Parking Spot Sells For $82K In San Francisco Building
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS/AP) - It seems parking spots aren't immune from the recent surge in San Francisco real estate prices.
A spot in the city's trendy South Beach neighborhood sold last week for $82,000.
The 8- by 12-foot parking space is in an enclosed garage in a condominium building just a block from AT&T Park. The unidentified buyer did not respond to interview requests, but a Porsche SUV was parked in the space on Thursday.
While it may seem like a lot of money, real estate agents said parking could be a good investment. It can add as much as $100,000 to the purchase price of a property, or be rented out at rates of $400 to $450 a month — the going rate in South Beach.
Sean Sullivan, who sold the space, said the spot has an ideal location with Instagram and other tech companies nearby.
"We had a very good response right out of the gate," said Sullivan, an agent who works for Climb Real Estate. "It was only in the market two weeks."
Sullivan said that he's previously sold a space for even more. In fact, he sold a parking spot in the same exact building at the height of the last real estate boom for $95,000.
Overall, the city has seen real estate prices climb. Home prices in San Francisco grew by 22.2 percent in March compared with a year ago, second only to Phoenix among U.S. cities, according to the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index released in May.
Home prices in the wider, nine-county Bay Area posted a 12th straight month of double-digit price increases last month, according to research firm DataQuick. DataQuick said Thursday that the median price for new and existing houses and condominiums reached $519,000 in May, up 30 percent from the same period last year.
Condos in the South Beach area are going for $1,000 a square foot. At 96 square feet, the parking space was a relative bargain at $854 per square foot.
Sullivan said the building where the parking spot was sold was built before the city restricted spaces to one per unit. It is one of the few buildings that allows non-residents to own a spot.
The new owner has a deed and will be required to pay property taxes and homeowner association dues on his little slice of South Beach.
The sale was all cash.
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