Exceptional Rousseau Home on 34th Avenue

Just saw a beautiful Rousseau home today, built in 1933. Listing at:
https://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/1537-34th-Ave-94122/home/639198

For those of us who love Sunset style homes, homes designed by Oliver Rousseau are among the finest examples of these houses. Rousseau focused on building high end homes with beautiful storybook decorative touches, inside and out. In addition to the finishes, the floor plans that Rousseau tended to put together were particularly nice, from pleasing large center patios with round natural shapes, to master bathrooms that linked directly with the master bedroom, to a finished downstairs den with wet bar. This was in an era when most floor plans in San Francisco had standard rooms with standard sizes, and the downstairs was just the basement.

First, the Mediterranean exterior and exterior balcony:


Exquisite living room with painted wood beams:


Raised dining room that is open from the living room and opens into a large center patio:


The center patio and as seen from the hallway:


Exquisite original bathroom with separate bath and shower stall with beautiful and colorful vintage tiles:


The downstairs den/social room with fireplace, and the original wet bar (there is also two car tandem garage downstairs):


This house has 4 bedrooms- two on the main level, and two on an additional floor above. The upstairs may or may not be original to the house, but it's nicely done. There are ocean views from all 4 bedrooms:

Tech Workers in San Francisco, Part 2

See part 1 here.

Hong Kong, October 1997. 3 months after the historic handover of the former British colony to Chinese rule, the Hong Kong Government is about to tackle Hong Kong’s biggest problem- lack of affordable housing. A booming economy driven by trade and banking and a scarcity of land in the built up areas has left Hong Kong one of the most unaffordable cities in the world in terms of real estate. The Government announced that it would (for its population of 7 million people) aim to build 85,000 flats every year every year for ten years (35,000 by the private sector, 50,000 for public flats). The goal was to make home ownership attainable for the average Hong Konger. Unfortunately, the Government took this step with some bad timing. The economy tanked soon afterwards from the Asian financial crisis, and together with some of those flats that had started to be built, caused a crash in housing prices. Nevertheless, housing did become more affordable – from 1997 to 2003, housing prices in Hong Kong fell by 61%.

Today, in 2014, Hong Kong is facing another housing bubble. Wealthy investors from mainland China have been buying up Hong Kong property. That, together with the recovering economy, is causing housing prices to go up again. The Government, once again, despite the scarcity of land, is looking for under-utilized plots like parking lots, and re-developing them to cope with the housing demand. It has also introduced a new 15% residential purchase tax on foreign and corporate property buyers, and higher taxes on quick property re-sales to dampen property speculation. According to PropertyWire, as a result, already, “the proportion of mainland Chinese buyers has dropped from around 30% in October 2012 to only 9.4% in January 2013 in the Hong Kong luxury market.”

Do these problems sound familiar for us San Franciscans? It should. San Francisco has a scarcity of land to build new housing, and yet it is a highly attractive place to live thanks to its urban culture and location near Silicon Valley. The ever increasing supply of people who wish to live in San Francisco is driven by the economic dynamics of the Bay Area as a whole – tech, banking, biotech, and two world class universities in Stanford and UC Berkeley.

So I’m surprised that recent public attention of the increasing unaffordability of San Francisco has focused on tech shuttle buses from tech companies like Google and Ellis Act evictions, and not enough on how we can alleviate the problem of housing unaffordability for real.

Having an economic engine in the Bay Area is desirable for all of us. Imagine if the Bay Area did not have the industries and universities that we have, and instead San Francisco was in a Rust Belt state. We would have higher levels of poverty, of crime. More people would struggle to make ends meet. The best and the brightest coming out of our local schools would leave the region, looking for places with better employment options like New York and Los Angeles.

Imagine a world without Intel, Apple, or Google. The world, let alone San Francisco, would be much worse for it. There is a unique entrepreneurial culture in Silicon Valley that has created these companies that no other region in the world can re-create, much as they might try. Sure, without Silicon Valley, we would still have computers, but we might be 10 or 20 years behind where we are now. Imagine a world where we’re still using computers as slow as those from 20 years ago, and we were all using the equivalent of Windows 98 on these computers. It’s not just the innovation that we would lose; the tech industry in places outside the Bay Area would be further behind from the lack of competition.

So let’s go back and focus on how we can make the housing problem better. I’m sure we can do more to protect renters’ rights. I’m sure we can do more to ask industry to contribute solutions to the gentrification of our neighborhoods. But let’s take Ellis Act evictions as an example. The number of Ellis Act evictions in a year is low compared to how many new housing units we could be building – we should be building tens of thousands of new units. That’s where the impact can be made. There are some who believe market forces do not apply to San Francisco. It's true that because of the high demand for housing in San Francisco, a relatively high amount of housing supply would have to be built to make a difference. But San Francisco doesn't sit on another planet. The fluctuations in house prices seen in Hong Kong, as described above, shows that market forces do indeed affect housing prices, even in the rarified land of real estate that is Hong Kong.

