High school internship bay area

For decades the Bay Area had seaside parks that were heavy on vibes but low on thrill rides and capital improvements. Here was an international hotel company, buying a 65-acre chunk of cheap land in the South Bay (before “cheap land” and “South Bay” became a contradiction), budgeting $40 million and treating it like a blank canvas for family fun.

“We don’t object to the Disneyland comparison at all,” J.W. Marriott Jr. said at that first press conference, flanked by Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam mascots. “It’ll be red, white and blue, a bit of nostalgia, a remembrance of things past.”

The corporate owners of the park (now called California’s Great America) announced Monday that they sold the land to developers for $310 million , and will shutter the park in no more than 11 years, possibly much earlier. It was sad news to generations of Bay Area residents who drove past Great America with their noses pressed against the glass of a station wagon, peering at the roller coasters visible from Highway 101.

Great America never quite became Disneyland North. It changed corporate owners multiple times, switching branding partnerships faster than I could ever keep track. (How many people reading this still call the Flight Deck roller coaster “Top Gun,” from the park’s brief marriage to Paramount Pictures?)

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But at a time when Silicon Valley was still filled with orchards and Marc Benioff hadn’t bought his first computer, Great America was the biggest thing in the South Bay.

My first trips to Great America as a Burlingame resident were in elementary school, not long after it opened in 1976. The trifecta of roller coasters — Willard’s Whizzer, Tidal Wave and Turn of the Century — worked as sort of a progression ladder for conquering my young fears.

In the 1980s, the Turn of the Century coaster rebranded as the Demon, giving the ride a horror film upgrade with glowing red eyes peering out of a cave as passengers approached (while adding two loops after the ride’s big drop). The Edge was a freefall ride added in 1986 with a big drop and bigger ad campaign. Meanwhile, the Tidal Wave was removed, and the park built the Grizzly, renown among coaster enthusiasts as one of the “worst wooden roller coasters in the world.”

The park tracked steeply downhill in the 1990s and early 2000s, seemingly chasing trends while getting further away from its roots. Among other random events, rock legend Lou Reed and teen rap group Kris Kross performed there , within a few years of each other in the late ’80s and early ’90s.

In the early 21st Century, the park developed a dying mall vibe. The original themed “lands,” including Yankee Harbor, Yukon Territory, County Fair and New Orleans Place, became an afterthought. A water park was hastily added to the map like a tumor.

Great America was always a top-notch observation deck park, with the alien-looking Sky Whirl triple-claw ferris wheel and the rotating Sky Trek Tower both providing great vantage points to see the park declining as the office buildings multiplied around it. The Silicon Valley land, once bought for next to nothing by Marriott, had become some of the most valuable in the nation.

There was one more comeback in the 2010s, when the park added its first great roller coaster in years (the wooden Gold Striker), launched the annual WinterFest event and seemed to rediscover its hospitality roots, or at least hired a few more gardeners.

By the time I brought my own kids in 2015, it was all but impossible to see Great America with your nose pressed to the glass of a car. New tech industry office buildings blocked the roller coasters from view; a Bay Area metaphor for something. When Levi’s Stadium opened in 2013, Great America was no longer even the biggest thing using its own parking lot.

Soon Great America will be just another memory from a very distant time. When you grow up in the place that launched a technology revolution, there’s not a lot of square footage left for fun.

Will I be sad to see it go? Sure. Did I expect to take my grandchildren there? Definitely not.

Those of us who grew up on the Peninsula and in the South Bay are used to the disappointment. We lost Marine World Africa U.S.A. , Frontier Village , Castle Golf & Games, the Circle Star Theatre and almost every local roller rink and cool old movie theater in the area. How the Winchester Mystery House is still operating is anyone’s guess.

Once built to stir nostalgia for its guests, Great America has become the nostalgia. Who knew that the first headline in The Chronicle would also serve as the perfect eulogy for when it’s gone?

“A sort of Disneyland for the Peninsula.”

Peter Hartlaub (he/him) is The San Francisco Chronicle’s culture critic. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @PeterHartlaub

“In general I would characterize the Bay Area as a cooling market alongside a lot of other markets that are also cooling ,” said Redfin deputy chief economist Taylor Marr. “We’re seeing the entire country’s housing market react to interest rates.”

Sheila Cunha, president of Bay East Association of Realtors, said she’s seen a slowdown for the last month. She just put a home in San Leandro on the market and didn’t receive any preemptive offers, which would not have been the case just a few months ago.

“I hate to use the words ‘normal market,’ but I’ve been doing this for over 20 years and been through all of the markets, and this is becoming a more normalized market,” she said. “I’ve been sitting in on so many meetings lately where people say they didn’t get 20 offers, they only got three.”

We examined three key metrics to show where the Bay Area and California housing market stands.

Home sales are declining

One of the most obvious signs of a real estate slowdown is a decline in the number of home sales.

Redfin data shows home sales stayed high and relatively steady for most of 2021, when the market was hot and rates were low.

At the start of 2022, there was a decline in sales, which appeared to be seasonal, then a return to growth. That momentum slowed in March; then, home sales began to decline in mid-April and are now down 19% year-over-year for the period from May 23 to June 19.

Countywide data shows the number of homes sold in San Francisco started to drop off in mid-April, and the year-over-year decline was 25% from mid-May to mid-June. There are similar patterns in other Bay Area counties, with home sales falling 22% year-over-year in Alameda County, and declining 23% in Contra Costa. Santa Clara County saw even larger declines of 26%.

