I recently had the pleasure of helping my great client sell her home in St. Francis Wood. Ten years ago, I helped her and her husband buy the home when they had a toddler and she was pregnant with their second child. They raised their two children there and their children are now teenagers so it was time to move. The home at 240 Santa Paula Avenue is a 3 bedroom, 3 bath English style home with a lush garden; I …
Carol Solfanelli | Compass | DRE License # 01347033 |
415-297-7031 | carol.solfanelli@compass.com
2022 Real Trends America’s Best Real Estate Professional
Top 1.5% of 1.6 Million Agents Nationwide
2022 Real Trends America’s Best Real Estate Professional
Top 1.5% of 1.6 Million Agents Nationwide
Author: Carol Solfanelli
Did you know that effective this year, if someone owns a unit in a 3+ unit building in SF and rents it to their child, they can be hit with a vacancy tax? Though a new law intended to make more housing available to renters may have been well-intended, it has some real quirks – and even real estate professionals don’t generally know about all of them yet! San Francisco‘s Empty Homes Tax Ordinance was approved by San Francisco voters …
This past year with interest rates shooting up to 8% at one point, and bad publicity for San Francisco about homelessness and crime, the real estate market slowed. This particularly affected the co-op market (often a second home market in SF, which has been particularly sensitive to the bad publicity). Most people are familiar with condos, which is ownership of a unit in a multi-family property that can include non-exclusive use of some other parts of the property. An owner …
Believe it or not, when selling a home one of the things you will need to confirm is that it is insurable! Just because you have insurance on it today does not mean a prospective buyer will be able to get insurance. And if a buyer is not paying cash but is taking out a loan to buy the home, the bank will not give them a loan unless they can get insurance. And even if a buyer is paying …
The SOMA neighborhood in San Francisco saw a substantial reduction in prices and sales in 2023. Over the past year (ending December 29, 2023), 106 condos sold in SOMA at a surprising average price of $744,283, down 29% from an average of $962,848 in the prior year. The highest and lowest sales prices in the past year were $1,400,000 for an 1805 square foot 3-bedroom condo, and $250,000 for a 307 square foot studio. The average time on the market for …
There are some sales that affect you more than others. I recently represented a client who was selling a home at 230 22nd Avenue that had been in the family for over 70 years and meant a lot to her. My client’s dad had grown up here and her grandparents had held onto the home until they passed away. It had not been lived in since 2011 so there was quite a bit of deferred maintenance. The floors had old carpeting …
Virtual staging is becoming a more attractive option for sellers these days. Some are selling properties that they purchased back in 2015 and beyond that are selling for less than what they bought them for back then. My sweet loft at 175 Bluxome, Unit 327, is an example of just this type of property. My seller bought it for $925,000 in 2015 and now it is on the market for $829,000, almost $100,000 less than what she paid for it …
I recently had the pleasure of helping a nice client buy a lovely home in Forest Hill. The home at 512 Dewey Blvd. is a 5 bedroom Edwardian home with 4 of the bedrooms on the top level. The home has beautiful original moldings and feels very elegant. Not only does my client have a luxurious primary suite but she will have a light-filled office on the same floor. It is perfect for her family with much more room than …
Luxury co-ops are a more challenging sell these days since many are second homes for people who live outside of the city or state. The co-op market has slowed a bit with the rise in interest rates and the bad press that SF has been recently getting resulting in some deciding not to buy their second homes here. See my discussion of co-ops in a previous blog. Fortunately, my recent co-op listing with my colleague, Joan Maze Miles, just sold, …