Northern California Fires Put Communities in Shock

 

Late Sunday evening, Russel Lee was relaxing on his deck in Santa Ana, CA, drinking a glass of wine. Then he smelled the smoke. He checked the local police scanner app on his phone and learned that wildfires blazing out of control were moving in on his four-bedroom townhouse in Southern California's Orange County.

The 63-year-old real estate agent and his wife, an artist, dug out their three cat carriers and frantically began packing some clothes, valuables, and important paperwork. At around 1 a.m., the police came banging on the door, yelling: "Get out now!" The Lees made it to a makeshift emergency shelter at the local veterans center, along with some folks who hadn't had time to change out of their bathrobes and slippers before fleeing.

 

Their home was burned to rubble, and they lost nearly everything—including one of their beloved cats, Alya, who refused to get into her carrier in time. His wife's artwork, much of which she had already sold online, was all destroyed along with the antique furniture that had been in his family for generations. The couple are now living in their motor home parked on their friend's driveway.

But despite their devastating losses, Lee and his wife know they were lucky. Twenty-one people have died in the 22 large wildfires burning through seven counties, including the famed wine-producing areas of Napa and Sonoma, as of Wednesday, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. About 3,500 homes and buildings have been incinerated by the blazes, which have ravaged about 170,000 acres, mostly in Northern California. (That's larger than the island of Manhattan.) The causes of the fires have not yet been established.

As firefighters struggle to contain the conflagrations, in the wine country north of San Francisco, it is clear that the region, an economic powerhouse for California, will continue to suffer long after the flames are extinguished and the human toll has been counted.

The disaster is expected to ravage the housing markets of this highly prosperous region, with slashed prices, scarce availability, and wrecked infrastructure—all factors that will need to be taken into account as displaced homeowners decide whether to return and rebuild, or leave the area for good. The multibillion-dollar tourist industry, and the jobs it provides, is also at risk. It's likely to take up to a decade to rebuild the homes, businesses, and essential services such as schools residents will need should they choose to return.

Wildfires are common in California, as well as the Western states of Washington, Oregon, and Colorado, in late summer and fall. But those burning in Northern California are unusual, says Tom Jeffery, a senior hazard scientist at CoreLogic, a real estate information company.

 

"When you have a wildfire occur in an area that's uninhabited, it can be a good thing for the environment. You have to have fires to have certain plants to reproduce" like certain pine species, he says. "[But] whenever you have homes exposed to it, then you have a potential disaster."

The median home price in Napa County was a whopping $876,200 on Sept. 1, according to realtor.com® data. In neighboring Sonoma County, home to hard-hit Santa Rosa, the median home price was $750,000. But that was before the fires.

More than 172,000 homes are now at risk of going up in flames in the Napa and Santa Rosa metropolitan areas, which are usually not prone to wildfires, according to an analysis from CoreLogic. (Napa is the name of a town as well as of the surrounding county.) It will cost an estimated $65 billion or more to rebuild them.

Californians are just beginning to come to grips with the scope of the disaster.

"Multiple neighborhoods are burnt out," says Randall Bell, CEO of the national real estate appraisal firm Landmark Research Group, based in Laguna Beach, CA, which has assessed areas damaged by wildfires. "It's street upon street of just charred-to-the-ground moonscape. All you see are chimneys and foundations. It's a sad sight—and you see hundreds of them."

 

WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE HOUSING MARKETS ONCE THE WILDFIRES ARE EXTINGUISHED?

Only about a quarter to half of the original residents whose homes were reduced to ash are likely to return and rebuild, Bell predicts.

"Emotionally they’re overwhelmed. Financially, they’re overwhelmed," he says. "When these fires come through, they don’t just burn houses. They burn stores, restaurants, the churches, the schools. They burn everything. You may rebuild a house, but where’s your infrastructure?"

Lee, the real estate agent whose Orange County home burned down, doesn't plan to rebuild. He and his wife plan to move to Kentucky, TN, or North Carolina, where they have friends who might be able to find him work.

