Most people know how expensive Silicon Valley real estate can be, but one Twitter thread from a real estate expert sheds a particularly grim light on how the tech industry is affecting home prices in Northern California.
In San Francisco, $1.45 million was the median price of just over 400 houses sold in the last month, according to a Twitter thread by Curbed Cities Editor Sally Kuchar. By contrast, the median list price was $1.39 million with the average down payment 33.4% of the sale price.
“The median list is $1.39M and the average sale price is 112.2%, so homes are selling for more than they list for (this is not normal!),” tweeted Kuchar. “There’s an average of 6.1 offers per home.”
https://twitter.com/sallykuchar/status/978334435585097730
Indeed, San Francisco housing prices have risen dramatically over the last decade, going from approximately $900,000 in 2007 to nearly $1.5 million in 2017.
Kuchar, who pulled together the thread of statistics on the housing market in California’s Bay Area, compared the average prices in various Bay Area cities. Naturally, the places that house major tech companies prove to be a popular place to be — Menlo Park, home to Facebook’s offices, sold 33 houses for a median price of $2.59 million in the last 30 days.
https://twitter.com/sallykuchar/status/978335515203141635
While tech companies like Facebook have made efforts to build affordable housing, the area that houses so much of the country’s tech industry continues to face a serious housing crisis. According to Kuchar, there are currently only 20 homes for sale in Cupertino (home to Apple), with a median sold price of $2.3 million.
https://twitter.com/sallykuchar/status/978336479335219201
Palo Alto, which is headquarters to Tesla and Hewlett-Packard and known as the base for many hot new startups, apparently only has one house that costs less than $1.5 million out of 38 currently on the market — a 1-bedroom condo for $848,000.
https://twitter.com/sallykuchar/status/978337701714735104
The tech hub is the most expensive city out of the ones Kuchar listed — the median cost of a house sold in the last 30 days was $3.08 million with a $924,000 down payment.
To further highlight the problem, Kuchar compared traditionally more affordable cities such as Oakland across the bay. While she tweeted that there are currently 354 homes for sale, the median price of a house sold in the last 30 days was $735,000 with the median household income just under $60,000.
“Who are the homes for sale in Oakland for? The data tells us not current residents,” Kuchar tweeted. “This is a case study on gentrification.”
https://twitter.com/sallykuchar/status/978339379826475009
Berkeley, which has long been heralded as a liberal enclave and is out of the most popular Bay Area tech hub, faces a similar problem — a median sold house price of $1.2 million with an average down payment of 30.7%, according to Kuchar.
While some experts predict a “hiccup” in Bay Area real estate prices in the coming years, the rapid price growth is still changing the area’s market dramatically.
“Sorry for ruining your Monday,” Kuchar concluded, after publishing the tweestorm yesterday.
https://twitter.com/sallykuchar/status/978340783181807616
Email Veronika Bondarenko
