Start 2017 off on the right foot with this list of January resolutions for your home. Ah, the month of resolutions! Your personal honey do list is sure to be filled with ambitious goals for 2017: get back to the gym, take control of your diet, but what about your home? This month, we’ve rounded up a January to do list to make sure you start the year off on the right foot at home.
1. Nix Indoor Condensation – Look for indoor condensation on windows and take corrective action. For 7 ways to reduce humidity in your home, check out this great video from Andersen Windows & Doors.
2. Make a maintenance calendar – Review warranties and product material to check on recommended maintenance for furnace, equipment, appliances, and tools. Mark your calendar to track scheduled upkeep and service.
3. Accessorize, Accessorize, Accessorize – After the holiday decorations come down, your walls can feel a bit dull and empty. January is a great time to add new home decor accessories, like fresh throw pillows or framed photos of the past year’s activities.
4. Get ready for the big game – Now’s the time to get ready for the ultimate game day. Here are 5 winning football party ideas that will score big.
5. Organize your files – While most paperwork is now maintained digitally, it’s still important to make sure you’re organized and backed up. Take an afternoon to sort through online statements, contacts and emails that piled up over the holidays. And after all of that hard work, be sure to back up to a hard drive or cloud service.
6. Sort and toss – Take time to sort through your toiletry products in the bathroom and food items in the pantry. Toss anything that is old or expired and start fresh for the new year.
7. Warm up your home – In many parts of the country, we’re dreaming of ways to add a little extra warmth around the house. Whether it’s adding weather stripping or a smart thermostat, these 6 easy ways to make your home warmer and cozier this winterare just the trick!
8. Ready to Move? Do this first – If you’re thinking of selling your home in 2017, make it a resolution to collect these 10 pieces of valuable information well before the spring real estate rush.
Friday, January 18, 2019
The California Association of Realtors 2018 State of the California Consumer Survey found 44 percent of buyers bought a more expensive home than they wanted. Thirty-three percent purchased a smaller home than desired, 36 percent purchased a home farther from school/work than wished, and 30 percent purchased in an area where schools were of lesser quality.
“In a competitive housing market, if you are comfortable with your choice of home and financing, it is all right to settle for fewer preferences or amenities than you’d like. It is important to be flexible and willing to make some compromises to get into your new home,” said Alan Barbic, 2019 president of the Silicon Valley Association of Realtors.
Buyers typically spent eight weeks on their home search. In the hyper-competitive, supply-constrained San Francisco Bay Area, which had the highest incidence of multiple offers, buyers spent a median of 10 weeks in their home search. Buyers made a median of three offers on other homes before having an offer accepted, but nearly one-fourth made more than 10 offers. Those who purchased a home for more than $1 million made five offers on other homes.
“We are seeing some added inventory, but it is not enough to meet the demand for homes here due to the enormous job growth,” said Barbic, who will be officially installed as president of the local trade association on Jan. 17.
The survey found a typical first-time buyer purchased a three-bedroom, 1,500-square-foot, single-family home. Nearly half of those surveyed purchased a home in the suburbs. First-time buyers selected their neighborhood primarily based on their budget (53 percent), safety (51 percent), and proximity to jobs/school (38 percent).
Repeat buyers typically purchased a larger three-bedroom home with a median 1,700 square feet. Three in four purchased a single-family home.
Millennials tended to buy homes with a median of 1,500 square feet and a median price of $350,000. Most millennials were more likely to purchase a condominium or townhome in a suburb (43 percent) and selected the neighborhood on budget (52 percent), safety (49 percent), proximity to jobs/schools (40 percent) and family/friends (33 percent).
Most Gen Xers selected a home in the suburbs with a median of 300 square feet greater than their previous home. Most purchased a single-family home, and nearly 20 percent purchased a townhouse/condo.
Boomers purchased a single-family home in the suburbs without stairs, or a home in rural area, since many of them are approaching retirement age and planning to age in their home and seek a quieter lifestyle.
The online survey was conducted between May 9 and July 9, 2018, with 6,144 participants. For the buyers section, respondents were 1,441 buyers who purchased a California home within the previous 18 months.
Information provided in this column is presented by the Realtor members of the Silicon Valley Association of Realtors at www.silvar.org.
