| Hot New Listings - | October 2nd, 2008 |
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$2,795,000/ Upper Market- Liberty Hill/ BR/BA: 4/2.5 PKG: 2 Brief Description: New expansion, remodeled on 3 levels with downtown views and terraced gardens. $2,250,000/Marina Dist/ BR/BA: 3/3.5 PKG: 2-4 Brief Description: Newly constructed home approx 3,000 sq feet of living area. It is 3 stories with views to both the North (Marin/GGB) and South (Pac. Hghts) from deck area to the top level. There is a level yard with Penthouse room/office. $1,800,000/ St. Francis Wood/ BR/BA: 5/2 PKG: 2 Brief Description: Spanish Mediterranean remodel. Elaborate detail, art-friendly home with usable garden/yard. $1,699,000 / South Beach/ BR/BA: 2/2 + loft PKG: 1 Brief Description: Never before on the open market, this rare penthouse offering features 2 full bedrooms, loft library, and a corner patio that enjoys city views and opens to both the living room and master bedroom. $1,195,000/ SOMA/ BR/BA:1/1 PKG: 2 Brief Description: Live on the top of the Heublein Building. One of 3 penthouse units w/rooftop Japanese Soaking Tub. One of a kind space and once in a lifetime opportunity. Perfect for young professional male or older male/couple looking for a crash pad, pied a terre or weekend retreat. Last chance to buy off market. Price negotiable! $1,149,000/ Russian Hill / 2 unit building. Upper 2 bdrm. Lower 1 bdrm. Remodeled top to bottom – great entry level units! Agents: $385,000/ Anza Vista / BR/BA: Studio/1 PKG: 0 easy street parking Brief Description: Elegant Victorian condo with garden entry, Civic Center views, approx 398 sq ft. Top Unit - $1,325,000ish/ BR/BA: 3+/3 PKG: 1 Brief Descripton: Unbelievable 2 Level top floor PANO view condo completed in September 2008. Multiple deeded decks, large deeded yard. Smashing views of Bay Bridge, Oakland, Bay and East Bay. Great SFH alternative…commuters dream. Can show and sell NOW. Lower Unit - $849,000ish/ BR/BA: 2/2 PKG: 1 Brief Description: New construction, lower level condo w/ some views. Giant Patio and outdoor space, open kitchen/living/dining area. New building completed in September 2008. Can show and sell NOW. |
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We have something for everyone today, in a wide range of sizes, styles, prices and neighborhoods:| Hot New Properties and Listings Not on Open Market | September 4th, 2008 |
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We have some mouth-watering Russian Hill listings this week– along with some other properties in sweet, classic San Francisco neighborhoods. $589,000 to 1,999,000/ New Construction/THE ARTANI-818 Van Ness The ARTANI is in the cultural center of the city. We have something to suit all styles and tastes with one bedroom, one bedroom plus den and two bedroom units with parking available. These homes offer sophisticated living in a beautifully appointed 52 unit building with an extraordinary roof garden, doorman and so much more. To see, please call Sharon Collier at 415-738-2608 for more details. And make sure to tell her you saw it in The Buzz! $1,799,000/ Russian Hill / Single Family with Au Pair. Quintessential San Francisco location at crest of Russian Hill. Total bedroom/bath count is 3/2.5, with 2-car parking. Big lot, terraced garden. R-3 lot, charming architecture, designated historic by League of Women Voters. Call Meredith at 415-312-1616 to get inside early– just tell her you learned about it in The Buzz. $1,165,000/ South Beach / Penthouse at The Lansing on a charming block of Rincon Hill. 2br/2ba/1-car parking. Large terrace. Full-on City views. This was a model unit and has wonderful upgrades. Call Ashley at 738-7035 to get in early– just tell him you learned about it in The Buzz. $659,000/ Excelsior Single Family/ 3BR/2BA/2-car parking. Charmer with great floor plan and nice upgrades including remodeled kitchen and new plumbing. Convenient location near Geneva. Call Mary to get in early at 738-2621. Just tell her you saw it in The Buzz. $589,000 /Haight Ashbury /1BR/1BA:1/1 . Adorable, remodeled, Victorian condo in 6-unit building. With 4 rooms total, could be used as 2-bedroom (if you really like each other :)). This is a winner for the price. Call Sharon to get in early at 415-269-2268. Tell her you saw it in the Buzz. $2,000,000 / South Beach /200 Brannan penthouse. 2BR/2BA/2-car parking. 1500+ square feet. Great floor plan, high end finishings. Huge private terrace, wood burning fireplace, City and Bridge views. Call Sharon to see early at 415-269-2268. We also have an unusual Buyer need for a 2-unit view building or house that’s suitable for extended family and can be partitioned into two homes. Our price range is 6-7M. We will consider properties in any of San Francisco’s better neighborhoods, including Cole Valley and Sea Cliff. The upper living quarters requires the view and needs at least 2-bedrooms. The lower portion of the home needs at least 3-bedrooms. Please call Sharon if you have/know of something at 415-269-2268. |
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| Places Where You Can Safely Take Your Aunt To Lunch | September 3rd, 2008 |
