Category: Local Real Estate

  • BSD School Bond – Another Hundo?

    We addressed the bevy of local school bonds two and a half years ago here. The DJ is reporting on the next appeal to local voters for bond money to maintain and upgrade school infrastructure. The new classrooms at McKinley are moving right along and the new bonds would go towards “re-piping” and WiFi upgrades.

    The Burlingame School District Board of Trustees voted to increase the amount sought through a bond measure to $100 million from a previously approved $89 million, which is intended to be up for voter approval in November.

    Trustees previously approved moving forward to seek $89 million through a bond measure but the item was brought back for discussion to see if asking for just a bit more was worthwhile. The increase was approved unanimously. 

    The district passed its most recent bond, worth $97 million, in March 2020. The bond measure was a $25 tax per $100,000 of assessed property value. While Trustee Doug Brown said there isn’t a significant material difference between $89 million and $100 million for taxpayers, and “there wasn’t any red flags or yellow flags about increasing it,” he said the board should still carefully weigh the ask.

    The Board needs to formally vote by August on putting this on the November ballot. The same tax fatigue that was in place two and a half years ago is still with us in this age of “affordability” as noted recently here. It’s going to take some strong community outreach to push this on over the finish line especially if big transit and sales taxes are on the ballot as well.

  • Tax Time: Doing our share, or more

    Just in time for Tax Day, all of the big papers like the SacBee and the California Post are reporting on our fine county’s wealth. It turns out that according to SmartAsset, we are number four in the nation and number one in California. The methodology is always the devil in the details, so here is theirs:

    To identify the wealthiest counties, we compared all U.S. counties across three metrics: investment income, property value, and median income. 

    We started the analysis by calculating the Investment Index for each county by evenly weighing the Ordinary Dividends, Qualified Dividends, and Net Capital Gains. From there we calculated the Median Home Value, and the Median Income for each county, and ranked them on all three metrics. 

    The SacBee reports

    According to SmartAsset, San Mateo County was the richest county in California in 2025 with a wealth index of 68.36 out of 100. Part of the San Francisco Bay Area, San Mateo County offers a “mix of unbeatable weather, charming seaside views and technical resiliency, Built In San Francisco said, making it a popular location for established tech companies and startups.

    About 17% of San Mateo County residents work in professional, scientific, technical or administrative jobs, according to the county’s employment data. County residents had a median income of $156,000, according to SmartAsset. That’s about $56,000 more than the statewide median household income of $99,122 a year, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

    There are a lot of reasons for the “top line” — wealth, but as usual at the Voice, we ask what about the denominator? In this case it’s the cost to live here. We know it’s high and for a lot of items, we know why. Since gas prices are top of mind at the moment, you should check out the absolute smack down the U.S. Oil and Gas Association is applying on X to our governor, Tom Steyer and Ro Khanna among others as they blame everyone but ourselves for $6-7.50 gas. It’s embarrassing (if you are them). As they say, “the fish rots from the head”.

  • 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.

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