The SF Examiner is reporting that Mayor Newsom has thrown about the stunningly original idea of ditching the city's condo lottery and just letting anyone who wants to go condo, GO CONDO! Currently, the condo lottery allows for only 200 conversions per year, thus protecting the city's notorious multitudes of little old ladies from being evicted from their dirt cheap apartments and tossed into the cold, unforgiving streets. The silver lining to this real estate storm cloud? Millions of American dollars rolling into city coffers to fund very important programs such as the Bevan Dufty brand "Pink Clouds over the Castro" and the Mayor's warning labels on everything plan. Gee! more ›

It seems real estate construction types are finally -- finally! -- realizing in 2009 that no one can afford their mindnumbingly thoughtless, albeit impressive and mildly erotic, InfinityBeaconOneRinconBLŪ luxury towers. San Francisco Business Times has more, but here's a frank, death-of-fun quote from one of those coalition, do-gooder types. AHem: more ›

Ready to throw down money for a place in San Francisco to (finally!) call home? Well, for mere pennies (i.e., $189,000) you can own this downtown micro-condo. This hypercozy 441 square foot studio, located at 333 Grant Avenue, #405, is smack-dab on the border of Union Square and the Financial District. While this pad looks perfect for, say, a blogger with a feline fetish and little belongs, it is pretty small. Cubix small, maybe. But seeing as how the place went for $234,000 back in November of 2004, reports Curbed, it looks like the steal with this pricetag. Especially with such a choice location, and a pad featuring exposed brick and a washer and dryer. Check out even more shots of the small space, and judge for yourself. more ›

Sleep easy, San Francisco. Mayor Gavin Newsom has, at last, sold his Russian Hill bachelor pad. On the market for over a month, the spacious and too tastefully decorated penthouse condo, if you recall, had trouble finding a buyer. Today, the apartment is in escrow. While the asking price was a cool $2.995 million, the sales price has yet to be revealed. Anyway, congrats, unidentified buyer. Also, all together now: oh, if those walls could talk. more ›

A month after being on the market -- with an initial asking price of $3,200,000 -- Mayor Gavin Newsom's penthouse condo at 1101 Green Street #2001 has plummeted in price. According to SocketSite, the asking price for his 1,693 square foot one-bedroom bachelor pad has been reduced to a mere $2,995,000. more ›

We were idiots this morning and clicked on a Google ad this morning for The Hayes, that new condo building on Page near Market. We bike past it nearly every morning, and we were curious as to what it looked like inside. When the window popped up, we were immediately irritated because an idiotic faux-cool downtempo ambient electronic track started randomly playing - we couldn't find a mute button on the site because it waited about a minute before popping up a little player window. more ›