The tenancy-in-common (TIC) has been San Francisco’s answer to shared, affordable housing in hundreds, if not thousands, of its architecturally significant Edwardian and Victorian buildings. But since the city restricted the number of annual conversions to 200 beginning in 1994, the pool of potential units and buildings has grown immensely. Owners of units in 3-6… Read More
When the market takes a dive, we might expect that realtors would also sink a little; at the very least, they’d need to tread water more vigorously to stay afloat. What’s interesting then is that even as real estate sales weaken, nontraditional real estate companies like Redfin, Zillow, and Trulia are growing. According to today’s… Read More
The trend of luxury hotels offering time share suites has expanded into San Francisco’s most historic properties. The Ritz Carlton, for instance, offers fractional ownership at 690 Market St., which is the 119 year old former Chronicle building. An 2004 Sfgate article details the property’s offerings: Shares in the Ritz-Carlton clubs are sold in three-… Read More
One of the strategies SF brokers and bankers devised to make TICs more palletable was the fractional loan. Such a loan has the allure of allowing you to enter into a TIC relationship with partners without having to assume the risk of the entire loan amount. Without a fractional loan, if one of your partners… Read More
So… Sunday is one of (many of) America’s big TV days, and even people who don’t know who’s playing will gather round the cathode ray tube with beer and salty/cheesy/meat by-product snacks. I’ll probably watch for the ads, though they rarely live up to the hype. And it’s too much to ask for another wardrobe… Read More
TIC’s, which are shared properties, become much more valuable when they are converted to condos. Andy Sirkin, the attorney most credited with TIC expertise, explains The amount of appreciation increases with building size. Conversion allows co-owners of multi-unit buildings to eliminate many of the risks of co-ownership and obtain more attractive financing. Under some circumstances,… Read More
A comment on my last post on 6th Street got me thinking: how much does safety come in to your plans for home ownership? Are you more interested in a safe ‘hood than a swanky kitchen? You might have to decide: a lot of the new loft type condos are going up in the SOMA… Read More
Used to be, the answer to that question (if asked in SF), was more likely “something at the supermarket” than “something off the housing market.” No more! In fact, I found some pretty tasty looking houses for less than 500k- even less than 400k- available now for your consideration. I’m also going to include some Daly City… Read More
6th Street has been optimistically called the “Gateway to the City”: I can’t see why, really. Sure, it’s an freeway exit and sure, it runs from SOMA to Market in a straight line, but you could say the same of other streets that are a lot less disgusting. As a long time resident, I try… Read More
Cooling real estate means some houses, even in seemingly bubble-burst-proof SF, see many a day on the market. You’d think then that the owners would be more interested in making a deal to get rid of these, their albatrosses. I know that such deal-making-readiness is not always the case, but those curmudgeon type owners will likely… Read More