Entries categorized as ‘Technology and Real Estate’
We had so much fun comparison shopping with 2901 Broadway (the $55,000,000 listing we have here in San Francisco), we thought why not do a drive by and scare the ___ out of the Gettys and Ellison, and Trainas, who live on this block? Not that kind of drive by, but a Google drive by, with Google’s new “street view” mapping technology that promises to take up hours of your time once you discover it.
In a nutshell, you can search an address, move this little icon onto the map, and voila! You’re street level. Take a stroll down the street by clicking the N,S,E,W arrows, do a 360 degree turn, and zoom in insanely close. This is a Peeping Tom’s delight.
As for real estate, it could mean us Realtors won’t actually have to put you in a car. We’ll just direct you to Zillow, Redfin or PropertyShark.com for all the listings and the comps, send you the link to this street level mapping so you can check out the area, put a Starbuck’s Frappucino (yuck!) coffee card in the mail to you, and consider our 6% made. 
Do the “drive by” by following this link to the corner of Broadway and Baker. Just make sure to stop at all the STOP signs. The neighbors might complain.
-Comparison shopping on the sfnewsletter [sfn BLOG]
-60 minutes, 60 billion, and one Redfin lurking in the waters [sfn BLOG]
-Google Maps on Broadway and Baker
Categories: Alexander Clark · Announcements · Drive By · Pacific Heights · Technology and Real Estate
Ever hear the Jane’s Addiction song, “L.A. Medley”? If not, you should. We recently discovered zūm llc as the company that has done some 3D renderings for some of the new developments around town (The Potrero, Blū, Fairmont Heritage Place at Ghirardelli Square, 733 Front Street) and we decided they are deserving of our first “picture medley”. We’re always happy to support local businesses, so we contacted them, they replied, and you get to…ENJOY!
Fairmont Heritage Place at Ghirardelli Square:
733 Front Street:
Blū (631 Folsom):
The Potrero (451 Kansas):
Pretty Impressive isn’t it?
Some bullet points describing in brief what zūm llc does for the owner/developer…
In most cases they are retained directly by the owner/developer to assist the clients’ design and marketing teams for:
·Sales & Marketing
·Pre sales and Pre leasing
·Feasibility and Environmental studies
·Investor review process
·Design review process
·Government review process
As a person in the real estate business, with clients that sometimes make purchases solely off of pictures (myself included…not recommended, but common), the old saying a picture is worth a thousand words holds true. Now I can say a high-res 3D picture is worth two thousand words. Thanks to zūm llc for enlightening us.
We’ll get some information for you regarding Blū, and the Fairmont, and an update on the Potrero and 733 Front as soon as we can. We might also add that we “are the only blog that has these images right now“, so if you’re seeing them somewhere else, remember you saw them here first. Now, go back up and look at those pictures again. You deserve it.
-The Potrero
-Blū
-Fairmont Heritage Place at Ghirardelli Square
-733 Front Street
-733 Front Street: a walkthrough and opinion [sfn BLOG]
Categories: Alexander Clark · Just plain fun · New Developments · North Waterfront · Potrero Hill · SOMA · Technology and Real Estate · market info · picture medley
(Note that even though CBS essentially slams Realtors, they are still willing to take their money for on-line advertising.)
Chipping Away at Realtors’ Six Percent, just aired on CBS and the real estate community is buzzing. With quotes like this, how could you not?
“Real estate, by far, is the most screwed up industry in America.”
“Because they didn’t have to sit in the back of a Lexus with a real estate agent, and use up all of this time, we’re able to pass on a lot of savings to them.”-Glenn Kelman President/CEO Redfin
Ouch!
This quote from the National Association of Realtors responding to the 60 Minutes story:
“…For more than a year, NAR worked with the producers who put the segment together and offered several spokespersons to be interviewed for the show, including myself. Yet, NAR’s voice was strangely and noticeably absent from the segment though CBS gave time to two critics who disagree with our policies on the display of listings on the Internet.
At times, NAR and REALTORS have often been the subject of less than accurate news coverage….
Thank you for your support.
Pat V. Combs
President”
I’ve been tracking Redfin for quite a while now, as well as Zillow, Property Shark.com, and several others. In all honesty, the only company that impresses me is PropertyShark.com (so much so, I asked them to provide our newsletter readers with Foreclosure listings), but Redfin just doesn’t do it for me. I thought with Zillow, the end of the Agent was near, and thus food on my table would be short-lived, but I was relieved to see that just like many new companies, Hype is the only thing they’ve got going for them. Redfin, so far, falls into that category for me. And I’ve said it over and over and over again on the sfnewsletter, that what you get from the mainstream media regarding real estate and our market is nowhere close to accurate.