"I’ve started an insurance claim and hopefully I’ll do well. ... [But] I'm a real estate agent and there's nothing to sell anymore," he says. "I'm starting over from scratch at 63 with achy joints and an achy back."

Even homeowners with insurance premiums may not get enough money to rebuild their entire homes to what they were before, Bell says. That's because the price of construction is likely to skyrocket with the extra demand for construction workers, for which there is currently a national shortage compounded by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, and building materials. Some will get loans, others will tap into their savings.

Those who do rebuild are in for the long haul. The area is expected to recover only about 10% to 15% each year, according to Bell. That means it's likely to take five to 10 years before homes, businesses (including employment and tourism), and the local infrastructure is back to normal.

Plus, they'll have to find a place to live while they rebuild—which won't be an easy feat.

"We had a housing crisis before the fire," says Santa Rosa–based Realtor® Daphne Peterson, of Keller Williams Realty. "We're in a very high-cost area. Our vacancy rate was about 1%. Now we've lost about 1,500 to 2,000 homes. We have no place for people to stay."

Homeowners who decide to sell won't have it easy, either. Those whose homes survived should expect the properties to sell at a 10% to 35% discount. That's because it's not as desirable to live near burnt-out houses or with fewer services and businesses nearby.

"People don't buy a house," Bell says. "They buy a neighborhood."

Meanwhile, properties whose homes were charred or destroyed altogether could see discounts as high as 60%, he says. Sellers should expect an army of investors, a combination of home flippers and landlords, to swoop in.

But the price breaks won't last forever. These will likely dissipate after about five years, he says.

"I know that it will all come back," says Sonoma-area Realtor David Kerr, of Terra Firma Global Partners. "People in the North Bay are resilient. They will get through this." But he worries about the farmhands at the vineyards and the other residents or workers who aren't quite so well off. "It's not going to be easy for [everybody]."

 

HOW CALIFORNIA'S WORST WILDFIRE TRANSFORMED ONE NEIGHBORHOOD

The Oakland Hills fire in 1991 was California's deadliest and most destructive, according to CoreLogic. Twenty-five people were killed and about 2,900 structures on 1,600 acres were destroyed in the blaze.

One of the neighborhoods that sustained serious damage was the Upper Rockridge area of Oakland. It had been a middle-class community of Tudors, Craftsmen homes, and California bungalows built in the early part of the 20th century on narrow streets before the disaster.

But after the wildfire, it became an opportunity for many of the residents who stayed, as well new buyers purchasing empty lots, to start over. Most of the rebuilt homes were much larger than their predecessors.

Today, "it's a highly sought-after neighborhood" of homes in the $1 million to $3 million range, says real estate broker Daniel Stea, of the Stea Realty Group in Berkeley, CA. The homes have been built to new fire codes, the streets have been widened, and there's now a fire station up in the hills nearby. "It transformed the area," Stea says.

Bay Area Showing First Signs that Tech Pastures May Be Greener Elsewhere

San Francisco’s role as the center of the American technology industry could be changing. Skyrocketing real estate prices, along with other employment and other demographic trends, are forcing tech companies and workers alike to reconsider the attractions of living in the City by the Bay.

Recent Census data for 2016 shows that several of California’s most tech-friendly cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego are all showing net out-migration, or more people are leaving the area than coming in. And these aren’t the only U.S. cities losing population. Census data also shows more people leaving Chicago and New York than are arriving. But where are they going? And why?

Whither techies?

The Census data names Seattle, Portland, Phoenix, most of Florida, Austin, and Dallas as cities showing the greatest net in-migration, or more people coming than going, each with a net gain of more than 5,000 people in 2016. Maricopa county, home to the cities of Phoenix and Mesa, added more than 200 people per day in 2016. Seattle gained more than 1,000 new residents every week.

According to Tim Helenthal, President and COO of the national moving company National Van Lines says, “As real estate prices jump in many metro areas, we see a lot of moves away from expensive cities to places with active jobs markets and a more affordable cost of living.”

