GROW-A-BRAINDecember 21, 2006 More dead bloggers I just learned that John Mudd, one of the very first real estate bloggers, died a few months ago as a result of complications from juvenile diabetes. John Mudd was a pioneer, who started his Tampa Bay’s Inside Real Estate Journal in 2003 when there were literally only a couple of such blogs. Since then he had been actively involved with issues of real estate blogging, lecturing, publishing articles and promoting the concept. He will be missed. Another young blogger who passed away last week is Star of Sarcasmo’s Corner. RIP - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -    In other real estate blogging: Peek into the mind of America's most opinionated mortgage broker, Brian Brady Jonathan Greene’s new commercial Viva La Real Estate (reminds me of the... 01/14/2007

(Originally posted on my San Francisco Real Estate blog.)Public access to the San Francisco Multiple Listing Service (MLS) will most likely extend until the end of February, I was told this week by a SFAR representative. Due to the unexpected cancellation of a reciprocal service combining the SF MLS listings with those of other Bay Area listing services, public access will stay in place as a work around for those real estate practitioners whose work crosses county lines. Once direct entry to the system is cut off, the public will still be able to access complete San Francisco listings through realty and real estate agent websites. For example, this link will take you directly to the MLS page on my website. Have questions about buying or selling real estate? Are you ready to buy or sell ... 01/13/2007

For SEO reasons, the full post is not posed here. It can be read at my site. ---------I went through the current active listings in the MLS defined area of South Beach in San Francisco and picked out a couple. They have each been on the market for at least a few months. One is a studio - priced at just $379,000 (by far the lowest in South Beach) and the other it is a 2 bed/1.5 bath condo in a small industrial style 3 unit building. There's more info about the listings and the neighborhood at my main site. 01/09/2007

The Infinity has added all 42 unique floor plans to their site. The plans are for their Tower and Treetop buildings. There will be a total of 4 bulildings - 2 towers, 2 mid-rises - when the project is complete. One high-rise is under construction right now and has about 35 floors of the 42 up so far. I've got some pictures on my site. You can read the rest of the entry or more about the Infinty at my site. 01/09/2007

Rincon Hill is another one of San Francisco’s newer residential neighborhoods, although it has been around in some form for a long time. Early on, the area was home to many large mansions. After the 1906 earthquake, many of the mansions were destroyed and the area was replaced with many industrial buildings. Recently many new condo buildings have been built and are still being developed. Continue reading at Maury Properties... 01/04/2007

For an end-of-the-year post, I took a look at condo and TIC sales around San Francisco. In total, there were 3083 sold MLS listings in the year with 634 of those being TICs. About 40% of the listings were only on the market for less than 30 days. Another 30% were on for 30-60 days. The price per square foot for TIC units came in at just over $835 while the price per square foot actually came in lower at $811. For some more stats and charts, continue reading at Maury Properties. 01/03/2007

South Beach is one of the newer neighborhoods in San Francisco. Located near the new ballpark in San Francisco, it consists of many high-end condo towers, converted-warehouse condo buildings, and some apartment buildings. The area boasts a number of fine restaurants including the new Sutra, 21st Amendment, Momo's, Paragon, Town's End and many more. The area is convenient for grocery shopping, getting to the Financial District, and getting on 280-S or the Bay Bridge. Read more about the South Beach neighborhood of San Francisco at Maury Properties. 01/03/2007

I was over in San Francisco meeting with Patrick Kitano of TransparentRE.com yesterday about some blogging classes we are going to present together around the Bay Area. It was a great meeting that I followed by having dinner with my sister in Sausilito.We had a great storm all night and I woke up to head back across the bay when I discovered the power was off. Things got real interesting when the alarm went off in my Jeep and I broke the key off in the driver's door lock. Six in the morning, car horn blaring, doors locked, key broken, wind howling, rain coming down - who said real estate is easy?So, I'm just posting a few notes before I head back to Sausilito with the spare key. CNN Money.com - New homes sales: Back from the dead? New home sales and prices both showed surprising strengt... 12/27/2006

For information about new construction in San Francisco, this is a great resource! 12/23/2006