It’s here where we run into conflicting interests. There are interest groups in the city that are opposed to building more, building higher. There are some of us who believe that if we didn’t build at all, the character of our city can stay the same. It will not stay the same. We need to have a thorough re-evaluation of what we believe in.

I believe we need to aggressively look at how and where we can build new units. Mayor Ed Lee has announced a plan to build tens of thousands of new housing units in the next five years. We need to hold his administration to the fire and make sure they are accountable for making this happen. We may need to raise building heights in some places (again, many of us do not want our city to become denser, but we really need to consider the trade-offs carefully, and ask ourselves if we value low density more, or do we value affordable housing more).

We need to put pressure on our elected representatives to more quickly figure out how we can convert illegal in-law units into legal ones in a safe manner. We need to pressure them to move more quickly towards freeing up under-utilized pieces of land and getting those pieces of land built out (one particularly egregious example is the 17 acres of unused land at Balboa Reservoir next to City College and one of the most highly utilized public transit stations in San Francisco- Balboa Park BART). We need to hold developers accountable for making sure the new housing they are building isn't shoddy, and that there are setbacks where appropriate so that we don't turn our city into a mini version of the Kowloon Walled City. We should consider requiring developers to integrate a higher percentage of below market housing in every new development. We need to continually demand better public transit infrastructure in our city to accommodate a population that will continue to rise no matter what. We should look at ways to dampen property speculation- should we be looking at increasing city property transfer taxes for repeat or non-local buyers?

If we put our political energy towards increasing our housing stock by 5 to 20% (there are an estimated 375,000 units now), while clamping down on speculation, this will have a true meaningful impact towards helping our citizens stay in San Francisco. I can think of no way that could be more effective or realistic.

See part 1 here.

Tech Workers in San Francisco, Part 1

My name is Jeff Tam, and yes, I am a tech worker living in San Francisco. The horror of it, right? To hear of the stories that have been in blogosphere and the San Francisco press the last few years, we are gentrifying the neighborhoods, kicking out the blue collar working class and their families, destroying cultural traditions, flaunting huge sums of money wastefully, and going to work in luxurious company buses that take up the space of public bus stops. We, the tech workers, must be an uber-privileged, entitled, spoiled, under-appreciative, boring, non-ethnically diverse lot.
There are very legitimate and real concerns and issues underlying these stories, including issues around social justice, housing, gentrification, jobs, culture, families, and others. I will address these real issues in Part 2 of this blog post, which will be published in the near future.

There are also many emotive reactions that are arising from these concerns, which in turn evoke personal and emotive reactions for me. So this blog post will be less about policy issues and more about my personal observations, feelings, and stories.

I don't feel disconnected from the "traditional" culture of San Francisco, whatever that is. Nor do I feel like the tech snob everybody makes people like me to be. Here's my story. As a first generation immigrant from Hong Kong, I grew up in Southern California and took frequent visits to my grandfather in San Francisco and uncle in Sacramento. They, like countless Chinese immigrants looking for a better opportunity away from Communism, had settled in San Francisco and other places in the Bay Area. Indeed, a third of San Franciscans are of Asian heritage. I definitely had a middle class upbringing, and I felt privileged to grow up in a nice, leafy suburb (Irvine). But I never felt entitled- not during our first year in America when our family of four lived together in a small guest room in my grandmother's house, and not through the tough economic times of the ‘90-91 recession. My dad ended up having to go back to Asia for a job because he couldn't find a job that could support our family here. My parents, among the first in their families to earn a college education, always taught me to value a good education, hard work, respect for our elders, and thriftiness. I went to college at Stanford University, proud to have graduated top of my class at my public high school, and lucky to be one of only three graduates from my high school that year to make it to Stanford. Upon graduation in 2002, instead of moving to San Francisco in already gentrifying hip neighborhoods like the Mission, I moved to Daly City to live in a cheap pad with pink carpet with three other similarly young, wonderful roommates. My first job was at an enterprise software company in San Francisco. Eight months later, with my roommates on the move, I looked on Craigslist for places to live in San Francisco, and settled into another flat with three other roommates, this time in the Inner Sunset. My share of the rent: $550 a month.

I stayed in that place for seven years, and like generations of new San Franciscans, fell head over heels with San Francisco and decided that I never wanted to leave. My living conditions were basic: I lived in a scrappy little room with minimal window insulation and no heat vents. Four of us had to share one bathroom. But I loved my place. I loved the 1920's rounded ceilings in my room, the wood paneling on the walls, and a beautiful living room with an elegant brick fireplace, wood built-ins, and original wood windows and French doors. I loved the many roommates who lived in our house through the years; many of my friends outside of college and high school were made in those four walls.

