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A continuing rise in mortgage rates along with declining interest from homebuyers led the median San Francisco home price to drop 7% year-over-year to $1.38 million in August, according to a report from real estate company Redfin.

The San Francisco metro—along with neighboring Oakland where prices dropped 1.4%—were the only two metro areas that saw median sales prices decline during the last four weeks. By contrast, nationwide median home prices rose 6% over the same time period.

“Home prices in San Francisco are quickly approaching 2019 levels as they contract in reaction to higher mortgage rates,” said Taylor Marr, Redfin’s deputy chief economist. “Tech jobs fueled the boom in SF, making it unaffordable, and the exodus of tech workers is also driving a bust right now.”

The federal government’s efforts to fight inflation have pushed 30-year mortgage rates to 5.89%, the highest since November 2009. In August, fewer homes sold above their listing price than at any time since February 2021 and the typical home went for 0.3% below its final list price.

Laila Salma, a real estate agent with Salma & Company, said the drop in home values ​​is notable but placed the decline in the context of a larger cooldown in the city’s residential real estate market.

An August market report from real estate brokerage Compass noted other signs of a real estate cooldown, including a rise in the number of days a typical listing spends on the market, the number of overall listings and the number of price reductions for properties (up 117 % year over year). Home sales were down 32% in August from the same period last year.

“Overall, values ​​are down and have been for the last few months. Many buyers are caught up in the headlines but there is some great opportunity out there if you feel comfortable acting,” Salma said.

So see

She also pointed to the seasonality in San Francisco’s home buying market, which typically slows in the summer before picking up again in the fall. But she’s picked up on a real lack of urgency among buyers who are waiting for the best deals they can get before pulling the trigger.

Patrick Carlisle, chief Bay Area market analyst for Compass, wrote that this year’s fall home buying season will be one to watch as a sign of how buyers and sellers are navigating the slowdown.

“As of early September, interest rates have increased again and stock markets declined once more,” wrote Carlisle. “The next major indicator of buyer and seller psychology and market dynamics will be what occurs during the autumn selling season.”

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A respected analyst is issuing a warning for the San Francisco Bay Area: Homes are overvalued, especially in this cooling real estate market.

Mark Zandi, the chief economist at the venerated firm Moody’s Analytics, told Fortune in a report published Wednesday that the San Francisco Bay Area housing market is overpriced, although not to the degree of rapidly growing housing markets elsewhere in the country.

Moody’s “assesses whether local economic fundamentals, including local income levels,” are sustainable relative to the cost of local housing.

The San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley area — lumped together by Moody’s Analytics — has home prices that are overvalued by 11.4%, according to data by Moody’s Analytics. Other parts of what’s broadly considered the Bay Area, excluding Vallejo (where homes are overvalued by nearly 20%), see smaller or comparable percentages.

Outside the Bay Area, particularly in areas that have had an influx of residents, home values ​​are reportedly inflated. In the Santa Cruz-Watsonville area, homes are overvalued by nearly 36%. And in Reno, prices are 39% higher than expected. That’s not to mention Boise, Idaho, and Austin, Texas, which have seen overvaluations of 72% and 61%, respectively. (In Boise, Fortune notes, housing prices have already been cut.)

These “overvaluation” numbers don’t necessarily mean that prices will decline, Fortune explains. But when housing markets are no longer booming, as has been the case in 2022 so far, local housing markets with wildly inflated home values ​​(over 25%) do typically experience significant price drops.

Now, what does that mean for the Bay Area, where overvaluation is less severe? It remains to be seen for certain, but already, price reductions for active home listings in San Francisco are up nearly 200%, according to Compass. And a Redfin report in July suggested that the Bay Area housing market is cooling faster than anywhere else in the country.

The post Analyst predicts San Francisco Bay residence costs might drop appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

A respected analyst is issuing a warning for the San Francisco Bay Area: Homes are overvalued, especially in this cooling real estate market.

Mark Zandi, the chief economist at the venerated firm Moody’s Analytics, told Fortune in a report published Wednesday that the San Francisco Bay Area housing market is overpriced, although not to the degree of rapidly growing housing markets elsewhere in the country.

Moody’s “assesses whether local economic fundamentals, including local income levels,” are sustainable relative to the cost of local housing.

