The Belmont-Redwood Shores School District is considering reducing the number of middle school choices. There are currently three middle school programs. Ralston school has a comprehensive sixth through eigth grade education and has 1,099 students enrolled in the 2025-26 school year. Both Sandpiper and Nesbit have kindergarten through eighth grade instruction. Sandpiper has 123 students with 45 vacancies. Nesbit has 135 students with 33 vacancies. The district predicts there will be 290 fewer students in the next six years.Choices under consideration include keeping Ralston open as the comprehensive option and one of the other two schools as a smaller alternative. The second choice would be to keep two schools open and balance the enrollment between them.In the 2024-25 school year, 40% of all English language learner middle school students in the district attended Nesbit.More information about Silicon Valley schools is available.
Concerns about a K-shaped economy have entered the housing market. An important question is "do Silicon Valley house prices show a K-shaped trend?" The answer could be important to you whether you are a home buyer, a home seller, or a real estate investor.A K-shaped economy is a trend where wealthy people have greater wealth growth than average or low wealth people have. This may imply that luxury house prices rise faster than average house prices. The question is thus, do they?Luxury House Prices vs. Average House PricesA quick look for a K-shaped house price trend can be done by comparing Atherton house prices (luxury houses) to Redwood City house prices (average houses).Although house prices significantly different in Atherton and Redwood City, the appreciation rates are very close. There is no K-shaped trend.More house price comparisons posted at https://julianalee.com/blog/silicon-valley-houses-no-k-shaped-trend/ also show that there is no K-shaped trend.
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…
Although JLee Realty does not handle rental properties for clients, we watch what is happening in it to better understand Redwood Shores 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…
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…