In a past life, I did occasional work as a copywriter and marketing consultant for the real estate industry. One of my clients was Zephyr Real Estate, who hired me to write their annual San Francisco history calendar.  It was probably my favorite project because I got to combine my love of writing with my love of San Francisco history.

One year the calendar’s theme was “Notorious San Francisco.”  Each month featured a different San Francisco figure who generated controversy.  Four of them happen to be black. Here are the small stories I wrote about each of them:

Willie Mays
It’s hard to think of Willie Mays ever generating controversy, but he engendered prejudice and an ugly NIMBY attitude when he moved with the Giants from New York to San Francisco.

It started in late 1957 when Willie and his wife Marguerite, in anticipation of opening day at Seal Stadium, put an offer in on a house on Miraloma Drive.   Immediately, a neighbor suffering from racist distemper started jumping up and down about how surrounding home values would surely drop, and nearly persuaded the Seller to reject Mays’ offer. 

The Mays bought the house and moved in anyway, but then someone hurled a bottle with a racial hate note through their front window.  While Willie was sanguine, Marguerite was shaken.  The Mays sold the house and moved away from San Francisco in 1959. 

Later, when the “Say Hey” kid moved back in 1963, his new neighbors greeted him like a hero at the block party he hosted from his new home on Forest Hill.

Carlton Goodlett
A physician and civil rights maverick, Dr. Carlton Goodlett arrived in San Francisco in 1945. A year later he became the publisher of “Sun Reporter” a black newspaper “dedicated to the cause of the people—that no good cause shall lack a champion and that evil will not thrive unopposed.” For many years Goodlett ran both the paper and his medical practice out of a building he had constructed on Turk Street near Fillmore.

Using the “Sun Reporter” as a catalyst for social change, Goodlett’s endless battles against racism included attacks on MUNI’s discrimination practices and the City’S powerful labor unions’ Jim Crow policies.  Relishing controversy, he ran for Governor in 1966, and even briefly proposed that three Southern states break away from the United States to form a separate black nation. He also received the Lenin Medal for Peace from the Soviet Union in 1970 after shifting the focus of his energies from civil rights to world peace.

Goodlett remained the Sun Reporter’s publisher until his death in 1993. Today, the block running in front of City Hall is named “Carlton Goodlett Place” in his honor.

Frederick Leidesdorff
Frederick Leidesdorff,  a wealthy plantation owner from the West Indies, came to San Francisco by way of New Orleans around 1841.  Anticipating the city’s destiny as one of the world’s busiest ports, he built a chandlery, general store, an enormous adobe hotel, and a lumberyard to  build ships from scratch.  With his charm and cash infusion into the local economy, Leidesdorff became a beloved figure, and the City’s first elected alcalde, or mayor. 

Legend has it however, that Leidesdorff held a dark and tragic secret: as the son of a fair Dane and black woman from the West Indies he had successfully hid his lineage while in New Orleans from a young belle named Hortense.  Wildly in love and planning to marry, Leidesdorff’s integrity forced him to reveal his origins to Hortense’s family just days before their wedding.  He was forbidden from ever seeing her again, and Hortense died a few days later of a broken heart.     

At the age of 38, Leidesdorff died of brain fever in San Francisco the year the gold rush began.  He is one of only two men buried inside the Mission Dolores sanctuary at Dolores and 16th. 

Mary Ellen Pleasants
Depending on whom you talk to, black pioneer Mary Ellen Pleasants was either a loving abolitionist and shrewd entrepreneur, or an evil voodoo priestess who came by her fortune through mysterious, sinister means.  Regardless of the truth, “Mammy Pleasant” is a figure that rises again and again in tales of the San Francisco gold rush

Pleasants arrived in San Francisco in 1852.  Among her legitimate businesses were real estate dealings South of Market and elsewhere in the City where she operated laundries and boarding houses in buildings that she owned.  On the side however, it is said that Pleasants sold voodoo love potions, ran houses of prostitution, and profited from the mysterious deaths of those around her.

