Saturday

Green San Francisco: Making Bio Diesel


A Million for a Brown Grease Conversion Plant

The Cal Energy Commission just awarded San Francisco a million dollars to build a pilot fuel conversion facility to help the sf grease cycle program that has been a huge success in gathering old frying grease from restaurants for the cities bio-diesel fleet. More than 300 restaurants have signed up for the free pick up of cooking oils.

The plant will be located in Oceanside Sewerage Treatment plant and able to produce enough bio diesel to make the plant energy self sufficient and off the grid. You can count on a lot of experimentation to try and do the same for all the city owned vehicles. This pilot program has grand schemes and hopes to be a model for the state.

The city's restaurants have a down side that only owners and property managers can talk about.Much of this grease often finds itself in the sewers and creates a kind of "plaque" that causes a grease blockage. San Francisco spends about 4 million a year to remove sewer blockages. This is a good win win program, restaurants get free pick up, the city gets free fuel for its fleet and the saves the PUC 4 million a year by keeping grease out of the serwer system.

Here's a kick. According to the SFist blog......
"Looking to honor the forty-third President of the United States of America, George W. Bush, the recently formed Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco is looking to change the name of the Oceanside Wastewater Treatment Facility to the 'George W Bush Sewage Plant."

Howard Bell
www.yourpropertypath.com
A web site of over 450 articles related to real estate focused primarily on property management.

Your Property Path News Brief
http://wwwyourpropertypath.blogspot.com/
Snap News updates real estate markets and all things of interest to property owners and real estate professionals.

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Tuesday

Mid Market Gets New Face


Trinity Plaza Becomes an Upscale Trinity Place

The 360 rent controlled units with parking and small commercial will be replaced by a project large enough in scale to change the very nature of Market at eigth, just opposite the library. You can tell that this area is slated for gentrification by just walking through the civic center. Its a well stocked open air market run by smaller local farms. Truely, a local sourced food choice and its very inexpensive.
Lately, there is a pettition floating around suggesting the city wants to take back this part of civic center to do its own open air market. We have no doubt it will be another organic and beautiful market similar to the Ferry building markets. Vey much in keeping with the new Trinity development. It would certainly beautify the area, but I would like to see the small farmer and their offers of inexpensive, low cost food remain available to the area. This is still a low income area and people do need to eat. We have to be careful as we build out the new San Francisco to continue to provide for all our citizens.

Other than that, I thank the city for preserving the 360 rent controlled units and look foreward to the new development. Trinity Place will look beautiful and here are some of the numbers:

  1. 1,900 new residential units (approximately 1,411,000 gross square feet [gsf] of residential space).
  2. 1,100 studio units and 800 one-bedroom units comprising the residential component of the project.
  3. 360 units would be rent-controlled,
  4. 15 percent of the 1,540 non-rent-controlled units, or 231 units, would be designated as affordable
  5. 60,000 gsf of ground-floor retail space, with street frontages along Market Street, Mission Street, and portions of Eighth Street.
  6. 63,000 square feet (sq. ft.) of open space
  7. 1,450 off-street parking spaces for residential and short-term use in a five-level parking garage.

Thanks for Reading
Howard Bell
www.yourpropertypath.com
A web site of over 450 articles related to real estate focused primarily on property management.

Your Property Path News Brief
http://wwwyourpropertypath.blogspot.com/
Snap News updates real estate markets and all things of interest to property owners and real estate professionals.

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Thursday

Prop G: 10,000 New Homes for Hunters Point


Lennar and the Unions Make a Deal

Lennar strikes a deal with the SF Labor Council to build 10,000 new homes at Hunters Point Shipyard. This is a huge development encompassing 721 acres of land that would build out homes, shopping as well as industrial and commercial space. Heres some of the highlights:

1. More homes for family's than originally planned. The average size will be 2.5 bedrooms.
2. 35 million set aside for job training programs for the resident s of the neighborhood
3. The San Francisco Labor Council agrees to to support Prop G on the June 3 ballot public support for the project
4. A new 49ners stadium, if we can convince them to stay.
5. Affordable housing: 25% of the homes would be classified as affordable.
5a. 1600 units for very low income families
5b. 1600 homes for purchase for people making between 80-160% of the areas median income.