Friday, January 4, 2019
Your Home’s January Honey Do List
Start 2019 off on the right foot with this list of January resolutions for your home. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ah, the month of resolutions! Your personal honey do list is sure to be filled with ambitious goals for 2019: get back to the gym, take control of your diet, but what about your home? This month, we’ve rounded up a January to do list to make sure you start the year off on the right foot at home.
1. Nix Indoor Condensation – Look for indoor condensation on windows and take corrective action. For 7 ways to reduce humidity in your home, check out this great video from Andersen Windows & Doors.
2. Make a maintenance calendar – Review warranties and product material to check on recommended maintenance for furnace, equipment, appliances, and tools. Mark your calendar to track scheduled upkeep and service.
3. Accessorize, Accessorize, Accessorize – After the holiday decorations come down, your walls can feel a bit dull and empty. January is a great time to add new home decor accessories, like fresh throw pillows or framed photos of the past year’s activities.
4. Get ready for the big game – Now’s the time to get ready for the ultimate game day. Here are 5 winning football party ideas that will score big.
5. Organize your files – While most paperwork is now maintained digitally, it’s still important to make sure you’re organized and backed up. Take an afternoon to sort through online statements, contacts and emails that piled up over the holidays. And after all of that hard work, be sure to back up to a hard drive or cloud service.
6. Sort and toss – Take time to sort through your toiletry products in the bathroom and food items in the pantry. Toss anything that is old or expired and start fresh for the new year.
7. Warm up your home – In many parts of the country, we’re dreaming of ways to add a little extra warmth around the house. Whether it’s adding weather stripping or a smart thermostat, these 6 easy ways to make your home warmer and cozier this winterare just the trick!
8. Ready to Move? Do this first – If you’re thinking of selling your home in 2019, make it a resolution to collect these 10 pieces of valuable information well before the spring real estate rush.
Since mosaic tiling is a trend, I enjoy exploring many tiles to choose from and playing with cost-effective to expensive ways.
[Inexpensive bathrooms]
[Abobe: before Below: after]
I took the bathtub away and made a modern sexy bathroom for rental property.
Renting for male people was in my mind.
[Expensive bathrooms]
Modern Bathroom Idea
The Key for this bathroom design is to emphasize the high-ceiling. In order to really appreciate the beauty of Spanish tile, you have to stand in front of it. Tiles and design make you feel like you are in a museum.
The same story is playing out, over and over: People are flocking to the Bay Area for high-skilled, highly paid jobs, while cashiers, teachers and construction workers are, increasingly, saying goodbye to a place they no longer can afford.
A new study released Thursday points to why the California housing crisis is so acute, particularly in the Bay Area — where a home destroyed by fire sold for more than $900,000 and it would take four minimum wage jobs to afford an apartment: More people are moving in from other states than moving out. No other region in California has experienced such explosive growth of high-paying jobs. Statewide, between 2011 and 2016, California added just 171 homes for every 1,000 people.
“The boom is so ferocious that it exaggerates the driving up of the rents and the cost of living,” said Richard Walker, a geography professor emeritus at UC Berkeley and author of a new book, “Pictures of a Gone City: Tech and the Dark Side of Prosperity in the San Francisco Bay Area.”
The new research by Beacon Economics weaves together housing, economic and migration data, highlighting the underproduction of homes and cost pressures facing low- and middle-income workers amid the housing crisis. It examines the dilemma of the nation’s biggest economic engine, which is providing so much opportunity for some, while shutting so many out.
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The study, commissioned by the San Francisco public policy group Next 10, documented a growing economic divide. While pay for California’s low-wage earners grew by just 17 percent over the past decade, wages rose by 29 percent for middle-income workers and nearly 43 percent for high-wage earners.
The key question for California is, “How do you manage the effects of success?” said Michael Storper, an economic geographer at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. “At the moment we are a winner economy. California is amazing in how much it attracts high-wage, high-skill industries. Who wouldn’t want to be like that?”
At the same time, he said, how do you preserve housing for the majority of residents who don’t command high salaries? Or find a way to pay them more?
Carmelita Reyes, principal of Oakland’s International High School, said that when she started teaching in the city in 2001, many of the young teachers rented apartments by Lake Merritt.
“No one was getting rich being a teacher, but you could afford to live in Oakland,” she said. The narrative back then, she said, was “teachers are never going to buy a house. And now it’s `teachers can’t afford an apartment.’ ”
One of her teachers commutes from Napa County, where she found a cheap place to rent. A fellow Oakland principal has decided to open her home to travelers, renting out a bedroom on Airbnb.