It’s said that Pleasants made and lost a fortune worth thirty million dollars in the course of her lifetime.  She died impoverished and infamous in 1904 amidst scandal and rumor.  

Posted in San Francisco History | No Comments »

Are you a sucker for those gorgeous California Home/Architectural Digest photos?  Me, too. And San Francisco interior designer Dane Wilson has a yummy website that just matches my aesthetic: www.danerobertwilson.com

Here’s some more great eye candy– 10 high-end renovation and remodeling projects for $100,000 or less. If you like this kind of stuff, this 14-page pdf is worth a look:

10 High-End (but not super high-end) Remodeling Projects

Posted in Home Design | No Comments »

St. Joseph’s – The Patron Saint of Home Sellers

It’s said that if you plant a statue of St. Joseph upside down in your front yard it will make your house sell.  I’m not sure why the statue has to go in upside down. Maybe so it can suck your yard’s bad energy in through the top of its head. Or push good the energy out. 

At our last sales meeting we passed around at least half a dozen anecdotes about how placement of the statue made seemingly hopeless properties sell. I’ve actually never heard a story about somebody burying a statue and then NOT having the house sell. Our St. Joseph’s tales are rarely heard about outside of immediate real estate circles—probably because good-news real estate stories are never as interesting as the bad ones.  

I’m not sure where you place a St. Joseph’s statue in a condo or house with no front yard. Maybe in one of those potted plants the stagers bring in.  And then compensate for the lack of a front yard by making sure the plant is placed near the front door, perhaps in your home’s entry.

DiscountCatholicProducts.com and BurySt.Joseph.com both sell St. Joseph Home Sale Kits. The base model, which costs about six dollars includes the statue, directions and prayers.  For a couple of dollars more, they’ll throw in the cloth tote and protective plastic burial bag.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Bank Owned Listings in San Francisco

These pdf links will take you to lists of all foreclosed condos, all foreclosed houses, all foreclosed residential income property and all foreclosed buildings for sale in the San Francisco MLS right now. Please call me if you would like more information on any of these, and I’ll send you photos and more detailed information than you will get from the MLS.

How banks negotiate on foreclosed properties seems to vary region-by-region in the the San Francisco Bay Area. In San Leandro, I understand that with a decent downpayment (20%) you can get something at a substantially reduced price. Then in Concord, I hear of first-time buyers getting bank-owned homes with little down and an FHA loan. But here are five things you should know when considering a bid on a bank-owned property inside San Francisco:

1. Don’t let a too-high listing price deter you from making an offer. While most banks follow their listing agent’s counsel about price, some banks set the listing prices themselves. So even if a price seems unreasonable to you, you should go ahead and make an offer.

2. You may need lots of patience. Many of these lenders are slow as molasses about responding. The offers they receive have to wind through layers of bureaucracy in a Bank that’s located out of state.

3.  When a property is well-priced, you may have to overbid. Because some banks are so slow, they receive multiple offers on a home before they get around to accepting, countering or rejecting an offer. I’ve often called a listing agent and been told that my buyer shouldn’t bother coming in with an offer unless they can go above a certain price threshhold.
 
4. You should get pre-approved before writing an offer. Banks won’t accept your offer unless they know you are capable of closing. Often the lender will even make you go through the pre-approval process with them, or an approved broker. This does not, however, mean you have to use the bank they require you to get pre-approved with for your financing.

5. Terms are sometimes more important than price. A strong offer with a large down payment often beats out a higher price with a lower down payment. Preference is also often given to owner-occupants.

