If you’ve managed to miss reading this site the last few weeks, you might have not have noticed that burbed was nominated for, and won, this award from Zillow:

There’s one problem.  It turns out there was also an award for Best Blog in San Jose Real Estate, and burbed wasn’t even nominated.  So that means we can’t discuss Palo Alto anymore. 

Good thing burbed reader AJT sent in this San Francisco property, along with a comment about walking by the place and then finding out it was for sale.  And even better, look what was listed two years ago, thanks to Herve:

Burbed reader Herve thought it would be good to point this unique property out. Apparently it’s been on the market 2 years ago for $75 million (really?).

In any case, it is now just at $48 million – another sure sign the real estate market has bottomed out and that it is now a great time to jump back in.

Just think, if you got a smart enough mortgage, you could easily buy this and get at least $22 million in instant equity. Wowsers!

What are you waiting for?

Wowsers!  If the price was cut from $75 million in 2006 to $48 million in 2008, then it should be down to $31 million in 2010, right?

2901 Broadway St, San Francisco, CA 94115
$45,000,000

BEDS: 7
BATHS: 7.5
SQ. FT.: –
LOT SIZE: –
PROPERTY TYPE: Detached, Single-Family Home
STYLE: Custom
VIEW: Panoramic, City Lights, Water, Bay, Bay Bridge, Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, Downtown, Marina, Ocean, Park, Garden/Greenbelt, Hills, Mt. Tamalpais, Twin Peaks
YEAR BUILT: 1927
COMMUNITY: Pacific Heights
COUNTY: San Francisco
MLS#: 322933
SOURCE: San Francisco MLS
STATUS: Active
ON REDFIN: 1226 days

Italian Renaissance hilltop mansion on the Gold Coast, near Presidio. Expansive Golden Gate & north Bay views from almost every room. Grand reception hall. Elegant formal rooms. Graceful marble stair leads to family level. 7 bedrooms, 7.5 baths. Master suites. Library. Music room. Office. Rec room. Elevator. Period details. Private winding drive. Garden. Private tennis court. 2007 San Francisco Decorator Showcase. Property history & floor plans on property and agent’s website.

$45 million?  Someone doesn’t understand that if the house won’t sale, your price is FAIL!

I want to look at that “Days on Redfin” number again while my eyes pop out.  1226!  You’d almost think they don’t care if they sell the house or not!  Perhaps the tenants are paying almost enough rent to cover the heating bill.

For the garage.

I’m sure the Assessor’s Office is keeping an eye on this one, as it only paid $7,000 in taxes last year.  To give you an idea how little that is, if you were to buy this house and put $9 million down, your 15 year fixed loan of $36 million would cost you $261,000.  A month.  And that’s assuming you could get the 3.75% mortgage rate Redfin helpfully put in for you.  Do you think you’d have to apply for a jumbo?

One last thing about this expensive, er, expansive, listing.  Here’s what Redfin has to say about the 2008 observation:

The seller has requested that all public comments be removed from this listing. Per MLS rules, we are not allowed to link to blog posts about this home.

Fortunately, we are.  Otherwise we’d have to keep following up on 13 Lucky Street.

First, a trip to the way back machine:

September 19, 2008

How much does a garage cost in San Francisco these days?

CleanOffer
13 Lucky St
San Francisco, CA 94110
Price: $499,000

Followed by:

December 13, 2008

A letter from the owner of 13 Lucky St

It’s rare that Burbed gets email from the owner of a property that is publishable. Here’s one about a recent posting.

Glad you’ve all enjoyed commenting on our property. I’m sure things are slow and you’ll want to look busy, that is if you still have a desk at which to look busy.

However, 13 Lucky Street is far from a loser. And it’s large size qualifies it to be listed as a small warehouse.

13 Lucky is currently listed at $399K. It is variance-approved for one, SFH occupying the entire footprint of the existing building. It is not currently a SFH.

