Because so many people would do an even worse job than those hardworking professionals, and that’s really saying something.  Thanks to Burbed reader Chris for passing along this photo.

This is an Open Thread.

Let’s have another buy vs rent thread with this latest News of the Obvious from what’s little is left of our local newspaper.

Bay Area rents, especially in Silicon Valley, are on the rise

By Pete Carey, San Jose Mercury News
Posted: 07/21/2011 12:01:00 AM PDT, Updated: 07/21/2011 10:07:26 AM PDT

Bay Area apartment rents are on the rise, fed by the contrasting economic forces of a booming tech recovery and the steady flow of foreclosures that is turning former homeowners into renters.

The San Jose metro area, which includes Silicon Valley, weighed in with the highest average rent — $1,759 a month — among 43 metro regions monitored by RealFacts, a Novato apartment rental research company that released a report on second-quarter rental prices Thursday. The region also saw the biggest year-over-year increase, up 12.6 percent.

The San Francisco metro area — encompassing the Peninsula, East Bay and Marin County — had the second-highest rents in the survey, at $1,644, and the third-highest year-over-year increase, at 7.6 percent.

Rents are a barometer of the region’s economic vitality and job market, and after several years of stagnation, this year they’re pointing to recent job market gains. But they also signal the continued weakness of the housing market, with stiff competition for rentals throughout the region.

Photo: SJMN

That opening paragraph observes that rent going up isn’t only driven by new jobs being created by tech firms: it’s also due to new renters being transformed from former homeloaners.  So what are you seeing where you live?  Are your new neighbors former owners who now rent, or former renters who can now own?  Is your firm hiring or cutting back?  Is rent going up where you live?  Are house rents going up as quickly as apartment lease rates?

If you want to get into the apartment rental business, you could look to East Palo Alto, where up to 1,800 rental units are about to change hands.  The current owner, Page Mill Properties, defaulted on a balloon payment, and Wells Fargo is looking to sell the entire portfolio.  East Palo Alto: Close to the new Facebook campus, plus rent control!

And while former homeowners may be looking to rent now, foreigners with suitcases full of cash are still buying up RBA property, supposedly.

Trulia, the online real estate information service, reports a big jump in searches for Silicon Valley real estate from other countries. Searches for property in Cupertino were up 90 percent in the first quarter of this year from a year earlier, Trulia reported. Palo Alto was up 121 percent; Los Altos Hills up 182 percent; Atherton up 68 percent and San Jose up 86 percent.

This is an Open Thread.

Seen any good open houses this weekend?

This is an open thread. Go wild.

What’s on the agenda for you today?  Parade, picnic, fireworks?  Yawwwwwwn.

How does any of that celebrate Independence Day?  What you want is Independence… from your landlord!  Buy a house today, or be priced out forever!  Then paint your house any color you want!  How about red, white and blue?

This is an Open Thread.  Tell us what house you bought, or the Open House you managed to find despite it being a holiday and all.

Or just tell us about the parade and picnic and fireworks.  I suppose you’ll have some silly excuse like you couldn’t buy a house today because your bank was taken over by regulators.

Santa Clara County’s fastest-growing population is over 85

By Julia Prodis Sulek and Leigh Poitinger, SJ Mercury News
Posted:   07/02/2011 04:11:05 PM PDT

Phyllis Harding is slowing down now that she’s 89. She’s a bit forgetful and can’t walk too far or too fast. But she’ll be line dancing with her walker at the “Old Fogies Follies” this month, thanks to organized activities at her senior housing community in Los Gatos that is doing its best to keep her healthy longer.

“I’m living forever!” she said with a plucky smile as she got ready to order a new swimming suit for her water aerobics class at The Terraces of Los Gatos.

For Harding and the over-85 set, it certainly seems that way. New census numbers show that Harding is part of the “oldest olds” — the fastest growing population in Santa Clara County as well as the country. The over-85 population increased a stunning 52.7 percent in Santa Clara County between 2000 and 2010, more than any other age group, including 55-to-64-year-old Baby Boomers, which grew 37.4 percent. In San Mateo County, the over-85 population increased 34.9 percent, slightly less than the Baby Boomer population, which grew by 40.4 percent.