The San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley area — lumped together by Moody’s Analytics — has home prices that are overvalued by 11.4%, according to data by Moody’s Analytics. Other parts of what’s broadly considered the Bay Area, excluding Vallejo (where homes are overvalued by nearly 20%), see smaller or comparable percentages.

Outside the Bay Area, particularly in areas that have had an influx of residents, home values ​​are reportedly inflated. In the Santa Cruz-Watsonville area, homes are overvalued by nearly 36%. And in Reno, prices are 39% higher than expected. That’s not to mention Boise, Idaho, and Austin, Texas, which have seen overvaluations of 72% and 61%, respectively. (In Boise, Fortune notes, housing prices have already been cut.)

These “overvaluation” numbers don’t necessarily mean that prices will decline, Fortune explains. But when housing markets are no longer booming, as has been the case in 2022 so far, local housing markets with wildly inflated home values ​​(over 25%) do typically experience significant price drops.

Now, what does that mean for the Bay Area, where overvaluation is less severe? It remains to be seen for certain, but already, price reductions for active home listings in San Francisco are up nearly 200%, according to Compass. And a Redfin report in July suggested that the Bay Area housing market is cooling faster than anywhere else in the country.

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Sales volume plunged 38%.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

The median price of single-family houses in the San Francisco Bay Area peaked in April and has dropped every month since then. By July, the median price, at $1.33 million, was down by about $220,000 from the peak and by 2% year-over-year, undoing most of the huge gains in 2021 and early 2022.

In San Francisco itself, the median price of single-family houses also peaked in April – at $2.06 million, according to the California Association of Realtors. And then it sagged, and then it plunged. In July, it hit $1.68 million. Median prices are volatile from month to month, and they’re easily skewed by a change in the mix of what is sold, and by other factors, so we need to be careful here. But this is nevertheless a huge plunge at the wrong time of the year.

Year-over-year, the median price in San Francisco dropped by 9% in July, the second month in a row of year-over-year declines, following the 4% year-over-year decline in June. The first time the median price hit this level was in February 2018. In this chart, the seasonal low points are generally Decembers and Januarys. The summer months tend to be in the upper part of the range – but obviously not this July. The purple line connects the Julys.

Sales volume in July plunged by 38% year-over-year in the Bay Area, according to MLS data cited by Patrick Carlisle, Chief Market Analyst at Compass, San Francisco Bay Area.

“Across the Bay Area, markets have continued to slow and cool, with dramatic changes in demand, inventory, overbidding, price reductions, and year-over-year buyer appreciation rates,” Carlisle said.

“Median home sales price appreciation rates in the Bay Area have generally seen steep declines from those in 2021/early 2022, with some counties experiencing year-over-year median price declines in July,” Carlisle said.

“These changes vary in degree by county and market segment – ​​and monthly data can be volatile, fluctuating according to a wide variety of factors, including market seasonality – but the direction of these shifts is near universal,” Carlisle said.

San Francisco’s extra-special stew of housing market factors.

The spike in mortgage rates to over 5% is tough for homebuyers to digest, and for home sellers to adjust to, and it’s tough for them everywhere.

But San Francisco, with its focus on tech and startups, has become heavily dependent on venture capital funding, and on SoftBank’s funding, and on the hiring by these and other companies, with employees getting huge salaries and fantastic stock options, and all this has become dependent on booming stock and crypto prices. So here we go:

Prices of the most speculative assets have plunged, such as cryptos and stocks that recently had their IPOs or SPAC mergers. Many of these stocks of companies that are headquartered or were headquartered in San Francisco have collapsed by 70% or 80% or 90% and have made it into my Imploded Stocks column. And more broadly, despite the blistering summer rally, the Nasdaq is down 21% from its November high.

The funding of startups has fizzled, particularly the huge amounts that SoftBank used to throw willy-nilly at Bay Area startups, at valuations that turned them into instant pop-up unicorns. But SoftBank got waylaid by the plunge in stocks and disclosed a gazillion dollars in losses on its investments so far this year, and then shut off the money spigot.

Venture capital firms have pulled back from funding the craziest stuff as the exits via IPO or via merger with a SPAC that they rely on to cash out have been barricaded by the brutal collapse of many of these stocks.

