sfgate.com
In the frenzied real estate market of 2021 and 2022, owning a short-term rental in the Coachella Valley seemed like the perfect money-making venture. In 2022, one study called Palm Springs, the valley’s most well-known spot, the best city in a large market to invest in an Airbnb property. Prices skyrocketed, contingencies vanished, and homes sold quickly for far over list price. But just two years later, that meteoric rise has halted. Home prices have stagnated, and the options to purchase a vac…
4 days ago
sfgate.com
A local source for things to do and events in the San Francisco Bay Area including concerts, nightlife, theater, street fairs and festivals, museums and more at SFGate
14 days ago
sfgate.com
Chris Pratt and Katherine Schwarzenegger have demolished an architecturally significant California home, and the internet is pissed. The celebrity couple purchased a Los Angeles house known as the Zimmerman House that was designed by modernist architect Craig Ellwood in 1950. The midcentury modern home was reportedly sold off-market for $12.5 million in 2023, only to have the duo tear it down shortly after. It sits just down the street from two homes owned by Maria Shriver, Schwarzenegger’s mot…
14 days ago
sfgate.com
New details have been released about California billionaire and Beanie Babies mogul Ty Warner’s latest real estate endeavor. The notoriously reclusive businessman is working on transforming Goleta’s Sandpiper Golf Club, parts of which are designated an environmentally sensitive habitat area (ESHA) with a special-status designation for the red-legged frog, as first reported by the Santa Barbara Independent. Warner bought the property in 2003 and has plans to renovate the area that would require…
14 days ago
sfgate.com
Prominent tech executive, investor and San Francisco 49ers co-owner Gideon Yu has reportedly made a record-high home purchase in California. The former Facebook CFO bought a blufftop home overlooking the ocean in Malibu for $52M, one of the highest-ever recorded sales prices in the tony Point Dume neighborhood, according to the Robb Report. Yu bought the Southern California home in cash, the media site reported. He will have several high-profile neighbors, like Google co-founder Sergey Brin, for…
16 days ago
sfgate.com
Spending time in nature has numerous proven health benefits, including decreased anxiety levels, better cognitive functioning and lowered risk for heart disease. But for those who live in dense, urban areas, access to greenery can be fleeting outside of their neighborhood park. A new analysis by the Washington Post shows which cities in the U.S. have the best access to nature, which can improve health, and which cities are sorely lacking. The results for California weren’t good. NatureScore, a…
23 days ago
sfgate.com
The real estate industry is gearing up for the biggest shift it has seen in years. Some insist it’s the most monumental shakeup ever for the occupation. Others say it’s just a new chapter for an industry that weathers near-constant change. In March, the National Association of Realtors agreed to settle several lawsuits alleging price fixing by real estate companies, with a judge awarding the plaintiffs $418 million in damages. At issue was the industry standard practice of seller’s agents offer…
26 days ago
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If you were near the San Francisco waterfront over the weekend, you may have caught an odd sight floating by. A large, wood-shingled, two-story home was gliding across the water, towed by a much smaller boat at a glacial pace on Sunday as it made its way from the Docktown Marina in Redwood City toward Sausalito. The U.S. Coast Guard confirmed to SFGATE the boat was still in transit on Monday afternoon. The department has been monitoring the private transfer of the hulking watercraft, though Pett…
25 days ago
sfgate.com
The American mall is in a quandary. Stores are papered over and echos bounce around mostly empty halls. In the past decade, online shopping has taken a considerable bite out of in-person retail, leaving empty, palatial wastelands in its wake. Gone are the days of happy shoppers gliding across glossy floors with wide, stiff paper shopping bags in hand, while the smell of buttery pretzels wafts tantalizingly by. The “dead mall” (also known as a ghost mall or a zombie mall) has even become a sort o…
about 1 month ago
sfgate.com
Chaehyun Baek was living in South Korea in 2016 when she decided the best way to advance her tech career was to move to the Bay Area. She arrived in Silicon Valley without knowing anyone and focused solely on work, at the expense of nurturing friendships or building community. When the pandemic shut down offices across the country and she found herself alone constantly, she hit rock bottom. “I felt not really fulfilled,” Baek said. “What’s the real purpose of living the same days in and out?” Sh…
about 1 month ago
sfgate.com
California had the lowest job growth in the country in 2023 at a rate of just 0.87%, a disappointing figure considering an overall strong U.S. labor market, dipping far below 2022’s increase of 5.5%, according to an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data by the Los Angeles Daily News. The state gained just 154,000 new workers. The sluggish pace can be blamed on several economic blows last year, including mass tech layoffs, major strikes in industries like TV and film and high interest rate…
