Category: Local Real Estate

  • When is a transit stop not a transit stop?

    The wise people in Sacramento have forced density rules on every city and town in the state. Thou shall build. And it shall be stack-and-pack. And it shall be even bigger next to major transit stops. Beginning July 1, 2026, Senate Bill 79 (SB 79) enacts a significant “upzoning” mandate in California, requiring local jurisdictions to permit high-density housing within a half-mile of “major transit stops”. This law focuses on “urban transit counties”—defined as having 15 or more passenger rail stations.

    But what happens when that transit stop either disappears or is so scaled-back that it barely serves anyone? The Daily Journal and the Comicle both rewrote the doomsday planning scenarios put out by BART and Caltrain:

    A little over a month after BART laid out its tentative plan to close 15 stations if it didn’t receive funding, Caltrain also warned it could close one-third of all stations and eventually shut down passenger service altogether. 

    The agencies are relying heavily on the passage of an upcoming November ballot measure in several Bay Area counties, including San Mateo, in which voters will decide whether to help eliminate major transit agencies’ deficits through a 14-year sales tax measure.

    Even if the ballot measure passes, both systems are deep in the red. And it’s highly questionable that San Mateo County would get its “fare share” as noted back in September here. So when a stop, or 15 stops, close and the developers have already stack-and-packed the half-mile radius around it, what do we do? Answer: suck it up. 

  • Single Family housing: Still popular with the kids

    During an on-line interview with San Jose mayor Matt Mahan as part of his run for governor, GFC‘s David Crane passed along an interesting anecdotal statistic from the class he teaches at Stanford. The context was a discussion of in-fill development and “green-fill development” or building on bare land further outside the suburbs. Mahan walked the fine line of sounding like he saw a need for both.

    But the interesting factoid that Crane provided was that he asked his Stanford class if they had a goal of owning their own home. 100% of hands went up. It sounds like the “you will own nothing and be happy” concept that originated from a 2016 essay by Danish politician Ida Auken that was published by the World Economic Forum doesn’t hold water with Stanfordites when it comes to their biggest future purchase.

    But wait. There’s more. The real kicker was when Crane asked the class how many of them wanted detached single family residential homes. 85% of the class raised their hands. No stack and pack for them. Developers take note. The YIMBY’s might have 15% of the market mindshare, but the next generation of buyers looks a lot like the last four generations.

    Here is a related update from the SF Standard piece on Steve Hilton’s gubernatorial campaign. Great question and an even better answer. I wish more candidates would take this approach and tell the YIMBYs where to get off instead of demanding quality of life killing in-fill.

  • Save OSH: SFPUC threat

    One of the most missed businesses in our area was the Orchard Supply Hardware in Millbrae that closed in 2018. Our little Ace in downtown is awesome, but there is no replacement for square footage in that business. Outdoor Supply Hardware stepped into the breach a few years ago and it’s a perfect replica of the old OSH. When you need something, they have it. I’m mostly done rehabbing two old B’game homes, but maintenance never ends. So this news in the DJ was concerning:

    The Millbrae community is voicing concerns about an SFPUC proposal to oust its tenant, Outdoor Supply Hardware, to expand its Millbrae operations facility because of seismic concerns at a nearby location.

    The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission oversees the Hetch Hetchy Regional Water System, providing water supply for around 2.7 million Northern California residents, Steve Ritchie, Water Enterprise assistant general manager, said during a Millbrae City Council meeting Jan. 13.

    Its Millbrae operations center already hosts almost 500 division employees, Ritchie said, but seismic concerns at the existing SFPUC Burlingame facility means around 100 more employees and assorted equipment will need to move to the Millbrae location.

    Can’t we find a spot for these employees that is not right in the heart of the Millbrae commercial district and providing a key service to the public? Please.

  • Menlo Park: Drawing rave reviews

    The newish SF Standard is breaking through the SF Comicle news cycle with some different reporting and a conversational style. I get a daily email and click through to interesting pieces which, so far, have been free. They gave a two-thumbs-up to the changes happening in Menlo Park regarding housing and downtown vibrancy especially regarding the restaurant scene. Under this headline

    How a sleepy Peninsula suburb became the Bay Area’s hottest homebuying market

    The Standard notes some interesting things about MP’s Menlo Oaks neighborhood re-development that contrast with B’game.