Fed up with housing costs, some Californians are leaving the state altogether. The study found that between 2006 and 2016, more than 1 million more people left California for other states than moved in from the rest of the U.S.
“These high home prices and high rents are forcing more low and middle-income Californians to leave the state for more affordable housing in states like Texas and Washington and Arizona,” said Noel Perry, Next 10’s Founder.
Researchers found similar patterns for international migration: Higher-skilled migrants from other countries are replacing lower-skilled migrants in California.
And though the Bay Area has grown in recent years, that pattern may be shifting. The new study, along with a recent report from the Joint Venture Silicon Valley think tank, found that nearly as many people are leaving Silicon Valley as are coming in. The think tank found the biggest drops were for residents between the ages of 18 and 24, and between 45 and 64.
The Bay Area always has been a high-wage economy, Walker notes, but the latest boom has attracted such an enormous level of investment in tech and other lucrative sectors that “the whole thing has gotten out of hand.”
“You can’t keep that economy going — you can’t feed people, you can’t get them the things they want, you can’t deal with the tourists, you can’t drive buses — without lower and middle-income workers to do those kinds of jobs,” he said.
The Next 10 report did not include recommendations. Perry, its founder, said the study was intended to help state and local policymakers try to solve some of these challenges.
“In order to support long-term, sustainable economic growth in California, our state needs to support a diverse economy — that means jobs and housing for people at all income levels,” he said.
The insatiable demand for housing that has uprooted so many Californians is forcing an 80-year-old Pleasanton resident to leave the house he has rented for 46 years, his daughter said. Tricia Davis said her father and stepmother got a letter in April saying that they could stay in the home — if they agreed to a $1,000 rent hike. They considered moving to Montana, where Davis lives, and then to Fresno, near another relative, before discovering an apartment for people over 62, in town, that they could afford.
“For them to have to try to just move, it’s been pretty traumatic,” Davis said.
Davis, an agent for Delta Air Lines, said she long ago gave up on living in the East Bay city where she grew up. “Pleasanton, as great of a town as it is, even with a college degree I couldn’t afford to live there.”
The pre-fab skyscraper? Bay Area housing crisis brings new era for modular homes
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A RAD Urban modular unit is assembled in Lathrop, Calif., on Friday, April 27, 2018. The company makes modular housing units that can be moved to a site and fastened together for multi story housing. The pre-assembled units cut on-site construction time and labor costs. The steel chassis structures can be made into either one or two bedroom units. (Doug Duran/Bay Area News Group)
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LATHROP — Inside a nondescript warehouse in a nondescript industrial park, workers for RAD Urban are assembling the building blocks of a modern apartment building.
Piece by piece, along a factory line, workers erect walls, string electrical wires, fasten plumbing, hang drywall and paint until a bare 12-foot by 30-foot steel chassis looks almost like a move-in ready apartment.
These almost-finished units will be delivered to an Oakland construction site, then fastened together into full apartments in a five-story complex. Advocates hope the project will also help fuel a renaissance for modular housing.
Once a punch line for developers, a sturdier and improved version of pre-fabricated housing could be making a comeback as Bay Area developers try to speed up construction, cut building costs and add desperately needed housing.
Much like Tesla, its neighbor in the Central Valleyindustrial park, RAD Urban is trying to revolutionize its industry.
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“(We’re) really looking to fundamentally change the way we build,” said RAD Urban senior vice president Jason Laub. “We can solve that problem on the cost side.”
A pricey mix of challenging Bay Area economicrealities — high costs for property and materials, few construction workers but many middlemen — make the Bay Area one of the most expensive spots in the country to build.
Proponents of pre-fabricated or modular housing point to studies showing factory-built apartments and buildings can cut construction costs by about 20 percent, and can be built in almost half the time. It’s emerging as a small, alternative attack on the housing crisis. RAD Urban and another startup, Factory OS in Vallejo, have set up factories to build modular housing for the Bay Area and beyond.
A RAD Urban modular unit is assembled in Lathrop, Calif., on Friday, April 27, 2018. The company makes modular housing units that can be moved to a site and fastened together for multi story housing. The pre-assembled units cut on-site construction time and labor costs. The steel chassis structures can be made into either one or two bedroom units. (Doug Duran/Bay Area News Group)
“It’s an old idea with new twists,” said Carol Galante, director of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley. She cautioned about challenges ahead for a young industry. “This does require a total change of mindset by lenders, by architects, by general contractors.”
