Hayes Valley’s Fulton 555 Is Almost Ready for Sales and We Have Pricing

Images via TEAM.E

Hayes Valley has been home to an influx of fancy new condo projects in recent years, and the latest to hit the neighborhood is Fulton 555. The 139-unit complex, designed by Ian Birchall & Associates, is getting ready to start sales, and pricing has just been announced for the units, which are being described on the official website as “blank canvases.” Condos, which appear overwhelmingly white and glossy, will have Bosch appliances and hardwood floors throughout.

A shot of the kitchen in the Fulton 555 model unit.

Junior one-bedrooms will start in the mid-$500,000s, while pricing for one-bedrooms will range from the low $600,000s to the high $800,000s. Two-bedrooms begin in the low $1,000,000s and top out in the mid-$1,000,000s, according to the Mark Company, which is handling sales.

Building amenities will include the requisite rooftop terrace, a dog park, a lounge, and one amenity that will benefit the entire neighborhood: an on-site grocery. The Hayes Valley ban on formula retail was lifted just for Fulton 555’s grocery store thanks to a vote from the Board of Supervisors last year that approved a “neighborhood-serving grocery store of moderate size.” There’s still no official word on what that grocery store will be, but it will likely all be decided by this fall, when construction is set to wrap up and move-ins into the new building will begin.

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Source:http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2015/06/29/hayes_valleys_fulton_555_is_almost_ready_for_sales_and_we_have_pricing.php

Backyard Tent Renting for $899/Month Sums Up Everything That’s Wrong with the Bay Area

Screengrab from CBS’s report

About a week ago, enterprising millennial John Potter listed a backyard tent for rent on Airbnb, advertising a rate of $20/night. The tent, a nine-by-seven-foot Coleman set up in the backyard of his parents’ house in Mountain View, comes with a sleeping bag and a pillow. It’s close to Caltrain and (hint hint) Google. Also, there are amenities: Tenants (tentants?) are permitted one shower per day, and there’s free Wi-Fi. Yesterday, CBS’s NightBeat stopped by with a TV crew and trumped up the “Oh, zany Silicon Valley!” angle, asking Potter about the pros of sleeping out-of-doors (“Fresh air!”) and the cons (“Racoons!”). After receiving so many reservation requests, Potter told the website Fusion, he upped the rate to $46/night and is also offering a monthly rate of $899. Yes,$899 per month to sleep in a tent that’s walking distance from Walmart. Our first thought: This has got to be some kind of prank, or perhaps a conceptual art piece. Right? Right??

Screengrab from CBS’s report

From what we can gather, it’s not a prank, but there also isn’t a renter yet who’s settled in for the full $899/month package. Potter, a freelance web developer who runs a website called Aww, told us that so far two people have slept in the tent in the week since the Airbnb listing has been up. (He says he had a third reservation, but a room opened up in the house and he gave his guest a free upgrade. Nice guy!) Both tenants stayed just one night, and neither one left a review on the tent’s listing page.

More bonkers Bay Area rental stories:
Silicon Valley ‘Startup Castle’ Seeks Higher Beings to Join Exercise Cult
Inside the Nightmarish Building at the Center of SF Landlord Lawsuit
Longtime Rent-Control Tenant Shocked to Discover $6,700 Rent Hike Is Totally Legal

“I’ve had a handful of people who want to stay a month or longer as temporary housing because they wanted somewhere to live while they look for a permanent apartment,” Potter tells Curbed. “It’s, like, people who just got a new tech job or something like that, and it’s hard to find a place here, so they need temporary housing while they look.”

Here’s an excerpt from one inquiry from six days ago, which Potter gamely forwarded to us when we asked for proof:

I am currently in Mountain View working on my start-up. I spend almost all day at Hacker Dojo and will be out of the house the majority of the time. I will be clean, respectful, and quiet. I don’t smoke or drink and will not have any guests. Your place sounds like a good option, as I am content in almost any place and need only the basics.

From this prospective renter’s inquiry, we have to wonder from the word “house” if he had read the ad at all closely. Then again, it may be just a polite form letter from yet one more desperate Silicon Valley renter.

Asked whether tenants get a key to the main house so they can shower on their schedule, Potter said no. “We just make sure someone’s always home,” he says.

Source:http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2015/06/25/backyard_tent_renting_for_899month_sums_up_everything_thats_wrong_with_the_bay_area.php

Every Single Part of the Bay Area Is Unaffordable on $15/Hour

Map via Zillow
In the San Francisco metropolitan area, a household would need to make $126,480 per year to afford the median market-rate rental without spending more than 30 percent of income on housing, according to a new report by real estate website Zillow. That works out to a $63.24-per-hour wage for a single-earner household, or $31.62 for a dual-earner household. Not one single part of the Bay Area has a median market-rate rent that is affordable to a worker making the current California minimum wage of $9 per hour or the San Francisco minimum wage of $12.25 per hour (or the $15 per hour going into effect in SF in 2018). In San Francisco itself, single earners need to bring home $84.50 per hour, or $175,760, to afford the city’s median market-rate rent, and each member of a dual-earner household would need to earn $42.25 an hour per person.

The cheapest place in the San Francisco metropolitan area is Pittsburg, where the minimum hourly wage necessary for two earners is $18.14 (per earner), or $36.28 for a single earner. And although San Francisco is pricey, there are plenty of even more expensive areas around Marin and San Mateo counties. Atherton comes out on top, with a whopping $103.80 per hour, per earner, for a household of two workers to afford the median rental (which in Atherton at least is a largely theoretical notion, because the town isn’t exactly swimming in apartment complexes; rather, Zillow’s estimated market-rate rent is based on what an Atherton house would rent for, if it were on the rental market). Belvedere, Hillsborough, and Portola Valley are close behind.

The Bay Area is undoubtedly expensive and very, very difficult for anyone who isn’t making quite a bit of money to afford. That said, matching up minimum wages and median rentals seems a bit like stacking the statistical deck. By definition, a minimum-wage salary should not be expected to support a median rental, even in a more affordable city, unless a huge proportion of the city’s workers are earning the minimum wage. But in other American cities, it is undoubtedly easier to afford the median level of housing on far fewer dollars than it is here in the San Francisco area. In Chicago, where the minimum wage will increase to $10 next month, a two-earner household would have to make $16.10 per hour per person to afford the median rental, and in Los Angeles the earning level would be $24.98 per hour for two ($49.96 per hour for one).

The figures above are all based on estimated market-rate rents from the Zillow Rent Index, which, as we have recently discussed, is an imperfect approximation of the current state of the rental market (and does not factor in rent control, for instance). Because the full picture of data on apartment rentals is not publicly available, Zillow estimates market-rate rent for the portion of the housing stock it can assess as a whole: single-family homes, condos, co-ops, and TICs. (If this sounds confusing, definitely read our explainer on the matter.) What Zillow’s rent index does provide is a snapshot of how the market is changing, and there is no question that it is getting more expensive to live here. The last time that Zillow calculated these figures, in December 2014, someone living in San Francisco needed to make $152,960 per year to afford the median market-rate rental. Given that lots of San Franciscans have probably not received a $22,800 raise in six months, the city’s current rents are affordable to even fewer people than they were at the end of last year.

Source:http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2015/06/12/every_single_part_of_the_bay_area_is_unaffordable_on_15hour.php

Can I Offer You Pizza for That House?

One home buyer was tired of losing out in Portland, Ore.’s hot housing market, where bidding wars are common and are sending prices soaring. So the buyer made an offer a seller couldn’t refuse: Pizza every month for life.

Donna DiNicola, owner of DiNicola’s Italian Restaurant in southeast Portland, says she was partially joking when her offer for a 900-square-foot house in southeast Portland included pizza – but it worked. She offered $275,000 for the house – which was at the top of her price range – as well as pizza and two months of free rent for the sellers.

“Donna’s offer was just so compelling and the fact that she offered 60 days of rent back for free, which is practically unheard of,” says Holly Marsh, the home seller. “And then the pizza part was just hilarious. It just goes to show they really did something to stand out among the offers.”

The house has now been dubbed the “pizza house,” says Nathaniel Bachelder, the listing agent from Urban Nest Realty.

DiNicola’s pizza offer made it stand out. “Everything’s going pending in a couple days,” Bachelder says about the market in Portland. “Almost everything’s getting multiple offers.” Housing inventories for March and April were at less than two months.

Source:http://realtormag.realtor.org/daily-news/2015/06/05/can-i-offer-you-pizza-for-house