Top 25 Most Beautiful Real Estate Websites

Almost all of our writing here focuses on condominiums because, well, almost all of the new home construction in San Francisco consists of condominiums. A colleague of ours, Derek Schreiber, has the listing for a beautiful modern new construction single family home in The Castro (Eureka Valley on an MLS map).

We are pleased to highlight his beautiful new listing:

Asking Price: $2,995,000

The home features:

• Four bedrooms
• Three full baths and a powder room
• Parking for up to 3 cars (you bring the 3 cars to verify)
• Two master suites
• Landscaped garden/patio + view roof deck
• Light-filled open floor plan
• Modern kitchen and spa-like baths

Perched atop Kite Hill and overlooking Eureka Valley, this newly-built home makes an architectural design statement both inside and out.

Offering a modern luxurious interior with top-of-the-line fixtures and finishes, this home features a warm light-filled open floor plan with Valley views from one end and a private landscaped yard to the other.

Complete with unparalleled indoor/outdoor living, seamless access to the sunny garden/patio and a jaw-dropping pano-view roof deck with views of Eureka Valley, Kite Hill, and SF skyline, this architecturally-inspired home is both private and conveniently located.

Sunday Open House:

Sunday, 6/22 2-4pm

Listing Agent Contact Information:
Derek Schreiber - Kite Hill house (property specific website)
Zephyr Real Estate
BRE# 01733507
phone: 415.385.1827
email: derek AT zephyrsf DOT com

If you don't yet have an agent, get in touch with us and we'd be happy to arrange a showing for you or tell you our thoughts on the property after having previewed it this past week. If you've already got an agent, send them this link because there's nothing more stressful than having a client send you listings from another agent's website. Ha!

I used to live on Kite Hill, and I think it is an incredibly special spot nestled in the heart of The Castro neighborhood. If you've got a dog, it's a great community spot. And when it isn't windy, dog or no dog, it offers some amazing downtown SF views.

8 Octavia is getting ready to open it's doors to the world, and given how close we are getting to the last Sunday in June I can't tell you how hard it is to avoid the low-hanging gay pride weekend jokes.

Here's a compilation of some video we took when at 8 Octavia recently. We think the operable building louvres are really interesting and.... so very, very Stanley Saitowitz (what better way to get rid of the clutter created by curtains than by putting them outside the building?!)

We'd like to thank the fine folks representing the developer at the Mark Co. for allowing us to tour the building. We don't represent the developer. We represent buyers at new and existing construction across the city of San Francisco.

Three (four?) new developments are getting some attention this weekend:

If you'd like independent representation, we must accompany you on your first visit. Sign up from a building specific page or shoot us an email: team AT jacksonfuller DOT com

1645 Pacific - (listing agents Victoria Davis and Doug Shaw of Pacifc Union) This building had its grand opening on Thursday night, and will look at offers on the first release of homes on June 12.

1515 15th - (listing agents Polaris Pacific) Designed by Stanley Saitowitz, this JS Sullivan development offers 1:1 parking and clean, minimalist lines and interesting bathroom layouts that make heavy use of frosted glass.

The first two buildings of The Shipyard (listing agent The Mark Co):

The Olympia: 23 condo residences that are all townhome style (two-level, with no neighbors above you, just on either side of you). Pricing for The Olympia will start in the high $600,000s. Each home will have a private garage (garages face interior courtyard) and also direct street/sidewalk access. Most homes have private outdoor space with a balcony.

The Merchant: 63 condo residences (not the townhouse-style of The Olympia). Prices for one-bedroom homes will start in the mid-$400,000′s. Two-bedroom homes will be priced beginning in the mid-$500,000′s, and three-bedroom homes will be priced beginning in the high-$600,000s. Square footages are in line with what you'd expect in most new developments right now.

A few new buildings are also about to throw themselves into the mix - so stay tuned or get in touch if you'd like us to arrange for a multi-office visit. It can be a great way to explore all your options back to back. And no, we aren't even going to talk about The Arden. Because that falls just a hair past crazy in our humble opinion. And congratulations to all, it is a great building!!

It's hard to call it madness when we are short thousands and thousands of houses in San Francisco, but I'll call it anything as long as they keep building. Not because I want to pave over meadows and destroy urban pollinators, but because increasing supply is the only realistic way out of San Francisco's self-inflicted housing wound.

I was over on Berry street today and had a few minutes to walk along Mission Bay Channel, and grabbed the below photo:

Most of the buildings under construction are rental developments, with the exception being the development on the right side of the picture, which is Arden by Bosa.

I know it is tough to get a sense of it on the blog, so if you want here is the full width image which is a little more fun!

