San Francisco32 Offer Update: Sold! For Double Asking Why pay list, when you can pay double? Last month, I posted about a property in San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood that elicited 32 offers. Well, the sale closed last week at a whopping 96% above asking. Which begs the question, will paying double list the week before Facebook goes public prove to be a genius move, [...] 35% Above List? The Seller’s Market is Officially Here By Andrew Jeffery It’s beginning to feel a lot like “the good old days,” where real estate is once cocktail party subject de jour. Oh San Francisco, you do love blowing bubbles. Case in point: 86 Wool St., an 1,100 square foot Marina-style home in Bernal Heights, just sold for $202,000 above list. Wow. A [...] 32 Offers — Are We in a Bubble? We get asked almost every day whether we think a bubble is forming around social media companies like Facebook, Twitter and Zynga. And with Facebook buying Instagram this week for $1 billion, “bubble” is now on the tip of everyone’s tongue. They say you can see a bubble if you look at the real estate [...] San Francisco Pushes for Foreclosure Moratorium The Occupy movement may have faded out of national headlines, but here in San Francisco, activists are making strides to impact policy. Yesterday, after being prodded by members of Occupy Bernal, the Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to pass a resolution for a moratorium on foreclosures within the city and county of San Francisco. Occupy [...] Inner Mission vs. San Francisco: Condo Trends The Inner Mission is one of the most up and coming neighborhoods in San Francisco. Over the past 10 years, a more affluent demographic has moved to the area, as employees at companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter, Salesforce.com and Apple have flocked to this haven for culture, cuisine and nightlife. As a result, condominium development [...] $110k Over List and 11 Offers in Bernal (not Noe) This little house just a block off Cortland just closed with a sale price at over $110,000 above asking — with 11 offers. Which begs the question, which Cirios asked almost a year ago, “Is Bernal the new Noe?” Markets around the Bay Area are as tight as they have ever been, even against the [...] Riding the Waves at the Beacon Socketsite posted an interesting example of why the Beacon continues to be a dicey building to buy (or own) in. Here is the chronology of unit 802 in 250 King St.: Apr. 2006: Bought new for $906,666 with a 105% LTV loan Nov. 2009: Bought at foreclosure auction for $527,077, cash May 2010: Bought on the open [...] Occupy Bernal Seeks Statewide Ban on Foreclosures Occupy Bernal, along with San Francisco Supervisor John Avalos, is taking on banks and federal regulators in their appeal for a statewide ban on foreclosures. Occupy Bernal made national headlines last month by holding a mock auction at Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf’s Russian Hill home. Now, the group is pushing for California to put a [...] Dogpatch Cafe Building Sells After 114 Days Almost four months on the market, but the building that houses the DogPatch Cafe on 20th and 3rd, sold for $3,395,000, more than $300,000 below its original price of $3,790,000. Right on the T line and in the shadow of a the rising Potrero Launch, Martin Building Company’s 196-unit condo project. The building consists of 9 units, five of [...] 103 Park St: Week 2 – Demo continues2 back yards of debris later and we are still removing the old, getting ready for the new. 103 Park St: Week 1 – Demo beginsWith our plans approved, demo got underway this week. A couple photos can be found below. As the project enters its ugly, rip everything apart phase, we’ll post a few photos here and there, and once the project starts to really take shape, we’ll be back with more regular, complete updates. 103 Park St: Plans ApprovedWith minimal wrangling of city officials, we received plan approval today on the first submission attempt! This means that after a couple days of legislative paperwork (read: paying the city), construction should begin by the end of the week. Now that the project is entering construction phase, we’ll post regular photos along with significant milestones. [...] 103 Park: Closed!Finally! After weeks of waiting on escrow and the seller to get their acts together, escrow closed today. The good news is that we got two free weeks to work on plans, finalize scope and get ready for construction to begin next week. Happy New Year! 103 Park St: New Cafe Opens Down the StreetOne of our favorite aspects of this investment is the location. While South Bernal is certainly not as posh as North Bernal, it continues to become more desirable every day. To wit, we were pleased to see a new cafe pop up on Richland at Mission, just two blocks south of 103 Park. Cafeto, noted [...] 103 Park St: Private Investor ToursTo give investors a better feel for their investment, we have started private tours of the property. We want to make sure everyone who invests in this project can see as much or as little as they want, starting with the property itself. As we progress through the project, private tours will continue, along with [...] 103 Park St: First Draft of Plans, Contractor VisitsMason sent over a first draft of plans, which we reviewed and provided feedback. Those plans can be found here. As we finalize our desired scope, we will begin walkthroughs with our preferred contractors to get a better sense of how much of our scope we’ll be able to fit into the budget. Our initial [...] 103 Park St: As-BuiltsThe first step in any project is to get As-Builts from your architect. These are required to not just understand what your dealing with inside the building and out, but the city will need the As-Builts to sign off on the proposed project. Click here to see the As-Builts, which help give a sense of [...] 103 Park St: Escrow DelayedPer usual in REO transactions, the combination of sub-par escrow services and unresponsive banks delayed escrow. We are ready, our lender is ready but no one else is. We extended escrow through 12/28/11 with the full goal of closing early, but particularly with the holidays you just never know. The silver lining is that with access to [...] 103 Park St: Architect Green LightAfter reviewing bids, we decided to go with Mason Kirby, an independent Bernal-based architect. Mason’s enthusiasm for the project, reasonable prices and great ideas tipped the scales. For more on Mason click here. A big shout out to Daniel Kobesky at Existing Conditions Drafting for great referrals and connecting us with Mason. Traditional kitchen [...] 103 Park St: AppraisalThe last hurdle to getting the final sign-off from our lender was the appraisal. We weren’t too worried since more often than not the appraisal comes in right at the purchase price (so much for government-sponsored appraisal reform), but in this market you never know. For a property like this comparables are inevitably hard to [...] 103 Park St: Capital RaisedWith the inspection out of the way, architects working on bids and our loan approved, we could finally take a deep breath and focus on raising the equity we needed to close the deal. Fortunately the deal went over well with investors, in particular the prospect of owning cash flowing real estate in one of [...] 103 Park St: InspectionThe best part about a property that is half-ripped apart is that there are fewer unknowns and you going in assuming you have to replace everything. Surprises are what kill a rehab budget. But we still needed verification the foundation and major systems were intact, so called in Diverse Inspection Services, one of the most [...] 103 Park St: Due DiligenceWith the clock ticking, we started lining up architects to bid the project. We would not be changing a lot of design elements or making major structural changes to the property, but we would need plans and permits, so an architect to navigate the process would be essential. We scheduled six architect visits over a [...] 103 Park St: OfferingWe have a small but loyal group of investors who trust our judgment and market knowledge. But this was to be our biggest project to date and our first in San Francisco, so we knew investing would be a leap of faith. We had lined up a construction loan to supplement our private first so [...] |