Their is some doubt in my mind to Lennars ability to commit at a time when home builders are the walking wounded. As home prices have tanked we have seen more and more supply come onto the market. This has hurt all the builders and just recently Lennar credit ratings have slipped.
S&P's expectation that it ( Lennar) will "face ongoing earnings pressure due to worsening operating conditions, particularly in its important California and Florida markets." S&P's outlook is still negative.
Lennar is Junk Status

In November, S&P dropped Lennar by two notches to "BB+," the highest junk rating, from "BBB." In October, Moody's also dropped Lennar's debt ratings to junk status. We dont expect Lennar to disappear but the city is signing paper with a very sick pup.


Thanks for Reading
Howard Bell
www.yourpropertypath.com
A web site of over 450 articles related to real estate focused primarily on property management.

Your Property Path New Brief
http://wwwyourpropertypath.blogspot.com/
Snap News updates real estate markets and all things of interest to property owners and real estate professionals.
You can add this page to your favorite Social Bookmark site:

Saturday

Are San Francisco and Silicon Valley Merging


When you consider the Google, Ebay Apple and Genentech reverse commutes that are allowing many workers to live here and work there and you add to that the new Google digs in the Gap headquarters building, you have a mix of new people that have changed the face of San Francisco and have caused an increase in demand for housing.

Some Numbers For You
  1. Population growth in 2007 was 12,000
  2. New job formation was at 21,000
  3. Almost 55% of the new job formation for the state was in San Francisco
  4. New housing units in San Francisco a paltry 2,567
Its clear that housing is not keeping up. Granted 6000 units are coming up near Market and Church and we do have the Rincon Center construction. We also will see 20,000 new units coming on line in a few years at the old Hunters Point Shipyard.
Of course, all this good growth is a blessing for workers, restaurants, remodelers and other workers. The question is ...will they be able to live here. Much of this new building is condo driven and will not be a part of the rental market.

Thanks for Reading
Howard Bell
www.yourpropertypath.com
A web site of over 450 articles related to real estate focused primarily on property management.

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Thursday

TIC Tax May Get a Line Item


TIC's: San Francisco's attempt to work around the condo lottery which is designed to keep rental housing on the market and available for renters. The condo lottery limits the amount of conversions allowed in any given year.

The TIC concept provides wanna be owners with another vehicle that is less regulated than condo conversions. Generally, they are cheaper than condo's because the units are separately owned but share a mortgage and each is responsible for the whole payment. Condo owners each have a separate mortgage and if one condo owner defaults the other condo owners are not financially responsible. Hence, TIC's carry more risk and are therefore more affordable.

Along with one mortgage TIC owners receive one property tax bill for the entire building and for the same reason. TIC's are not legally separate units.
Since some units will have improvements that others choose not to have, its reasonable that the value of the improved units is higher and should pay a larger portion of the bill. SF assessor Phil Tang planning to roll out a new approach and provide separate assessment's for separate units allowing owners to more equitably share the tax bill, further blending the difference between a TIC, which is unregulated by the city and a Condo which has conversion restrictions. Add to that the fractional loans now available and the TIC ownership looks a lot better. Get your individual assessment form here

Howard Bell
www.yourpropertypath.com
A web site of over 450 articles related to real estate focused primarily on property management.

Your Property PathSF
A blog for San Francisco owners and managers of real property

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Sunday

Proposed: A New Park Merced



Owners Want to Add 5700 Units to Park Merced.


The Pro's
1. Over a 20 year period, new development would take the 115-acre property off the grid using efficient appliances, wind turbines and co-generation techniques to capture heat loss to reduce energy consumption by 60%
2. Slash water consumption by 40% by improved plumbing such as low flow toilets and grey water irrigation to reduce water consumption.
3. Reduce car usage by re-routing and bringing the M line into the community and a Bart shuttle, probably using bio-fuels.
4. Organic Farm: Thats right, a plan for an organic farm in the complex along with bycicle paths and green walking areas connected to SFSU campus.
5. Rent Control: The existing tenants will be moved into new spaces at the same rent rate and rent control would be enforced for existing tenants.

The Con's
Affordability: Open space reduces density and makes for a wonderful life style flys in the face of affordability. For that you need to have density.

*Special thanks for the photo to the western neighborhoods project

Thanks for Reading
Howard Bell
www.yourpropertypath.com
A web site of over 450 articles related to real estate focused primarily on property management.

Your Property PathSF
A blog for San Francisco owners and managers of real property

You can add this page to your favorite Social Bookmark site: