High-End Real Estate Sales Climb in Bay Area
Looks like the luxury home market in California’s Bay Area is thriving despite the lagging real estate market.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that 2010 saw a nearly 20-percent increase in the sale of homes of more than $2 million throughout the nine-county region. The number of such sales reached 1,216 last year as opposed to 1,016 in 2009, according to DataQuick Information Systems, which oversaw the preliminary analysis. While current total sales don’t exceed those of 2005-2008, when more than 1,500 similarly priced properties were sold each year, the market has improved significantly from the early part of the decade.
DataQuick adds that 2010’s numbers may even be higher than indicated due to the exclusion of sales executed during last two weeks of the year. Additionally, some super-high-end deals aren’t immediately listed in public records, the data source for this study.
If the emergence of big spenders proves anything, it’s that the Bay Area’s economy has remained relatively unaffected compared to other regions. This can largely be attributed to the resurgence of successful technology companies, as well as many new Silicon Valley and San Francisco start-ups.
Catherine Marcus, a Silicon Valley real-estate agent with Sotheby’s International Realty, says the “market in the super high-end was great” in 2010, with competition intense for some luxury homes. Former employees of Facebook cashed out private company shares and looked to buy homes, according to Marcus, along with buyers from tech companies such as Google, LinkedIn and Hewlett-Packard.
Marcus also says that the mid-peninsula town of Atherton remained the most sought-after location for buyers. DataQuick found that Atherton was the town with the most sales priced at more than $5 million in 2010, with 20 such transactions. San Francisco trailed far behind in second with only eight sales exceeding $5 million in 2010.
The Bay Area’s priciest property sale of the year was in the Pacific Heights neighborhood. Sold in December, the 7,400-square-foot home went for $15.5 million to Hos Pacific. Though the client wishes to remain anonymous, John Paul Hanna, an attorney for Hos Pacific, says, “People are still looking for premium properties.”
—Alexandra Gehringer