I have recently spoke with a builder who estimated a cost of $130-$170/sq foot to build, so at approx 2000 sq ft, you’d be closer to, say, $700K total for a BRAND NEW, custom built residence. the city has approved the building mass and we are moving ahead with plans for construction.

Owner financing is available as well.

Please contact me for any further enlightenment at davee (at) got (dot) net

Thanks!

Well, thanks to Burbed reader Brian, it appears the Bay Area’s best address is back! And available for a small discount!

$289,000

13 Lucky San Francisco, CA 94110

Beds:	0
Baths:	-
Sq. Ft.:	2,000
$/Sq. Ft.:	$144
Lot Size:	-
Property Type:	Single-Family Home
Community:	Inner Mission
County:	San Francisco
MLS#:	368369
Source:	San Francisco MLS
Status:	Active This listing is for sale and the sellers are accepting offers.
On Redfin:	97 days

Opportunity to build your custom home in the trendy Mission District. Currently, there is a garage on location and is rented to a contractor for storage. Seller will carry financing for qualified buyer.

Now this is smart marketing! It appears they’ve decided to move away from selling the “Own a gritty part of San Francisco, like a garage with no bedrooms or bathrooms” (ugh, how dated) to a “Sell the dream!” strategy.

Genius!

So… is this your dream? That sketch looks pretty cool! And, just think of the hot address you’ll have!

Here’s a news story from yesterday that has some impact on the Bay Area – maybe even the Real Bay Area (RBA).  After all, anyone who lives here knows the hottest time of year in the Bay Area isn’t July and August.  It’s September and October.

Sprawling Cities Getting Hotter Faster

livescience.com – Sat Jun 26, 12:20 pm ET

The number of extreme hot summer days is increasing around the world with global warming, but sprawling cities are racking up these sweltering days faster than more compact cities are, a new study finds.

This finding could be important to city planners, particularly because heat waves are a killer worldwide (heat waves kill more U.S. residents than any other natural disaster) and the number of hot days is expected to increase as climate change ramps up.

Researchers at Georgia Tech examined the number of very hot days in 53 U.S. metropolitan regions between 1956 and 2005 to see if there were any differences in the number of hot days between both kinds of cities. (By the U.S. Census Bureau definition, a metropolitan region includes some counties surrounding a city proper.)

The article was clearly written by someone in flyoverland, because unimportant cities such as Atlanta, Tampa, and Grand Rapids (Michigan) were presented as examples of sprawling cities, as contrasted with “compact”  ones. Named as the cooler cousins were Boston, Chicago, and Baltimore, where two out of three of them are near a real ocean, and the third near a convincing analogue.

Brian Stone of Georgia Tech (told ya!), an urban planner who authored the study, noted that severe heat waves are responsible for more deaths than any other type of dangerous weather.  “Residents of sprawling cities may be more vulnerable to this significant health threat posed by climate change," said Stone.

One could even wonder if the “compact” cities cited are keeping cooler due to ocean breezes rather than tree removal on a large scale.  Deforestation in sprawling cities occurred at twice the rate of that in more densely populated areas from 1992 to 2001.  This leads to the “urban heat island effect,” where asphalt, roofs, and other artificial surfaces absorb more heat than in rural areas with greater amounts of vegetation.  The urban heat island effect shows a temperature increase of 2 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit higher than a nearby rural region.

The actual data showed the sprawlers had 14.8 more “very hot days” on average while the chunkers only had 5.6 of them.  These outlying days were identified from the National Climactic Data Center’s “heat stress index” from 187 cities.  Heat data were used from 1956 to 2005, but based on city definition in 2000.

Cities were defined as compact or sprawling using the sprawl index, where only the top and bottom 25%were included in the study.  This metric uses population density, building proximity (both commercial and residential), also known as neighborhood mix, strength of downtowns and other activity centers, and street network patterns, based on 2000 UC Census data.  Stone notes that sprawl is also a factor of the historic development of a city.  For example, Boston grew around streetcars, while Atlanta developed during the age of the automobile.