about 2 months ago
sfgate.com
A so-called “California exodus” has been declared numerous times since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, with well-known companies like Oracle and Tesla (and its high-profile owner Elon Musk) joining the relocation frenzy. The claims of a large-scale exodus were more or less unfounded, with the real story centered around in-state migration, mostly from residents fleeing coastal cities to move inland. Even with certain outspoken millionaires decamping for other states, California saw its millio…
about 2 months ago
sfgate.com
A sprawling, still-under-construction estate has hit the market in Tahoe, listing for $12.8 million. The Clear Creek, Nevada, property is being built by developer Whisper Homes with “sustainable luxury living” in mind. The house is slated to have a Tesla solar roof, Powerwall battery system, generators and a battery backup system, allowing the home to go “off-grid” as needed. As an incentive, the developer has included a Tesla Cybertruck in the purchase price (hopefully, with a warning about of…
about 2 months ago
sfgate.com
Drive down San Francisco’s Dolores Street on the weekends and you might come across a peculiar sight. For four blocks, cars line the wide grassy median of the four-lane road, seemingly parked illegally without care of ticket or tow. But this weekend-only allowance is a little-known practice made permanent years ago that stemmed from years of disorganized, illegal parking and neighborhood complaints. Colloquially known as the “parking for God” program, parking adjacent to the Dolores Street medi…
about 2 months ago
sfgate.com
The former Westfield San Francisco Centre may have a new name, but that isn’t stopping it from losing stores. Popular cosmetics purveyors L’Occitane and Sephora will no longer operate in the mall, as first reported by the San Francisco Business Times. L’Occitane, a French skin care brand, has already shuttered its first-floor outpost. Representatives from the company didn’t return SFGATE’s request for comment, but the store’s phone line is out of service and the Market Street location is no long…
2 months ago
sfgate.com
The small town of Ridgecrest, nestled between the southern tip of Sequoia National Forest and Death Valley, is the most affordable place to buy property in California, according to a new analysis. The city had a relatively small home price to household income ratio of 3.61, which home warranty company American Home Shield calculated using Zillow home prices and data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The median home price in the 93555 ZIP code was $260,617 in October 2023, the time period in which the…
2 months ago
sfgate.com
Mill Valley approved a 100% affordable housing development this week, marking the first time this has happened in the Marin County town in 30 years, as first reported by the Marin Independent Journal. The four-story building is planned to include 44 housing units, with one-, two- and three-bedroom units available. Rents are expected to range from $978 to $2,908 per month, the Marin Independent Journal reported, and the units are to be reserved for low-income residents “making around $40,000 to…
3 months ago
sfgate.com
A Bay Area outdoors company will soon shutter its headquarters and decamp to Southern California amid a company restructuring. CamelBak, best known for its hydration backpacks, plans to close its Petaluma offices at 2000 S. McDowell Blvd. and lay off 43 employees by Aug. 1, with the remaining workers transferring to an office in Irvine. The job cuts will eliminate duplicative roles, the company told SFGATE. CamelBak is owned by Revelyst, which is owned by Vista Outdoor, which announced the layof…
3 months ago
sfgate.com
The wealthy California enclave of Santa Barbara was named the top emerging U.S. housing market in a new report, beating out a list of mostly affordable mid-sized cities. After prices plummeted in the high-priced locale known for its celebrity residents at the beginning of the pandemic, demand has come roaring back in the past few years. Prices are now 34.1% higher than the area’s 2019 median, according to the analysis from Realtor.com and the Wall Street Journal. This trend, which is also happe…
3 months ago
sfgate.com
The Bay Area real estate listing that went viral on TikTok for what appeared to be a very sad office-to-housing conversion last summer has sold. The “live/work” opportunity in San Rafael was listed for $520,000 in May 2023, reduced in price in late July to $480,000 and ultimately sold for $440,000 in November. At just over 1,000 square feet, the unit has a washer and dryer, a bathroom converted to include a shower, and a new kitchen. The Zillow listing came under some playful TikTok scrutiny f…
3 months ago
sfgate.com
In 2018, San Francisco’s Department of Public Works began a quest to find a new city trash can. Nearly six years and more than $500,000 later, the chosen design still isn’t on the city’s streets — and won’t be any time soon. The department is pausing the rollout of the new trash cans amid Mayor London Breed’s request for city officials to reduce department budgets by 10% going into the next fiscal year as San Francisco faces another budget shortfall. Public Works first told the San Francisco Ch…
3 months ago