For tech industry workers, jobs are just part of the equation. “Real estate markets where the cost of living is lower are desirable to tech workers looking to leave San Francisco,” says Helenthal. “We’re seeing movers going to job markets like Seattle and Austin where there are a lot of tech-related jobs, and we also see cities like Phoenix, Denver, Las Vegas, Portland, and St. Paul where the job market isn’t as hot, but have a substantially lower cost of living than San Francisco.”

Silicon Valley’s loss could be these cities’ gain. Lani Rosales, Chief Operating Officer at Austin-based entrepreneurship news site, The American Genius, and sister news outlet, The Real Daily, says, “There’s a lot of uncertainty from fellow media organizations in Silicon Valley about the tech sector there, but here in Austin, we’re optimistic. We still have a lot of larger companies like Oracle coming to town for the lower operating costs along with a healthy and diverse homegrown startup culture. We’re also first in the country for angel investment and fourth for software-related VC investment.”

Real estate costs are a driver

It’s little wonder money is driving tech workers and others out of the Bay Area. In San Francisco, where the median cost of a home has reached the $1.5 million mark, a salary of $105,300 is considered low income for a family of four, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. By contrast, the low-income limits for the U.S. as a whole are just $24,000. This puts pressure on workers to negotiate high salaries simply to afford a home, and pressures employers to keep costs low—often by hiring in less-expensive markets.

By contrast, in Seattle—the fastest rising housing market on the West Coast, and another tech hub—the median cost of a home reached $722,000 in July. Home prices on Seattle’s Eastside—where many tech companies, including Microsoft, are located—are higher, but still less than half the cost of the Bay Area. In many of the other popular destinations for movers, such as Portland, Phoenix, and Austin, median home prices are lower still: half the cost of Seattle, and a quarter the cost of San Francisco.

Work from anywhere but California

The rising cost of living for tech workers in the Bay Area could be feeding into another trend that’s affecting workers and employers around the globe: the work-from-home revolution.

According to Eddie Knoell, owner of Signature Home Loans, a residential mortgage brokerage in the Phoenix Valley, “We’re seeing a growing trend of IT industry workers who work from home remotely and are still employed by Bay Area companies. They’re moving to Phoenix to get away from the high cost of living in the Bay Area, yet are compensated at a higher rate than their counterparts who are employed by local companies.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported that the percentage of workers who work from home or via remote at least some of the time had increased steadily over the last decade. As of 2015, 38 percent of people in managerial occupations, and 35 percent of professionals report working from home some or all of the time. For many of them, this provides flexibility when deciding where to put down roots.

Don’t forget retirees

There’s another factor that could be driving migration patterns: baby boomer retirement. Redfin and National Van Lines have both noted a broader trend of people leaving northern climates for Sun Belt states like Florida, Arizona, and Texas.

Aside from the sunny weather, what do these states have in common? They’re top destinations for retirement-age movers, according to a recent analysis by SmartAsset. After years of delaying retirement plans after their retirement accounts were hammered in the 2008 stock market crash and recession, the long-anticipated wave of baby boomer retirees has finally hit at a pace of about 10,000 a day.

Today’s retirees are seeking places where they can live an active retirement on a budget. They may be approaching 70 years old, but most baby boomers say they feel younger and are more active than their age would suggest. The majority also have less saved than retirement benchmarks advise. Perhaps that’s why there are two California counties bucking the out-migration trend. They’re Riverside and Placer counties: home to Palm Springs and Lake Tahoe, long noted as retiree havens with a lower cost of living than California’s coastal cities. Both showed net in-migration of more than 5,000 people in 2016.

San Francisco has long been seen as a city of opportunity. That’s not likely to change anytime soon. However, rising costs and changing demographics are making other cities more attractive to tech workers, retirees, and others who seek job opportunities and a more reasonable cost of living.

