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Merced is California’s fastest growing county

More people are moving into Merced County and the housing market is having trouble keeping up with the growth.

The California Department of Finance reported that the county is the fastest growing in the state. The report showed that more than 4,000 people moved into Merced County last year. The state department shows the county saw a 1.8% population increase since the start of 2017.

Merced County’s population is projected to grow by nearly 68 percent between 2015 and 2060, reaching 452,519 residents. If the state’s estimates prove accurate in other parts of the state, Kern will overtake Fresno in the 10th most populated county by 2052.

Krotik says a big part of it has to do with the growth of UC Merced. About 1000 apartment units are being built in the city of Merced. County officials are working to accommodate the influx of both people and businesses.Another factor is affordability. Los Banos saw the most people moving in with more than 900 new residents. Real estate agents claim most of them are from the Bay Area.

High housing prices along the coast and in the north part of the state – and a reluctance to build more there to meet the demand – will continue to push more people inland, including those who live in the Valley but commute for better-paying jobs

A strong market it’s a good problem to have, but low vacancy will remain a problem until more homes are built to meet the needs of a growing county.

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SF Bay Area Metro Cities Ranked By One Bedroom Rent

The Most Expensive

  • San Francisco, CA rent, similar to last month, remained at $3,400 and as the most expensive in the metro.

  • Mountain View, CA was second with rent climbing $10 to $3,110.

  • Emeryville, CA ranked as third with rent at $2,790.

The Least Expensive

  • Vallejo, CA rent dropped $70 to $1,420 and continued to be the least expensive.

  • Santa Rosa, CA was second with one bedrooms priced at $1,570.

  • Napa, CA ranked as third with rent falling $50 to $1,650.

Growth rate, Yearly 1 Bedroom Rent Evolution

The Fastest Growing (Y/Y%)

  • Emeryville, CA had the fastest growing rent since this time last year, up 15.8%.

  • Mountain View, CA was close behind as second with rent climbing 15.6%.

  • South San Francisco, CA ranked as third with rent jumping 14.5%.

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Can Legislation Lower California exorbitant Real Estate Prices?

Through shifting control of land use policy from local to regional governments, Senate Bill 827 wants to reduce the Golden State’s cost of housing.

State Senator Scott Wiener, the movement’s champion in the California Senate, has proposed a new bill SB 827, that, if passed, would compel California cities to allow dense, mid-rise housing within walking distance of most transit. The bill would affect large swaths of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Oakland, and other locations farther afield, near rail stations and along bus routes. If SB 827 passes, it would be the most important step in decades toward upping the state’s housing supply in substantial numbers.

Opponents of the bill portray it as seizing control over neighborhoods from local planners, and they are not entirely wrong. The bill shifts power over an important aspect of land use policy from local decision makers to the state. Indeed, that is the proposal’s greatest strength.

SB 827 shifts power over an important but specific aspect of land use policy—housing density near transit—from the local level to the regional one. Moreover, it does so without otherwise intruding on cities’ autonomy. There is no need to over-constrain local land use policy by overriding it even when its effects don’t transcend municipal boundaries. Of course, the devil is almost always in the details and it certainly will be in the case of SB 827 too, but in shifting control over a defined aspect of land use from the local level to the regional one, this bill gets the overarching principle right.

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Mortgage Rates Surge to Highest Since 2013

Mortgage rates surged to their highest level in almost five years this week.  

Unlike the extremely mild and uneventful day-to-day changes seen for most of the past 2 months, rates are actually putting some distance between themselves and the March plateau.

Whereas a well-qualified borrower with 25% down may have been quoted a conventional 30 yr fixed rate of 4.5% a few weeks ago, they’d already be looking at 4.75% today for most lenders.  Of course this can vary a bit from lender to lender, but the point is that all lenders have experienced that sort of delta.

Today’s Most Prevalent Rates – 4/26/2018

30YR FIXED – 4.58%
FHA/VA – 4.25%-4.5%
15 YEAR FIXED – 4.02%
5 YEAR ARMS –  3.74%

 

 

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Bay Area trend – low earners move out, high earners move in

New residents to the Bay Area are earning far more than the people they’re chasing out, pushing up home prices and highlighting the gap between owners and renters in Silicon Valley. Lower income workers moving out of the Bay Area were being replaced by younger workers making about $12,640 more annually from 2005 to 2016, according to a national study released by BuildZoom. The Bay Area income gap has accelerated  from 2010 to 2016, with the average newcomer out-earning the typical former resident by about $18,700. Bay Area newcomers had a median annual household income of about $70,000, while those leaving had a household income of $57,400. About 60 percent of the newcomers had at least a four-year college degree, while about 50 percent of the outgoing residents had that level of education.

The Bay Area represents the extreme edge of a national trend: higher paid and educated professionals moving to large, coastal cities like San Francisco and New York, while lower paid workers are moving toward less expensive metro areas. This migration has driven up housing prices in coastal cities, while others in the Rust Belt have seen home prices drop.The median sale price for a single-family home in prime Bay Area counties has climbed for nearly six years. The median  price for a home in Santa Clara County in February was $1.3 million, in Alameda County $750,000, in San Mateo County $1.45 million and San Francisco $1.5 million, according to real estate data firm CoreLogic

In these California cities, houses probably earn more per hour than you do

Houses in San Francisco earn more per hour than most of their owners – or anyone else, for that matter, – do at work, a new report finds.A study released by real estate site Zillow finds that houses in the Bay Area city typically appreciate at a rate of $60.13 for each working hour, calculated based on a 40-hour work week. Minimum wage workers in San Francisco currently take home $15 an hour and the average hourly wage in the San Francisco-San Mateo metro area was $36.61 in 2016, reported the U.S. Department of Labor.

In San Jose, the typical homeowner is gaining $99.81 of equity in their home every working-hour, but minimum wage in the city is just $13.50. That means the typical home in San Jose is “earning” over seven times local minimum wage. Even still, the average hourly wage in the San Jose metro is $43.71, which is over two times less than local home value appreciation per working-hour.

San Francisco and San Jose are poised to be among the most expensive markets in the nation throughout 2018, reported Zillow, with median home values of $1.1 million in San Jose and $893,000 in San Francisco. A renter or prospective buyer would need to earn at least $170,000 a year to live comfortably in either market, according to HSH.com.“The way the economy in the Bay Area is right now, it’s like the demand is on steroids,” Michael Rawson, director of the Public Interest Law Project based in the Bay Area, told Newsweek. “It drives the land prices through the roof.”

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