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My readers tell me they love the postings about places to see and visit in San Francisco– even ones who have lived here for years enjoy being reminded of forgotton nooks and crannies. With that in mind, here’s a posting about SF dining that may jog your memory about some cool places to eat. ******************** Realtors tend to be big foodies. We eat out a lot and we fancy ourselves very up-to-the-minute about which restaurants are in or out of favor. I’m personally not a huge food fanatic, but I love a really nice dinner out in a great, fun new restaurant. But. . . when relatives visit, I’m often frustrated by their culinary timidity. Dim Sum overwhelms them and restaurants with things like bacon ice cream and duck fat french fries are out of the question. Even so, once they’re done trying out Scoma’s or Aliotos on Fisherman’s Wharf, they want to try someplace the natives frequent, where they can feel like a bit of an insider. If you have relatives like mine and want to take them someplace where you can all enjoy the meal, here are some “oh-my-gosh-I-totally-forgot-about-that-place-its-great” restaurants: Tadich Grill Tadich is one of the places my Dad took me when I was a kid when we were having ‘father-daughter time. Today, when I enter Tadich I’m transported to the glamour and style of the past. Its old-world atmosphere, with dark wood paneling, 80-foot mahogany bar, and natty staff in shirts and waistcoats always makes me expect to see Herb Caen or Dashiell Hammett pop out of one of the booths any minute to surprise me. I love the waiters at Tadich. They are funny, polite, efficient, and often Croation (no I don’t know why). They will happily deliver any cut of meat or fish just the way you want, be it charcoal broiled, grilled, poached, or baked to perfection. If you’re really up for playing tourist guide afterwards, you can all jump on the California Street cable car right outside for a trip up Nob Hill. Greens I love how Green’s unassuming front door next to the City’s Yacht Harbor opens up to wide open space that always bowls me over with a breathtaking view of the Golden Gate Bridge, framed by swaying masts and bobbing boats. On sunny weekends, a brunch at Greens can be followed by a scenic walk along the Marina green and shoreline. You can also take your visitors to walk off the calories on nearby Chestnut Street. Momos I stay away from Momos like the plague during a ball game, but any other time of the week it’s a great place to power lunch and a perfect choice for sports fans who want to make a pilgrimage to our beloved ball park. The superb front patio deck takes in a view of the Embarcadero, the Ball Park and the South Beach Harbor, and is a great place to people watch. Momo’s indoor dining room offers the same spectacular outlook, along with an open kitchen, wood-fired oven, and busy earnest staff. BTW, on non-game days, MoMo’s offers the entire restaurant for special events, and can hold up to 400 for cocktails. For smaller groups of 125 or less, there’s a “Hall of Fame” room, lined with oil paintings of the Giant’s famous stars in action. LuLu Including LuLu right after MoMos may make me seem a bit SOMA/South Beach eccentric, as well as inclined towards cutesie names. But I include it because it’s one of my favorite ‘forgotten’ restaurants– and a solid choice for foodies and conservative eaters alike. Lulu opened in 1993, when the Yerba Buena complex was still an apple in San Francisco’s eye and open kitchens with wood-fired ovens seemed very cutting edge. Today, it still feels fresh and new, with consistently good food that continues to meet the high standards set by San Francisco’s fine dining crowd. Lulu’s central restaurant area is noisy and showy, with raised tables, a long crowded bar, and open kitchen. I love Lulu most for its reliability. When I met a girlfriend there last week for lunch, it was exactly what I expected. Fun, easy, casual and elegant, with great food and good service. |
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| FHA Loans Have a Fresh New Look | September 3rd, 2008 |
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FHA loans are loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration, a part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The FHA is anxious to help first time home buyers get into the market and those with ugly rate adjustments refinance into more affordable house payments. FHA loans used to be out of the question for San Francisco home buyers. The loan limits were way too small (around $417,000) and required squeaky clean credit and healthy incomes. Today, FHA loan limits in San Francisco have been boosted to $729,750. With 5% downpayments acceptable to the FHA, this makes a $750,000 purchase price much more doable. The FHA has also substantially loosened their lending requirements. Excellent credit is no longer required and buyers can get into a single family home or condo below the $750,000 threshhold with as little as 3% down (no you did not misread that–). The FHA’s target audience for their loans are: First-time homebuyers, borrowers with mediocre credit (or even no credit), those with limited resources for a downpayment, and homeowners who want to refinance. It may sound like there’s a catch to all this– but there’s not. These are real loans are we are closing deals at Paragon with buyers who are obtaining them. Other FHA loan perks: Easier