House Hunter In Royal Oaks – Country Living Under $800K! [Video]
Want to live the country life but still be an hour away from Silicon Valley? $800K may seem like a lot of money, but here in Silicon Valley it’s difficult to find a single family home with acreage.
Whether you’re from Santa Clara county, San Mateo county or Santa Cruz county, there has been a trend of families looking for more space, larger outdoor living areas for family gatherings and more rooms with multi-purpose functionality as we continue to stay safe and work from home.
Check out this video to see if this 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath 2,045 sqft home (with over 2 acres) fits your lifestyle.
Give me a call to learn more about this property. 831-346-2743 Text/voice
Lynne Watanabe MacFarlane, MCDM, SRES | Realtor
PFAC Silicon Valley affiliate
Intero | A Berkshire Hathaway Affiliate
phone 831.346.2743
lmacfarlane @ Intero.com
www.lynnemacfarlane.com
DRE# 02066698
Strong Demand for Housing Continues Despite COVID
Here’s the latest from MLSListings Silicon Valley and Coastal Regions
– Single-Family Homes Market Overview
The SF Bay Area real estate market continued to show its strength during July, even in the midst of the COVID19 pandemic.
Median prices again rose across all five MLSListings counties compared to July 2019; the lowest gain was 7% in Santa Clara County, and the highest increase in median price was 19% in San Benito County.
Closed sales remained robust across the board, both month-over-month and year-over year.
Further displaying this resilience, median days on market dropped in every county except for San Benito and new listings coming on the market grew versus last year in all counties except for Santa Cruz.
Inventory stayed problematic in all counties, with 4 out of five counties showing year-over-year decreases.
Santa Clara’s inventory is 1/3 less than this time last year and Santa Cruz inventory is down by 35%.
While San Mateo showed a modest 12% gain in inventory, it is still at historically low levels.
Even with the strong demand, premiums paid (amount paid over asking) is close to 100% in all counties and steady with both last month and last year in all counties except for San Mateo, which saw a 4% drop in average premium paid, from 105% of list last year to 101% of list this year.
Multi-Generational Housing On The Rise And Co-Living Arrangements In The SF Bay Area
In recent years co-living has gained popularity not only in younger 20’s demographics, but attracting popularity for 50+ Boomer generation. Typically, seniors who opt for the co-living lifestyle as homeowners enjoy additional income from roommates and companionship!
What’s the difference between Co-Living versus Co-Housing?
In co-living people without family ties choose to cohabitate in a single dwelling. Typically, each resident has a private bedroom but other rooms (such as kitchen, laundry room, family room) are considered shared common spaces. In a co-housing community, each individual or family has an independent living unit (single family home, condo or apt) and they might share common facilities such as pools, a library, conference or fitness space.
Silver Tsunami
In the SF Bay Area we know that the lack of affordable housing is difficult as it can hit the senior population hard. As the ‘Silver Tsunami’ and senior households continues to expand over the next two decades, households in their 80’s will be the fastest-growing age group according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. Many of those households already face cost burdens.
Santa Cruz – Watsonville Share of Households age 65+ www.jchs.harvard.edu
As the cost of senior communities continue to rise, along with visitation restrictions which COVID19 has placed on family members not being allowed into these senior communities, the desire for multi-generational housing continues to escalate. These are hard questions all families must decided what is important to them. Families are looking for more options as our lifestyle has shifted during these stressful health crisis times our community and family interdependence has become of greater necessity.
What are Co-Living Advantages?
- Sharing household responsibilities can lessen the load and housemates can have complimentary benefits such as one roommate’s ability to drive to the store and another can prep food and cook. This might allow individuals to live independent and active lives.
- Fewer seniors own their own homes these days, more are likely to have a mortgage or even a second mortgage. Co-living can help homeowners afford to stay in their home but creating passive income with rent. Sharing space means dividing up utility costs and home maintenance expenses too.
- Loneliness is one aspect of aging-in-place that co-living can help remedy. A sense of belonging and community can be nurtured with scheduled co-living events such as “Italian Night!” and plan cooking a dinner while playing Italian opera and watch a favorite Italian movie!
Preventing Co-Living Conflicts
Create a written agreement outlining who pays for what and when. Housemates with declining cognitive abilities and/or mobility issues can make living together difficult so a mutually agreed upon rental contract will help avoid co-living conflicts.