Bay Area Housing Affordability Takes Another Hit

The median price of a single-family home rose 7.2 percent year-over-year to $565,330 in California, its highest level in a decade, while the median price climbed 17.9 percent to $1,150,000 in Santa Clara County, according to a new report. This small ranch-style house in Sunnyvale’s Washington Park neighborhood recently sold for $1,831,000 — $433,000 over the listing price.

The supply of available homes is shrinking across California, as prices surge and the affordability crisis deepens as a statewide concern.

In August, the median price of a single-family home rose 7.2 percent year-over-year to $565,330 in California, its highest level in a decade. That’s according to the latest report from the California Association of Realtors.

Naturally, the Bay Area gets special mention: Region-wide, prices rose 10.2 percent year-over-year across the nine counties to $856,200.

In Santa Clara County, the median price of a single-family home jumped a daunting 17.9 percent year-over-year to $1,150,000. Yet the region’s prices were highest in San Francisco, where the median — $1,380,000 — was up 9.7 percent year-over-year. Right behind was San Mateo County, where the median rose 10 percent to $1,375,000. Alameda County’s median price of $867,500 was up 11.9 percent, while Contra Costa County’s median of $627,860 was 10.2 percent higher than a year earlier.

This recent sale in Santa Clara went for $300,000 over the ask price of $1,410,000

The story behind the price increases, of course, is the lack of inventory. Statewide, active listings fell 11.9 percent from the year before. Every county in the Bay Area and Southern California experienced a drop in unsold inventory, as did most of the Central Coast and Central Valley, the report said.

And what’s available sold faster than ever. The median number of days required to sell a single-family home in California in August was 18, compared to 28 one year earlier. Locally, San Francisco homes spent 15 days on the market in August, compared to 25 days the year previous; San Mateo County homes spent 11 days on the market, compared to 14; Santa Clara County homes lasted 9.5 days on the market, compared to 15 in August 2016.

It’s all a function of supply and demand.

Buyers fight over the few available homes and prices keep rising: “Even the most affordable markets are facing rising prices,” the report said. “California is no longer home to a single county with a median price below $200,000, and only 10 of 58 counties have a median price lower or equal to the national median price of $258,300.”

In Santa Clara County, buyers essentially are competing “over scraps,” said Sereno Group agent Kevin Swartz, who is based in Saratoga. “There’s nothing for them to buy. Clients that I’m working with — it used to be the case, even at this time of year, that there’d probably be two or three homes to see in a given week, and now there’s often not even a single home that works for them.”

Despite the low inventory, sales rose 1.3 percent year-over-year across the state — a modest increase, but significant given the few homes available.

In the Bay Area, the sales increase was more robust: 6.5 percent, year-over-year, despite the chronically tight housing supply.

The pressure-cooker market is most extreme among lower-priced homes, because they are particularly “inventory constrained,” said California Association of Realtors President Geoff McIntosh. In other words, the supply of affordably priced homes keeps contracting, leading “to weaker sales growth, faster rising prices and fierce competition for the few homes that are listed.”

That’s been exactly the fallout in Sunnyvale, where a modest house — under 2,000 square feet — recently sold for $2,470,000. That was $782,000 over its listing price.

When prices are computed on a per-square-foot basis, the Bay Area again leads the state in prices, the report said: “San Francisco had the highest price per square foot in August at $871 per square foot, followed by San Mateo ($863), and Santa Clara ($668). Counties with the lowest price per square foot in August included Siskiyou and Lassen (both at $129), Kern ($135), and Tulare ($136).”

California Commercial Real Estate Forecasts Slower Growth Ahead

California may be easing into a soft landing with signs of “ebbing optimism” among developers on the three-year outlook for the state’s commercial and multifamily real estate markets.

The new Summer/Fall 2017 Allen Matkins/UCLA Anderson Forecast California Commercial Real Estate Survey indicates slower growth ahead in office, retail, and industrial. One of the goals of the survey, which is now in its tenth year, is to address “turning points” in the market, says Jerry Nickelsburg, director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast. “What is significant about the latest survey is that we are now seeing the turning points in most aspects of commercial real estate in California,” he says.