The only Bay Area metropolitan area included in the study was San Francisco.  Classified as very compact (big surprise), San Francisco also reported a large increase in very hot days, as did more spread-out Fresno.  Los Angeles showed a much smaller increase in hot days, as did San Diego.  But take a look at Stone’s map of cities included in the study.  Notice something a little odd?

Just in case it doesn’t jump right out at you, here’s another view:

See it now?

How is Atlanta considered more sprawling than Los Angeles?  Sure San Francisco is compact (the city is only 49 square miles!), but see how Fresno, LA, and San Diego are all in the same classification of the second most compact group?  Los Angeles wrote the book on sprawl, as LA county is tremendous (4061 square miles).  It may have millions of people, but most of it is suburban.  And yet, Stone relies on Reid Ewing’s measure of the sprawl index, which cites a measure showing Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco as being some of the most compact cities in how they handled population growth (see page 9).  And then on page 27 is this fascinating note:

The highest ratings on the density factor go mostly to the central PMSAs of large CMSAs. The
New York PMSA is in a class by itself, having a factor score more than five standard deviations
above the mean. While the smaller Jersey City PMSA ranks second, this is followed by other
large PMSAs: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami PMSAs. Also high on the
density factor are secondary PMSAs of these same CMSAs: Anaheim, San Jose, Newark,
Oakland, and Ft. Lauderdale. Their large housing and labor markets drive up the bid rent curves
of these CMSAs, making accessible central locations particularly valuable. Valuable land is
naturally developed at higher densities, as housing producers and consumers both seek to
minimize expensive land inputs. The simple correlation of the density factor for 2000 with the
population of the MSA or PMSA is high (r = .614).28 The simple correlation with the population
of the MSA or CMSA is even higher (r = .653).

Wow, looks like we’re back to higher rents, higher density, and higher smarts.  Location, location, location!  Low on the density scale are the Southeastern cities, and they have the lower rents to match.  While we in the Bay Area think of Los Angeles as sprawling, that’s only compared to San Francisco.  When it’s stacked up against Atlanta, Los Angeles is downright concentrated.

At the bottom of density rankings are medium-size metros in the Southeast, in ascending order:
Knoxville, TN; Greenville–Spartanburg, SC; Greensboro–Winston-Salem–High Point, NC;
Columbia, SC; Raleigh–Durham, NC; and Birmingham, AL. These are places whose growth
has mostly occurred during the automobile era, and has been without topographic or water-related
constraints that restrict development elsewhere in the Sunbelt. Still, the clustering of low
densities in this particular region is striking and requires further investigation.

And what does Los Angeles have to do with the Bay Area?  Simple.  Los Angeles is San Jose writ large.  And that’s where the Bay Area take on this study comes in.  Compared to San Francisco, San Jose also sprawls, despite its attempts to have an urban core with the fake city of Santana Row, and the out of place luxury high-rise of 360 Residences.  So if we in the RBA need to take anything from Stone’s study, it’s this.  Sprawl means more extreme heat waves.  Heat waves mean more deaths.  And old people dying of heatstroke in their RBA homes is the only way those places this Special will ever come up for sale.

Today’s house is featured thanks to burbed reader Jeff, who notes “This house is not staged.”  Thanks, Jeff!

442 21st Ave, San Francisco 94121
$748,880

Beds: 3
Baths: 2
Sq. Ft.: 2,160
$/Sq. Ft.: $347
Lot Size: –
Property Type: Single-Family Home
Style: Edwardian
Year Built: 1914
Community: Central Richmond
County: San Francisco
MLS#: 371209
Source: San Francisco MLS
Status: Contingent This means the sellers have accepted on an offer on the property, but success may still depend on passing a home inspection or the buyer’s financing approval. It may still be possible to tour these properties and submit a backup offer in case the current one falls through.
On Redfin: 24 days

Finally a 2-level Edwardian Home that has NOT been staged, glossed over, painted/refinished & /or remodelled-grand home’s untouched good bones with all its glory have original details intact!Main level opens onto a large foyer across the width of the home w/ skylit staircase, living room w/ fireplace & built-ins across front of house. Dining Room w/ fireplace & box-beam ceiling across from foyer opens through french doors to deck & yard. Eat-in Kitchen, Laundry & BA. Upstairs:3BR+Sunroom & split BA. More 2 follow.

