Free Republic

How And Why Buyers From China Are Snatching Up Bay Area Homes By Kathleen Pender November 29, 2014 The Lumina, a luxury condo development taking shape in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood, is popular with overseas buyers. When Linda Vida sold her house in the Oakland hills this summer, she was hoping for a buyer who would live there, put kids in the local schools and “give back or participate in the community,” she says. However, “as is very typical these days, a woman from China paid all cash for the house, and is not going to live in...

The flood of Chinese money into Bay Area housing is coming not just from home buyers. Developers and investors are also building and backing large residential projects here. They mainly want to diversify away from China’s overbuilt market but also serve Chinese buyers wanting a home in the Bay Area.

The Crossroads of the West gun show is taking place at the Cow Palace in Daly City this weekend, where founder and owner Bob Templeton has plans to speak to the crowd about gun ownership and the executive orders President Barack Obama announced Tuesday.Saturday's event drew thousands of people, according to San Jose Mercury News, and thousands more are expected to pour in for Sunday's show. Last year, more than half a million people attended Crossroads events, the newspaper reported. In addition to founding Crossroads with his wife in 1975, Templeton is also the current president of the National Association...

Ending almost two years in limbo, the financially beleaguered Daughters of Charity Health System on Monday announced it has closed a $260 million investment deal with an East Coast hedge fund that will keep one of the Bay Area's oldest hospital chains afloat for at least three more years. The news came 11 days after California Attorney General Kamala Harris gave her conditional approval for the largest nonprofit hospital transaction in state history, and the first to involve a hedge fund. Unlike the controversy and staunch opposition generated by the hospitals' previous suitor, the deal with BlueMountain Capital Management registered...

San Ramon, California, appears to have broken a new earthquake record over the last two weeks: A total of 408 small quakes have shaken the East Bay city, almost four times the record set in 2003 in half the amount of time. "I've not felt so many tremors in decades," Mark Stone said outside a San Ramon Starbucks on Tuesday morning. "My dog, Gimmel, she's the first one to know a couple of seconds before." The U.S. Geological Survey reports that as of Oct. 13, the Northern California Seismic Network had detected 408 earthquakes – at least a dozen since...

New documents raise questions about the integrity of the steel rods that hold together the Bay Bridge eastern span and point to potentially widespread problems that experts warn could lead to premature failure.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Wood-burning heaters -- including modern pollution-fighting wood stoves -- will not be permitted in new homes built in the Bay Area starting next fall, as part of a first-in-the-nation ban approved by air quality regulators Wednesday. The new rules, approved unanimously by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, will also require every seller of an existing home with a wood-burning fireplace to give buyers a disclosure statement warning of the health risks of wood smoke. Even wood stoves certified by the federal Environmental Protection Agency as low emission would not be allowed in new homes whose...

A magnitude 4.0 earthquake was reported Monday morning in Piedmont, Calif., near Oakland, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Earthquake on Hayward fault. I'm in San Francisco. Seemed stronger than 4.2 from that distance.

(CBS SF) — The fault that produced a 4.0-magnitude earthquake in Fremont early Tuesday morning is expected to produce a major earthquake “any day now” and Bay Area residents should be prepared, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist said. The 2:41 a.m. earthquake on the border of Fremont and Union City occurred on the Hayward Fault at a depth of 5 miles. The epicenter was at a spot just north of the intersection of Niles Canyon Road and Mission Boulevard. The quake caused some BART delays early today while work crews checked the tracks, but appears to have caused no major...

The temblor, which was centered one mile north of Fremont, hit about 2:41 a.m., USGS reported. ... The initial quake was followed by at least a dozen smaller ones and triggered a 15-to 20-minute delay on the area’s rail system before the morning commute, the Los Angeles Times reported. The largest of the smaller temblors was a magnitude 2.7.