Make sure to interview to find the right fit housemate. Look for someone who is financially stable, and shares your interest, values and lifestyle. Always discuss privacy expectations and do consider looking outside an age range. When meeting with a prospective roommate for the first time, always meet in a neutral public location for safety reasons. Get references from previous roommates and consider a background check and credit check; protect oneself.
Consider a trial period and see if all personalities get along! Will pets or habits become irritating after two weeks? Will you need to consider ‘overnight guests’ and does each roommate need to seek permission and could this be considered an invasion of privacy for some? Some people need more privacy than others and having a written agreement can help communication and expectation.
It can be a wonderful experience co-living with others. Co-living can be multi-generational or the same age, but whatever one decides to do I hope you’ll enjoy the company and appreciate your differences!
** Looking for a Multi-Family Home? Click here for a Search for Single Family Homes with 5+ bedrooms, CA
If you’re interested in other cities, let me know, I can set-up your customized search to assist your needs.
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Lynne Watanabe MacFarlane, MCDM, SRES | Realtor PFAC Silicon Valley affiliate Intero | A Berkshire Hathaway Affiliate phone 831.346.2743 DRE# 02066698 |
Are People Really Leaving San Francisco For The Suburbs? [Video]
Here’s my latest vlog post – I hope you and your family are doing well, staying healthy.
One of the first trends that became evident when quarantines began was the large number of young professionals who had gone home to wait out the virus with their parents. Having left the cities where they work and return to their hometowns, many of these young people may not go back. If the work-from-home situation continues – or if their jobs are eliminated – they might find themselves moving back home for good. This may be one of the factors to my discussion here on this post.
As the quarantine lifts, what are the potential market shifts and migration patterns in the SF Bay Area will we see?
Let me know if you or someone you know is interested in making a change (moving to a bigger home with more office space, multi-generational living, layout changes, bigger garden or fresher outside living at the oceanside.) I’m always here to help you make informed, knowledge-based decisions in the shifting markets!
There is a record nine year high in the number of homes on the market in S.F. as it continues to represent 60% more inventory than at the same time last year and 110% more inventory than in 2015 (according to http://socketsite.com/archives/2020/06/most-homes-on-the-market-in-san-francisco-in-nine-years.html)
Market Report – June 16th, 2020 (Coming out of CVD19 dip as stats begin to normalize)
Looking at today’s Santa Clara County inventory we’re seeing some ‘normalization’ as we are approaching mid-June.
Looking locally at Santa Clara County, here’s a comparison of the last two years with this year’s Active and Pending listings. Blue indicates 2918 (which was a banner year, partially due to the low inventory), Orange indicated last year 2019 and today 2020 in Red.
Pendings in Santa Clara County SFR took a big dip, pandemic related but the good news is that in June we’re quickly rising and catching up to 2019 and 2018 numbers. (See below)
From MLS/Aculist I pulled the latest data (June 16th) taken from the 5 Bay Area counties (San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito) for New Listings (yellow) & Sold Homes (blue) from March 16 – June 15th.
As indicated, once we could begin showing properties the listings increased. (See below graph)
Here is a market snapshot from May 2020 comparison to last year’s May 2019 for single family homes and condo and townhouses.
**If you are interested in receiving market data in your neighborhood, let me know, I’m here to assist you with explaining what’s going on in your community.
Lynne MacFarlane, MCDM, SRES
Your Link Between SF Bay to Monterey Bay
PFAC Silicon Valley affiliate
831.346.2743 text/cell
SF Bay Area Real Estate Market Doesn’t Stop After Shelter-In-Place
The San Francisco Bay Area real estate market had begun to rebound in the first two months of the year 2020, with strong buyer demand, often with multiple offers, after a flattening of prices in 2019. But the shelter-in-place (SIP) and stock market tumble caused by uncertainty of the pandemic slowed listings and sales.
Just last week real estate agents and other professionals who are deemed as ‘essential workers’ are allowed to work with the CDC guidelines. With these new strict guidelines real estate agents can not show open houses, give tours and must not show homes with sellers who are still residents of the property. Empty residential properties can be shown with a single agent and with only two prospective buyers. Virtual tours using video (real-time or recorded) is highly encouraged (more on Virtual Agents here).
