San Francisco is home to an enviable number of unicorn companies. So, it stands to reason that the tech executives and other well compensated tech types have and will spend piles of cash on houses.
In a recent Redfin report, four tech sector hometowns are mentioned as pockets when home prices are being driven up to astronomical levels. In addition to San Francisco; Portland, Ore.; Seattle; Boston and Denver are hot spots.
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And with the fat wallets are coming heated bidding wars. In the Redfin analysis, most properties are netting the buyers in those places more than their asking prices.
The new rankings show residential real estate’s 30 most competitive neighborhoods of 2015. Included in the analysis are factors that include percentage of homes that sold above asking price, days on the market, and average price.
Which San Francisco neighborhoods ranked?
San Francisco has four areas on the top 30 list. They are:
- Central Sunset (8)
- Noe Valley (13)
- Richmond District (21)
- Bernal Heights (24)
Central Sunset had the highest listing price to sale price ratio of all 30 cities, at 1.21. Almost 92 percent of homes sold above list price, and 90 percent of the transactions involved bidding wars. Homes in Central Sunset spent an average of 14 days on the market, and when they did sell, 35 percent of the transactions were all in cash.
The average price of a home in Central Sunset was $1,150,000, but was not the highest price on the list. That distinction went to Noe Valley, which had an average price of $1.8 million. Those pricey Noe Valley abodes spent an average of 13 days on the market, after 92 percent of the deals resulted in bidding wars. Eighty-eight percent of those sales resulted in bidding wars, and a whopping 39 percent of the high-priced sales were all cash deals.
Realtors in these hot markets have said that buyers come ready to make a deal. It’s rare for a home not to get multiple offers. In addition to the now-standard advice for buyers to arrive pre-qualified, they are also well-versed in the market, and often will begin with an offer that eclipses the asking price. And, they are willing to bend over backward to accommodate the sellers.
Katie Gustafson, a Boston Redfin real estate professional, said in a statement, “Offering over list price, waiving contingencies– buyers are doing everything they can to compete. My clients recently won a bidding war in Washington Square by agreeing to let the sellers rent their home back for free for two months after closing, giving them a nice cushion to move out of the home and get settled into their new place.”
Boston had the top-ranked market on Redfin’s list.