Ulitmately, how you sell or buy your home is up to you. Make sure to do your homework and you’ll most likely come out on top.
-More Doom & Gloom [sfn BLOG]
-Chipping Away at Realtors’ Six Percent[cbs news]
-Our Bay Area Waters Just Got Sharkier [sfn BLOG]
-It’s For Sale, I Saw It First [sfn BLOG]
Categories: Alexander Clark · Doom & Gloom · Technology and Real Estate
What the hell is the FlippingPad…besides a cool name? Actually, it’s a pretty cool site with very good intentions. In a nutshell, it is is a forum/blog/site for all you property flippers, aspiring property flippers, and past property flippers to get together and talk story. It has a national audience, albeit small but definitely growing, and there could be some good advice and/or deals to be found there. If you’re into real estate, it should be on your radar. The message below is from one of the founders:
“We were fed up with current real estate communities. While many offer a wealth of information, we got lost in the shuffle. Our goal was to create a place to share and discuss real estate investing without being inundated by the get rich quick packages of the site’s founders. Many lesson packages and seminars are useful, we just wanted a site free of outside influence, where active investors could potentially post projects, find partners and get “objective” advice.
———————-
The Flipping Pad promotes ethically responsible investing through shared knowledge. You’ll always get both sides of the coin on our site, or at least we hope so!”
(more…)
Categories: Alexander Clark · Announcements · Technology and Real Estate
“The days of buying property with little to no information are over.”
PROPERTYSHARK.COM LAUNCHES 9 NEW SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA COUNTIES:
Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Napa, Marin, Solano, Santa Cruz, & Sonoma
San Francisco has already been blessed with their presence, and we’re continually asked to do what we do in other parts of the Bay Area, so we thought we’d put this up there for all you “out of towners”.
If you’d like to see a little sample of what they do for us, click here.
To look up a property in any county:
Alameda
Contra Costa
Marin
Napa
San Mateo
Santa Clara
Santa Cruz
Solano
Sonoma
To browse the Bay Area foreclosure listings, go to:
http://www.propertyshark.com/mason/Foreclosures2/
Have fun! Of course this guy might be a little more nervous than most.
Categories: Announcements · Technology and Real Estate · market info
Not quite sure how this could play out in urban San Francisco, but see the logic for say….rural Arkansas. Or even a place to post FSBOs. Is this kind of like who gets picked first to play dodge ball? Or is it Zillow’s subtle way of going around the agents they claim not to be alienating? Just throwing it out there, because it just came to us seconds ago. Now we’ll go test it out.
-I called it! No, I did! [Zillow]
[graphic taken from Zillow Buzz]
Categories: Announcements · Just Interesting · Technology and Real Estate
A few readers sent us this totally cool link, and so we must post for it you.
Is It Better to Buy or Rent?
Compare the costs of renting and buying equivalent homes. Click
CALCULATE each time you change an entry.
We had some fun with this for a while. Make sure to tweak the sliders. According to Dataquick, you can use a 2.4% appreciation for San Francisco. What was that game show that spun that wheel and the players said, “big money, big money, no whammies?” We’ll substitute to apply to us, “Come on big appreciation, no Whammies!”
Of course, it could be a good time to buy rental property and collect those rents.
-Is it better to rent or buy graph [NY Times Online]
-Is it better to rent or buy article [NY Times Online]
-Inger Hogstrom Photography [one of the readers that sent us the link]
Categories: General Info · Just Interesting · Letters to Editor · Technology and Real Estate
Getting tired of being priced out of the market? Can’t imagine paying $750,000 for a one bedroom condo in San Francisco. Frett not! Enter Second Life. A Virtual 3D world waiting to be created. Don’t like the rain? Don’t allow it in your town? Trump stealing your thunder? Create your own real estate empire. Land is for sale, and it’s still pretty cheap. You can buy some land, build a commercial mall, then rent space out to high end tenants (read: advertisers). The marketing world is getting in the groove of this 3D world.
The only thing…you need to be kind of tech savvy. So break out of this two-dimensional world of over-priced real estate, and scarce land, and invest in 3D. It may be the future, we’ll have to see.
Categories: Technology and Real Estate
Apparently the Houston Association of Realtors has begun uploading their MLS onto Google. The news of Google and the Houston MLS is not new, we just heard the “dump” has begun. 