As one can suspect, this has caused much disruption in the buying and selling of homes but it has not prevented sales by any means! Here’s a snapshot of the most important metrics to keep you informed on the real estate landscape, it includes sold homes, new listings, Transactions Fell Through (TFT) and withdrawn homes. These graphs are gathered and summarized for all five MLSListings’ Counties (San Mateo, Santa Clara, Monterey, San Benito and Santa Cruz Counties) by Aculist/ MLSListings.
Interesting to note is that despite the fact that there is a -25% difference between last year and this year’s new properties on the market, there is -14% difference of sold. This could be because it usually lags 30 days (entered escrow around that time). But not surprising we see an increase of TFT (40%), cancelled (34%) and withdrawn (87%) from last year.
Here we see a big difference between the new 2019 listings in blue vs. the new 2020 listings in orange after SIP.
Here we find a fairly regular pattern between the sold listings in 2019 vs 2020 (by the week). It will be very interesting to note what will happen in the next two weeks.
Until then we wish you good health and take the necessary precautions to keep you and your family well!
Questions? Text me if you have any plans on selling, buying or investing in 2020. Feel free to ask for a complimentary market analysis and we can discuss your needs!
(831) 346-2743 text/voice anytime
lmacfarlane@intero.com
If you want to know what’s going on in the market, sign up here!
Will The Corona Virus Create A Housing Crisis …And Our New Norms
Concerns about the impact COVID-19 will have on the global and local economy are real. They’re scary too as the health and wellness of our friends, families, and loved ones are high on everyone’s emotional radar.
While we don’t know the exact impact the virus will have on the housing market, we do know that housing isn’t the driver as it was in 2008.
A Recession Does Not Equal A Housing Crisis:
- The COVID-19 pandemic is causing an economic slowdown.
- The good news is, home values actually increased in 3 of the last 5 U.S. recessions and decreased by less than 2% in the 4th.
- All things considered, an economic slowdown does not equal a housing crisis, and this will not be a repeat of 2008.
As our country begins to collectively roll out shelter in place, I hope we can come together, take the time to share gratitude; let’s remember that this will pass. As a country we’ve experienced multiple divisive events such as Civil War, WWII, and more recent traumatic events as 9/11. The concerns about an impending recession are real, but housing isn’t the driver. During the Dot.com bubble starting in late 90’s, a period of massive growth of Internet & telcos, in 2002 (the dot.bomb) I personally would have lost my entire wealth because I was young (& mostly naive) never imagined stocks could crash! The only thing that helped preserve it was a little Los Altos house we divested. I sure am grateful for owning real estate – I am not a financial planner by any means, but I am conservative and because I’ve seen these recessions I advise my buyers to diversify their portfolios; try to have 6 months to a year’s worth of savings, have savings that are a mix of stocks, bonds, mutual funds but work towards owning property. the SF Bay Area our homes are not only places to live, but a wonderful wealth generating asset over time. With our current ongoing global uncertainty, including a U.S. stock market correction, no one could have seen coming. We first should do what’s best for our country, and for our families and that is to take care of one another.
Let’s fight this COVID-19 epidemic together by staying indoors & practicing social distancing, and checking up on loved ones and neighbors.
Take care of your needs now & let me know if I can help in anyway!
We’ve got this!
Lynne MacFarlane, MCDM, Realtor, PFAC affiliate
DRE# 02066698
(831) 346-2743 text/voice anytime
Open House! 3210 Shorebird Place Marina, California [VIDEO]
Gorgeous 4 years old Surf Plan 2 home by luxury builder Shea Homes is the perfect combination of elegance, comfort and function! The first thing you will notice as you enter this beautiful beach house is the color scheme and decor that perfectly matches the serene surroundings. This home offers highly desirable features such as high ceilings, spacious floor plan, lots of windows and abundance of natural light, quiet street and friendly neighbors. In addition, the homeowner has also added unique amenities to ensure extra comfort and efficiency – waterfall island, beautiful glass kitchen backsplash, plumbing hookup in the backyard ready for an outdoor kitchen and a cozy fire pit for the chilly evenings, solar-panel hookup, Culligan water softener, extra insulation in all interior walls and ceiling for extra sound proofing… Don’t forget you are only minutes away from the plentiful restaurants and entertainment Monterey has to offer and the beautiful sand dune beaches!! Welcome home!
More real estate market information about Marina, California: https://lynnemacfarlane.realscout.com/homesearch/market-trends/NzYyOTJfX2NpdHktMDY0NTc3OA==?mlses=MLSLISTINGS&SFR=true
