The Facebook Effect on Real Estate: It’s Very Real [The Basis Point]

2012 Stern Grove Celebration

It isn’t only the Golden Gate Bridge that is celebrating their 75th anniversary!  The Stern Grove Festival’s free music in the parkis also turning 75 this year and has lots of great, free music to come and enjoy.

The celebration kicks off with a special event on June 24th:

11:30 a.m. – The Big Picnic Party
A private catered fundraising event in the West Meadow benefiting Stern Grove Festival. Tickets for The Big Picnic Party are available here. Tickets include reserved seating at the concert.

But you can always bring your own picnic and have a party with your friends and all for free.  Here’s the line up for 2012:

• June 24
• The Big Picnic Starring Anita Baker
  Featuring The Family Stone & Glide Ensemble
• July 1
• Preservation Hall Jazz Band
  The Stone Foxes
• July 8
• San Francisco Symphony
• July 15
• Nitin Sawhney
  Meshell Ndegeocello
• July 22The E Family
• July 29
• San Francisco Ballet
  Helgi Tomasson, Artistic Director
• August 5
• Ozomatli
  SMOD
• August 12
• Al Jarreau and The George Duke Trio
  Mara Hruby
• August 19
• San Francisco Opera
• August 26
• OK GO
  The Family Crest

And as always, remember that the weather is variable, so bring layers and sunscreen!

Rita Roti is a broker associate / assistant manager at Zephyr and can be reached at Rita@ritaroti.com

The San Francisco Chronicle had a great article about some of the upcoming home tours and I had heard about most of them.  Except, I had never known about the Private Collections Tour: The Spring Art Tour!  It sounds like a fascinating way to see a home filled with art and benefit a good cause all at the same time.  You get a choice of which collection to visit and even an invite to a party afterwards.

Or perhaps you’d like to check out the San Francisco Decorator Showcase or the Marin Living Home Tour or Dwell Home Tour or one of so many others!

Read the article for more!

Rita Roti is a broker associate / assistant manager at Zephyr and can be reached at Rita@ritaroti.com

Save the date: April 15th

Rita Roti is a broker associate / assistant manager at Zephyr and can be reached at Rita@ritaroti.com

• There are 35% more women in the Marina and 47% more women in Pac Heights on weekend nights than expected.
  * Conversely, there are 23% more men in SoMa, 16% more in the Castro, and 14% more in the Financial District;
• What happens in Soma has a 17% chance of staying in Soma.
• Where do Iphone users, and Android users hang out
• During normal business hours everyone’s headed into the Financial District…
  * …but on weekend nights it’s all about the parties: the Mission, the Marina, Downtown, the Castro, and Western Addition. Read more:

(So ladies if you’re looking for a straight man in this city, you’re odds increase in Soma.  Men let’s face it you can go anywhere in this city and have high odds as a straight guy).

Real Estate has a language of its own, and it just got some new abbreviations.  Yes, I used to sit down with new clients and explain that there were four stages to a listing’s life: Active, Contingent, Pending and Sold.  But now I’ll have to change that statement to reflect a number of sub-categories:

From the SFAR:

MLS Statuses as of January 4, 2012

Active:
No accepted offer

Act. Cont.-Short Sale:
Accepted offer pending lender approval, additional offers being sought

Act. Cont. – Rel. Clause*:
Accepted offer with a subject to sale seller release clause, additional offers being sought

Act. Cont. – Show*: 
Accepted offer with Buyer contingency provisions such as inspections, accepting back-up offers

Act. Cont. – Probate*:
Accepted offer, available to be overbid through the court confirmation process

Pending:
The Seller has accepted an offer and is not soliciting additional offers

Temp. Off Market*:
The listing contract is still valid, but the property is not being actively marketed and there is no accepted offer. Temp. Off Market listings will not be allowed to be relisted as new.

Withdrawn – Cancel*: 
The listing agreement has been cancelled

Withdrawn – Duplicate*:
Duplicate listing, property can be found as pending or sold in another category

Expired:
The listing agreement has expired

Sold:
Escrow has closed

*New MLS status as of January 4, 2012

Of course, I wish there was a version of Active Contingent that was for properties where the seller (or listing agent) didn’t want to be bothered with addition showings, but the contingencies were still in effect, because that’s a reality.  Hopefully agents will mark those properties as pending.  But old habits die hard and we are used to the old way of only moving a property status to pending when all contingencies have been removed, so they may remain on the MLS as Act. Cont. – Show instead; causing disappointment when it isn’t really possible to show them!

Rita Roti is a broker / assistant manager at Zephyr and can be reached at Rita@ritaroti.com

The Case-Shiller High Tier Index applies to house sales of about $600,000 and above. In the 8 northern and central districts of the city, the median house sales price for non-distress houses is well over $800,000. If there was an “Upper High Tier Index” for SF alone, which sadly there is not, I suspect we would see an even larger uptick in prices. It’s been very consistent in the city, Bay Area, state and country that lower price homes have been affected much more negatively than higher price homes.

For the record, tiny monthly fluctuations must be considered within any reasonable margin of error and are essentially meaningless. What is important are the more consistent, longer-term trends.  The beauty of all this data is you get to decide what headlines to believe, and more importantly what to discount; but give yourself a moment to read the fine print first…

As has been very well published most places in the press, San Francisco rents are through the moon, particularly in South of Market where Web 2.0 aka Social Networking is at it’s most fiercely creative.

As we wrap up 2011, Trulia’s Chief Economist looks ahead at what’s in store for the battered housing market and which cities have a big reason to celebrate the New Year.

By Jed Kolko (@JedKolko), Trulia’s Chief Economist

My crystal ball is never as crystal-clear as I’d like, but I do think that we can expect a gradual economic recovery to move the housing market a few steps back toward normal in 2012. Even so, we still have a long ways to go. As we exit 2011, prices still not have rebounded after their huge declines, inventories are still well above normal, and the foreclosure rate is still far higher than before the bubble. Even the best possible 2012 won’t get us halfway back toward normal.

Before getting into the predictions, let me be upfront about what I’m assuming. After 14 months of job gains, I expect the economy to continue its slow but determined recovery. I don’t do my own macroeconomic forecasts, but every single one of the fifty-ish economic forecasters surveyed by the Wall Street Journal expects the economy to grow throughout 2012, and that makes sense to me. Of course, any unexpected severe political or financial crisis could tip us back into recession, and then all bets are off. Here’s to hoping that doesn’t happen.

My five predictions for housing in 2012: Read More

Trulia’s Real Estate Crystal Ball for 2012 [Forbes.com]

Home buyers needed to earn a minimum annual income of $61,530 to qualify for the purchase of a $292,120 statewide median-priced, existing single-family home in the third quarter of 2011. The monthly payment, including taxes and insurance, would be $1,540, assuming a 20 percent down payment and an effective composite interest rate of 4.63 percent. The effective composite interest rate in second-quarter 2011 was 4.85 percent and 4.78 percent in the third quarter of 2010.

Regionally, housing affordability rose in most counties in the San Francisco Bay Area but was down in Los Angeles County and Fresno County. At 77 percent, San Bernardino County was the most affordable, while San Mateo County was the least affordable, with only 25 percent of households able to purchase the county’s median-priced home.

C.A.R.org