Real Estate In San Jose

Removing Protected Trees

Many cities have enacted ordinances to protect various trees within their city. A long-time Palo Alto homeowner recently achieved a court ruling forcing his neighbor to remove Coast Redwood Trees whose roots were damaging his house. The legal actions were made more difficult by a real estate agent who indemnified the buyer of the house in order to get the house sold.A short summary by the long-time owner: In 2021, I sued my neighbor, with a one-sided result in my favor. I claimed for damage under state law #3479, and my neighbor’s ONLY defense was: “I was complying with PA’s tree ordinance”. The PA ordinance will not win against superseding state law. The 7-page opinion of the state judge never even mentioned the PA ordinance because it’s irrelevant against state law. But I still was forced to sue and pay my (winning) legal fees. My neighbor chose foolishly to go…

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High Interest Rates Make New Home Construction Less Feasible

The city of San Jose just released a report titled "Residential Feasibility Analysis" that compares expected construction costs with the value of the construction. The report says the total estimated development costs have increased by approximately 12-13% over the last 18 months. Construction mortgage rates have doubled over the last 12 months and hover above 8.0%. The report analyzed the expected total construction costs of building multi-unit housing and compared it to the expected value of the completed project for housing built to be rented and housing built to be sold. For market-rate homes, the expected residual value per unit ranged from -$322,000 to -$614,000. The residual value is the expected sales price minus the total of the hard costs, soft costs, sales costs, and profit. With these strong negative residual values, a builder would not want to build.Looking at the San Jose real estate market shows that weak sales…

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Bay Area Rents See Biggest Drop?

Although JLee Realty does not handle rental properties for clients, we watch what is happening in it to better understand Atherton real estate. On Sept 17, 2023, the San Jose Mercury News published an article titled “Bay Area rents see biggest drop in 27 months“. The article presents the ease of finding a one-bedroom apartment near Lake Merritt. The article cites ApartmentList.com as a source for the trends they cite, including a 3.1% year-over-year decline for the San Jose/Sunnyvale/Santa Clara metro area.The housing rental market has weakened, but the headline could create a misleading impression. The sky is not falling for the rental market. Look at the graph below created by Zumper.com.The peak rental price for a 2-bedroom apartment was reached in Aug-Sept of 2022. The “biggest drop” is being calculated from a price peak and isn’t a good choice for judging long-term trends. I’m looking at two-bedroom rental trends…

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1031 Exchange - Flipping Houses

A 1031 exchange is used to defer taxes on the sale of your investment property when your proceeds are invested in a new investment property. Although you probably consider a house you bought with the intention of flipping to be an investment, it is not considered by the IRS to be a property that was bought for investment purposes and thus does not allow it to be used in a 1031 exchange.Tax professionals recommend keeping an investment property obtained in a 1031 exchange for two years as a rental property. Some professionals will say that one year plus one day is sufficient for the 1031 exchange to avoid an IRS challenge.In 2008 the IRS issued a safe harbor rule saying it would not challenge the 1031 exchange because of the sale of your replacement property if:You rent the dwelling unit to another person at a fair rental price for 14…

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