For SEO reasons, I don't post the full entry here. It can be seen on my site.  ------ The 170 Off Third condo project should be opening their sales center early next year, according to an email I received the other day. The opening is somewhat behind schedule, as it was originally scheduled to open this past summer.... 12/19/2006

The full post can be read at my website. For SEO reasons, I don't put the full post here. ---------  According to Socketsite, the condo development Radiance will open their sales office in January. Radiance is located off 3rd Street in Mission Bay between China Basin Street and Mission Bay Blvd. According to Socketsite:

Radiance at Mission Bay will consist of two 16-story towers, two 9-story midrise buildings, and townhomes with condominiums ranging in size from 850 to 2,175 square feet. The current website is simply a placeholder, the sales office should open early next year, and while ground has been broken, we don’t expect to see delivery of the condominiums until mid-2008.

This development sits a little further away from most of the Mission Bay developments, b... 12/15/2006

One South Park is a condo project in San Francisco's South Beach area, right at the corner of 2nd St and South Park. The building is a former tobacco warehouse being converted into 35 high-end condos. The project includes studios, 1, 2 and 3 bedroom units with penthouses on the top floor of the building.The sales office is projecting a mid-January opening and occupancy should begin in July or August. Pricing is expected to be around $900-$975 per square foot. There are a number of different floor plans. A few can be seen at my post on my site.I have a copy of all of the floorplans in a PDF file, but it is too large file to post here. EDIT: Nevermind. You can download it here.  A breakdown of One South Park with square footage and HOA fees is available for download from my site in a smal... 12/13/2006

    CNN did a story about the best investment markets for real estate. It should be no surprise that San Francisco ranked as the best for investors.  From 1949 to 2006, real estate investors and those owning property have seen an average 4.2% appreciation per year.   So, while we have all become used to the double digit appreciation we have seen in our markets in the recent past, we should understand that the history of our market tells us two things. First, don't get used to double digit appreciation, it is not the norm. Second, time is on our side. With over 50 years of data showing a market that grows at a healthy rate, we should be less worried about a crash and more focused on a slowing market the declines but does not blow up in our faces. 12/11/2006

I don't post my full posts here because I've been told it isn't good for the SEO of my site. So, for the full post, please go to my site, mauryproperties.com. --------- I mentioned this site, Swivel, yesterday. Techcrunch reported that it has gone live. I just checked it out a bit after having some problems earlier in the day - maybe due to high traffic. I tried creating a few graphs with some data sets already uploaded on the site. Here is one comparing the San Francisco metro area housing index to the national consumer price index. I can't vouch for the accuracy, but check it out anyway: 12/06/2006

Just a few links and comments on some posts about great clients, how homebuyers choose agents, and Redfin's latest idea. Mike at Altos Research had a great post the other day entitled “The Perfect Home Buyer.” His post was actually inspired by a post at SEOmoz, but as Mike says, it relates perfectly to the real estate industry. There’s another post by Kevin Boer at 3OceansRealEstate about Redfin’s great new idea. Apparently, Redfin wants people to go around to open houses, take pictures, and blog about them.RealBlogging has a post about a new survey that says that 80% of homebuyers start their search on the internet and most of them then go to an agent. While that isn’t anything new, an interesting point is raised about how homebuyers choose their agent. I would think that traditionall... 12/04/2006

Just wanted to post some pictures of the One Rincon Building. They've started to put some glass on the building. It still has quite a few more floors to go as it will be 63 stories. Here's one picture. I have another on my site, as well as a map of the various condo buildings in San Francisco.  12/03/2006

I took some pictures today of The Infinity - a new condo building in development in San Francisco. The tower is starting to look very nice. Here is one picture. I added a new feature to my site to show the pictures in a better. Check them out at mauryproperties.com. 12/01/2006

College-educated people between the ages of 25 and 34 are still moving to San Francisco in high numbers. I feel this is one reason that cities like San Francisco will remain strong as much of the country sees downturns. Read more at http://mauryproperties.com/blog/2006/11/29/sf-getting-younger-and-more-educated-2/. 11/29/2006