    The small, tree-lined enclave is pocked with active job sites. Foundations have been poured where modest ranch homes once stood. The transformation has been swift and, for builders and sellers, wildly lucrative. Home values in Menlo Oaks are at all-time highs, according to Zillow, driven by an influx of luxury developers rebuilding the neighborhood house by house.

    The typical home is just shy of $3.2 million, a 4.2% increase over the pandemic-era peak. It’s the biggest price pop across the entire Bay Area. And Menlo Oaks has plenty of company. Of the seven Bay Area neighborhoods currently at their highest-ever values, five are in Menlo Park, according to Zillow’s data.

    It’s hip to be square, at least for home builders. Menlo’s flat, right-angled lots are easy to build on, and the city’s planning process is fairly straightforward by Bay Area standards. A developer who gets one design approved can build others like it fairly quickly.

    Most of the suburb’s housing stock is post-war, meaning demolishing a building won’t bring the same preservationist outrage as tearing down a Victorian. (Or a mostly original Arts & Crafts bungalow, Mission style, Tudor, Eichler or French Normandy as we have in B’game)

    “The good part about having kind of uninteresting architecture is that no one minds,” said Sotheby’s agent Chris Iverson. “‘Oh, you knocked down a ranch house and built a modern farmhouse? OK.’”

    The piece highlights one big developer, Thomas James Homes, that has been very active in Menlo Park (more than 50 projects). I see them scraping the occasional house here in B’game too. But the major difference is the commercial uptick in MP.

    The demographic shift (meaning Boomers selling); Springline’s importation of San Francisco brands like Burma Love, Che Fico, and Barebottle Brewing; plus cultural events at the Guild Theatre, bring a “daily energy” that makes the city feel vibrant well beyond the workday.

    We could use some of that culinary uplift and the Guild Theatre is a nice venue with some fun entertainment that we desperately need, but at the end of the day maybe we’re better off not attracting the scrapers.

  • Old Post Office starts filling up

    A piece in the SF Comicle today about the Mission Rock development drawing in a new restaurant (Aurelia, as in the Giants shortstop of old) reminded me of recent news about our own big downtown development at the Old Post Office. Two new tenants have been announced here and here:

    CBRE’s Industrious co-working outfit is growing its Bay Area footprint with an expansion in Burlingame.  The Los Angeles-based co-working unit of the giant brokerage has leased approximately 19,800 square feet of offices on the fourth floor of 220 Park. The $180 million development at 220 Park Road recently transformed a former post office into high-end offices in the heart of Burlingame, the San Francisco Business Times reported. (see below)

    Dostart Development Company and Sares Regis partnered to build 220 Park. Industrious’ lease will take up about two-thirds of the building’s fourth floor, making the co-working company the largest tenant the developers have landed so far. Last year, private equity firm SkyKnight Capital leased about 10,000 square feet at the property. Dostart and Sares Regis could also be solidifying another lease with another firm, sources familiar with negotiations told the Business Times.

    “There’s a lot of coworking in San Francisco and a fair amount in Palo Alto, but nothing in Burlingame,” Peri Demestihas, head of real estate for Industrious, told the Business Times. “It’s a pocket filled with folks who say, ‘I don’t want to go into San Francisco or Palo Alto. I want to live and work here.’” And who wouldn’t?

    The other deal that has been announced is fintech company Upstart Holdings relocating headquarters to downtown Burlingame’s 220 Park. The fintech firm, an artificial intelligence-powered lending marketplace, shrinks from 100,000 to 60,000 square feet as part of the move. Maybe they will use some of the co-working space from Industrious instead of dedicated space. The next question is when will the Bacchus operated restaurant open on the street level. Apparently, some code issues associated with the historic part of the building that was moved and returned has introduced some hiccups, but hungry tenants hopefully will move things along.

  • EssEff: Tone deaf regulation

    If you thought the push to force homeowners to abandon their gas lines and appliances for electric was expensive, check out what SF is planning for older apartment buildings. The Comicle is reporting on 126 apartment building built before 1975 that will be required to add sprinklers to every room of every unit. The price tag is expected to be $300,000 per unit–an estimate that has tripled since the ordinance was first proposed in 2016. After being adopted in 2023, that number leaves out the cost of moving out while the walls and ceilings are torn up and pipes welded in place. The Comicle notes:

    Condo owners say the unexpected assessment, which applies to about 9,800 units, could force them to sell their units, while real estate brokers say the ordinance is already depressing prices and sales activity in the buildings that are on the list. (Owner) Ayre said she doesn’t know where she will go if she has to move out of her condo during sprinkler installation. Because most of the towers targeted by the ordinance are historic, it’s likely that the sprinkler installation process will involve removing lead paint and asbestos.

    But wait, there’s more

    Many of the condo buildings impacted by the ordinance have recently spent upward of $10,000 a unit to comply with the city’s “sleeping ordinance,” which requires residential buildings with three or more units to have a minimum fire alarm sound level of 75 decibels in sleeping areas.

    Owners need to get the permit for the sprinklers by January 2027 and complete the work by 2035. HOA Board members must be loading up on Tylenol as they run the numbers on what the assessments need to be starting now.

  • Cut housing regulations? Start here.

    Politicians across the political spectrum rail against excessive regulations on building housing. CEQA is being gutted and onerous quotas are being foisted on cities and towns all over the state. Very few cities are trying to maintain some sense of order and quality of life since they know just pushing housing without all the other infrastructure is insane. The Merc sizes the problem in a piece about San Mateo County, Half Moon Bay, Belvedere and Clayton not having state-approved plans yet.

    In total, the Bay Area’s 110 local governments are responsible for adding 441,000 new homes between 2023 and 2031, up from 187,990 in the previous eight-year cycle. So far, the region is far behind schedule in meeting the ambitious new goal, in part because of high interest rates and other market forces.

    Despite the threat of stricter penalties, housing advocates say the few remaining municipalities without completed housing elements appear to lack a sense of urgency in obtaining the state’s sign-off.

    “They’re mostly small and wealthy jurisdictions that probably feel they don’t have any obligation and that they can hire enough lawyers to get out of whatever obligation the state imposes on them,” said Matt Regan, a housing policy expert with the Bay Area Council, a pro-business group.

    I keep waiting for some “small wealthy jurisdictions” to lead the legal way out of this mess. We don’t need a lot of lawyers, just a couple of really good ones. 441,000 new units over the next six years? It just not sustainable. Not even close. Here in the County the Merc notes

    On the Peninsula, San Mateo County received a similar letter from the accountability unit in September. County officials said they are working as “expeditiously as possible” to finish their required rezoning process by the middle of next year, attributing the delay to “difficulties of navigating the many new housing laws” passed in recent years. They said the county had not received a builder’s remedy application.

    There’s quite a bit of County land “up the hill” from the Easton Addition in B’game. What if the County decides easy access to 280 and a fairly well-run water system make for a good target location? Will they be funding and building another water tank, sewer line, school and sheriff sub-station. I doubt it.

    For all the talk of authoritarianism spilling out of Sacramento, this top-down issuance of quotas and heavy-handed penalties merits a long look in the mirror. The RHNA numbers are where the next cut should come from.

  • Natural Gas Gets a Reprieve?

    This is an interesting month in the climate wars with Bill Gates issuing a statement that basically said “nevermind” after years of haranguing us, eight miles of rainforest cut down for a climate conference in Brazil and some of our local governments trying to keep their all-electric “reach codes” on life support. Per the DJ:

    After some legal hiccups, cities throughout the region, including San Mateo, are revisiting policies that incentivize use of electric appliances and penalize reliance on gas infrastructure in homes and buildings.

    That “legal hiccup” was the Ninth Circuit eviscerating Berkeley’s overreach on natural gas. Our neighboring city to the south is reacting with a revision that

    Would require single-family homes, duplexes, townhomes and commercial buildings to install either a heat pump or higher-efficiency air conditioner at the time the original AC unit needs replacement.  The potential reach code would also require the addition of electric infrastructure when certain types of renovations are already underway.

    Then San Mateo broached a “scoring” system to award points to homeowners for choosing various electric-only options. You would not be wrong to compare that to the CCP’s Social Credit system. At least one councilor has a glimmer of understanding about complexity (i.e. staff time) and costs although it apparently didn’t deter her from plunging ahead.

    This is already going to be really complicated to understand, but it’s also an opportunity to really bring our community along because with a number of the other reach codes, there have been real cost issues associated with them, where people thinking the cost was going to be X, and the cost ends up being X plus 50%,” Councilmember Lisa Diaz Nash said.