Population declined. From July 2020 to July 2021, the population of San Francisco dropped by nearly 55,000 people, or by 6.3%, to 815,000 people, the lowest since 2010, according to the Census Bureau. But the decline started in 2019. According to estimates by California’s Department of Finance, the population peaked in 2019 at 890,000. So since 2019, the population has dropped by about 75,000 people, or by 8.4%. For people who live here, the City is still immensely crowded and congested, but just a little less so than during peak craziness.

Working remotely and corporate move-outs have left the previously bustling Financial District and the South of Market area a shadow of its former self. According to the Savills, 26% of the entire office space in the City is on the market for lease, which is huge. Among the big cities, only Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston are in worse shape.

New housing units have been added at a rate of 2,000 to 4,500 every year. All of them have been multifamily, as no single-family housing has been built in over a decade. Density in the city is growing, and huge areas are being redeveloped. This includes Candlestick Point/Hunters Point Shipyard, Treasure Island, Parkmerced, Potrero Power Station, and others, most of which are industrial wastelands, some of them decorated with nuclear contamination from the US military during the Cold War, the cleanup of which has become its own forever soap opera of scandals. Tens of thousands of housing units are planned for these areas.

But much lower home prices would solve a host of big economic and business issues in the Bay Area – including the entire phenomenon called Housing Crisis.

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The logo of shower toilet and plumbing supplies maker Geberit is seen at its headquarters in Rapperswil-Jona, Switzerland October 30, 2018. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann

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• Higher raw materials costs trigger profit dip
• Company will lift prices by an average 7.5% in July
• Group sees good demand across building sector

ZURICH, May 4 (Reuters) – Geberit (GEBN.S) will raise prices again this year as it tackles “an unprecedented surge” in raw materials costs hitting the construction industry, the Swiss plumbing products maker said on Wednesday.

The company – seen as a proxy for the broader construction sector, as its products, such as bathroom ceramics and pipes, are so widely used – had already imposed one extraordinary price hike in January and an annual price rise in April.

“Due to the expected acceleration in raw materials price inflation we will implement another extraordinary price increase of an average of 7.5% as of July this year,” Chief Executive Christian Buhl told reporters.

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That would come on top of the 1.5% price rise in January and the April increase of 2.5%.

Geberit said it expects the raw materials it uses to become 10% more expensive during the second quarter compared with the first three months of the year, making them 28% more expensive than a year earlier.

The company is just the latest to warn about rising costs for inputs like energy, metals and plastics. Reuters reported earlier this week that Italy plans to set aside around 7 billion euros ($7.35 billion) to help construction firms cope with spiraling costs.

Higher input costs took the shine off a near 8% rise in sales during Geberit’s first quarter, with the company’s operating profit falling 5% in the same period.

Buhl said the company was able to find the raw materials it needed to make its products, but faced difficulties.

“Every week we have a new challenge,” he said. “It’s a long list of raw materials… some smaller things like pallets, but it’s really across the board.”

Still, demanded remained strong in both the new build and renovation sectors, he said, despite higher prices and interest rates.

The company also plans a new share buyback program of up to 650 million francs, to start in the third quarter at the latest.

($1 = 0.9796 Swiss francs)

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Reporting by John Revill; Editing by Michael Shields and Jan Harvey

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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If you own a car or a television, you’ve probably noticed — gas prices are surging to record highs. AAA reported a national average of $4.25 per gallon last week, with gas prices predicted to creep up even more in the near future. This extra cost is adding fuel to an already hot fire for business owners and consumers in the grip of inflation. But is this pressure at the pump going to impact homeowners looking to hire pros for their home improvement projects?

Most likely. Here’s what we know.

Angi recently polled our pros to find out how this recent spike is impacting their businesses. More than 90% of Angi pros say they expect higher gas prices this year and nearly 95% (94.9%) say those costs will impact their businesses. Due to surging gas prices, nearly 75% of pros say they will raise prices or rates (or already have) to make up for this added expense.

Joshua Belcher, owner and operator at Liberty Landscaping in Knightstown, Ind., used to offer all his customers free estimates. But now, due to gas prices and inflation, he’s had to start charging for that service and raise prices by 20%.

“You want to do the best you can for your customers and give them fair deals,” he said. “But in order to stay afloat, you have to charge for things you used to do for free before.”

About half of Belcher’s customer base has been able to afford the price increase. For the most part, homeowners understand where he’s coming from.