In other words, Silicon Valley — a place known since the 1960s for luring millions of young workers and their families to launch the technology revolution — is graying. Over the next 10 years, the number of people over 60 is expected to nearly double, while the number of those 75 or older is expected to triple by 2030, according to a report from the Silicon Valley Council on Aging.  Over the next decade, the 20-to-39 age bracket will decrease the most, by about 2.4 percent, the report says.  [emphasis mine]

The Merc summarized this article as “The over 85 folks are mostly whites living in wealthy suburbs of Los Gatos and Los Altos, but Latino and Asian ‘oldest olds’ are growing quickly.”

Want a house in Los Gatos or Los Altos?  Just wait for these folks to slow down a little more.  Other “wealthy white communities” where you’ll find the growing community of the “oldest old” are “…Saratoga, Monte Sereno… Los Altos Hills and Palo Alto.”

And at some point those homes will change ownership.  According to Nancy Hikoyeda, associate director of the Stanford Geriatric Education Center, 85-plussers are hit with  ”compression of morbidity… multiple illnesses, often including some form of dementia, which make them more frail.”

That’s great news for all those idle kitchen and bath contractors, because the homes probably are as frail as their owners and could use about 40 years’ worth of updates.

This is an Open Thread.  Any homes in your neighborhood that could be up for sale soon due to a little morbidity compression?

Thanks to Burbed reader Real Estater for bringing this up in comments yesterday.

The Chinese Go on a Global Homebuying Spree

Kelvin Wong, Nichola Saminather and Hui-yong Yu, On Friday June 24, 2011, 8:08 am EDT

On a sunny Saturday in early June, Larry Zhou strolled the floor of a property exhibition in Hong Kong, wondering whether it was time to buy another home — not in the city, where residential prices have soared 50 percent in the past two years, but maybe in Thailand or Malaysia. "My wife and I have been thinking about investing outside of the country since we already own an apartment in Shanghai," says Zhou, a 38-year-old civil engineer, who was visiting the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre before wrapping up a business trip and returning home. "I’ve known people in Shanghai who like to bring their money and invest in Hong Kong properties, but I think Hong Kong is way too expensive."

The two-day event that lured Zhou and 3,000 others is one way that China’s expanding wealthy and middle classes are finding investment properties and second homes around the world. They are grabbing everything from $68,000 foreclosed condominiums in Florida to $2 million beachfront villas in Vietnam. "Some of them will buy homes considering better education opportunities for their kids, while others look for immigration options," says Mo Tianquan, founder and chairman of Beijing-based SouFun Holdings (NYSE:SFUN – News), which runs China’s biggest real estate website and organizes buying excursions abroad.

Vietnam beachfront villas?  Don’t be silly.  Every single one of them wants to buy a house in… Vancouver?  The smart ones, though, are buying in Silicon Valley, especially places smart enough to work the magic word “Cupertino” into the listing somehow.

In the U.S., Chinese buyers have helped support home sales and prices in Silicon Valley and Hawaii, while they are an increasing presence in Las Vegas and New York, according to local brokers. […]

Las Vegas?  What the heck are they thinking?  There’s no Apple Campus in Las Vegas!

This is an Open Thread.  Let us know what Open Houses you’ve seen full of foreign buyers.  Or any buyers.

Here’s a short but sweet entry for your weekend pleasure.

15980 Short Rd, Los Gatos, CA 95032
Foreclosure, Not for Sale

BEDS: 6
BATHS: 4
SQ. FT.: 7,111
LOT SIZE: 1.48 Acres
AUCTION DATE: Friday, January 21, 2011
AUCTION PRICE: $2,214,000
STORIES: 1
# OF ROOMS: 12
YEAR BUILT: 1982
COMMUNITY: Los Gatos
COUNTY: Santa Clara
LISTING #: 302830461
SOURCE: Public Records
STATUS: Foreclosure
ON REDFIN: 127 days

Sorry, this is one short sale the bank won’t let you touch.  There’s no Streetview, either, but here’s the house:

And here’s the neighborhood.

This house is a 7,111 square foot behemoth, and none of them are for sale.  JP Morgan Chase needs to be told what “selling shortly” is all about.  That street name was somewhat prescient.