New bank-owned listings come on the market at a rate of about 10 a week. If you would like regular updates on what comes up in San Francisco, email me and I’ll get you on a distribution list.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

After I blogged about the wonders of EveryBlock San Francisco, one of my Favorite People emailed me about MapJack– another amazing site that offers a street level view of every location in San Francisco, Palo Alto, San Jose, Oakland and a few Cities in Thailand (don’t ask why. . .).  The technology is sort of akin to the old A9 map site, but much (much!) better.  The photography is a higher resolution, better framed and allows you to turn around 360 degrees to see what’s up and down and across the street from any address. 

MapJack is another superb site for someone researching a property in San Francisco from a distance. The site is still relatively new, so you can be assured that the photos are reasonably up to date.

Posted in Miscellaneous, San Francisco Neighborhoods | No Comments »

How Long Will Your San Francisco Home Take To Sell?

This is a pdf link to a market report on how long San Francisco properties take to sell. If you’re not a data-sifter type, the gist of this analysis is that, city-wide, San Francisco San Francisco single family homes take 135 days to sell. Condos take on average 96 days to sell.

Another indicator of a real estate market’s health is the Months Supply of Inventory (MSI). MSI is a measure of how long it would take to sell everything available were nothing new to come on the market. Generally speaking, 4-5 Months Supply of Inventory (MSI) is considered a balanced market between buyers and sellers.  Less than 4 months is considered a sellers’ market.  More than 5 months is considered a buyers’ market. These are broad parameters. Market conditions are determined by other factors as well.

By these definitions (and several others), the home market in most of San Francisco’s neighborhoods is now a strong buyers’ market. This means  more choice, less competitive bidding, increased price reductions, more price negotiation. This doesn’t mean that the best-value homes aren’t still often selling quickly. We are still seeing multiple offers on truly well-priced homes.

The incredibly low interest rates add to a buyer’s advantage– provided you can qualify under today’s more rigorous financing guidelines.

****************************

Other Highlights of the Report:

The higher-end house market in districts 5 (Noe/Castro/Haight) and 7 (Pacific Heights/Marina), and the middle-range house market in district 9 (Potrero/Bernal) have slowed way down since September’s Wall Street meltdown. Inventory is very high and the average days-on-market figures for available homes have soared. 

Financing higher-end home sales has become much more difficult in the past 6 months, though there are signs of easing.The lower-end house market is now playing a dominant role in sales, especially in areas such as district 2 (Sunset/Parkside) and 10 (Bayview/Excelsior)– which have the lowest months-supply-of-inventory in San Francisco and the highest number of accepted offers in January 2009. District 10 has been the district with the highest numbers of foreclosures in the city.Condo inventories have grown substantially in districts 9 (SOMA/South Beach), 6 (Hayes Valley/ NOPA/ Alamo Square) and 1 (Richmond)– but are moderate in district 5 (Noe/Castro/Haight).

You can learn more about the neighborhoods discussed in this report here.

Tenancy-in-Common (TIC) sales have decreased to very low levels over the past year. With fractional financing disappearing, the TIC product is proving very difficult to buy or sell.

**********************************

Please keep in mind as you review these statistics that not all homes take over two months to sell. In the past 14 days, of the 104 homes and condos/tics with into contract, 30 of them had an accepted offer within three weeks of hitting the market.

Posted in Market Conditions | No Comments »

Here is a pdf link to some San Francisco homes and condos that went into escrow within three weeks of hitting the market.  I just pulled these listings today, so the information is current and relevant to today’s market.

How did these properties beat the statistical odds?  Most likely because they were priced right and showed beautifully. 2191 34th Avenue, a small Sunset District house was small but aggressively priced at $649,000 with beautiful staging and  professional quality photos that made the home stand out online.

Some of these properties were on the market at the end of last year at higher prices.  2354 9th Avenue, also in the Sunset District, was listed for $100K more last year. 384 Bradford, a modest 1960s home in Bernal Heights was on last year for $530,000.  It came back on as a bank-owned property for $499,000. A reduction from $530,000 to $499,000 doesn’t seem significant, but pushing the price below the $500,000 threshold drew fresh buyer attention to the property.

