Category: Local Real Estate

  • Historic housing: A little help from a friend?

    The very cute story in the Daily Journal about the oldest house in San Mateo coincided with me seeing an actual newspaper ad about Truckee having the Mills Act in place and asking for submissions. The San Mateo home sits only five blocks from the impending disaster further south.

    The oldest standing private dwelling in San Mateo sits on the corner of South Delaware Street and First Avenue. It was built by Williams Sands, an Irish expat who moved to California in 1857. He built the iconic eye-catching Gothic revival structure for his wife and five children in 1860. The original farm house stood on First Avenue, and the Gothic steamboat-style front was added on the Delaware Street side of the home around 1880. The home stayed in the Sands family for more than 100 years before it was purchased by Frank Jaros who cared deeply about preserving the structure. After Jaros’ death, his sister, Denise Nagel, sold the home to Aikin in 2012. In his bid for the house, Aikin wrote a letter promising to preserve the home’s history.

    You should click through for more of the color commentary on the property, but right at the end we find out

    His home is eligible to receive local landmark status that would limit major exterior changes but could also make Aikin eligible for property tax relief through the California Mills Act.

    The city of San Mateo had to enable that. B’game has a very limited Mills Act property tax abatement program in place specifically within its Downtown Specific Plan Area. It ain’t easy to find or understand on the city website but thanks Gemini I did. Wouldn’t it be nice to expand into residential areas? And then actively promote it as Truckee (a town less than half the size of B’game) has done?

  • 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.

  • Neighborhood siege and YIMBY bigotry

    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.

  • The County appears flush

    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.

  • Gas Water Heaters: Common sense missing

    We are officially in the last half of the year, and the burning question is are we also in the last six months for gas water heaters? It was more than six years ago when I first analyzed here what a stupid, expensive, complicated mandate this would be when B’game looked at it. I elaborated on more nitty-gritty problems in May here. More issues come to mind as I look at my water heater especially how much time and money it will take to patch the ceiling and roof where the deleted vent exits. Do the retired gas pipes under my house just lay there for eternity like a desiccated rodent’s skeleton? This ban is a plumber, electrician, roofer, and painter’s dream. More people are waking up to the impending implosion, and the San Mateo County Supes will be looking at it during their August 11th meeting. Will common sense make an appearance? The supes should memorize this letter to the Comicle.

    The Bay Area Air District’s plan to prohibit gas water heaters and furnaces needs to be scrapped.  Everyone is in favor of cleaner air, but how we get there needs thoughtfulness. Arguing that incentives for property owners and future higher costs for gas will ease the pain of conversion isn’t going to cut it.

    Converting from gas to electricity is not a simple process. One can’t just unplug the old unit and plug in the new. Designing the new systems, obtaining the appropriate permits, and coordinating with PG&E, if an upgraded electrical panel is needed, will take time.  Modifying the building to accept the new water heater and furnace takes money, budgeting and careful planning, especially if people are living in the building.

    Hardly anyone replaces a water heater or furnace before it breaks. When one does need to be replaced, the situation is tantamount to an emergency because the home becomes uninhabitable without hot water or heat. Mandating the replacement of the gas units with electric add to the cost and complexity. This flat-out ban on gas water heaters and furnaces will bring nightmares to many.

    Frank Lee, San Francisco

    Lost in all of this is just how much time a homeowner will need to spend to comply. I value my time pretty highly, but I don’t get a sense that our elected officials do.

  • BSD: $100 million ask goes to voters

    I’m not sure the best way to sell a new bond measure to the B’game taxpayers is highlighting the Big Number, but that was the approach taken in official comments for the DJ article. Back in April, the decision to jump from $89M to $100M was seen as not having any red or yellow flags as we noted here. Phrasing it as $16 per $100K of assessed property value makes it seem small, but these days of “affordability” concerns and whatever else lands on the November ballot create uncertainty. Recent buyers in particular can do the math since assessed value equals purchase price, e.g. a recent $2.5M purchase would come with a $400/year school tax–small compared to the $25K property tax but it all adds up. The DJ notes

    The Burlingame School District Board of Trustees unanimously approved placing a $100 million bond measure on Nov. 3 ballots at its board meeting June 9. Some of the school sites in the district are over 100 years old, Superintendent Marla Silversmith said, and one trustee coined a pitch for the bond as the “$100 million bond for the 100-year-old schools,” Silversmith said.

    Improvements included on a project list further detail the modernization that would take place, the replacement of antiquated portable classrooms with permanent facilities, the installment of energy efficient systems and infrastructure, improving school site parking and traffic circulation, and more.

    This as-yet-unnamed General Obligation bond for CapEx is separate from Measure GG passed in November 2024. That is an 8-year parcel tax that provides approximately $3.6 million annually exclusively for academic programs, smaller class sizes, and teacher retention.

    You probably already got the mail piece and should expect at least a couple more in the next five and a half months. The primary we just had did not bode well for new taxes and it’s hard to see how that will change in a couple of months.

  • Parking Ah-ha: It’s a necessity

    The Merc is highlighting a 23-story apartment building with less than one parking space for every three units. Guess what? It’s a problem

    The Fay apartment tower in downtown San Jose was built to draw residents back to the city, a sleek high-rise with rooftop views and luxury amenities. But two years later, the building is 60% vacant, and city officials say one key reason stands out: not enough parking. Two years after it opened with fewer than one parking spot for every three apartments, The Fay has plunged into foreclosure.

