Judging by the number of houses I’ve seen being redone from the studs up, together with the number of homes that seem to be hitting the market at over $2 million these days, you’d think that Noe Valley real estate is doing very well once again, thank you very much.
Exhibit A: 729 Elizabeth Street.
I first saw this house, advertised as a fully remodelled 4 BR, 2BA, Potrero Hill View Home,” back in October 2009. With its Spanish Mediterranean, sunny yellow exterior, it had curb appeal, together with terrific if industrial views over the working end of the Central Waterfront and I-280. The main floor showed started off well, with an open layout, great sun and expansive views. I don’t recall the exact layout any more, but I do recall that a lot of the home’s square footage, including “an expansive fourth bedroom/media room” and “informal office space” were located on a lower floor basement conversion that still felt like a basement. ...
Back from vacation, and ready to blog and roll!
I’m currently working with a couple of clients looking for homes in the Potrero Hill District. Here, we’re talking specifically about subdistrict 9.E under San Francisco’s MLS (Multiple Listing Service).
It’s an area that roughly sits between I-280 and I-101, with Cesar Chavez at its the south end and the tangle of 101/Design District/Division at its north end. With major arteries at all ends as well as proximity to Caltrain, it’s a favorite for people who need good commute access. It’s also got some of the best weather in San Francisco. The crest of Potrero Hill sits at intersection of Carolina and 22nd Street. Homes on the “north slope” — ie. north of 22nd Street — boast spectacular views of downtown SF and the Bay and therefore fetch a premium. Potrero Hill has a small but upscalish shopping/cafe strip located on 18th between Connecticut and Texas. The recently opened Whole Foods at Rhode Island and 17th hasn’t hurt either. Architecture is a mix of broad two-story Victorians and newer modern structures designed to take advantage of the weather and the views, especially on the north slope. ...
I came across this beautiful wreck during a walk in my ‘hood last autumn and snapped this photo to catch the eerie light through the windows.
Purchased a year ago for $700,000, the 1300 sf house has grown to 4BR, 3 BA and 2462 square feet. Voila, the new 587 Jersey, just listed at a slender $1,749,000. That’s $710 a foot.
I toured the property last Tuesday and to be honest I was underwhelmed. The developers squeezed the extra square footage into the original building envelope by building out the attic and the basement. Certainly a good way to avoid all the hassle of neighborhood 311 hearings, notifications, and controversy. But at the end of the day, you’re still buying a built out basement and a built out attic. And it shows. ...
At long last, here’s the promised data on Noe Valley condos and TIC’s.
First, a look back (in anger?) at the make-up of Noe Valley sales in 2009.
Note that there were more than twice as many condos sold as TICs, and more homes sold than condos and TICs put together. (What’s a TIC? — Check out my series of posts on Tenancy-In-Common Interests, starting here.)
Also, that absurdly long DOM for TICs was distorted by 3 TICs at 201 Hoffman that took 410 days to sell. Still, without those sales, DOM for TICs (tired of the acronyms yet?) was still 99 days. And I’d be somewhat skeptical of the whopping difference in price between TICs and condos as well: TICs sales often don’t have a price per square foot listed, so there are very few data points — and there are very few sales to begin with. ...
Back in May 2009, I showed that Noe Valley was not immune from the slump in prices affecting the rest of the city, despite suggestions to the contrary from real estate agents, mavens and media.
Have things gotten any better? Well, no. And maybe.
Here’s a chart showing percentage change in single family home prices for the last 14 months, relative to their all-time highs (click to enlarge). (All figures are 3 month moving averages.)
After reaching an all time high in March 2008, prices plummeted. Just a year later, in the midst of fears of a global Depression, home prices were down 30%. Did things get better? No, they got substantially worse. Despite an impressive city-wide recovery in 2009, with prices going from 30% down to around 18% down for single family homes at year’s end (see more detail here) , Noe Valley home prices continued to retreat. In October and November 2009, prices were down 35%. At year’s end, they’d barely clawed back two percentage points. Not surprisingly, days on market (DOM) remained stubbornly high for all of 2009. ...
Catching up on the endless paper-work the other night, I came across that rare thing: a property that sells twice in a relatively short time with no major renovations performed in the interim.
This “sales matching” technique is what the folks at Case-Shiller use to create their Indexes of property values across the country. Part of the reason they can is that their indexes are generated for large Metropolitan Statistical Areas with lots of house sales. And even so, they use a lot of fancy foot-work to “match up” properties. ...
As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve had several questions about per square foot prices recently. There’s no doubt that it’s a very useful metric, for the obvious reason that it allows you to get closer to an “apples to apples” comparison of the value of two different properties that are different in size. Of course, that leaves all sorts of other variables — location, amenities, etc. But if, say, you’re looking to make an offer on a property, certainly you’d want to start by looking at what other properties in the same area have been selling for on a per square foot basis, and then use that to see if the property you’re interested in is in the ballpark. ...