Another well-priced property listed right below a psychological price threshold was was 2586 Clay, at just under $2M. This Pacific Heights single family home in a premium location, was a pristine Victorian just steps away from Alta Plaza Park and the Upper Fillmore Street shops.

In the condo market, most of the properties that sold were listed just under certain price threshholds– like 55 Lapidge in the Mission, listed just under $650K;  1945 Washington #304, listed just under $720,000; and 3250 Broderick, a gorgeous top-floor condo flat on a prime Marina District block listed just right at $1.15M.

Posted in Selling Strategies | No Comments »

In a past life, I did occasional work as a copywriter and marketing consultant for the real estate industry. One of my clients was Zephyr Real Estate, who hired me to write their annual San Francisco history calendar.  It was probably my favorite project because I got to combine my love of writing with my love of San Francisco history.

In 2003 the theme was 25 Years of San Francisco Real Estate. My task was to find odd facts and figures that followed the arc of local market, and housing trends between 1978 and 2003.  This was my favorite calendar to write. Nearly all of the stories came from old magazine and newspaper articles,  so I got to play historian as I decided which stories had merit and which details to emphasize. 

When you read these keep in mind that they were written in 2003!  Given what’s happened between then and now, the whole thing makes for a verrrrry bizarre read. I’m going to refrain from editorializing here– because I’d soooo much rather hear your comments. So make ‘em. Down in the comments section at the end of this post. . .

***************************** 

1978 - Rent Control
In the spring of 1978, Angelo Sangiacomo, one of the City’s largest landlords, significantly hiked the rents in many of his 1100 apartments.   Public outcry against these increases and others across the city was so huge that the Board of Supervisors slapped a 60-day rent freeze on all housing in San Francisco.  Two months later, a permanent, less draconian version of rent control was introduced which exempted 2-4 unit building that were owner-occupied.  It passed unanimously, without a peep from rent control’s most vitriolic opponent, Quentin Kopp, who put a positive spin on the board’s proceedings.  “I voted for it because it gives landlords up to 18% in retroactive increases and exempts the little landlords,” he said.  “It’s mild enough to swallow.”

1982 - Energy Crisis
While San Franciscans enjoyed technological novelties like microwave ovens and dustbusters in the early 80s, they also worried about the nation’s energy crisis.   One enterprising physician responded by building the city’s first “solar townhomes” at the corner of Broderick and Eddy.  Other methods of alternative energy explored at that time were more extreme.  While the Union of Concerned Scientists considered the possibilities offered by the ocean and fast growing plants, others touted building homes underground to save on heating costs.  “Even on a totally flat lot,” said one expert, “You could dig a hole, build a house in it and solve the lighting problem by building glass walls around a central courtyard.” 

1983 - Interest Rate Spikes
Mortgage rates were on everyone’s mind in the fall of ’83.  While rates were off their previous high of 17% the previous spring, they still hovered around 13-14% and hardly anyone could afford to buy.  Condominium projects like the the apartment condominiums at Ocean Beach starting at $111,000, the neo-Victorian units at Turk and Divisadero starting at $149,800, or the luxury  Golden Gate Commons town homes downtown starting at $310,000 remained out of reach for the average, well-heeled Joe who, with his $40,000 a year income, could only realistically expect to qualify for a $74,000 loan. 

1988 - Home Prices Soar
In 1988 the plunging stock market and rising unemployment was sending the national economy into a recession, but you couldn’t have told that to San Francisco real estate buyers, who spent their days driving real estate prices through the roof.  Back then, home shoppers had to make fast decisions, as there was usually only one chance for their agent to show them a property before an offer was written on the trunk of a car.  “The market is so hot you have to wear oven gloves,” reported the Chronicle, which cited as an example a Richmond District Fixer listed for $235,000 which received 24 offers and sold for $267,000, a staggering price differential for the time.  

