Silicon Valley Residents Are Still the Nation’s Best at Money Management in 2018

For the third consecutive year, residents of Cupertino rank No. 1 in the U.S. for money-management skills. Five other Silicon Valley communities rank in the top 10 in the country for financial savvy: Los Altos, Saratoga, Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, and Mountain View. Among cities with more than 300,000 residents, San Franciscans have the nation’s best money-management skills. Home prices...

San Francisco Led the Nation for Home Building Gains in 2017

Building-permit activity increased by almost 95 percent in San Francisco last year when compared with the historic average over the previous 36 years, ranking the city No. 1 the nation for new-construction growth. San Jose ranked No. 8 in the U.S. for home building gains, issuing a total of about 8,500 permits in 2017. Oakland posted a 16.9 percent gain in issued permits, about 40 percent o...

San Francisco Is the Top U.S. Housing Market for Millennials

A new analysis ranks San Francisco as the No. 1 U.S. destination for millennials, with other technology hubs also popular. Gen Xers are buying homes away from coastal areas, with Texas a particular hot spot. Six of the top 10 housing markets for baby boomers are in Florida. Despite the San Francisco metropolitan area’s sky-high housing prices, millennials are flocking to the region t...

The Nation’s Hardest Workers Call the Bay Area Home

San Francisco ranks as the hardest-working city in America in 2018, according to a just-released report. Fremont and Oakland also rank among the top 10 hardest-working cities in the country. Two separate reports released last fall found that Bay Area workers are America’s happiest and enjoy the best work-life balances. Living in the Bay Area — and especially buying a home ̵...

Real Estate Roundup: The Bay Area Is Adding Seven Times More Jobs Than Housing Units

Here’s a look at recent news of interest to homebuyers, home sellers, and the home-curious. SILICON VALLEY’S JOB AND HOUSING MARKET PRECIPICES WIDEN Silicon Valley’s booming technology sector is creating plenty of high-paying jobs, but the region is nowhere close to keeping up when it comes to creating new housing units. Citing a new report from the Silicon Valley Competitiveness...

U.S. Home Sales See Biggest Drop in More Than Three Years in January

U.S. home sales dropped by 4.8 percent year over year in January, the largest such decline since 2014. Nationwide, inventory decreased for the 32nd straight month on an annual basis, down by 9.5 percent. The median home price ended January at $240,500, up by 5.8 percent year over year for the 71st straight month of annual gains. The inaugural month of 2018 continued U.S. housing market tre...

Outsourcing Home-Maintenance Tasks: How Much Should You Expect to Pay Each Year?

A recent survey found that the average homeowner pays $2,000 per year to outsource maintenance services such as housecleaning and landscaping. Sixty-three percent of homeowners use at least one recurring home-maintenance service provider. Housekeeping is the most expensive service to outsource, an average of $285 each month. Most prospective homebuyers have considered the major costs of ow...

Tight Inventory Continues to Drive California and Bay Area Home Prices in January

California and Bay Area home sales declined in January on an annual basis by a respective 2.9 percent and 4.6 percent. The median sales price for an existing-single family home in the nine-county Bay Area was $809,900, a gain of 10.9 percent from January 2017. Home prices in Silicon Valley counties rose by about 25 percent year over year, among the highest rates of appreciation in Californi...

California Housing Prices Straining Even Highly Paid Tech Workers

Software engineers at major Bay Area tech companies bring home an average of $210,500 per year, compared with those in Los Angeles, who earn $157,000 per year. Programmers who work at Santa Monica’s Hulu face California’s most challenging affordability conditions, with 44 percent of the average salary needed to purchase the median-priced home. In the Bay Area, the least-affordab...