In my humble opinion, the market is extremely hot for the right properties. On Friday I wrote four separate offers (five if you count that one property is two condos), in four entirely different neighborhoods, and have been in a multiple offer situation on every single one of them. My buyers lost out on a house near West Portal (by roughly $25-35k), and my buyer on a Outer Avenues house is still in the thick of a six offer situation.

My clients for a Cole Valley property accepted a counter offer from the seller, knowing that other offers were lurking. And thankfully, the sellers of a Russian Hill property that my client offered on realized cash truly is king in this lending environment, and wisely accepted our offer on their property, rather than the others with financing.

I would love to share details and specifics about all of these, but as you can imagine, I can’t. I am very busy representing a ton of people throughout the city at this very moment, and all of it is helping me gain that much more knowledge to help you.

As always, other agents are talking to me and sharing stories, potential buyers they may have for homes, and properties some of their sellers may sell. Why they don’t just post all of it for free on PocketListings.net is beyond me, but I’m happy they feel comfortable sharing with me.

If you, or any of your friends/family, need help with San Francisco real estate, please don’t hesitate to contact me. My head is FULL of real estate opportunity!

Oh…and that luxury remodel on Beulah I mentioned two weeks ago….SOLD IN FIVE DAYS for $2,600,000 (asking $2,495,000). We can only assume CASH, and multiple circling.

Happy Monday! It snowed!

My elation quickly turned from thrill and excitement to the feeling of pearling the nose of your board on said 8 foot bomb, crossing a tip and being sent cartwheeling, full yard sale, down your favorite chute with the entire chairlift above watching.

Alas…the house is not coming on the market, but has been rented. It only took one week to rent it, for a mere $6000/month, and they didn’t even have time to finish putting the sign up out front.

I keep saying, Cole Valley (and San Francisco) real estate is doing just fine…thank you very much.

As for me and my buyers, we’ll continue to lick our wounds until we come out on top.

Gather ’round…I have a story for you.

Yesterday, on behalf of my clients, I presented a full asking price, ALL CASH (that’s $1,350,000 George Washingtons), two week to close, sellers may “rent-back” ’til November offer on 49 Alma Street in Cole Valley. This is a home that was listed late 2010 for $1,475,000 and withdrawn in January of 2011.

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…and our offer was not enough! We were one of FIVE offers!

We expected multiple offers, but here is the kicker – four of the five offers were also all cash! Are you kidding me!? Hang on…it gets better. Our offer was almost the lowest in price. One other offer below us. The winning offer had zero contingencies. That’s all cash, significantly over asking, no contingencies, two weeks til the seller gets their coin…Is it 2003-2005 all over again? WTF!

I know the details of the other offers, but for the sake of the lucky and thrilled seller, and the lucky and thrilled buyer, some things in a transaction are better not to publish until it closes and cash and keys are transferred. Job well done by listing and selling agent combined, and the buyer for blowing our minds.

Okay, I have another anecdotal bit of story for you.

Seven Divisadero hit the market a couple of weeks ago. Barely two or three days on the market…Bam! In contract, all showings canceled.

You cancel showings when you have an extremely good offer that you’re not afraid is going to fall apart. My guess is another all cash offer over asking with one simple inspection contingency.

That leaves several all cash buyers with over $1,000,000 to burn still out there looking.

But it’s supposed to be a buyer’s market…right?

-US Cities Where Homes Sell The Fastest
-Battle Royale: Cole Valley Versus Noe Valley [theFrontSteps]
-Multi Millions On A Monday [theFrontSteps]
-49 Alma Street [Property Website and Photo Credit]
-7 Divisadero [Property Website and Photo Credit]

I’ve been riding my bike by this building for better part of four weeks (school started) watching it get prepped and cleaned, and today it’s finally revealed to us on MLS. It certainly doesn’t have that “wow” factor we recently saw on Brokerick, but I expect there to be a bit of buzz around this property. After all, it’s vacant, needs a little TLC, could be occupied by a family upstairs looking for income potential downstairs, and the location doesn’t get much better.