This home’s description is like one of those bad science-fiction novels where you ask yourself if you really want to keep reading it all the way to the end, and you actually stick it out to the end.  Only then you find out that this is just Book 1 of at least a 5 book series, so you don’t really know what’s going to happen after all. 

That’s what “More to follow” suggested after seeing this listing that has NOT been staged.  Also NOT been glossed over, NOT been painted/refinished and/or NOT been remodeled.  What is going to follow that?  Has the house also NOT been hooked up to utilities?

For those of you who come to here to learn something about Real Estate, here’s a handy tip.  If a listing says a house has “good bones,” it’s a very indirect way for the agent to tell you it’s a “Contractor’s Special” or “Handyman’s Delight,” or, more honestly, “Money Pit.”  Or maybe it means there are a good number of bones buried in the yard, since this house has been standing almost a hundred years.

Speaking of the yard, not only has this house NOT been staged, there are a lot of things the agent also did NOT do.  First, let’s admire said lot

That shape is so familiar, now what is it?  Wait, wait, don’t tell me… Ah, it’s a minus sign!  Like your equity!

Next, look at the house description, and note that there is no figure given for the lot size.  Finally, check this from the list of features:

Lot Information

• Regular
• Level
• Dimensions (Approximate): 25′ x 120′

Math class is hard, but how difficult could it be to find somebody out there to multiply 120 by 25?  Hell, you can type “25*120” into fracken Google and find out the answer!  This agent is NOT trying very hard! Not only is the house NOT staged, neither is the listing!  Don’t you just want to run over to this place and check out the NOT glossed-over, NOT painted/refinished, NOT remodeled interior?  Look at this photograph!

Whoahhhh…. this looks like someone took a 2 hour Introduction to Scrapbooking class and only remembered something about grids.  You know, Redfin has some very nice features on their site, and one of them is that they allow nine photos per listing.  Perhaps one picture at a time would have been more… viewable?

Oh who cares, the place is pending, the price has eights in it, and good bones will always tell.  Just don’t dig too deeply in the yard.  There might be aliens in the sequel.

Blogger Economist Rob Pitingolo measured which metro area was the “smartest,” and used the density of higher education degrees as his metric.  His essay has gotten recent notice from USA Today, the San Francisco Chronicle, and my good buddy Greg Fielding.  Fielding asks if San Franciscans are so smart, then “why do they accept such painfully-high price-to-rent ratios?”  That’s pretty much the old “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich,” saw isn’t it?  I’m going to demonstrate that Fielding asked the wrong question.

On a per-large-city basis, San Francisco blew the rest away with a whopping 7,031 degrees per square mile.  San Jose, the supposed “Capital of Silicon Valley,” lags fifteen places behind with an unimpressive 1,259.

It’s becoming increasingly accepted that there is real economic value to bringing a lot of smart and entrepreneurial people together in the same place. This can be tough to measure, unfortunately.

Yup, Math class is hard.  Pitingolo wondered whether the surrounding areas benefit from a core city’s degree concentration, and repeated the same measurements on a county level.  But many of his comparison cities are either contiguous with their counties, or are strongly linked with unmentioned surrounding counties, resulting in a lovely display of apples and orangutans.  And for some reason, the City and County of San Francisco was merged with contiguous San Mateo in the county section, dropping to fifth place with an anemic 1,105.  San Jose’s results also collapsed when amalgamated with Santa Clara County (413).  Obviously counties with huge swaths of farmland will pull these numbers down no matter how many Ph.Ds are sipping lattes on University Avenue.  What the density metric implies, and whether the county data make anything clearer is still up for discussion in the blog’s comments.