Condominium projects across the city are getting ready to open their doors for new home buyers in San Francisco. Buyers haven't had this many choices in new development that we can recall in recent history. Also of interest - the projects that are about to begin sales are scattered across the city from Mission Bay to Hayes Valley and Nob Hill/Cow Hollow.

Millwheel North - the latest news indicates a June opening for this development. The homes are nearly finished, so occupancy should be this summer. We've been keeping a close eye on this one, the last time we were there we featured some video of construction in progress.

1645 Pacific - If all goes as planned, June 9 is the date that the developer will start reviewing offers. It's a building unlike any other we've seen in a while, and the attention to finishes and detail are impressive. For the artistic millionaire in all of us!

8 Octavia - The Mark Company has announced plans to open their doors in June as well. Just like Millwheel, this building is nearing completion and we would anticipate immediate occupancy once closings begin.

Arden by Bosa - We are attending a broker preview tomorrow, and while the building is a long ways from finished the sales office will be opening in.... June. We were very impressed with The Madrone and we look forward to seeing the plans for Bosa's final Mission Bay development.

Amero SF - Also ready to sell now, with some townhouse style floor plans that are... enormous! At least, for San Francisco.

Beyond these buildings, the next big development to launch their sales will be The Lumina. The building is growing up fast, the above picture was taken about a week ago.

What developments are you excited about? We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments here or on our facebook page or Matt's twitter feed.

While all of the details haven't been worked out about the new development that will replace the office/industrial building that had been on the site, demolition has taken place at the future construction site for 555 Fulton, as you can see from the video above.

What's one of the details that remains to be worked out? While I'm sure that there are plenty of them, the biggest sticking point is about the ground-floor tenant. As you may have read in a previous post, our city's formula-retail restrictions have created a bit of a problem for this development.

The ground floor is reserved for a grocery store of about 12,000 square feet that would serve the neighborhood. So it doesn't seem like it would be that challenging to find a tenant... but the grocery store needs to be "affordable" (i.e., no Whole Foods) and it can't be a chain (no formula retail - so no Trader Joe's, no Safeway, no Mollie Stone's). Neighborhood groups want a locally owned, non-chain grocery store to open in the space, while the developer says that's not an economically viable proposition.

Going on a tangent from "here's a video of stuff getting demolished" to "buying food from small retailers," I decided to do a little research about independent grocery stores in California, because I'm curious about how many independent grocery retailers succeed in such a high-cost state and even more specifically in our very-high-cost city. I remember when all the Cala Foods stores closed in San Francisco, leaving a complete eyesore on Haight @ Stanyan...which has now been replaced by a Whole Foods Market. As I asked google about independent grocery stores in California, one of the first hits I got was a story about the California Independent Grocers Association being merged into the California Grocers Association. Note the missing "Independent" in the name. This is definitely not a statistical analysis about the feasibility of independent grocery stores in our fair state, but I think it's noteworthy that the independent folks teamed up with the bigger folks.

Mission Bay made the news for a fire a few weeks ago at an apartment building that was under construction. There are some videos out there that have really good footage of the fire itself, but we wanted to share this picture taken after the fire showing how much of the debris has been removed so that the building can be rebuilt.

The building is located directly across the street from the Strata apartments, and is located next to several other construction projects including the Sol apartments and Arden by Bosa, which will be the final Bosa development in Mission Bay.

You can also see the Channel Creek apartments in the top frame of the picture. It will be interesting to see if codes are changed so that temporary fire sprinklers are required earlier in the construction process. From what I understand, the fire started as a result of welding that was happening on the job site.

Given the size of the fire, it is pretty amazing that no one was killed and that the damage to surrounding buildings was so minimal.

If you live in the neighborhood and have more information or perspective on the fire, we'd love to hear your thoughts either in the comments below, or on Matt's twitter feed or the team JacksonFuller facebook page.

Sorry we've been such lax bloggers as of late...

How do you, dear reader, pronounce Linea?

The 63-ish homes at 300 Ivy sold out incredibly quickly in 2013, and at this point almost all of the homes have sold, and we've even had our first resale in the building! With the exception of the commercial space, the building is essentially complete. Below is an artist's rendering of 300 Ivy:

And below we have a picture that was taken this morning, showing how the building actually appears without the assistance of any graphic designers or CAD renderings.

What are your thoughts on 300 Ivy? Did the renderings do it justice, or did they get it really, really wrong? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

$95,000

This is a rare opportunity! 10 acres covered in Beautiful aspen...

Looking to buy a home? Here are five essential...

Moving from a small town or suburb to a large...

As the events of the last few years in the real...