Qualification - With the FHA backing the loans, lenders are willing to loosen their lending requirements– and will often lend more money to you than they might through other kinds of loan programs. Low Downpayment OK - Other loans require at least a 5% downpayment and it has to be your own money, so gifting a downpayment isn’t allowed. An FHA lender is fine with downpayments as little as 3% down and getting that 3% from a friend or family member is not a problem. Cash Reserves Not Required - Most lenders insist that you to have 3-6 months carrying costs in the bank. FHA loans don’t require that kind of cushion. These loans are not for everyone. FHA loans are fixed for thirty years and those with itty-bitty downpayments will be required to pay a 1.5% fee for mortgage protection insurance. If you have at least 10% down, good credit and a job with W-2s and pay-stubs, you would probably be better off going with a different loan product. |
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| Now that the Olympics are Over. . . AIA’s Annual Festival for Architecture and the City | August 29th, 2008 |
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The programs to choose from are endless. There’s something for everyone here. The ones that caught my attention are: Exhibit: Urban Re:Interventions Lecture: Building Green in San Francisco: New Incentives and New Requirements Under the Bay Bridge Boat Tour: Movie: The Art & Science of Renzo Piano Family Tours and Art-Making Workshop at Contemporary Jewish Museum Food: DZINE ******************************
You must register for all events. Space is limited. Logon to the AIASF website for more information. |
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But the centerpiece of the festival (at least for me) is the Living Homes Tour– which offers design enthusiasts an inside look into the world of distinctive Bay Area residences in San Francisco. Projects are showcased with the designer(s) via an open house format, and tour participants get to some of the city’s latest residential projects from the inside out. Saturday’s tour concentrates on homes in the Mission, Noe Valley and Potrero Hill, as well as a tour of the Arterra condominiums. Sunday’s schedule is more focused on Pacific Heights, although a home in Sausalito is included, along with a tour of the new Salvation Army Community Center in the Tenderloin.| A Room for a Few– | August 24th, 2008 |
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Last week there was a great real estate rental story in the SF Weekly about the Tiger House– a seven bedroom home in Cole Valley, right where Belevedere dead ends into Frederick. It’s known as the Tiger House because the whole facade is covered with a painting of a fantastic Tiger sitting in the jungle. If you’ve seen it, you can definitely picture it in your mind right now. The SF Weekly story is about the fluid twenty-something bunch that lives there. The anchor tenant is Dan, the owners’ son. Known as the “Danlord, he oversees manages the tenant turnover. Whenever he posts a vacancy, the response is overwhelming and competition to get in is very tough. The alchemy of personalities is very important to the Danlord, and you have to be very funny, clever, smart and cool in all the right ways. When I first moved to San Francisco in 1986 and needed cheap rent I dreamed of finding a group household with funny, clever roommates. My life would be like a series of “Friends” episodes where we would share meals, be there to greet one another when we got home, and never, ever leave dirty dishes in the sink. My first place was a room in a giant flat in the Duboce Triangle with four roommates. I got hardwood floors, ceilings that went up forever, and little plaster cherubs nestled in the corners of my big bay window (I’ve never seen anything like them since). The downside was the careless sloppy people I lived with. My low point came at 2:00 am about four months after I’d moved in, when they decided to use a chain saw on some furniture because they had run out of wood for the fireplace. After that, two old high school friends invited me to live with them in a flat across town on Filbert, between Octavia and Gough. It was a good sized three bedroom, built in the 1960s with a lovely back yard that we were allowed to look at but not use– it belonged to Mrs. Chin, who lived with her husband downstairs. Mr. and Mrs. Chin were retired, old-fashioned and extremely noise sensitive. To this day I can’t figure out why they decided to rent the place above them to three young women. They peeked between the blinds each time we passed their kitchen window on our way upstairs, and Mrs. Chin’s days were spent banging a broomstick on the ceiling whenever more than one person walked across the living room at a time. My third shared rental was my last, in a two bedroom Victorian apartment on Carl Street. The trim on the outside and inside was thick with layers of paint and there was wall-to-wall beige shag carpeting with insanely ugly kitchen linoleum. We also overlooked the N Judah and there was a power surge each time a train went by. But it had a formal dining room and for the first time I could really entertain and try recipes like pot roast with Lipton’s Onion Soup Mix dumped over it. The market for rental housing has