PropertyShark has this place owned by the same people for the last 30 years.  All they listed was a refinance in 1998 for $750,000.  How’d they manage to get it auctioned off to the bank?  There’s a story here.  And it’s okay if you don’t know it, because this is also a Weekend Open Thread, so tell us any other story you wish.

Steve Jobs appeared at Cupertino City Hall to request plan approval for Apple’s striking new headquarters.  Seems they can’t fit all their Cupertino employees at the current HQ over at 280 and De Anza Boulevard, so they want to build a 12,000 person, 4 story building on the site they purchased from Hewlett-Packard.

And it looks like either a spaceship or a giant donut.  Mmmmm, donuts.

Jobs To Cupertino: We Want A Spaceship-Shaped, 12K Capacity Building As Our New Apple Campus

Alexia Tsotsis, TechCrunch, Jun 7, 2011

After having a banner WWDC start yesterday, Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs humblypresented his idea for a new Apple campus at the Cupertino City Council today. Jobs wants to build one building that will hold 12,000 Apple employees on a former Hewlett-Packard property in the area between Tantau North Wolfe, Homestead and the 280 freeway.”It’s a little like a spaceship landed,” Jobs says. No kidding.

Jobs began the presentation referring to the fact that Apple is growing “like a weed,” and that its current campus at D’Anza and the 280 isn’t enough — fitting only about 2,800 people. Apple currently rents buildings to house its other 6,700 employees in the area. The new building will augment the current campus.

Paving the way for these plans, Apple purchased about 100 acres from Hewlett Packard in 2010 and added them to the 50 it owns adjacent. Jobs says he has corralled “some great architects … some of the best in the world” to come up with a design that will house 12,000 people in one four story high building on the property. The area is now mainly apricot orchards.

With the futuristic design Apple apparently is relying heavily on its experience building retail stores, and it will be creating one massive piece of curved glass if the proposal goes through. “There’s not a single straight piece of glass in this building,” Jobs says. The parking will be underground.

Here’s the site in question:

I’ve added the street names to the original slide.  Pruneridge will no longer be a through street from San Jose to Wolfe, but will stop at the new Apple campus at Tantau.  This reasonable alternative to 280 will then have traffic joining the fray on Homestead to the north.  But at least I’ll be able to get a parking space at BJ’s when this thing opens.  (Actually I won’t; Jobs says they will still need all the space at Infinite Loop, the current Apple HQ.)

As long as Apple doesn’t introduce an iPhone 5 that electrocutes the user while secretly tweeting photos of his/her crotch, this is a done deal:

“There is no chance that we’re saying no,” insisted [Cupertino Mayor Gilbert] Wong, who started his life with Apple IIs and Apple II +s, “The Mothership has landed in Cupertino.”

Will this make the house with a dragon sell faster with more overbidding?  This is an Open Thread.

Here’s some news from Mountain View about a multimillion dollar project that doesn’t involve stainless steel kitchen appliances or Berber carpeting.

Developer sues city for denying permits

Owner of ramshackle apartments still owes city $97,000 in fees

by Daniel DeBolt, Mountain View Voice Staff, Thursday, June 2nd, 2011

Summer Hill Apartments at 291 Evandale Ave. remains closed. Photo by Michelle Le.  (Article in MV Voice 2/23/09)

The former owner of a large Evandale Avenue apartment complex has filed a lawsuit against the city that claims he lost as much as $24.5 million when the city opposed his efforts to renovate the apartments after his redevelopment project fell through.

Plaintiff Sal Teresi claims that city officials, under the direction of former city attorney Michael Martello, engaged in "capricious and arbitrary conduct" to prevent him from renovating the 64 vacant apartments at 291 Evandale Avenue, which he ended up selling in the middle of the recession. As a result of the city’s actions, Teresi claims he lost $4.5 million in rent over five years and $16-20 million from appreciation of the building.

The issue took center stage in a City Council meeting in October of 2009. Teresi’s lawyer claimed then, as Teresi’s new lawyer claims now, that Teresi had a right to re-roof and repair the buildings without being subjected to a design review process, which the city officials told Teresi was required June of 2008. In the 2009 meeting, City Attorney Michael Martello disagreed, saying that "under their theory they could rebuild the entire complex" without any oversight.