I’m not the only one expecting some activity either. According to the “agent only remarks” hidden from all of you (who luvs ya), “the property has already been appraised for an amount over the asking price.” Which begs the question, why not just ask a price closer to reality and save a bunch of people a bunch of time?

I know the answer, do you?

-2 Units on Cole Street, in Cole Valley, $1,150,000 [MLS]
-Cole Valley Comparables [MLS]
-Got Color? [theFrontSteps]

2. Document any 1964 Datsuns with a blown motor trapped in the garage for 40+ years:

3. Rip up disgusting kitchens and baths:

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4. Go to Haight Street, buy a magic wand, tap it three times, and poof! Datsun gone and property remodeled!

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–

[Notice the marketing remarks? "Two enormous storage areas which can easily accommodate surf boards..." So hip! Don't forget spell check. ]

5. Slap a new price tag on it…orginally $1,200,000, and now only $1,158,000, throw it on the market as a single family home, or maybe a two unit building, or even two separate TICs, give it a personalized property website, cross your fingers, and hope you can soon see some return on your investment (of time, money, sweat, and sleepless nights.)

It’s that simple…

-43-43 1/2 Downey, $1,158,000, Cole Valley [Single Family Home, Two Unit Building, Tenancies In Common]

Editor-

Take a look at this Cole Valley condo. Purchased in April 2005 for $800,000, relisted [11 days ago] for $749,000. No upgrades, no permit history, save for a new roof.

I would prefer to remain anonymous.

Thanks.

Anonymous you shall remain, thankful we shall be to all of the readers, including you, that send in tips.

We’d like to add, when it sold in 2005 for $800,000 it was listed at $749,000. Will history repeat itself? We can only hope.

-1358 Cole Street $800,000 Then

-1358 Cole Street, $749,000 Now

The monthly sales data for Subdistrict 5E (Cole Valley/Parnassus/Ashbury Heights) is so low that running percentage declines off of median values, as I did for Noe Valley, would have been worthless. As several of your readers and I myself pointed out, it’s hard to draw conclusions when there are very few data points.

Instead I ran the percentage declines off the “95th Percentile” value, which the statisticians among your readers will know means that 95% of the sales fall below that value. Hence, it represents a “high”, while excluding the potentially aberrational top 5% of values.

After looking at this chart, I sort of threw up my hands. With only 179 sales in over 6 years, it’s not sensible in my view to draw conclusions about monthly trends in Cole Valley, let alone to compare them to Noe Valley, where the “core” area alone — Subdistrict 5C (Noe Valley) — had over 900 sales during the same period.

So I re-ran the numbers and calculated medians based on annual sales. The second chart shows the results. I think this is much easier to understand. Again, with so few sales, one should be careful about drawing any conclusions, and with only 5 sales in 2009 so far, I think it’s too early to conclude that the apparent drop in median prices for 2009 will continue to be accurate. Rather, I’d say that Cole Valley seems to have been holding up pretty well.

And we’d have to agree and argue this is yet another reason why Cole Valley is superior to Noe Valley…

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Thanks again to Misha Weidman for the charts and analysis. Good to have a data geek on staff.

Call us crazy, but we’ve seen a lot of activity in the market as of late, at all price points.

For those wondering, last sale was in 2005 for $1,755,000 (asking was $1,395,000) but has since undergone a significant remodel, and added roughly 1209 square feet.

Kitchen Before:

Kitchen After:

Living Room Before:

Living Room After:

We’ve long stood by Cole Valley as a better investment than Noe Valley. Is the writing appearing on the wall? Time will tell. Maybe real estate doens’t suck after all.

-394 Frederick [MLS]

Apparently it’s not all bad in Noe (according to the San Francisco Chronicle), but can Cole Valley step up to the plate? We think so.

Enjoy!

-Noe Valley/Cole Valley Homes Sold Past 12 Months over $2 million

Cole Valley:

Noe Valley:

Please share in the comments below and take us away to a great weekend:

Cole Valley, or Noe Valley. If you had to choose, and why?

-Noe Valley on Tour de San Francisco (real estate) [sfnewsletter]
-Cole Valley on Tour de San Francisco (real estate) [sfnewsletter]