The survey asks respondents where they think rental rates and vacancies will be three years from now. After hitting “rock bottom” in late 2009, the U.S. economy has been moving forward with steady growth for the past seven years, says John Tipton, a real estate partner at Allen Matkins. “So, it is not surprising to see some of the confidence waning,” he says. “Where it gets to be a little more concerning is where you have this more persistent pessimism.”

In the office market, for example, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, and the East Bay led the office market out of the recession. Those markets jumped out as the hottest and fastest-recovering markets. Now all three are below 50 on the survey’s sentiment index, which is the “neutral” line between pessimism and optimism. Orange County and San Diego also saw survey sentiment dip below 50. “That leads one to believe that there could be a little bit more of a correction on the horizon,” notes Tipton.

The bright spot in office is Los Angeles, where things have not only remained positive, at 57.5, but there also has been a slight increase in the amount of optimism as compared with the last survey that published in December. Multifamily also saw an uptick in sentiment as compared with the last survey that was published in December. So, it is important to note that sentiment is not cooling across the board, Tipton adds.

Multifamily has been one of the two sectors of the survey, industrial being the other, that has consistently recorded positive sentiment. However, there was a sharp drop in multifamily sentiment in the December 2016 survey. The view at that time was that the market had been so hot for so long that it was natural that growth was slowing and sentiment was cooling, notes Tipton.

However, the results of this survey show that sentiment has rebounded, particularly in Silicon Valley and San Francisco, where sentiment dropped to nearly 40. Some factors contributing to the reversal in sentiment include strong employment growth and income gains, both of which support demand for rental housing. In every market, developers are optimistic about the course of rental and occupancy rates for the next three years, and three-fourths of survey respondents said they plan to start a new project in the coming year, with over one-half of them starting more than one project.

Office Sentiment Is Mixed

The outlook for office is continuing to trend lower. The office sentiment index has dropped from highs near 80 to below 50. The index went below 50 for San Francisco two years ago, and below 50 for Silicon Valley and the East Bay in June 2016. Despite healthy unemployment levels that are now at 4.4 percent, panelists are concerned that occupancies will not be able to maintain current levels and that rents will not be able to keep up with inflation.

Respondents are more bullish on the outlook for Los Angeles. Downtown L.A. in particular is in the midst of a building boom. In contrast, survey results highlighted some potential warning signs in the Bay Area where sentiment remains at a low of 38.85. However, some industry experts are more confident that the market still has good growth potential.

Eighteen months ago, the San Francisco office market saw a pause in demand. Companies started shedding space, the sublease market picked up, and rents have been flat for 18 to 24 months, notes Meade N. Boutwell, a senior vice president, brokerage services, at CBRE in San Francisco. In part, that was a cooling of a six-year hot streak, adds Boutwell. “At this moment in time, demand is strong and even getting a little stronger,” he says.

San Francisco also has a cap on its development pipeline that has been in place for some 30-plus years. That cap tends to keep new supply in check. “Essentially, we have reached that cap and the supply is going to be very restricted going forward,” says Boutwell. That cap also could create some additional upward pressure on rents, he adds.

Push/Pull Continues in Retail and Industrial

Industrial has benefited from the disruptive impact that e-commerce is having on the retail sector, with more companies focused on the delivery of retail goods bought online. However, both retail and industrial saw cooling of sentiment in the current survey. Developer sentiment is trending negative, at or below an index level of 50 for Silicon Valley, East Bay, San Francisco, and the Inland Empire, while developers are more positive about opportunities in Orange County, Los Angeles, and San Diego.

The interpretation of those results from the UCLA economists is that even though there has been a pullback in sentiment regarding the industrial outlook, it may indicate a shift from a “white hot” market to a “red hot” market. The majority of survey respondents (87 percent) started new projects last year and all said they will be active with existing or new projects this year. Part of that cooling sentiment may be influenced by the fact that there is some natural constraint on new supply. There are not a lot of industrial areas to develop in urban areas, such as Los Angeles or San Francisco, as compared with other markets like the Inland Empire, notes Tipton.