1989 - Home Prices Plummet
“Will we all be living in $1,000,000 homes by the year 2000?” blared the cover of San Francisco Focus magazine in April of ’89.  With prices jumping 65% over a two-year period it seemed like a reasonable question.  For many however, it was already too late.  “I’ve gone from Trump to Chump,” complained one buyer who had bought his house when prices peaked in May of the previous year.  As the national recession caught up with San Francisco in at the end of ‘89, properties for sale began sitting on the market for months at a time until their sellers faced reality and started dropping the asking prices.  Ultimately, San Francisco prices slid 10% between ’89 and ’91, before making a slow come-back in the fall of ’92.

1990 - Homes “Get Smart”
Dateline 1990 – The computer-programmed “Smart House” is heralded as the home of the future.  “Your drapes will close automatically as soon as direct sunlight hits your upholstery,” announced Better Homes and Gardens “and the microwave will start cooking the vegetables as soon as the roast in the oven reaches a certain temperature. . .family rooms or rec rooms are reincarnated into “media rooms,” with a projection screen television as a centerpiece.  . . . Home computers have a place 24% of America’s homes, but most PC manufacturers only tentatively approach the personal computer market.  “There is a home market and it’s going to continue to grow,” said an Apple marketing director,” but we don’t see it as explosive growth.”
1992 - Home Foreclosures Make the News
California was slower than the rest of the country to recover from the recession in as it moved into the 90’s.  Out of work and out of money, thousands of home owners let their properties go into foreclosure.  This put the squeeze on scores of banks and savings and loans who had made risky loans in the high-flying 80s.  Dozens of them went under, got gobbled up by larger competitors, or merged with other banks to strengthen their portfolios.  In San Francisco, the branch closings, and name changes were confusing.  It got to the point where it was difficult to know where to send a mortgage payment, or where to make a deposit as familiar San Francisco institutions like  Bayview, Gibraltar, SF Federal, Eureka Bank, Continental, Golden Gate, and Bank of San Francisco faded from view. 

1994 - The Catholics Start the Sell-Off
In June of 1994 the Archdiocese of San Francisco told St. Paul’s parish in Noe Valley that their 1880’s church and its schools would close for good if they didn’t raise $6 million dollars for needed seismic repairs.  The following spring, St. Paul’s put their two of their school buildings and the Blessed Virgin Mary convent up for sale, so they could restore and save the church and one remaining school building.  The price for all three parcels combined was $4.3 million.   The property drew several interested investors, including religious organizations, non-profit housing groups, and a Japanese Medical School.  The winning bid was put in by a developer who pledged to keep the shell of the buildings intact while converting their interiors to condominiums.

1994 - More Rent Control
On November 8, 1994 San Franciscans passed Proposition I by just 3,256 votes, thus extending rent control to all 2-4 unit buildings whether they were owner-occupied or not.  Suddenly small residential income properties seemed like lousy investments since you couldn’t expect the income for a low-rent tenant to help much with the mortgage.  Enterprising buyers, however, responded by partnering up on the purchase of sets of flats.  With each owner occupying a separate unit, costs could then be shared and made more affordable.  If these groups of owners were persistent and willing to weather the perils and pit-falls of a tenancy-in-common, they could even ultimately convert their units into condominiums and make a healthy profit on their investment.
1997 - SOMA Owners Cash In
Until the late 1990’s, Stanley Unger led a modest life.   As a young man, he spent his days repairing appliances in his father’s warehouse shop on Second Street at Brannan.  Later he became a limousine driver, then a doorman at a luxury apartment building on Nob Hill.  All that changed on Thursday, December 11, 1997 when VIP’s from the San Francisco Giants planted shovels in the earth and broke ground for Pac Bell Park.  Seemingly overnight, land-hungry speculators descended on the China Basin neighborhood offering unreal prices to long-time owners.  Having inherited his father’s property at an assessed value of around $360,000, Unger and his brother struck a deal to lease it out for $3,000,000.  Stanley then retired to spend his time lifting weights, tinkering with hot rods, and traveling across the country with his sweetheart.  “Dad was always talking about selling,” said Unger, “but I always begged him not to because I just felt it was a great asset.”

