300%20Ivy%208-13.jpg
Nine of the 63 new Hayes Valley condos under construction at 300 Ivy (aka 401 Grove Street) will be sold for as little as $236,862 for a 624 square foot one-bedroom and $355,404 for one three-bedroom with 1,605 square feet.
So what’s the catch? As part of the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development Below Market Rate (BMR) Inclusionary Housing Program, applicants for the 9 BMR units cannot make more than 90 percent of the area median income, which means a single person can make no more than $63,750 a year, a couple can make no more than $72,850, and a couple with a child can have a current annual income of no more than $82,000 to qualify.
While the prices above do not include a parking space, five spaces will be made available by lottery to the buyers of the nine units for $75,000 each.
Applications are due by 5pm on September 24, 2013. Pass it along.
401 Grove Street Gets Its Groove On Despite Intimations Otherwise [SocketSite]
300 Ivy Street Below Market Rate Housing Program [sf-moh.org]

29 thoughts on “Nine New Hayes Valley Condos For As Little As $237K A Piece”
  1. I have heard of other BMR units in nearby Hayes Valley buildings going unsold for many many months (even years) – the bureaucratic requirements of complying with the BMR rules get in the way. And then it can end up hurting others in the building, because lenders want buildings to be owner occupied in order to lend against units.

  2. Besides Santa Monica and San Francisco, does any other city (especially larger cities) have a BMR program?

  3. Don’t know about the relative size of the city, but The City of Carlsbad says this, which is so direct about cutting the libertarian real estate related rhetoric to the core I’ll just quote it:

    The city is required by state law to provide affordable housing for all income groups — very low, low, moderate and upper income. Generally, the market is meeting the affordable housing need for upper income households in Carlsbad. The city, however, must establish programs and/or laws to require and/or provide affordable housing for low and moderate income households within Carlsbad because the market is not doing it.

    Emphasis mine.
    Also, IIRC The City of Huntington Beach has a program for condominiums for sale at below market rates. So it’s not at all a San Francisco-specific thing.

  4. if I am not mistaken the city of Atherton was trying to count retired and housed nuns as part of their low income allocation

  5. I saw a white almost hipster looking guy walking out of an apartment at the Valencia Gardens
    How does one get on that list?
    And do you have a choice of where you end up once they select you?
    Why are their many Samoans at Sunnydale but seemingly none at Valencia Gardens?
    I have questions

  6. “I saw a white almost hipster looking guy walking out of an apartment at the Valencia Gardens…”
    Said white hipster guy could have been visiting for a variety of reasons… LOL

  7. “Said white hipster guy could have been visiting for a variety of reasons… LOL”
    Said units frequently do end up getting illegally re-leased, used for short-term rentals (a la Airbnb), or the owners charge for roommates.
    Makes the housing either free or actually a profit center. There is a new $40k Lexus SUV that lives at a low income building near my work. LOL. What a sham this is.

  8. Isn’t it a bit racist to assume that said white hipster couldn’t be a *resident* of VG? Would you assume a Samoan walking out of a Pac Heights mansion was just the housekeeper?
    No race/etnicity question on the BMR unit app.
    Jus sayin’…
    As for these HV units, I’m all for it.

  9. Nobody said he couldn’t be a resident. But it’s less likely than other possibilities, such as visiting.

  10. There are zero Samoans living in Pacific Heights mansions
    I know this is a fact and do not need to confirm
    I don’t think this is a racist statement

  11. Sorry my only question was how to some people on the public housing list end up in the decrepit and dangerous Sunnydale Projects and others VG and Bay Street which damn near is better than my apartment (I hear they have in unit laundry!)

  12. “five spaces will be made available by lottery to the buyers of the nine units for $75,000 each.”
    To those who claim most buyers do not want to pay for parking availability, the cost of these spaces shows how desirable parking is.

  13. “To those who claim most buyers do not want to pay for parking availability, the cost of these spaces shows how desirable parking is.”
    I believe that is about the cost to develop them isn’t it? You prefer that people be forced to pay the 75K for them? If you can’t afford it or don’t need a spot it is nice to get the unit cheaper.

  14. No, my point was only that the price reflects the desirability. Nobody should be “forced” to pay for parking, and nobody should be “forced” to build without parking availability FOR SALE either. Parking is extremely valuable these days and I know in the Marina a unit with deeded private parking will get at least 125K more than a unit without parking. I would not be surprised if these parking spaces could have sold for 100K.

  15. I’m curious. What cities in the country most closely match the price of $355K for 1600′? If you were to phrase it that way: a condo in San Francisco priced as if it were in _______.

  16. anon @ 1:53, I highly doubt you can back up anything you said other than the expensive car near where you work.

  17. Anowned,
    I lived in a SF condo building for years which includes below market rate units (developers can choose to build them at a different location, include them in the building or pay a fee I believe). Anyway the building managers know about the shennanigans with those units, the HOA board knows about it, and most residents know (particularly residents that live next door to those units).
    At the end of each day you pick you battles, and this topic didn’t make it to the top of the list. To much other more important stuff going on.

  18. No, my point was only that the price reflects the desirability. Nobody should be “forced” to pay for parking, and nobody should be “forced” to build without parking availability FOR SALE either. Parking is extremely valuable these days and I know in the Marina a unit with deeded private parking will get at least 125K more than a unit without parking. I would not be surprised if these parking spaces could have sold for 100K.
    75k for the amount of space that a parking spot requires and the cost to develop is peanuts. Now, in some places where parking spots are selling for 200k, it probably does make sense.