The other side of the e-commerce coin is retail, which continues to struggle with increased competition and changing omni-channel business models. Those surveyed are bracing for a retail sector that will look worse in 2020 than it does today. In fact, sentiment across all six California markets declined in the most recent survey, with a high rating of neutral, or 50, in Silicon Valley, and with Orange County on the low end with sentiment dropping to 38.7.

One of the takeaways from this survey is that sentiment is cooling, which is not unexpected after seven years of growth. However, there are still challenges and opportunities in the California commercial real estate market, notes Tipton. “A rising or falling tide does affect all boats, but at the end of the day, when you are making investment decisions, you are trying to look at a specific location,” he says. “It’s not like buying a stock. You are literally looking at this street corner, this product type, and making those investment decisions.”

6 Reasons to Attend an Open House..Even if your not Buying a Home

Perusing online real estate listings can be nothing less than addictive. We've all spent time scouring the internet, ogling homes for sale that we don't intend—or can't afford—to buy. Because it's fun!

But would you ever hop in the car and go look at a house in person, even if you're not at all ready to make an offer?

Before you dismiss the idea, consider what you stand to gain by turning house hunting into an extracurricular activity.

Sure, it might seem nosy at first—and we're certainly not encouraging you to be a straight-up looky-loo. But regardless of whether buying or selling is in your near or distant future, there are many benefits to going to an open house.

Like what? We're glad you asked! Here are six solid reasons to hit up an open house next weekend.

Reason No. 1: Learn more about what you can afford

What you want to buy and what you can afford to buy are often two very different things.

Unfortunately, you don't always figure that out until you're deep in the process of house hunting, perhaps with your heart set on a dream home that will drain your finances and make you house-poor.

"Many first-time home buyers ask me to find them something that doesn't exist,” says Melissa Colabella, licensed real estate salesperson with Julia B. Fee Sotheby's International Realty, in Irvington, NY. “They are often shocked to learn that single-family homes do not even exist in their price range in their preferred neighborhoods.”

Attending open houses lets you get a grip on what you can realistically expect to find in your budget. Sure, you can enter a price range online on realtor.com®—but remember that perusing online listings is only the first step of the process. Often, actual homes look quite different from their online photos, which can be focused on or touched up to show only the best parts of the property.

Reason No. 2: See the agent in action

Even if you don’t find your dream home, you might meet your dream agent. What better way to interview the candidates who could represent you on either side of the transaction than by seeing them in action, points out Realtor® Patrick Madigan, owner of Madigan Realty, in Raleigh, NC.

While most sellers interview multiple agents to find the best fit, he finds buyers rarely do—which can be a mistake.

“Open houses present a great opportunity to get multiple face-to-face appointments with potential agents, without having to set up a formal appointment to interview them,” he says.

Be alert to whether the agent engages you when you first come in or is too busy to acknowledge and help you. And come armed with a few insightful questions about the local market to see if the agent seems knowledgeable about more than just that one open house, Madigan suggests.

Reason No. 3: Check out the competition

Traffic at an open house can be a gauge for whether the sellers have found a sweet spot with their price, since a new listing should be attracting multiple visitors when priced correctly.

If you’re a buyer, the number of visitors can indicate how quickly you might need to pounce when you decide you’re ready. (And it can tell you how to price your own home to move fast if you’re selling.)

“Some markets will allow for you to have a few days to mull over your decision, but an open house with 34 visitors can indicate your offer needs to be submitted right away,” Colabella says.

You'll also get a face-to-face look at your competition. If you listen carefully, you might pick up some intel about the kind of buyer the seller is looking for. Even if you don't intend to buy this house, the info might come in handy down the road.