    Here are a few of the costs that get us to X + 50% —or way more–2X, 3X?. Things have gotten even more expensive than when I wrote that five years ago. Some day I would love to see the DJ or the Daily Post survey council members up and down the Peninsula (and County supes) to see if any of them are all-electric. Aside from new construction, I’ll be it’s very very few.

  • Don’t “Miami” Burlingame

    I feel for the people on the west side of EssEff. The (over)development pressure from various state laws and codes has them on edge. Close the Great Highway? Sure. Let the voters on the east side disrupt your daily life. Miami styled high rises blocking the sunset in the Sunset? Too bad. Now with Scott Weiner’s SB79 signed into law, we are all at risk of being Miami-ized. SB 79 does this:

    • Overriding local limits: SB 79 supersedes certain local zoning restrictions to permit greater density and building height for housing projects located within a half-mile of qualifying transit stops.
    • Target areas: It primarily applies to urban counties with significant transit infrastructure, such as those in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and Sacramento.
    • Affordability: The law includes requirements for a portion of the new units to be set aside for lower-income households.
    • Local flexibility: Local governments can adopt alternative development plans that must be approved by the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD).

    The bill looked like it was headed to defeat, but the Sacramento sausage-making took center stage as

    The chair, Sen. Aisha Wahab of Fremont, opposed the bill on the grounds that it tilted too heavily toward developers without requiring enough affordable housing. In Sacramento, a chair’s word usually decides a bill’s fate. But Weiner went above Wahab’s head, calling Senate Pro Tem Mike McGuire, the Dem. Majority leader, asking him to give the other Senators on the committee to vote against the chair, a maneuver known in the Capitol as “rolling the chair” and is often seen as a breach of decorum and defiance of leadership.

    There was more sausage-making to come including

    Amendments made in the 11th hour got the bill through the State Building and Construction Trades Council, when the bill was amended to require union labor on any building taller than 85 feet, and tenant groups got some protections for low-income neighorhoods. In the end, Wahab and Durazo flipped to support the bill.”  Lucky for Newsom, the bill’s reach was narrowed to counties with over 15 major passenger rail stations, leaving out Contra Costa, and Marin, where Newsom recently purchased a mansion in Kentfield for $9 million.

    How nice. Marin gets the status quo while EssEff, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties get the intense development pressure. With B’game’s central location between the city and Silicon Valley and the lovely amenities, schools and weather, I’m feeling a bit like the bullseye on the developers’ dartboard. Will our council get creative? Will they muster support from other similarly situated Peninsula cities? Or even go farther afield like Huntington Beach? I’m not seeing that sort of backbone. Will the parking lot across ECR from Walgreen’s be the Miami beachhead in town?

  • The Voice Blog at 22: The more things change…..

    July 26th is the Burlingame Voice blog's birthday and today it is 22.  The hardcopy editions back in the day started several years before–we're not quite sure how much earlier since we didn't put a date on each edition, but the on-line presence has a clear birth date.  Reflecting on the categories and their content, I'm struck by how much changes and yet how many people's points of view and concerns stay the same.  164 posts about high-cost rail?  Still a boondoggle that needs to die.  Overdevelopment in the neighborhoods?  The shift from worrying about McMansions to worrying about huge multi-unit complexes on R-1 lots is a difference without a distinction, just the magnitude.  Keeping our infrastructure, streets and public safety best in class?  The same as it was 22 years ago.  Maintaining our treescape and streetscapes?  Check and continue to question the cheesy little plastic street bollards and visual pollution proliferating around town like rodents. 

    With another year in the books, the 23rd year will bring more change, but the same perspective–that of regular residents who care about our little city and don't want its quality of life to degrade.  The pressures are enormous especially from Sacramento and Redwood City (i.e. the state and county).  If you don't stay informed and stay willing to speak up, you get what you get and have little reason to complain.  If you are vigilant at least you will have the "I told you so" relief.

    I happened to see this gorgeous Burlingame bungalow that is all spiffed up for sale this week and it reminded me of all the early fights that go on to this day.  It reminded me of why we started 22 years ago and why we persevere.  Some lucky new owner will join the community and share our concerns.  Blog on!

    Classic bungalow

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