1999 - Y2K
In the first half of 1999, doomsdayers predicted nationwide blackouts and terrorist attacks as the clock ticked relentlessly towards the hour of midnight, December 31, when computers would misread the year 2000 as 1900.   Expert IT engineers declared that confused microchips in every automated home device, from alarm systems to microwaves, would falter, and a failed PG&E power grid would plunge neighborhoods across the city into total darkness.  FEMA advised stocking up on food, water, gasoline, and cash, and survival outfitters saw a run on items like fire starter kits and water purification systems.  As the year wore on, however, ‘Monica Gate’ pushed the Y2K story off the front page and people began to take it less seriously.   Said one pundit who jokingly claimed that the millennium threat was still real, ”I plan to stockpile at least two six packs of beer and a couple of videos.”

Posted in San Francisco History | 1 Comment »

Whenever I work with a buyer considering a purchase in an unfamiliar location, I urge them to walk the neighborhood and drive past the property at different times of the day, especially evenings or weekends. You get a sense of who your neighbors would be and begin to understand a neighborhood’s character. Sometimes it’s a mixed bag—  shady characters loiter on street corners, while homeowners are carting sheetrock and lumber through their front doors or painting their front stairs.  

Nothing can replace actually visiting a neighborhood on foot. However, there is an online way to get a bit of the inside scoop on life in and around any San Francisco address.  Every Block San Francisco offers news feeds for every city block in eleven major metro areas across the US. This is your a one stop resource for looking up everything from building permits to police activity.  In the past I had to dig around in a bunch of different places on www.sfgov.org to get this stuff. Now it’s all organized on a single website. 

I just tried EveryBlock.com for three different addresses – one in Presidio Heights, one in SOMA, and one in West Portal. I instantly got all police activity surrounding each address for the last five days, a handful of restaurant and merchant reviews, a few real estate listings, and recently posted local snapshots from Flickr—(the SOMA pix covered a lot from the MacWorld Expo.)

Every Block told me that Presidio Heights cops spend a lot of time dealing with blocked driveways;  SOMA cops deal with lots of the homeless; and West Portal cops do many routine MUNI inspections (I THINK this means they make sure every rider has paid their fare—- email me if you think I’m wrong.)

When I dug a little deeper on the West Portal address, I learned that a neighbor wants to widen his garage door and add on to the back of his house. I also found a nearby restaurant was cited for unclean work surfaces and improper food storage.

A review of recent media reports near the SOMA address hooked me up with a 7X7 article on the Seven Coolest Neon Signs in San Francisco– which includes the Dahlbeck Electric sign on Howard between 1st and 2nd. And when I looked up zoning agenda items, I learned about every major development/rehab project slated for review by City Planning.

For the Presidio Heights address, I played with the business reviews section and got the Yelp! feed on   everything from nearby pet hospitals to Vietnamese noodle shops. They also have the Craigslist Lost and Found—someone lost a digital camera on California near Jordan, but someone else found a pair of prescription eyeglasses at Arguello and Washington.

EveryBlock is a great resource for out-of-towners who want to learn what’s going on around a particular listing before coming to town to see it. Nothing beats a human perspective, however. So if you see a property online that you want to know more about, call me for an honest, live assessment about what it’s really like on the inside and outside.

Posted in Living in San Francisco, San Francisco Neighborhoods, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Someday (soon) I will learn how to successfully cut and paste tables into my blog. Until then, here are some pdf links to sales reports for all you statistics junkies:

How Much Have Prices Declined in San Francisco & Other Market Data, February 09 

Months-Supply-of-Inventory & Days-on-Market Analysis for San Francisco, February 09

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »