Great news items on front page of our local news paper. Seems that housing boom is back and it is more or less fueled by dot.com type of boom of Facebook, Google and many more successful tech companies.
In part it is fueled by higher employment gains in technology area which is again attracting inflow of technology workers back in valley. Palo Alto especially is favorite of all is considered safe heaven as it has great schools, great neighborhood of rich and famous. Even in worst of times, I haven't heard Palo Alto real estate going down. At the most it stagnates... However, boom does percolate to rest of the region and spreads to entire valley.
It is quite contrary to rest of the US that real estate is going up in Valley. But I guess, it is all about supply and demand. Lot of investment is from China, Russia and rest of the world. Which is quite obvious as weather is perfect and on top of it, if you want to do anything in technology area, this is THE PLACE to be.
Silicon valley is best example of the fact that Cost of Doing Business doesn't matter as long as you can do business and make money out of it. Silicon Valley has one of the highest possible cost of business with highest property rates, highest Utility rates, highest cost of employees, highest rate of taxes and one of the highest gas prices (except Hawaii). Despite that people come here and start business. Why? One reason could be luck or chance that Chip/Software some how got bootstrapped here. Another more persistent one is consistent climate of technology with abundant best Universities and abundant Capital availability from bunker hill road. All that surpasses any deterrent in form of cost.
I hope this boom will continue and will be a reasonable boom rather than bubble type of like it was in 2005s. All friends and family members.. if you want to move in, this is right time. jump in!!!
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_20235268/buyers-compete-short-supply-homes-bay-area
CHUCK TODD/BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
The winning bidder on the Palo Alto home was a Google employee from China, highlighting two trends: the rise of the wealthy tech buyer and the buyer from Asia. “We’re seeing lot more buyers from that region,” Giovannotto said. “It’s difficult to buy property over there, and the power of their money is greater over here.”
Another Palo Alto home drew 10 offers recently, selling for $325,000 over the asking price.
In the East Bay, a relatively small supply of lowerpriced homes and an increase in demand has homebuyers jumping.
Two couples working with Danville real estate agent Kevin Kieffer of Keller Williams used the “strike first” method Kieffer advocates to grab their homes this month. He tells clients that in this market, they have to make a bid almost immediately, not wait until the weekend when the bulk of buyers are looking. If it’s a foreclosure, the bank is likely to welcome a decent offer, he said.
Cameron and Rissa Kossen bought a bank-owned Martinez house that’s near Pleasant Hill schools for $313,000 by making an offer quickly. Had he waited until the weekend, Cameron Kossen said, other buyers would have made offers and “it would have gone up to $330,000 or $340,000.”
Another East Bay couple, Ken and Ashley Wilson, were outbid on three homes before landing the fourth, a threebedroom, two-bath house in Pleasant Hill.
“The housing market is moving so quick that houses would come on the market and my wife and I were having to make decisions almost at that minute, because there were others willing to purchase the home right then,” said Ken Wilson, who works at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.
On both sides of San Francisco Bay, real estate agents say fewer homes than usual are for sale.
“Menlo Park and Palo Alto are both desperate for inventory,” said Wendy McPherson of Coldwell Banker in Menlo Park. She said that Palo Alto recently had only about 30 homes for sale.
Ray Chavez of Alain Pinel in Los Gatos sold a home in Santa Clara that received five offers in six days and sold for $17,000 over the asking price of $609,000, a big bump in that market for a small home.
“It’s amazing what’s not out there right now,” he said. “There are only 32 homes in the whole city of Santa Clara. We’re down 74 percent from February 2011.”
The threat of historically low interest rates rising further — the rates rose above 4 percent this week — combined with increased confidence in the economy is bringing out buyers who have been holding back.
“I think it’s a little bit like Christmas,” said Safran of the Contra Costa Association of Realtors. “People finally started buying again this Christmas when they hadn’t bought for three years. I think they’re just ready. It’s time.”
Sales were up across the Bay Area in February, the strongest showing for that month in five years, according to DataQuick, a real estate information service.
Silicon Valley is having its fourth-highest year in sales since 2000, said Richard Calhoun of Creekside Realty in San Jose. Calhoun, who has tracked the inventory of homes for sale in Santa Clara County for more than a decade, said that in some parts of Silicon Valley, including the Palo Alto area, the entire stock of homes for sale would be exhausted in less than a month.
“The housing market has definitely bottomed and is on a recovery path,” said Ken Rosen, chairman at the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at UC Berkeley. “I think it is a real recovery happening, around the whole country.”
Contra Costa County, saturated with foreclosures, is still 18 months away from a full recovery and a normal housing market, Rosen said. “There’s going to be a spillover from San Francisco and the Bay Area, but it hasn’t happened yet.”
Some would-be sellers on the Peninsula seem to be holding out until next year, when Facebook’s newly minted millionaires will begin spending their money, potentially driving up prices even more.
Sellers are “getting greedy” and pulling homes off the market, said Alex H. Wang of Rainmaker Properties in Los Altos. “They get multiple offers on their house and say, ‘I don’t want to sell anymore. I’ll wait until next year.’ That upsets everybody.”
Contact Pete Carey at 408-920-5419.
LIPO CHING/STAFF PHOTOS
Real estate agents Peter Giovannotto, left, and Chris Iverson stand in front of a Palo Alto ranch-style house that received 38 offers and sold in eight days for $1.65 million, $450,000 more than the asking price. The agents used the lights as part of a renovation theme during the selling period.
The three-bedroom, two-bathroom Palo Alto house features a modest living room and a double oven, but the top oven didn’t work at the time of the $1.65 million sale.
============================
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_20242869/bay-area-adds-more-than-15-000-jobs
“The Bay Area is producing what the world wants,” said Jon Haveman, chief economist with the Bay Area Council’s Economic Institute. “High-end computer manufacturing, information services, professional and business services are all doing well and creating jobs.”
To be sure, the Bay Area has a long way to go to recapture the jobs lost during the recession. Still, the current job trends show the region also has come a long way since the depths of the downturn.
Employment totals in the Bay Area are now at their highest levels since February 2009. The East Bay and South Bay are at similar multiyear highs.
The statewide jobless rate was 10.9 percent last month, unchanged from January. The United States had an unemployment rate of 8.3 percent in February, which also was the same as in January.
In February, the South Bay posted a jobless rate of 8.7 percent, down from 8.9percent the previous month; the East Bay’s was unchanged at 9.3 percent, while the San Francisco area’s was at 7.4 percent, worse than the previous month’s 7.3 percent rate, a Beacon Economics estimate culled from the EDD figures shows.
The overall Bay Area jobless rate was 8.6 percent in February, an improvement from the 8.7 percent rate in January, according to this newspaper’s analysis of the Beacon figures.
Through much of the recovery from the recession, the South Bay and San Francisco regions led in job growth, bolstered by the fastexpanding tech sector. The East Bay, ground zero for the meltdown of the housing market, has lagged.
Now, however, the East Bay has joined the upswing, which bodes well for overall economic prospects in the Bay Area. The 3,200 jobs East Bay employers added in February follow a gain of 9,400 jobs in January.
Despite the improvements, the hunt for employment remains a struggle for some job seekers.
Even the information technology sector isn’t uniformly hot for job seekers. Gabriel Garcia, a San Jose resident, is finding that IT employers prefer to hire people for temporary contract jobs rather than full-time positions.
“It seems that things are picking up,” Garcia said. “But it’s been harder than I expected.”
Despite the tough times, Newark resident Sarah Babbitt, a mother of two, is not discouraged as she seeks a job in retail or restaurant management.
“I’ve been looking for work for about two months,” Babbitt said. “But I’m confident in my skills. I’ll be able to find something.”
The region is poised to produce more employment opportunities for job seekers, analysts predicted.
“The Bay Area has longterm fundamentals that are better than pretty much anywhere else in the world,” Haveman said. “That is the result of the frontier economy that we have in this region.”
Contact George Avalos at 925-977-8477. Follow him at Twitter.com/george_avalos.
In part it is fueled by higher employment gains in technology area which is again attracting inflow of technology workers back in valley. Palo Alto especially is favorite of all is considered safe heaven as it has great schools, great neighborhood of rich and famous. Even in worst of times, I haven't heard Palo Alto real estate going down. At the most it stagnates... However, boom does percolate to rest of the region and spreads to entire valley.
It is quite contrary to rest of the US that real estate is going up in Valley. But I guess, it is all about supply and demand. Lot of investment is from China, Russia and rest of the world. Which is quite obvious as weather is perfect and on top of it, if you want to do anything in technology area, this is THE PLACE to be.
Silicon valley is best example of the fact that Cost of Doing Business doesn't matter as long as you can do business and make money out of it. Silicon Valley has one of the highest possible cost of business with highest property rates, highest Utility rates, highest cost of employees, highest rate of taxes and one of the highest gas prices (except Hawaii). Despite that people come here and start business. Why? One reason could be luck or chance that Chip/Software some how got bootstrapped here. Another more persistent one is consistent climate of technology with abundant best Universities and abundant Capital availability from bunker hill road. All that surpasses any deterrent in form of cost.
I hope this boom will continue and will be a reasonable boom rather than bubble type of like it was in 2005s. All friends and family members.. if you want to move in, this is right time. jump in!!!
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_20235268/buyers-compete-short-supply-homes-bay-area
SHIFT IN BAY AREA HOUSING
BIDDINGWAR
IN SOUTH BAY, TECH WORKERS DRIVE UP MARKET; IN EAST BAY, PENT-UP DEMAND FUELS BUYING BOOM
By Pete Carey
pcarey@mercurynews.com
Peter Giovannotto is smack in the middle of a major shift in the Bay Area housing market.
The Peninsula real estate agent recently had a modest Palo Alto ranch-style home draw 38 offers and sell in eight days for nearly a half-million dollars more than the asking price, all par for the course in Palo Alto’s overheated real estate market.
“We started at $1.2 million and ended up selling for $1.65 million,” he said.
A flock of eager buyers competing for fewer-thanusual homes for sale is sending prices soaring along the Peninsula, where Googlers and Facebook employees duke it out with foreign investors for a place to live.
In other parts of the Bay Area, pent-up demand has helped create a hot market for lower-cost homes, with buyers having to move fast to grab foreclosures and be prepared for stiff competition on other homes for sale. In Contra Costa County, pending sales of single-family homes are up about 62 percent from last year and inventory is down 32 percent — a seller’s market.
“We are getting lots of multiple offers on lowerend properties,” said Barbara Safran, president of the Contra Costa Association of Realtors. “One person told me they had 12 offers on a property in Concord.”
BIDDINGWAR
IN SOUTH BAY, TECH WORKERS DRIVE UP MARKET; IN EAST BAY, PENT-UP DEMAND FUELS BUYING BOOM
By Pete Carey
pcarey@mercurynews.com
Peter Giovannotto is smack in the middle of a major shift in the Bay Area housing market.
The Peninsula real estate agent recently had a modest Palo Alto ranch-style home draw 38 offers and sell in eight days for nearly a half-million dollars more than the asking price, all par for the course in Palo Alto’s overheated real estate market.
“We started at $1.2 million and ended up selling for $1.65 million,” he said.
A flock of eager buyers competing for fewer-thanusual homes for sale is sending prices soaring along the Peninsula, where Googlers and Facebook employees duke it out with foreign investors for a place to live.
In other parts of the Bay Area, pent-up demand has helped create a hot market for lower-cost homes, with buyers having to move fast to grab foreclosures and be prepared for stiff competition on other homes for sale. In Contra Costa County, pending sales of single-family homes are up about 62 percent from last year and inventory is down 32 percent — a seller’s market.
“We are getting lots of multiple offers on lowerend properties,” said Barbara Safran, president of the Contra Costa Association of Realtors. “One person told me they had 12 offers on a property in Concord.”
CHUCK TODD/BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
The winning bidder on the Palo Alto home was a Google employee from China, highlighting two trends: the rise of the wealthy tech buyer and the buyer from Asia. “We’re seeing lot more buyers from that region,” Giovannotto said. “It’s difficult to buy property over there, and the power of their money is greater over here.”
Another Palo Alto home drew 10 offers recently, selling for $325,000 over the asking price.
In the East Bay, a relatively small supply of lowerpriced homes and an increase in demand has homebuyers jumping.
Two couples working with Danville real estate agent Kevin Kieffer of Keller Williams used the “strike first” method Kieffer advocates to grab their homes this month. He tells clients that in this market, they have to make a bid almost immediately, not wait until the weekend when the bulk of buyers are looking. If it’s a foreclosure, the bank is likely to welcome a decent offer, he said.
Cameron and Rissa Kossen bought a bank-owned Martinez house that’s near Pleasant Hill schools for $313,000 by making an offer quickly. Had he waited until the weekend, Cameron Kossen said, other buyers would have made offers and “it would have gone up to $330,000 or $340,000.”
Another East Bay couple, Ken and Ashley Wilson, were outbid on three homes before landing the fourth, a threebedroom, two-bath house in Pleasant Hill.
“The housing market is moving so quick that houses would come on the market and my wife and I were having to make decisions almost at that minute, because there were others willing to purchase the home right then,” said Ken Wilson, who works at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.
On both sides of San Francisco Bay, real estate agents say fewer homes than usual are for sale.
“Menlo Park and Palo Alto are both desperate for inventory,” said Wendy McPherson of Coldwell Banker in Menlo Park. She said that Palo Alto recently had only about 30 homes for sale.
Ray Chavez of Alain Pinel in Los Gatos sold a home in Santa Clara that received five offers in six days and sold for $17,000 over the asking price of $609,000, a big bump in that market for a small home.
“It’s amazing what’s not out there right now,” he said. “There are only 32 homes in the whole city of Santa Clara. We’re down 74 percent from February 2011.”
The threat of historically low interest rates rising further — the rates rose above 4 percent this week — combined with increased confidence in the economy is bringing out buyers who have been holding back.
“I think it’s a little bit like Christmas,” said Safran of the Contra Costa Association of Realtors. “People finally started buying again this Christmas when they hadn’t bought for three years. I think they’re just ready. It’s time.”
Sales were up across the Bay Area in February, the strongest showing for that month in five years, according to DataQuick, a real estate information service.
Silicon Valley is having its fourth-highest year in sales since 2000, said Richard Calhoun of Creekside Realty in San Jose. Calhoun, who has tracked the inventory of homes for sale in Santa Clara County for more than a decade, said that in some parts of Silicon Valley, including the Palo Alto area, the entire stock of homes for sale would be exhausted in less than a month.
“The housing market has definitely bottomed and is on a recovery path,” said Ken Rosen, chairman at the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at UC Berkeley. “I think it is a real recovery happening, around the whole country.”
Contra Costa County, saturated with foreclosures, is still 18 months away from a full recovery and a normal housing market, Rosen said. “There’s going to be a spillover from San Francisco and the Bay Area, but it hasn’t happened yet.”
Some would-be sellers on the Peninsula seem to be holding out until next year, when Facebook’s newly minted millionaires will begin spending their money, potentially driving up prices even more.
Sellers are “getting greedy” and pulling homes off the market, said Alex H. Wang of Rainmaker Properties in Los Altos. “They get multiple offers on their house and say, ‘I don’t want to sell anymore. I’ll wait until next year.’ That upsets everybody.”
Contact Pete Carey at 408-920-5419.
LIPO CHING/STAFF PHOTOS
Real estate agents Peter Giovannotto, left, and Chris Iverson stand in front of a Palo Alto ranch-style house that received 38 offers and sold in eight days for $1.65 million, $450,000 more than the asking price. The agents used the lights as part of a renovation theme during the selling period.
The three-bedroom, two-bathroom Palo Alto house features a modest living room and a double oven, but the top oven didn’t work at the time of the $1.65 million sale.