Being from Hong Kong, I deeply craved and missed the feeling of living in a built up urban city with good public transport and Chinese food within striking distance. I cursed the N-Judah during those early years like so many fellow MUNI riders, still I loved the urbanity of taking a train to work. I enjoyed the Inner Subset, because it is close to Chinese restaurants and supermarkets that reminded me of home, close to a great diversity of various other ethnic restaurants near 9th and Irving, close to the ocean, Golden Gate Park with all its attractions, close to all the other little village neighborhoods near me that give San Francisco its unique charm, close to my regular barber for the last ten years and our little monthly chats in Cantonese about her not-studious-enough and too-interested-in-girls ABC teenage son who eventually did grow up and make it to college (she charged $10 for her cuts; nowadays I pay $15), close to local secrets like Grand View Park and cute Rousseau houses near Sunset Boulevard and Noriega, close to many wonderful friends and roommates, and close to the woman I met who also lived in the neighborhood and who would eventually become my wife.

I am one of the lucky few who (yes, in no small share thanks to Silicon Valley) eventually made enough money (combined with my wife's money hard earned through her salary as an architectural historian) to buy a house. No, we couldn't afford the Marina, or the Mission, Potrero Hill, and Cole Valley. For that matter, we also had trouble affording our old neighborhood in the Sunset. We did buy a nice little 1930s house with a darling terraced backyard in the unfashionable Outer Mission, a block away from Balboa Park BART. We love our Spanish Mediterranean house.

So long story short, yes, I feel lucky to have a good life in San Francisco and gainful employment as a director of product management at a small Silicon Valley company (no crazy blowout Christmas party, no free lunches or ping pong tables or special perks like a masseur in the office; yes we get free snacks and drinks, yes I did used to work at Yahoo with its corporate buses, foosball tables, in-office gym, and free cafetaria). Yes, I know a few who have made their million or millions thanks to a combination of acuity, hard work, and luck. But no, I personally did not make my millions. I don't know any friends or colleagues as described in the press as soulless spoiled tech brats either. Many of them aren't white, male, suburban genius kids. Many of them are first generation immigrants. Many of them have families and work hard to make their monthly mortgage payments. Many of them volunteer, participate in community organizations, go into politics, or otherwise engage in and with their community.

In conclusion, my friends and I don't smoke Cuban cigars and sit on a gold-plated throne at home. Now pretty please, will you let me stay in this wonderful city, my city, my San Francisco? Please? See part 2 here.

Well Preserved But Tastefully Remodeled Edwardian Home

I recently have been too busy to go to open homes, but this morning spotted on Redfin a really nice old Dutch Colonial style Edwardian home built in 1908 in Noe Valley:
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/3776-25th-St-94110/home/1981902

When I see a more worksmanlike Edwardian home like this one on the eastern side of the city, most of the time the inside's gotten majorly messed up already due to the home's age and neglect or ill-advised remodeling efforts from decades ago (though in other places in the city like the Inner Sunset or the Richmond, there are some really beautifully built and well preserved three-story Edwardian homes). But not here, the really beautiful original interior features have been nicely preserved, while some other spaces that likely needed upgrading or had already gotten messed up were very tastefully remodeled in a modern yet classy way. The traditional Dutch Colonial exterior:


Living room with original rounded ceiling, you can see the stairs and stained glass window in the right:


Dining room with old box beam ceiling (repainted in white):


Really nice modern kitchen that opens up into the yard with lots of natural light:


Original detailing - molding on the rounded ceilings and stained glass window:


Upstairs hallway with a glimpse of the nice and colorfully cheery modernized bathroom to the left:


More of the remodeled modern but classy bathroom - the colors evoke the 1950s for me:


One of the bedrooms - traditional with original rounded ceiling, but cheerfully painted:


Nice backyard:

Marina Style Barrel Front House

I saw a wonderful well-preserved Marina style barrel front house this weekend in Silver Terrace:

http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/167-Harvard-St-94134/home/2014468

It was built in 1933, at a time when traditional Marina style barrel front houses were already out of style (they were more prevalent in the 1920s), though this house does bear some of the hallmarks of such a house built during its "late period", with decorative tiling and "cat's ears" mini-eaves visible from the front. The tiling is a nod to the Spanish style which was very popular in San Francisco housing being built at the time.


Here's the view from the inside, from the living room:


The living room also features another relatively rare feature for a more "working class" home at the time- a very distinguished traditional French style fireplace that was placed along one wall of the living room, rather than along a corner to save space:


What makes this a French style fireplace you may ask? Just search for Chenonceau fireplace on Flickr and you can see - Chenonceau is a French pleasure castle built for the royalty in the Loire Valley that I saw two years ago.