Meanwhile, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina scored first on The Daily Beast’s completely arbitrary measure of Metro IQ.  This alternative intelligence ranking was based on each million plus metro area’s ratio of degrees, colleges in the region, nonfiction book sales, and percent of eligible voters voting.  San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose came in second, scoring first with education but losing out to Raleigh-Durham due to relative voter apathy.  I will leave it as an exercise to the Real Bay Area reader exactly how valuable a measure of regional IQ can be that equates Duke, UCNC, and Chapel Hill with Stanford, Cal, USF, SF, Hayward and SJ States, and (in your face, Tar Heels!) Foothill.

We can argue whether completing a college degree is any indication of intelligence.  We can debate whether Pitingolo’s study erred by emphasizing population density over percentage of degree-holders, thus boosting teeming multistory cities such as San Francisco over low-profile megaburbs such as San Jose.  We can present various ways to measure what is a city, what is a metro area, and what is a region.  We can ask to what degree “human capital sprawl” limits a city’s economic engine (as in Oklahoma City) as opposed to revving it in Silicon Valley.

But there is no escaping real estate.  And here’s a better article that also says we’re #1, by one of my favorite authors, Richard Florida.  Florida noticed Pitingolo’s study too, although he didn’t have much to add to it. 

Florida began with the perennial question of whether to rent or buy.  He studied 133 metropolitan regions,  noted the places with high versus low housing price to rent ratios (HPRs), and found that areas with higher HPRs have higher housing prices and lower percentages of people who are homeowners.  As Florida put it, “the costs of owning are relatively lower in places where more people already own their own homes.”  When prices are relatively higher, fewer own because fewer can afford to.

Then Florida looked at economic data for the regions: output, income, and wages.  Those with higher HPRs tend to be more productive, have more wealth, and higher wages.  And he already showed earlier that week that high HPRs are correlated with lower unemployment rates.  Hmm, high housing cost, high wages, high income, high productivity… does that sound like anywhere you know? 

Previously, we’ve seen how smart regions have higher levels of income, economic output, and overall well-being. It costs relatively more to own in smarter, more advanced regional economies. We measure smart regions in terms of the level of human capital; the percentage of the workforce in creative, knowledge-based, and professional occupations; and the level of technology-based industry. The HPR ratio is positively related to all three. The correlation between the HPR ratio and human capital (measured as the share of metro population with a bachelor’s degree or higher) is .4.

Ah, there’s that college degree metric again that made all the headlines, measured it in percentage instead of density.  Florida says San Francisco is a smart region, and therefore an expensive one.  So, San Franciscans don’t pay high rent ratios because they aren’t smart.  They pay high rent ratios because they are.  The smarter a region is, the higher those ratios should be. 

Florida concludes that the conventional wisdom of buying at a low HPR (15 or even 20) isn’t that wise.  Instead, he suggests you buy where skilled people want to work, where there are good economic prospects, and where homeownership isn’t routine. Buy where there are plenty of people who want to buy but haven’t yet.  When it’s time to sell, you’ll have plenty of potential customers.

It’s counterintuitive, but rent in Pittsburgh, but buy in San Francisco.  That’s the smart thing to do.

59 Sunview Dr San Francisco, CA 94131

$665,000

Beds:	3
Baths:	2
Sq. Ft.:	1,286
$/Sq. Ft.:	$517
Lot Size:	-
Property Type:	Detached, Full, Single-Family Home
Style:	Contemporary
View:	Garden/Greenbelt, Woods
Year Built:	1956
Community:	Midtown Terrace
County:	San Francisco
MLS#:	370307
Source:	San Francisco MLS
Status:	Active This listing is for sale and the sellers are accepting offers.
On Redfin:	15 days

Custom Built on a cul de sac with Muni 2 blocks away-close to Mollie Stones, Starbucks, Diamond Heights and Noe Valley Restaurants. Newly painted and mint inside with newer kitchen, expanded dining room with glass canopy, 2Bd/1Bth, LR with FP, hardwd flrs, deck, wine cellar, garden with Hot Tub. 1 Bd/1Bth on entry level not warranted, 1 car gar, storage areas. Call listing Realtor at Cell Phone ONLY for an appt. Relocation so home delivered vacant. Open this Sunday 5/23 1 to 5 PM

Thanks to Burbed reader Jeff for this find!