“Customers who appreciate your business and have the financial means do have your back during these hard times,” he said. “It’s a bummer for them but they understand. Certain customers we’ve lost because they say they can’t take the price increase.”

Phil Boonstra, owner of PR Builders in Windsor, Colo., says rising gas prices increase his subcontractor costs and he has no choice but to pass that on to homeowners.

“Some of my subcontractors are an hour away from the job, and every time they’re filling up, they’re seeing a $20 or $30 increase in cost,” he said. “They start adding trip charges to their work, and that gets passed on to the consumer. On a basement remodeling job, that’s an extra few hundred dollars. It really starts to add up.”

But there are ways for both homeowners and pros to work together and save on transportation costs.

Tips to budget for home projects amid gas price surge

Communicate with your pro and expect the extra charge

Pros have to factor in the extra cost of gasoline required to make it to your home. Asking about any extra fees related to gas prices can save homeowners sticker shock later on.

Many pros are now wrapping this additional cost into their home project quotes. Until gas prices cool off, it’s helpful for homeowners to budget for this extra expense when hiring a pro.

Consider bundling your home projects together

Have a few things that need tackling at your home? Think about hiring a handyperson who is able to handle a few different jobs in one visit. That way, you (and your pro) will save on transportation costs.

Book pros close to your home

Hiring a local service (as opposed to one that is a town or two away) can save homeowners money in transportation costs. Plus, pros may be more likely to take on jobs that are nearby, so they can avoid spending more money at the pumps.

Tweet your home care questions with #AskAngi and we’ll try to answer them in a future column.

The post How will fuel costs have an effect on dwelling companies prices? appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Gasper and his wife Minnie Pulizzi are walking from San Diego to San Francisco to combat the sky-high gas prices.

That trek is roughly 500 miles.

Eyewitness News caught up with the couple, who are in their 80s, for a recent report on the rising gas prices.

Gasper says he can remember when gas was 25 cents a gallon in 1959.

The last time someone made such a journey was last April, when a man in a bear suit trekked from Los Angeles to San Francisco.

READ MORE: Life-sized teddy bear walking from LA to San Francisco

The man who went by Bearsun started his journey from Little Tokyo in LA County in his attempt to reach viral fame. A deputy stopped him along the way and gave him the all-clear to continue safely.

This was a bear-y unique situation. You may have seen a large teddy bear walking through town. One of our deputies got to meet the individual inside the bear & learned his goal is to complete a walk from Los Angeles to San Francisco. We wish him the best of luck on his adventure! pic.twitter.com/oLLyZsfZE1

— SCV Sheriff (@SCVSHERIFF) April 14, 2021

The Pulizzis will likely walk a full 100 miles more than Bearsun did in his journey. The couple is 50 years old.

Copyright © 2022 KABC Television, LLC. All rights reserved.

The post Married couple of their 80s stroll from San Diego to San Francisco to fight sky-high gasoline costs appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

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Boarded up shop windows. Brazen robberies. proliferation of tent camps. To outsiders, San Francisco sounds more and more like the dystopian Detroit from the 2028 sci-fi classic RoboCop. But here’s the rub: Many San Franciscos who have survived the pandemic are wealthier than ever. Instead of fleeing the city, they’re doubling down on larger, more modern homes that fit the lifestyle of Zoom rooms.

The numbers are frightening. Home sales by volume in every price bracket increased 41 percent in 2021 from pre-pandemic days, according to Compass data. Luxury home buyers were even more voracious, snapping up 85 percent more homes that sold for between $3 million and $5 million. Sales of homes over $5 million more than doubled. Single-family homes are selling for nearly $1,100 per square foot, compared to about $900 in early 2019.

According to Compass chief market analyst Patrick Carlisle, new San Francisco residents tend to be wealthier than those leaving, and many who were already wealthy before the pandemic are now wealthier thanks to a buoyant stock market. Although average home prices have risen nearly $200,000 over the past year, the percentage of homes that find them “affordable” has remained unchanged at 19 percent.

“Who would have thought that a pandemic, that wild card out of nowhere, with all its weird implications, would result in one of the wildest markets in history?” said Carlisle.

Wealthy buyers have typically committed to staying because they either have ties to school communities or simply prefer city life to the slower pace of the suburbs, said realtor Nina Hatvany, who often handles high-end sales. They mostly earn two incomes while working at home, so they need space for two offices and a home gym. They also seek a private outdoor space where their children can play and entertain guests.