Teresi’s troubles began when he had lined up a buyer for the property just before the recession hit, and decided to vacate the apartments before closing escrow, according to the claim Teresi’s lawyers have filed in the case. The sale fell through when the real estate market tanked. After unsuccessfully trying to find another buyer, Teresi needed to rent the apartments again to pay his bills.

Wow, all those new Facebookers, Googlers, VMWearers and StartUppers driving rents through the roof, while a whole apartment complex is sitting empty!  Do you hear the sound of opportunity knocking? This developer did, and he thought it would be a great idea to sell the place and deliver it to the new owner tenant-free.

After he got the tenants out, whoops, the housing market collapsed!  I hate it when that happens.  I’m sure you can figure out what kind of troubles he’s had since, especially since the City of Mountain View didn’t consider him the most responsible of apartment owners.  According to the lawsuit:

[T]he city and the city attorney at the time — Michael Martello — treated Teresi Investments with "intentional and disparate treatment" when they denied the company permits to renovate the property in 2008 and 2009. The property’s next owner, Bay West Realty Capital, was given "favorable treatment."

This is an Open Thread.  Tell us about your favorite crime magnets, because some of the local coverage of this place suggests when the fences went up, the crime rate went down.

We’ve talked about bad locations for homes: busy streets, near railroad tracks, freeways, airports, and power transmission lines.  Here’s an article that tries to quantify the cost of some of these location fails. If you’re in the market for a house, here’s some things to avoid when you check out who you’ll be sharing an area with.

7 Neighbors That Can Hurt Your Home’s Value

By Brian O’Connell – 05/17/11 – 8:15 AM EDT, The Street

NEW YORK (MainStreet) — Woody Allen once said, “We’re all our brother’s keepers, but in my case I share that honor with the Prospect Park Zoo.”

Bad neighbors are nothing to laugh about, according to the Appraisal Institute. An unkempt yard, close proximity to a sex offender or having an unfortunate commercial facility nearby (such as a power plant or funeral home), can reduce the value of surrounding homes by as much as 15%.

Having a power plant near your home usually hurts sales value. One study shows home values within two miles of a power plant can decrease between 4% and 7%.

“The impact can vary tremendously depending on a few factors: how ‘bad’ the bad neighbor is, the kind of neighborhood you’re located in and the type of market that exists,” says Carlos Gobel, director of residential services at Integra Realty Resources in Miami.

Here’s TheStreet’s list of 7 Deadly Nabes,  Any particular percent impact on home values comes complete with links to studies, and the softer, squishier numbers merely quote some self-appointed “expert.”

• Power plants – 4-7% hit within 2 miles of plant
• Landfills – 6-10% hit, up to 15% if it’s a Superfund Site
• Sex offenders – 9% hit if living within 1/10 mile, plus takes 10% longer to sell
• Delinquent bill payers – No amount given
• Foreclosed homes – 27% hit within 250 feet
• Lackluster landscaping – 5-10% gain from “pristine” landscaping, no value given for neglected lawns or weed-infested jungles
• Closed schools – No value given, but 75% of home buyers consider school quality “very” or “somewhat” important.

Closed schools above refers to local authorities having budget problems, rather than enrollment changes.  Some of you older readers will remember the opening, closing and re-opening of neighborhood public schools as the Baby Boom, the Baby Bust, and the Echo Boom wildly changed the number of school-aged children.  But if families move away from a neighborhood because they don’t consider it safe, that’s a school closure due to local, not national demographics, and family flight (or at least families with money flight) will hurt home values.

But there’s nothing in the article about jerkface neighbors who party until 3 am, or run a manufacturing business on their driveway, or harass you for parking in front of their house, or have eight more times people and vehicles than bedrooms.  I’d think those would affect the selling price as well, although some are easier to hide than others.  And come on, meth labs may add value for the producer but they definitely hurt the house values in the hood.

For a blast from the past, here’s a Millbrae Special with three different location fails.

This is an Open Thread.  Share your opinions on bad neighbors, location fails, equity burns, open houses you want to see, or anything else on your mind.