I recently helped a client get the home he desired. He wanted to buy a single family home in an upscale San Francisco neighborhood with a budget that didn’t match the neighborhood prices. However, we persisted. After making an offer on a home which he didn’t get, this much nicer property came on the market and we quickly swooped in. It had one of the most beautifully designed kitchens I have ever seen and coveted Edwardian original details. My sense …
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
Category: Thoughts & Tidbits
If you have had time to pay attention to the news, you know that recently there has been a bit of a sea change in the way real estate transactions are handled. This has been precipitated by a settlement with the National Association of Realtors to resolve antitrust lawsuits. The bottom line is to de-couple the payment of listing broker’s and buyer broker’s commissions so that each party – a seller or a buyer – will negotiate their commission separately …
When I moved to San Francisco in 1987, I was met by my boyfriend, Michael (now my husband), who picked me up from the airport and initially whisked me off to Ocean Beach. We sat on the rocks above the Cliff House and looked out at the seals. The next place he brought me to was fashionable Pacific Heights. There he showed me a lovely apartment on Jackson Street that he had found for us while he was waiting for …
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 …
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 …