The amenities add up, especially given that “they tend to buy fully renovated homes, which are by definition more expensive,” Hatvany said.

All of this upsizing comes against a grim backdrop.

“Who would have thought that a pandemic, that wild card out of nowhere, with all its strange implications, would result in one of the wildest markets in history?”

– Compass Chief Market Analyst Patrick Carlisle.

An East Coast couple visiting their new grandchild in the mission had their rental car broken into twice in two days. A family in NoPa, as the North of Panhandle neighborhood is known, didn’t realize their dog had scared off a robber until they found a crowbar he’d left behind. In response, a neighbor installed a deadbolt in her garage to protect against burglaries – the first since she moved in 10 years ago.

According to SFPD data, property crimes such as burglary, theft and auto theft rose 11 percent this year to nearly 42,000 cases by mid-December. But that’s down from 54,000 in 2017, when the city had the highest per capita rate of property crime among the 20 most populous U.S. metropolitan areas, the FBI says.

Yet perceptions are everything. When stronger fortifications aren’t enough, some residents have turned to private security firms to keep an eye on their expensive homes. The city just passed a law allowing storekeepers to hire off-duty proxies in hopes of stopping retailers from citing theft as a reason for closing even more stores.

More help can’t come soon enough.

In a coordinated attack just before Thanksgiving, thieves ambushed Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Burberry and Dolce & Gabbana. Within minutes, they had jumped into getaway cars and driven off with hundreds of thousands of dollars in designer goods. Video images of the brazen smash-and-grab in Union Square, where many businesses have already closed during the pandemic, went viral.

Mayor London Breed, a lifelong resident who grew up in council housing, is furious.

It’s time, she told reporters at a recent press conference, to “become less tolerant of all the bullshit that has destroyed our city.”

Breed announced a series of measures to combat shoplifting and the sale of stolen goods, as well as a push to combat open-air drug sales and use. She even declared a state of emergency in the Tenderloin, a neighborhood hit hard by theft and drug overdoses.

The liberal city deserves its reputation for compassion, she said. Acknowledging her push for a tougher stance on crime will anger people, she added, “I don’t care.”

“We’re not a city where anything goes,” she said. “We’ve passed the point where what we’re seeing is even remotely acceptable.”

Even before the mayor’s announcement, some residents of the Tony Marina neighborhood had hired private security guards. A security guard told KPIX his neighborhood customers more than doubled from 70 to 150 during the pandemic.

“We don’t feel safe in our neighborhood,” Katie Lyons, a marina resident, told the TV station. “We have an alarm, we have cameras on our property, but we want the added security of someone keeping an eye on our apartment.”

Hatvany, the high-end realtor, says there’s some truth to the notion that quality of life issues are forcing some longtime residents to reconsider life in the city.

Vendors bemoan what they call an “epidemic of car and home burglaries, parcel theft, the visible homelessness problem and the number of people on the street who are obviously mentally ill and can be unpredictable and therefore alarming,” she said.

High-visibility crimes like the events in Union Square happen throughout the Bay Area, not just in San Francisco, she said. “But they don’t make the city look good for people who are considering moving here or who need one last excuse to go to another state,” she said.

It’s time to “become less tolerant of all the bullshit that has destroyed our city”

– Mayor London Breed

Low-level crime was at the heart of the 2019 district attorney dispute, which was won by former assistant public defender Chesa Boudin, whose progressive vision included no prosecution for offenses such as public camping, public urination and begging. His main rival was longtime law enforcement officer Nancy Tung.

“Property and low-level crimes shrink the space for ordinary people and expand it for the people who commit them,” Tung told City Journal ahead of the election. “As we continue down this path, we will see more people leaving San Francisco.”

While Tung’s vision of a mass exodus has yet to materialize, Boudin faces a recall vote in June over what critics are calling his inaction in prosecuting crimes.

Meanwhile, the rich could just keep buying bigger houses.

The less affluent, who exited when they lost service jobs last year, may not be able to afford rent-controlled housing that has been reset to market prices, said Carlisle, the Compass analyst. People who have managed to cling to homes could also be displaced after evictions for non-payment are back on the table following a pandemic-related moratorium.

“Will this lead to further exodus of low-income residents from the city?” he said. “I hope not, but I fear so.”

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