  19. How does one get on that list?
    You go down to SFHA and fill out some paperwork. And wait. And wait. And wait. And wait.
    I put my homeless and schizophrenic step-brother on the waiting list for low income housing in San Francisco. Seven years later he was still on the waiting list. Eventually he ended up in Las Vegas with his sister.
    I am pretty sure the only way to actually get assigned a low income unit in The City is to bribe someone.

  20. In a recent NYT magazine column Adam Davidson alluded to something of a ‘grand bargain’ for rent control being eliminated in exchange for higher taxes on landlords.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/28/magazine/the-perverse-effects-of-rent-regulation.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&
    While he was discussing New York City, one can imagine a rule that would allow landlords to reset their apartment rents to market rates in exchange for having their Prop 13 property tax valuation re-assessed post rent-raise.
    Probably politically unpalatable in that the benefits (higher prop tax revenue) would accrue to many, while the losses (breaking price controls) would be concentrated with a few tenants.

  21. “I saw a white almost hipster looking guy walking out of an apartment at the Valencia Gardens…”
    Probably a stray from four barrel coffee.
    “five spaces will be made available by lottery to the buyers of the nine units for $75,000 each.”
    God, this city sure loves it lotteries.

  22. Let’s see. One is a set of hyper-local laws that artificially suppress the price someone can charge for renting their property. The other is a statewide mandate that simply limits the amount of taxes the government can levy on property above what the owner paid for it. Aw shucks I’m just frwaglumbled trying to figure out which one will live on and which won’t.
    As for BMR, we say it stands for Beyond Muddled Reality.

  23. ^I’m confused. Which one do you think will live on and which one won’t? Both seem pretty dang entrenched to me, just at different levels of government…

  24. One is a set of hyper-local laws that artificially suppress the price someone can charge for renting their property. The other is a statewide mandate that simply limits the amount of taxes the government can levy on property above what the owner paid for it. Aw shucks I’m just frwaglumbled trying to figure out which one will live on and which won’t.

    I’ll just take the political angle.
    I think that last sentence was just sarcasm; I think egg_cream_of_OCD is aware of and hinting at this, but basically it’s going to be a heck of a lot easier for S.F. landlords to get rent control either rolled back or eliminated than it would be to win a statewide supermajority vote on Prop. 13.
    You’d never know it if all you listen to are the bellyaching landlords on socketsite, but even within the population of S.F. renters, not everyone benefits from rent control. All new construction, such as the condos that are the subject of this post were they to end up on the rental market down the line, is exempt. Single Family Homes are also exempt. There are other exemptions. So the people motivated to go out and vote against any repeal of rent control is small compared to the overall voting pool (statewide).
    We have one real world, populous metro area (Cambridge, MA, et. al.) example of repealing rent control, and it occurred because voters in the area covered by rent control were outvoted by people in the rest of the area who were not benefiting from rent control. This makes a natural template for a California ballot initiative to quash rent control in the municipalities that have it, since voters in municipalities that don’t have it get to vote and presumably don’t form part of the natural constituency for retaining it.
    That dynamic wouldn’t exist with an effort to repeal Prop. 13, since the vote would be statewide and the effects would be statewide. In addition, there’s no visible, well-funded constituency for repealing it like there is for rent control, where landlords in the areas that have it hate it and are willing to shell out all kinds of money to get rid of it.
    Simply put, there’s no well-funded opposition to the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, and yes, that applies to the SFTU and groups like it.
    Therefore, taking a long term view and the above-stipulated hypotheticals, Prop. 13 lives on, and rent control gets eliminated.

  25. There was a statewide ballot initiative to phase out rent control a few years ago . It failed by a wide margin.

  26. Mark F: Which one and when? I’ll assume you were referring to Proposition 98 on the June 2008 ballot. I’m sure I voted against it.
    You’re correct that it failed by a wide margin, but I don’t think that’s anywhere near a good test of my assumptions and hypothetical above.
    First, unlike what I proposed above, there were groups other than advocates for tenants actively campaigning against Proposition 98 because the rent control repeal was wound up inside what was being advertised as a measure to prevent eminent domain “abuse” in the aftermath of the 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London.
    But there was significant support for maintaining the ability of government agencies to use eminent domain, so there was an active, well-funded constituency against Proposition 98. The authors of Prop. 98 overreached, even on the issue of eminent domain.
    Secondly, because the rent control provision was wrapped up inside of what was advertised as an eminent domain control measure, the backers of Prop. 98 looked like they were being deliberately dishonest and “trying to pull a fast one”, which sapped their support.
    Prop. 98 also attempted to do away with fairly reasonable protections for renters apart from rent control, for example, regulations requiring the fair return of rental deposits.
    Lastly, there was another competing, “spoiler” measure on the ballot for the same issue, yet more tightly focused (that is, it was focused on prohibiting governments from acquiring residential real estate for the purpose of conveying it to another private party) that would have been preempted if Prop. 98 passed.
    While it’s not totally irrelevant, I don’t think Proposition 98 was a good indicator of whether or not rent control in S.F. is as entrenched as Prop. 13 is statewide.

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