to skirt L.A. Smart money says a more compelling reason for this retail invasion is that San Franciscans shop.

"In the retail industry, it's thought that San Francisco is second in importance as a location to New York. They do the volume (here), and it's so self-contained," said Vikki Johnson of Johnson Hoke, a San Francisco retail leasing firm.

Posted by Bill Quick at 09:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

APP.COM - Housing boom's side effect: rising property taxes

MIAMI — Teri Vasarhelyi and her husband thought they would be able to afford a bigger house with more land two years ago when they left San Francisco, the most expensive home market in the country.

They figured they found a good deal in a two-bedroom house in the peaceful, leafy Coconut Grove area for $440,000 in March 2004. But the shock came when their first property tax bill came a few months later — more than $9,200 a year, nearly double what they paid in their old home.

On the other hand, the general thrust of this article is right: You do need to be aware of possible changes in property taxes when you buy and sell property. Teri's agent should have made it clear to her what the change would be, so there wouldn't have been a "shock" when that Florida tax bill arrived.

Posted by Bill Quick at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Here is a really scary set of graphs about asset inflation in our economy today.

Posted by Bill Quick at 03:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)