Wow, what a great deal! And it even has income potential! And… it’s pink! Which immediately makes it a Bay Area classic.

That said, Jeff really wanted to call out this photo:

That’s right! This house comes with an unfinished panic room! No matter what the emergency is… someone trying to kidnap you, you didn’t get into Stanford, your ponzi scheme falls apart, you’re unable to roll over your neg am mortgage… this panic room can help you stay safe.

Peace of mind in a pink house. For just $517 per square foot. Sold!

746 Kansas St San Francisco, CA 94107

Listed at: $649,000

Beds:	2
Baths:	1
Sq. Ft.:	1,565
$/Sq. Ft.:	$415
Lot Size:	-
Property Type:	Single-Family Home
Style:	Victorian
View:	Partial, City Lights, Twin Peaks
Year Built:	1900
Community:	Potrero Hill
County:	San Francisco
MLS#:	367021
Source:	San Francisco MLS
Status:	Contingent This means the sellers have accepted on an offer on the property, but success may still depend on passing a home inspection or the buyer’s financing approval. It may still be possible to tour these properties and submit a backup offer in case the current one falls through.
On Redfin:	28 days

Potrero Hill with lots of potential. Bring your contractor. Please do not walk property

Thanks to Burbed reader Jeff for this find!

In particular, these are some pretty interesting photos!

Ok everyone. It’s Friday! It’s story writing time! Break out those creative juices!

Write a brief story that explains what happened to this house, and how it will benefit the buyer. Challenge: you cannot say that it is a handyman’s special.

536 Laidley St San Francisco, CA 94131

$875,000

Beds:	5
Baths:	3
Sq. Ft.:	2,136
$/Sq. Ft.:	$410
Lot Size:	-
Property Type:	Single-Family Home
Style:	Contemporary
View:	Panoramic, City Lights, Bay, Park, Hills, Mt. Diablo
Year Built:	1906
Community:	Glen Park
County:	San Francisco
MLS#:	364602
Source:	San Francisco MLS
Status:	Active This listing is for sale and the sellers are accepting offers.
On Redfin:	24 days

Great extra wide property on quiet Laidley Street in Glen Park. There are two separate detached units, each with a garage. The front 3bd. 2ba. house has new central heating, 2nd floor deck with crow’s nest, ground floor studio, views of Mt. Diablo, San Bruno Mtn, and Bay views. The rear unit is a legal 2 bd. Each needs some work. 4 blocks to GLEN PARK BART. This is a short sale. Offers will be reviewed as they come. Open Sundays 2 – 4pm and Tuesday Tours. Call or write for other times. Come see!

Some people trash their house when they know they’re going to be foreclosed… these folks apparently decided to paint the exterior to vent their frustrations.

Seems that with tenants, the owners would’ve been able to keep up with the payments.  They originally put 20% down to buy it (according to PropertyShark).

This seems to imply that the design was in malice. Personally, I think this is exactly the kind of house that San Francisco is famous for – individualized, iconic, controversial. Just think of how this house is already cheering up this Friday at Burbed!

If you’re not proud of owning this house and its color scheme, then this house probably isn’t for you.

Now, to onto the nitty gritty: offers will be reviewed as they come. So, it’s definitely in your best interest to bid early and at a very high price. Otherwise, this could easily slip away. Maybe you should even go as far as to place multiple bids under secret names – each higher than the last! Now that’s a strategy that any realtor would approve of. Ignore the fact that there are no interior pics – it’s probably just too fabulous.

And, with the separate detached units… in a word… cashflow. Sweet sweet cashflow.

Happy friday!