The names of the tech workers in this story have been changed.Ten thousand miles from Silicon Valley, in a room near the Black Sea, Yegor Karpenchekov dreams of money. At night, while the rest of Odessa sleeps and cocaine smugglers drift in and out of the port under cover of darkness, Yegor logs onto FaceTime and talks to a 70-year-old woman in San Francisco. Her name is Sally Faubion, and five months ago she recruited Yegor from the freelancer marketplace UpWork to code her apps. She believes "divine intervention" brought them together; for Yegor, it was likely $20 per hour...

The FBI asked for the public’s help Monday in identifying people who have severed underground fiber-optic cables throughout the Bay Area. Over the past year, vandals have used tools to intentionally cut the cables in Berkeley, Fremont, Alamo, Walnut Creek and San Jose in 10 separate incidents, most of which happened in the middle of the night, said FBI Special Agent Greg Wuthrich. The cost of the damage was not discosed. The FBI is coordinating the investigation, which involves several local law enforcement agencies, Wuthrich said. The cases are not related to a mysterious rifle attack on a Pacific Gas...

Spurned at the ballot box three years ago and facing an even more uphill battle now because of California's historic drought, an environmental group has filed a lawsuit attempting to drain Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, a linchpin of the water supply for 2.6 million Bay Area residents from San Francisco to San Jose to southern Alameda County.

The federal government will investigate whether the western pond turtle -- found along the West Coast, including in Marin -- should get Endangered Species Act protection. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will conduct a one-year status review on the turtle, which faces declines of up to 99 percent in some areas. "As the West Coast's only native freshwater turtles, western pond turtles are integral to the wild places where they live," said Collette Adkins, biologist for the Center for Biological Diversity, which petitioned the agency for the protection in 2012. "Threats like habitat destruction from urbanization and agriculture are...

Lon Simmons, the Hall of Fame broadcaster whose baritone voice and dry wit captured some of the most thrilling moments Bay Area sports history, has died. He was 91. The Giants sent a press release Sunday afternoon that said, "The Giants family and Bay Area sports community lost a true gentleman (Sunday) morning when Hall of Fame broadcaster Lon Simmons peacefully passed away."

There are few places in the nation where a democratic socialist independent who’s mulling a presidential run would have more rock-star status than the Bay Area. Yet U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, is convinced that his populist message can resonate far beyond places like Berkeley and Brooklyn. “If you go to almost any state in this country, including the most conservative, and you ask them if it makes sense to give tax breaks to billionaires while making cuts to Medicare and Medicaid and education, they will say ‘no,’” Sanders said in an interview Monday afternoon in San Francisco. He said...

Sales tax rates are going up in parts of California on Wednesday and will, for the first time, hit double digits in some Northern California cities. Shoppers in Albany, Hayward and Union City and San Leandro in Alameda County and El Cerrito in Contra Costa County will pay 10 percent starting next month. If a bill in the state Legislature passes, more areas could be paying that much. The statewide sales tax rate is 7.5 percent. State law allows cities and counties to add up to 2 additional percentage points in local sales and use taxes. The Legislature passed bills...

A San Jose neighborhood was shut down Sunday morning when a man with a machete went on a rampage. It happened on Mocho Court, near the Tully Road 101 exit Neighbors said around 10:30 a.m., the suspect went walking around the neighborhood with a machete. Later, he smashed a car with the weapon and then went into his garage and started lighting items on fire. Police surrounded the suspect and he was taken into custody. The suspect's sister said he may have wanted police to take his life. The suspect has not been identified, and nobody was hurt.

OAKLAND (KPIX 5) — The minimum wage in Oakland is about to become the highest in the Bay Area. Right now it’s $9/hour, but not for long. Thanks to voter-approved Measure FF, it will rise to $12.25/hour on Monday. But as this city’s minimum wage goes up, so go food prices. Most restaurants have said they’ll have to raise prices and cut worker hours. --SNIP-- But while Higginbotham can’t wait for the $12.25 hourly wage, small business owners like Sam Hori at 475 Café worry they may not survive. “It’s scary, because if things go down, we cannot to be...