Reason No. 4: Get a feel for the neighborhood

If you’re looking in a new, largely unfamiliar community, browsing for a few months can tell you a lot about your potential neighbors. You’ll get a sense for who primarily lives there (e.g., families, retirees, or singles), whether the neighborhood is abuzz with block parties and other events, or if it's mostly quiet. Plus, you'll get the chance to meet other prospective buyers, and learn where they’re relocating from and what they’re looking for in their new community.

“Of course buyers come in every demographic, but sometimes the patterns are surprising,” Colabella says.

Reason No. 5: Learn more about your needs

“As first-time homeowners, we weren't sure yet what we were looking for exactly beyond the number of bedrooms and bathrooms," McGrath says. "The open houses helped us learn more about layouts and amenities we liked.”

In fact, you might be surprised by what you gravitate toward when you really look around, Colabella notes.

“Often buyers think they want charming, older homes but then decide newer construction better fits their needs," she says. "Or they start with houses and then switch to townhomes or condos after losing sleep over the concept of homeownership maintenance.”

Reason No. 6: Do some design recon

Wouldn’t you love to have someone give that designer touch to your house? Many homes for sale have been professionally staged or recently fixed up, so an open house can give you insight into the latest design trends. And since they’re often done on a budget, it can get those creative juices flowing for how you could incorporate wallet-friendly tricks to spruce up your space (like opening up your space with strategically placed mirrors).

And, if you’re preparing to sell your house, you can use open houses to pick up some staging tips of your own. Notice what you pay attention to and how little touches—such as fresh towels and empty closets—can make a big difference.

San Francisco Median Home Price Rises to $1.4 Million

Despite 2016’s general loss of inertia, Paragon Real Estate Group now reports that the price of a house in San Francisco is up to a median of $1.4 million in the first half of 2017.

Paragon economist Patrick Carlisle notes that in 1996 the same price was a mere $274,000, although according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation formula that comes out to nearly $434,700 in today’s currency.

At the time that was double the national average. But in the first half of 2017 Paragon calculates the median price of a house in the United States as $240K, just less than one-sixth the SF price. (And also still less than the city’s median from 21 years ago.)

The St. Louis Federal Reserve presently marks the nationwide price of a house at just over $310K, so there is some room to debate the size of the gap.

But since even that more conservative estimate leaves SF real estate 4.5 times more expensive than the rest of the country, it’s an intimidating landscape no matter what.

Carlisle pegs the median in San Mateo County at $1.38 million, Marin County at $1.26 million, and Santa Clara County at $1.13 million.

Alameda County overall is $855K, while the city of Oakland comes out to $715K.

Solano County has the lowest median, according to Paragon, at $406K, 1.3 to 1.6 times the nationwide figure, depending on the estimate.

Breaking down prices by neighborhood in each county, the rankings go:

• Pacific + Presidio Heights, SF: $6.18 million.
• Atherton, San Mateo County: $4.85 million.
• Los Altos Hill, Santa Clara County: $4.18 million.
• Belvedere, Marin County: $3.7 million.
• Piedmont, Alameda County: $2 million.
• Alamo, Contra Costa County: $1.63 million.
• Rockridge, Oakland: $1.52 million.
• St Helena, Napa County: $1.36 million.
• Healdsburg, Sonoma County: $864K.
• Benician, Solano County: $625K.
• 
  

Carlisle notes that although it’s less visibly pricey than many surrounding cities and less pricey than SF in particular, Oakland remains the city to watch out of the pack:

SF has had the highest compound annual rate since 1996: It is the epicenter of the Bay Area high-tech, bio-tech and fin-tech economic miracle.

But Oakland soars above all other markets in appreciation since 2011, because of a combination of factors: It is the closest affordable alternative to much higher SF prices; it is a lively, multi-cultural urban area appealing to high-tech workers; and its housing prices dropped an astounding 60% after the 2008 crash.

He adds, “We now recommend that all our clients go back in time to 1995 or 2011 and buy as many homes as possible.” If only it were that easy.