Terner Center research traces versions of off-site construction back as early as the 1830s. It’s been common in Finland, Japan and Sweden for decadesas one solution to a short building season, where bad weather could throw a project off several months.
The U.S. has embraced the method in times of great housing need, most prominently after World War II.
In the Bay Area, the need has returned. The Terner Center estimates construction costs grew by at least 25 percent in the Bay Area between 2014 and 2017. Those costs make it hard for developers to get financing and make a profit on middle class housing — a market segment badly neglected in recent new development.
Building off-site and transporting modules to a property can save up to 20 percent of the cost of a three or four-story, wood frame apartment complex. Developers save time by preparing the construction site whilethe factory is building units.
Builders can squeeze savings from several other steps in the process: lower labor costs, as workers trade lower wages for shorter commutes to factories outside the core Bay Area; lower material costs from factories buying in bulk; and fewer middlemen.
Developers also believe workers are more efficient in a factory, where jobs can be completed sequentially, uninterrupted and with fewer delays.
Jay Bradshaw, director of organizing for the Northern California Carpenters Region Council, has teamed with RAD Urban and Factory OS to provide workers for the plants. “There’s a buzz,” Bradshaw said. “It’s a brand new industry.”
Skilled carpenters can see some benefits — stable conditions, a growing industry, and a chance to live close to where they work, Bradshaw said. Many construction workers already live in the Central Valley, forced out of the Bay Area by high housing costs.
Factory construction also opens up more job for women, proponents say, because physical demands can be alleviated by a well-engineered production line.
But startups in the field have had challenges. Modular builder Zeta Communities closed its Sacramento factory in 2016, citing lack of funding and laying off about 100 employees.
Galante said the companies have to convince banks to think differently about financing, and realize that even though factory construction is cheaper in the long run, it requires more upfront costs than traditional building.
More than a few U.S. companies are getting in on the trend. Kasita, aTexas-based startup with a factory in Austin, recently brought a modular house to downtown San Jose as part of a country-wide tour.
The 400-square foot unit — long and narrow, like a traditional modular home — drew hundreds of visitors during its two-day stay, including several developers, Kasita founder Jeff Wilson said. The unit was tricked out with high-tech amenities, including voice-controlled speakers and electronics. The units can also be stacked, Wilson said, and are ideally used for in-fill urban housing.
RAD Urban sees its niche as large apartment and mixed-use complexes with more than 100 units. It set up its factory in 2013, customizing the space with rails to slide frames between stations, and platforms to allow workers access to the underside of the units so they can add insulation and finish ceilings.
A RAD Urban modular unit under construction is photographed in Lathrop, Calif., on Friday, April 27, 2018. The company makes modular housing units that can be moved to a site and fastened together for multi story housing. The pre-assembled units cut on-site construction time and labor costs. The steel chassis structures can be made into either one or two bedroom units. (Doug Duran/Bay Area News Group)
The factoryincludes 40 work stations, allowing a complete unit withcabinets, sinks and interior finishing, to come off the line in about 20 days.
The steel frames range in width from 10 to 16 feet, and can be 15 to 40 feet long. A typical unit is 360 square feet. Attaching two or three units together make up a one- or two-bedroom apartment.
The units are shipped to the job site by tractor-trailer shortly after they are finished, Laub said. The factory serves the west coast only; longer shipping drives up costs.
The assembly line is a work in progress. Ideally, most tasks would be done at waist-high stations. Some jobs still require ladders, and workers climb and crawl around the units to finish the product.
The units being completed will be shipped to a construction site at 4700 Telegraph Ave. in Oakland. The assembly of the 5-story, 48-apartment and retail complex is scheduled to start in June.
Residents at Garden Village, a completed UC Berkeley project near campus, say the apartments have a modern, sleek feel — and are a big upgrade over other student housing. The apartments have a deck and a rooftop farm where herbs and produce are grown for local restaurants.
“It doesn’t feel like it’s school housing,” said Michelle Reed, a senior. “I’m definitely going to shed a few tears when I move out.”
RAD Urban has completed three projects and has two more under construction. The company is also designing two, mixed-use apartment towers in uptown and downtown Oakland. Each tower will have nearly 200 apartments, and will rise 29-stories. The company says they will be the tallest pre-fab apartment buildings in North America.
“We need to produce a lot more housing,” Laub said. “This is a very good step.”