============================
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_20242869/bay-area-adds-more-than-15-000-jobs
LEADS STATE IN JOB GROWTH
Bay Area notches three-year high in employment
By George Avalos
gavalos@bayareanewsgroup.com
The Bay Area economy created 15,400 jobs in February, raising total employment in the region to the highest level in three years, the state’s Employment Development Department reported Friday.
But despite positive job growth in the Bay Area, the net gain statewide was a mere 4,000 jobs.
“California’s economy is being led by the Bay Area,” said Scott Anderson, senior economist with Wells Fargo Securities. “The Bay Area is certainly the bright spot in the state.”
The Bay Area has added jobs for seven consecutive months, and all three major urban centers in the nine-county region are now making significant employment gains. The South Bay added 4,100 jobs last month, while the East Bay gained 3,200 and the San Francisco-San Mateo-Marin region added 7,100, seasonally adjusted figures showed.
Bay Area notches three-year high in employment
By George Avalos
gavalos@bayareanewsgroup.com
The Bay Area economy created 15,400 jobs in February, raising total employment in the region to the highest level in three years, the state’s Employment Development Department reported Friday.
But despite positive job growth in the Bay Area, the net gain statewide was a mere 4,000 jobs.
“California’s economy is being led by the Bay Area,” said Scott Anderson, senior economist with Wells Fargo Securities. “The Bay Area is certainly the bright spot in the state.”
The Bay Area has added jobs for seven consecutive months, and all three major urban centers in the nine-county region are now making significant employment gains. The South Bay added 4,100 jobs last month, while the East Bay gained 3,200 and the San Francisco-San Mateo-Marin region added 7,100, seasonally adjusted figures showed.
“The Bay Area is producing what the world wants,” said Jon Haveman, chief economist with the Bay Area Council’s Economic Institute. “High-end computer manufacturing, information services, professional and business services are all doing well and creating jobs.”
To be sure, the Bay Area has a long way to go to recapture the jobs lost during the recession. Still, the current job trends show the region also has come a long way since the depths of the downturn.
Employment totals in the Bay Area are now at their highest levels since February 2009. The East Bay and South Bay are at similar multiyear highs.
The statewide jobless rate was 10.9 percent last month, unchanged from January. The United States had an unemployment rate of 8.3 percent in February, which also was the same as in January.
In February, the South Bay posted a jobless rate of 8.7 percent, down from 8.9percent the previous month; the East Bay’s was unchanged at 9.3 percent, while the San Francisco area’s was at 7.4 percent, worse than the previous month’s 7.3 percent rate, a Beacon Economics estimate culled from the EDD figures shows.
The overall Bay Area jobless rate was 8.6 percent in February, an improvement from the 8.7 percent rate in January, according to this newspaper’s analysis of the Beacon figures.
Through much of the recovery from the recession, the South Bay and San Francisco regions led in job growth, bolstered by the fastexpanding tech sector. The East Bay, ground zero for the meltdown of the housing market, has lagged.
Now, however, the East Bay has joined the upswing, which bodes well for overall economic prospects in the Bay Area. The 3,200 jobs East Bay employers added in February follow a gain of 9,400 jobs in January.
Despite the improvements, the hunt for employment remains a struggle for some job seekers.
Even the information technology sector isn’t uniformly hot for job seekers. Gabriel Garcia, a San Jose resident, is finding that IT employers prefer to hire people for temporary contract jobs rather than full-time positions.
“It seems that things are picking up,” Garcia said. “But it’s been harder than I expected.”
Despite the tough times, Newark resident Sarah Babbitt, a mother of two, is not discouraged as she seeks a job in retail or restaurant management.
“I’ve been looking for work for about two months,” Babbitt said. “But I’m confident in my skills. I’ll be able to find something.”
The region is poised to produce more employment opportunities for job seekers, analysts predicted.
“The Bay Area has longterm fundamentals that are better than pretty much anywhere else in the world,” Haveman said. “That is the result of the frontier economy that we have in this region.”
Contact George Avalos at 925-977-8477. Follow him at Twitter.com/george_avalos.
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