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B’game real estate update: 1H26
Local realtor Raziel Ungar provides bi-annual, B’game-specific updates on a variety of real metrics on how our local market is responding to market conditions. The brochure is really well-done (speaking as numerate former analyst) and provides a permanent view that we can look back on later. For example, here is the April 2013 post.
For the first half of 2026, sales jumped to 104 from the mid-70s the last two years, up 33.3%. Prices still rose with the additional monthly inventory which remains low at 13.3 vs 17-18 the last two years. Average price per square foot bumped up to $1,539 – up 3.1% YoY and up $184 per ft2 in two years. As Raziel notes, “this remains the metric that best reflects true appreciation in this market.” Back in the linked post from 2013, it was less than half that in Burlingables and B’game Grove.
The average home price was up 2.0% to $3.37M which seems a bit low but is partially explained by the median size being 3.5% smaller–just a sales mix change as houses certainly are not getting smaller in B’game! Lastly, for the first half, average sales prices were 107.5% of asking with Raziel and others suggesting that AI money is flowing into B’game and will continue. All this in the face of high, but not crazy high since the October 2023 Peak of 7.79% was the highest point since late 2000. Raziel notes that the second half generally “flattens” but he doesn’t think we are set up for that this year. We shall see.
We have a lot of wildlife visitors to our yard, but none more regular than this mated pair of mourning doves. I think they actually live here most of the year and have had several broods each season. The other frequent visitors are listed here from my recording two years ago.
Mourning doves are strongly monogamous and often mate for life within their short lifespan. Pairs stay together through a single breeding season to raise multiple broods, and many will reform bonds with the same partner the following year if both survive.
Mourning doves symbolize peace, love, hope, and spiritual renewal, frequently acting as messengers bringing comfort and reassurance, particularly regarding departed loved ones or during times of grief. Their gentle, melancholic cooing is associated with tranquility, divine presence, and the soul’s journey, often interpreted as a sign of inner peace.
The cooing is very relaxing, and they aren’t afraid to land together to get a drink and a quick dip.
The only thing worse than race-baiting or misinformation is when the two appear together. Society is inflamed enough without resorting to the combination. Enter Jim Lawrence, the former mayor of Foster City and chair of Fixin’ San Mateo County, writing a letter to the DJ. He starts off well-enough with a concern many of us probably have but can’t stop himself there. He writes (and I snip):
The eight-month jail sentence imposed on former San Mateo County Community College Chancellor Ron Galatolo has shaken all confidence in our local judicial system. Mr. Galatolo was convicted of eight felony counts involving perjury and tax fraud. According to published reports, both the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office and the Probation Department recommended a state prison sentence. Judge Leland Davis instead imposed just eight months in county jail, with the likelihood that he will serve only about four months.
I don’t know about “all confidence” but OK so far. Eight months is light in my opinion as well and the whole idea of serving halves of sentences is ridiculous. But things quickly go off the tracks.
As an African American, I cannot help but wonder whether a working-class defendant or a person of color would receive the same outcome. This strongly indicates that we need a review of court policy and procedures. As a strong proponent of oversight, I believe this is yet another taxpayer-funded function over which taxpayers have little meaningful oversight or input. Wake up, everybody. Titles do not make the man — but they certainly seem to count in our court system.
The only problem, and it’s a biggie, is Judge Leland Davis is black. How do I know? Because the last time I had jury duty, he was the judge. In fact, he was appointed to the bench by former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in December of 2010 and is the current Presiding Judge for San Mateo County. I may have actually been in his court room twice over the last 15 years and I clearly remember a photo of Justice Thurgood Marshall on his wall. I recall him being of the “no nonsense” school of judging. Shouldn’t someone like Jim Lawrence either know this or bother to look into it before firing off a misleading public letter? Short answer is “yes”. Just another reason why I call his op Wreckin’ San Mateo County. Their idea of “oversight” is often short-sighted. Here’s Judge Davis.
Here at the Voice, we go the extra mile for our readers or, in this case, the extra 1.7 miles. That is how far 606 S. Delaware in San Mateo is from my house. Having read the DJ news piece noted in the anniversary post, John Horgan’s column and Dana Yates’ opinion piece, I wanted to see the house and the neighborhood for myself. Horgan called the proposed 5-story, 20-unit project “absurd”. He notes
There, on South Delaware Street not far from downtown, a plan is afoot that simply boggles the mind. A property owner has proposed constructing a five-story minitower that would include 20 studio apartments. The structure, if approved by city authorities, would be markedly out of character for the neighborhood.
But that’s not the most striking aspect of the plan. According to a revealing report in the Daily Journal last week, the bold project would not have a single on-site parking space, not one. Nada. Nil. Zilch.
My trip to San Mateo was late on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I found a section of quaint single-story, small bungalow style homes and no open parking spaces on the block. Think back to this post about the San Jose parking fiasco. “Parking is a necessity” should not be a surprise to anyone, but the Delaware St. project has no on-site parking! There is some odd arrangement to have eight spaces (not 15 or 20) in a “nearby garage”, but I didn’t see it on the east side of the Caltrain tracks where this neighborhood is located. I just keep thinking about people lugging groceries especially with all the talk about senior housing.
But the rising angst isn’t just a San Mateo or Burlingame thing. Anyone following the EssEff Marina Safeway project has seen concern about size and density morph into bigoted accusations of bigotry. Note the Comicle’s Laura Waxmann piece about a photo of a community meeting:
When I snapped the photo Thursday night, it looked like many community meetings I had covered before: a crowd of hundreds of neighbors packed into a Marina District warehouse to discuss a large housing development they opposed, the proposal to reimagine a waterfront Safeway into 848 apartments rising as high as 22 stories. I didn’t expect the image to take on a life of its own. Many (readers) were incensed or incited by one detail: Almost everyone in the room was older, with graying hair and faces that had seen decades of life. Two days later, the post had nearly 10 million views. Yet others called out what they described as a “YIMBY bigotry” toward older San Franciscans that the photo had unleashed.
Waxmann didn’t call out people in the meeting being “white” but plenty of other commenters have and the YIMBY bigotry is rife in the opinion pieces and letters to the editor both at the Comicle and elsewhere. Comicle hack Joe Garofoli even dredges up the old race restrictions in deeds that were invalidated 80 years ago. One letter-writer says
NIMBYs do not get to decide who lives here. If they like their city, they should want more people to be able to live here.
No sorry. Let’s put the soft YIMBY bigotry away. People aren’t trying to influence WHO gets to live here–just some common sense about HOW MANY get to live here. Dana Yates’ column about why we are losing faith in local government gets to the source of the angst, but the bottom line is lack of action at the local, county and state levels. The priorities seem wrong and it could be too late by the time they figure it out. Remember Ben Franklin’s quote “When the well is dry, we know the worth of water”. Here’s the photo of the orange house on Delaware that has kicked over the hornet’s nest.
I’m very supportive of the effort to bring music and other events to our new Town Square. It’s perfectly located to bring more life to our city center–if things go off as advertised which isn’t happening consistently. Thursday was the latest challenge. A ukelele band was advertised on the sandwich board and in the Daily Journal’s very helpful weekly schedule of events that runs most days. Start time 4pm which would have allowed people at the Farmer’s Market to enjoy some uke. It was also the DBID Walk with Wine event. Even better. The problem was no band. People were peering at the sandwich board, looking at their watch or phone and moving on by 4:20. Back in June a band was cancelled because Music in the Park was scheduled for the same day. Having two shows on the same day isn’t a deal killer. Last minute cancellations and no shows won’t help bring in an audience.
Luckily, I was on foot when I took this picture at around 7pm, but my head was on a swivel as it usually is around Safeway. My understanding is that some of the big Eucs that are still standing are housing nesting birds. When they leave, so will the Eucs. Southbound drivers are going to miss them in the morning, and northbound in the evening, when they are gone. I do wish the contractors would get on with the stump grinding instead of letting the corpses just sit there. In fact, I wish they would just get on with every aspect of the project. After the initial surge of activity things have slowed down dramatically.
The blog version of the Burlingame Voice turns 23 years old today. It’s been an interesting year as we scrambled to migrate from TypePad to WordPress on short notice in September. Special thanks to Matheus Souza for the tech support. WordPress has a more informational backend. It can screen out automated crawler views, so viewership is now real human viewership–even if some commenters use AI to add poignant prose which is fine. The views are tallied by post and the subscription feature is also working better than it did on TypePad. And of course, it’s all still free and ad-free. I still get asked if someone can place an advertisement, but we’re not going there. We’re into “affordability” here at the Voice even if everything else just goes up including our taxes.
Many of the issues of the B’game day remain the same. Just two days ago, the DJ headline was “1st AB 79 development application for San Mateo; 5-story building proposed for residential street after bill goes into effect”. The Monsters are still invading. And there are some new issues like the backlash against more data centers (also on the DJ front page Friday). Who would have thunk the systems that power the net, the Voice and all the apps we depend on would become a power and water-sucking boogie man in the public’s eye?
Credit the Comicle’s Kurtis Alexander, the water guy, with crafting a pretty complete story about the woes of building the hoped-for Sites reservoir 70 miles northwest of Sac. All of the actors in the delayed play are present–farmers, ranchers, salmon, tribes, and bureaucrats. And of course, the Gavinor is complaining about the delay as well, like he hasn’t been in charge for the last seven and a half years. But the journo buried the real story in paragraph 11.
Seed money for the venture comes from the state’s 2014 water bond measure. The $7.5 billion Proposition 1 initially helped fund four large reservoirs, but Sites is the only one that hasn’t fallen through due to financing and other issues.
He meant to write it “is the only one that hasn’t fallen through yet“. The state has been sitting on $7.5B of water monies for eleven years and hasn’t built a single thing. We are headed for an El Nino year so hopefully the legacy reservoirs will capture most of what we need, but one has to wonder what it takes to get some competent management that doesn’t make the high-speed rail team look like it’s making progress!
Amid the steady drumbeat of housing affordability and lack of same, one entity doesn’t seem to have any problem buying up real estate. The San Mateo County government is buying left and right regardless of whether the cities they are buying in like it or not. Today’s DJ headline is “Contentious land buy OK’d; County buys Foster City property for Human Services Agency“. Another $29 million to upgrade the second largest department’s digs. The La Quinta motel purchase in Millbrae sparked all sorts of protests and a recall election (which was successful). The “sobering center” planned for B’game’s Bayfront may be controversial with some nearby business owners and hoteliers, but it hasn’t sparked the same ire as the San Mateo proposal on El Camino did. Just another run-of-the-mill $13 million purchase. There is the “affordable housing” project in Daly City and Caltrain had no problems getting primo space in the new Millbrae complex but constantly reminds us it may literally go under soon.
One wonders when the belt-tightening will begin? Perhaps the November election will send a message about it.
Here in the City of Trees, or as Mark Simon at the DJ recently noted, “except not so much lately” referring to our City of Tree Stumps, I still marvel at the bounty in my yard. The Gravensteins are having a bumper year, the lemons are doing well, and I thought I would get a great yield of pears. It is always a battle with the squirrels over my pears and my neighbor’s figs that hang over the fence. I thought I would win this year because the main bunch was quite far out on a branch that would deter the determined little fellas. I was wrong. All seven are missing in action……
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