been getting tighter and tighter over the past few years and much of it is tied to the current real estate market. In my little real estate world, I see scores of renters who are staying put because they either can’t get a mortgage or are choosing to wait until the market bottoms out. I’m also hearing from friends with grown children who have scored big-paying jobs and are moving to the City. These kids can afford the big rents that drive the cost of housing up, making competition for reasonably priced rental housing even more fierce. Other renters stay put because they have cheap rent-controlled housing that they don’t want to give up. Then there are owners of smaller buildings who choose to keep their units vacant. I can think of two clients right now who have big flats sitting empty– they want to keep their options open in case they want or need to sell, and the value of their property goes down once they rent them out. I’m sure if I were to poll my associates at Paragon, I would come up with at least twenty other landlords who are doing the same thing. If I were a twenty-something seeking a rental today, I would probably be a stressed-out wreck. So kudos to any of you trying to find a decent place to rent at an affordable price today. Anyone willing to try it must be incredibly courageous, creative and resilient. |
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| Prices for The Hayes Condominiums in San Francisco - Effective August 08 | August 18th, 2008 |
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I frequently get updates on pricing for different new home projects. Even The Hayes is located at Page and Gough, three blocks from the Hayes Here are details on pricing I got from the Hayes this afternoon. These Featured Homes
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| Introducing You to Some of my Cool Clients | August 15th, 2008 |
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Over my 22 years in the business of helping people buy and sell real estate, I’ve worked with everyone from artists and entrepreneurs, to attorneys and whiz-bang computer geniuses. Here are links to some of their websites– www.johngriffinphotography.com www.lesartssf.com Michel McIntosh |
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| New Listings and Properties Not Yet on Market | August 13th, 2008 |
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$4,250,000 Russian Hill Investment Property – 13 units with nice Golden Gate Bridge views. Information is limited at this point. Please call Cece Blase for details - 415-577-0809. $2,150,000 Marina District Flats. 2 units, both owner-occupied. Some remodeling. Classic architecture with much original detail. This one is a pocket listing. Please call for address, details and showing information - 415-577-0809. $1,795,000 Anza Vista 1000 block of Broderick Street. 4100 square foot Victorian with 5 bedrooms, 3.5 baths, 1 parking. Full renovation. This is the block that dead-ends into Kaiser Hospital. Well worth checking out. 415-577-0809 $1,359,000 Corona Heights Charming, quiet(!) street. Two level condo, 3br/2ba/2pkg. House-sized 2400+square feet, deeded garden. $898,000 Nob Hill. 1+BR/1BA. Top floor in 9-unit boutique building. Built 2006. Great light, sexy master suite. $869,000 Outer Richmond. 2+BR/2BA/3PKG. Spacious with formal living spaces, good architecture, eat-in kitchen. Bonus rooms and bath down. One block to GG Park. $799,000 Midtown Terrace 3BR/1BA/1PKG. Just shy of 1100 square feet, corner lot, sunny backyard, potential on lower level. First open scheduled for 9/7. I can get you in early. Call to preview and buy before it hits open market! 415-577-0809. |
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| New Intelligence on the Artani Condominiums in San Francisco | August 6th, 2008 |
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The Artani has 52 units total, with a combination of one bedrooms, one bedroom plus dens and two bedrooms. There are no studios or three-bedroom units. All of the units come with one car parking. Square footages run from just over 700 sf for a one bedroom to the 1400 square foot penthouse units– . Tentative pricing puts an entry point at $599,000 to $1M+ for a penthouse unit with indoor/outdoor terrace and water views. Almost all the units have some outdoor space. There will be a ‘knockout, fabulous’ (sales agent’s words) roof deck with fountains with landscaping designed and installed by Living Green of SOMA The principal amenity will be a doorman/concierge. The Artani not heavy on bells and whistles– I like to call these kinds of buildings “stylish, not stylin.” High end finishings include Caesarstone countertops, and hardwood floors come standard in all the units. Multi-paned windows with floor-to-ceiling glass will be the building’s hallmark and a major architectural feature of the project. Relative to other large condominium buildings on the Van Ness Corridor (Chelsea Court, Symphony Tower, Opera Plaza), the Artani will have a much higher end feel with richer finishings and lobby attendant. |
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One of my bosses is Artani’s developer. So Paragon is handling marketing and sales for the units. The sales office is scheduled to be up and running right after Labor Day weekend.