    The Fay’s parking problems provide an early test of a 2022 statewide law that erased parking requirements on housing developments within a half mile of a major public transit stop. But those policies are colliding with California’s deep-rooted car culture — and in pockets around the Bay Area, the signs of pushback are starting to show.

    I love it when they talk about our “car culture” like it’s some Happy Days muscle car cruise night memory or a low-rider meet up. Or drag racing up at Ocean Beach before they closed the formerly Great Highway. But cars are intrinsic to everyday life if you need things like groceries, trips to the vet, Home Depot, etc etc etc.

    Across the Bay Area, tenants living in housing projects with limited parking are finding themselves running up parking fines and doing battle with neighbors over street parking. At some affordable housing projects, where parking requirements were eased as early as 2015, the frustration is mounting. “I have 20 parking violations,” said Candy Sandoval, a custodian and single mother of four who lives at Quetzal Gardens low-income housing in East San Jose, “plus my car was vandalized because of parking on the street.”

    Her fellow tenants are so exasperated without enough parking — there are 42 spots to accommodate 70 apartments — some of them park in silent protest directly in front of the building, smack in the middle of a designated bus stop.

    I’ll bet you would stump Google and ChatGPT is you asked, “how does a single mother of four manage without a car?” This little charade is creeping into B’game as well. The latest example is a proposal at 2 Park Rd. where Crosby N Gray is located. While not nearly as bad as The Fay or Quetzal Gardens, it’s proposed to have 140 spaces for 144 “units”. One really needs to consider the number of bedrooms and the number of units to understand real parking needs. Will we have to rename it No Park Rd.?

  • Electric reality sets in? Not yet

    We had another big power outage Monday in B’game. At the start, the PG&E app said about 5,000 “users”, meaning service addresses, were out including long-suffering Broadway. Figure as many as 8-10,000 people lost power for some period of time. The area around City Hall was still out more than an hour after it was first reported. At this point it appears such outages don’t even merit a mention in the news–except here at the Voice.

    Therefore, now is the perfect time to recap the long SF Comicle article from Sunday titled “What to know about water heater changes“. Writer Brooke Park might be out of a job–or in line for a Pulitzer–because her piece actually got it right on about 80% of the problems with the impending gas water heater ban. It’s almost a full page long and hits on:

    Adding both a heat pump water heater and a heat pump furnace system could push more homeowners toward costly electrical panel upgrades. Older homes often have 100-amp panels, while newer or upgraded homes may have 200-amp panels or higher. Homes with multiple new electric appliances — such as two heat pumps and an electric vehicle charger — may be more likely to need electrical upgrades, especially if they have lower-capacity panels.

    While Park captured the basics, the time and delay to find an electrician, get them scheduled and get the work done along with the permitting isn’t captured in the estimate. Nor is any sort of removal costs for the “obsolete” gas plumbing, vents, roof repair, etc, etc.

    The Bay Are Air District said that an average natural gas water heater installation would be around $3,500 while a heat pump installation would cost about $7,000. At the high end, if for example significant electrical work is needed, the costs of a heat pump installation could rise to $38,800, the air district said.

    (One guy in Foster City), Mark Allen was expecting at least a $2,500 rebate from his electricity provider but is still navigating the reimbursement process. “No kidding, 16 emails back-and-forth, we still did not have a permit and almost 2½, 3 months had gone by,” Allen said. When he got the necessary paperwork and submitted the rebate, the electricity provider said he was past the deadline.

    Beyond the higher expense, heat pump water heaters can be larger, louder and slower to heat water than their natural gas counterparts.  “If you have the right setup for it, yes, it could be good. But I personally would never want to put one in my house,” said Chris Guslani, the owner of Bay Area Water Heaters, which installs natural gas water heaters as well as the occasional heat pump. “They don’t heat up as fast, they’re loud, they’re huge.”

    Both (120V and 240V) models will produce noise comparable to a refrigerator, which is similar to the noise of a natural gas water heater. But the heat pump will often run for twice as long, Guslani said. Homes typically have 50- or 65-gallon tanks to hold hot water. Once that is exhausted, 120-volt models can typically heat from seven to 15 gallons of water per hour, while 240-volt water heaters can warm approximately 18 gallons to 23 gallons if its hybrid mode, which uses traditional electric water heater elements to warm water faster, is unlocked, installers said.  A gas-powered water heater can heat about 30 gallons of water per hour.

    Guslani said that in about 60% of cases he’s seen, gas water heaters operate in spaces without any wall sockets. And manufacturers warn against using extension cords for water heaters. Heat pump water heater tanks might need to be up to 15 gallons larger than those used with natural gas water heaters to account for slower heating times, according to the air district. Heat pumps, which are often a foot taller than natural gas models, also typically need to be installed in rooms with more than 700 cubic feet to allow for adequate airflow.

    There’s more that I will add as a comment, but it all reminds me of “Besides that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?” The bureaucrats are expected to vote on who gets exemptions in October, so let the virtue signaling begin. One of our County Supes, Ray Mueller, is tapping the brakes on the idea or at least the Jan. 1, 2027 start date.  

  • 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”.

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