Is Your Apartment Building a SOFT-STORY Building?

Soft-story buildings have structurally weak ground floors, normally wood-frame construction with a large open area often used for parking. Older buildings of this style, that have not been retrofitted, could collapse in a major earthquake, destroying the properties and risking the lives of those who reside in them.

After the Loma Prieta earthquake, as well as the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles, many soft-story buildings were severely damaged, which prompted changes in building codes. The 6.0 magnitude Napa earthquake in August 2014, the largest in California in 20 years, has again drawn attention to the dangers of older buildings that don't meet current seismic standards.

The city of Mountain View is set to follow the example of San Francisco and Berkeley by encouraging, or perhaps forcing, property owners to retrofit buildings in the city that are more likely to collapse.

There is an estimated 100 to 125 buildings in Mountain View that have a soft-story design that may need retrofitting. Landlords in Berkeley have been paying anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000 per unit for the seismic retrofit work, averaging about $3,280 per unit, according to Berkeley’s Planning and Development department.

If you have this style of a building, protect your investment. Hire a structural engineer to inspect your building and determine if seismic retrofitting is needed.

Mountain View Voice - related article

San Jose Mercury News - related article

Soaring Bay Area Rents. What are the Going Rates?

You’ve seen the articles – “Soaring Bay Area Rents”, but what are the rents? How much are other’s charging?

San Francisco Business Times in January 2015 published a list of the highest rents in the country, which included a number of Bay Area cities. They showed the median rent for a typical 1-bedroom apartment.  The median means the middle, in other words, half the rents for a 1-bedroom apartment are less then this number and half are higher.

Palo Alto - $3,645	San Mateo - $2,728	Sunnyvale - $2,616
San Francisco - $3,488	Redwood City - $2,700	Santa Clara - $2,446
Cupertino - $3,136	Mountain View - $2,700	San Jose - $2,400

* Source – San Francisco Business Times - LiveLovely.com

The best way to find out how much your property might rent for is to look at ads to see how much rent other owners and property managers are asking for on similar size units in your area. Rather than spend hours combing through Craigslist and other rental web sites I have found several good web sites that make it easy for you to look at a map and see the rental ads from Craigslsit and other rental sites.

Look up rents at: www.TomMartinsWebsite.com/rentalrates.

Multi-Family Building Energy Upgrades and Low Cost Financing

The Bay Area Multi-family Building Program offers cash rebates and free energy consulting for multifamily properties that undertake energy upgrades. The program is open to multi-family buildings with five or more attached dwelling units in Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties. (Fourplexes and smaller properties typically qualify for the single-family energy rebate offers. Check www.EnergyUpgradeCA.org for available programs)

Improve your property value by updating to modern energy systems, lowering utility bills and reducing operating costs. An energy consultant will work with you to customize a package of improvements that matches your property’s needs and meets a minimum of 10% whole building energy savings. Select your own licensed contractors and manage your installation.

The program provides $750 per unit in rebates to help pay for qualifying upgrades. In unit, whole building, and common area improvements are eligible.

Get started today by enrolling online at: Multifamily.EnergyUpgradeca.org/#bayarea

Looking for low cost financing? When you replace your heating or air conditioning system, windows, or upgrade your insulation, CaliforniaFIRST offers affordable, long-term financing that you can repay easily on your property taxes. And, there's an added bonus: just as with your mortgage, the interest portion of your CaliforniaFIRST tax assessment may be tax deductible. No banks. No money down. Not based on personal credit rating. Check it out at CaliforniaFirst.org.

Mountain View - the Hot Location in Silicon Valley

Mountain View is proving to be hottest location to live in Silicon Valley, just ask anyone trying to find a home to rent or buy!

• The median price single-family home in 2011: $965K  - In 2014: $1,468K - a 52% increase*
• The average price single-family home in 2011: $1,002K - In 2014: $1,504K - a 50% increase*

My projection is that the next three years will be similar, and here’s why:

Location – Mountain View has a great geographical location on the peninsula. Live in Mountain View and you have easy access to your job, whether it be Oracle, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Cisco, Apple or almost any other company, from San Francisco to San Jose, because highways 101, 237 and 85 all intersect in Mountain View. Plus, CalTrain and the VTA light rail serve Mountain View, providing transportation to downtown San Jose, the north San Jose region (Cisco campus), San Francisco, Palo Alto, Menlo Park and the north peninsula communities.

Location – Mountain View is home to some of Silicon Valley’s largest employers, including Google, Intuit, LinkedIn, Microsoft, and Symantec. These companies are expanding and adding jobs. Time is more valuable than money; so those with money are buying homes closer to work to reduce commute time. Office buildings from five to eight stories tall soon could be allowed north of Highway 101 adding as many as 3.4 million square feet of new offices, with room for at least 15,000 employees, according a Mountain View Voice article on February 26, 2014.

Location – After a long day at work, employees love to relax, eat and enjoy some nightlife. Mountain View’s pedestrian-friendly downtown is the destination point, offering cuisine from scores of countries, as well as bars and nightclubs, specialty shops, bookstores, coffeehouses, and sidewalk cafes. Castro Street is vibrant with people during the evening hours and housing within walking distance is in high demand.

Schools – Schools test scores are a primary driver of real estate values. The past test scores in the Mountain View-Whisman school district have kept real estate prices well below those of neighboring Los Altos and Palo Alto, but those scores are rapidly improving, bring up real estate values with them. We have seen the district’s Academic Performance Index (API) improve by almost 10% since 2007, with some individual schools now having an API similar to those found in Los Altos and Palo Alto schools.

* Based on local MLS data. Information believed to be accurate but not guaranteed.