Here's a look at the dining room that resides directly behind the living room- notice the ceiling molding and beautiful diamond pattern with trim wood inlay floors (also exists in the living room); looks like they have been refinished in a darker stain for the sale:


Next, check out the original kitchen, complete with original cabinets and backsplash tiles! The countertop actually looks pretty pretty dirty and rundown, might require some work post-sale to polish up. The flooring is cheaper newer linoleum.


Awesome purple tiled bathroom - not sure if the purple tiles are original, but from the patterning it's clear it's definitely no younger than 1950s vintage:


There's a nice telephone niche right outside the bathroom:


A view of one of the two bedrooms out back:


The views from the bedroom windows are nice; partial bay views:


There's a wide open two-car tandem garage, but does have a nice unwarranted bonus room in the back plus a quarter bathroom (aka a closet with just a toilet):


Finally, check out the backyard, notable for the gigantic trees at the back for complete privacy:

The original center patio home?

I was lucky enough to be able to be in Pompeii a few months ago, saw several ancient Roman homes with courtyards of various sizes in the middle.  The ones with smaller courtyards reminded me of the center patio homes of San Francisco.  Here's a photo I took at the Villa dei Misteri in Pompeii: </br>

1930 House in Miraloma With a Sunroom

Saw a beautiful 1930 house in Old Miraloma Park today, on Rockdale Dr. atop Stanford Heights Reservoir. I've seen a few houses in that vicinity over time, and they all seem to be beautifully built from about 1930, superbly maintained, a really nice neighborhood overall.

The house listing: http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/751-Rockdale-Dr-94127/home/1175180

It's a Sunset style home but is completely detached. All the houses on this street seem to have beautiful front yards (as opposed to being paved over). The stairs are on the front. The front of the living room has nice windows that stick out so that you can get a better panorama of the surrounding area; in addition, there is a small breakfast nook that also faces the front.


It's got a nice typical flow in the front, with the living room flowing into the dining room.


The dining room has nice rounded ceiling and moldings:


The kitchen is a bit odd. It retains what looks to be the original 1930 kitchen subway tile (what a timeless look), pretty old cabinets (possibly from the 1930s) but has a marble countertop that while nice, doesn't seem to match with the rest of the décor:


The bathroom is also very classic - the floor tile may be original, and the wall subway tile is nice, though the color of the violet accents makes me think it might be more 1940s/50s than 30s.


The house does not have a center patio (which is a bit unusual actually for a house with this floor plan), but does have a sunroom in the back. The way this sunroom(a bonus feature) was built is typical for San Francisco in the 1920s/30s. In the back of the house are the two bedrooms, side by side. But instead of both bedrooms with windows that directly face the backyard, there is another room that both bedrooms can access, the sunroom. The sunroom, because it sticks out the back, has windows in three sides, hence the name. It can be used as a relaxation room or a study, but might be awkward as a third bedroom because whoever lives there would have to pass through one of the two bedrooms to get to the sunroom. Here's a photo of the sunroom from one of the bedrooms:

A close-up of the sunroom:


You can walk from the sunroom straight into the backyard, since the house is on a slope. The backyard feels like a real sanctuary or secret garden:

1930s House with Wild Wood Inlay Floors, Plus Fireplaces in San Francisco

I recently spotted a pretty cool Sunset style house in Glen Park on Redfin, built in 1931:
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/46-Wilder-St-94131/home/898542

it's a corner house with a beautiful turret with a delicately flowery crenellation:


The wood floor patterns are pretty amazing. Some might say it's ostentatious, but since it is likely original to the house (1931), I'm going to stick with amazing. It's also got a very aesthetically pleasing rounded shaped fireplace on the corner of the living room that other than exceptions dates the house to 1931 to 1932:


I've noticed that most house fireplaces in San Francisco can be grouped like-for-like into: Victorian, 1910s to 1920s (sandstone brick fireplaces with built-in's on both sides on one side of the living room), 1930 to 1932, and 1932 to 1940. This type of stonework fireplace was popular in 1930 to 1931. But originally they were mostly placed on one entire side of the living room rather than a corner, like here. But in 1931/1932, it seems like the builders figured out that this wasn't necessarily a good use of space, and started moving the fireplaces to a corner of the living room so that furniture could be placed on 3 of the four sides of the living room (except for the side with the bay windows). After 1932, most of the fireplaces were French style, like in this house.

Even wilder wood inlay floors await in the dining room:


The kitchen is not original but not new either, kind of blah:


But the bathroom looks original with beautiful bright green tile:


Finally, since the house is built on a slope, because the bedrooms are on the same level as the backyard. You can see there is some inlay even in the bedrooms:


All in all, beautiful house, great location in quaint neighborhood-feely Glen Park, right on the BART line and conveniently near the freeway exit as well!