Price drops are becoming more common

Redfin data shows that in the San Francisco metro, which also includes San Mateo County, the percent of active listings with price drops was at just 1% at the start of the year, and has gradually increased since, with a sharp ascent at the beginning of April. It’s now over 4% for the period from mid-May to mid-June.

“There are close to one-in-five homes in the region that are dropping their prices, and it’s a little bit higher in San Jose,” Marr said.

Homes are selling for closer to their asking price

This sale-to-list-ratio looks at what homes are selling for versus their list prices – a high ratio over 1 indicates a hot market with lots of competitive bidding.

The sale-to-list ratio in the San Francisco metro rose to the highest it’s been in the past several years in late March, peaking at 1.13. It has since decreased to 1.1. During the same period in 2021, it was 1.09, while in 2019 the ratio was 1.07.

“It’s definitely cooling down quickly,” Marr said, but noted that this is a lagging metric, and we have still “yet to see how much demand has dropped off from Bay Area sales.”

He said that since rates have risen, it reduces the purchasing power of buyers and he expects the ratio to “continue to dive and it may even fall below 1 at the end of year, given how much mortgage payments have risen.”

Homebuyer demand

Redfin’s seasonally-adjusted Homebuyer Demand Index looks at data points including home tour requests and other home-buying services, and as of June 19 the index showed a 16% year-over-year decline nationwide.

Data from the Mortgage Bankers Association shows both a monthly and annual decline in mortgage applications in California. Purchase applications are down 11.9% from April to May, and 26.8% year-over-year, while refinance applications have decreased 25.3% from April to May, and 83.5% year-over-year. The agency does not have more localized data.

Wei said other signs that suggest a slowdown are properties are staying on the market longer and days-on-market are a little bit higher, which suggests a decrease in competition. According to data from the California Association of Realtors, San Francisco’s median days-on-market for May is 12 days, which is a 9% year-over-year increase.

“There are not as many multiple offers on the market, which suggests the market is not as hot as before,” Wei said.

Data from ShowingTime , which tracks real estate showings across the country, shows that the seven-day moving average declined 47% from the start of 2022 in California.

What comes next?

Renee White, a broker associate with Keller Williams who is based out of Walnut Creek, said in the Bay Area if a home has the quality and is priced right, there will always be competition, particularly because of the lack of inventory. While she’s still seeing offers come in on listed homes, she believes we’re currently in a “flat market.”

“We might have to ignore the gains we had this year; those people were lottery winners,” she said, adding that “now is the time to buy when everybody else isn’t buying.”

Marr said the first signs of cooling have been more pronounced in expensive coastal markets because they tend to be more sensitive to higher rates and worsening financial market conditions.

The housing market first started to show signs of moderation in expensive coastal cities as early as February with fewer offers and mortgage applications, a decline in touring activity and more price drops on active listings, Marr said.

Nationally, real estate companies including Compass and Redfin have recently announced layoffs , and average monthly mortgage payments in the Bay Area are more than 50% higher than they were a year ago. According to Redfin, searches for “homes for sale” on Google for the week ending on June 18 declined 14% from a year ago.

Oscar Wei, deputy chief economist for the California Association of Realtors, said that “just like across the nation, California as well as the Bay Area is seeing some slowdown in terms of sales,” which is “not exactly a surprise.” Like Marr, he also said that buyers in the Bay Area are probably more sensitive to financial market activity.

“We anticipate a continued slowdown in the coming month and probably into the second half of 2022,” Wei said. “In the coming months we’ll see more increases in interest rates. One of the reasons why we’re seeing the impact is the cost of borrowing… This impacts people’s desire to buy a home.”

Wei said the prospect of a recession brings uncertainty to the economy and the housing market, so potential buyers will probably hold off for a bit.

Kellie Hwang is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected]

• Real Estate: Track home prices in every Bay Area city and ZIP code

“In general I would characterize the Bay Area as a cooling market alongside a lot of other markets that are also cooling ,” said Redfin deputy chief economist Taylor Marr. “We’re seeing the entire country’s housing market react to interest rates.”

Sheila Cunha, president of Bay East Association of Realtors, said she’s seen a slowdown for the last month. She just put a home in San Leandro on the market and didn’t receive any preemptive offers, which would not have been the case just a few months ago.

“I hate to use the words ‘normal market,’ but I’ve been doing this for over 20 years and been through all of the markets, and this is becoming a more normalized market,” she said. “I’ve been sitting in on so many meetings lately where people say they didn’t get 20 offers, they only got three.”

We examined three key metrics to show where the Bay Area and California housing market stands.

Home sales are declining

One of the most obvious signs of a real estate slowdown is a decline in the number of home sales.

Redfin data shows home sales stayed high and relatively steady for most of 2021, when the market was hot and rates were low.

At the start of 2022, there was a decline in sales, which appeared to be seasonal, then a return to growth. That momentum slowed in March; then, home sales began to decline in mid-April and are now down 19% year-over-year for the period from May 23 to June 19.

Countywide data shows the number of homes sold in San Francisco started to drop off in mid-April, and the year-over-year decline was 25% from mid-May to mid-June. There are similar patterns in other Bay Area counties, with home sales falling 22% year-over-year in Alameda County, and declining 23% in Contra Costa. Santa Clara County saw even larger declines of 26%.

Price drops are becoming more common

Redfin data shows that in the San Francisco metro, which also includes San Mateo County, the percent of active listings with price drops was at just 1% at the start of the year, and has gradually increased since, with a sharp ascent at the beginning of April. It’s now over 4% for the period from mid-May to mid-June.

“There are close to one-in-five homes in the region that are dropping their prices, and it’s a little bit higher in San Jose,” Marr said.

Homes are selling for closer to their asking price

This sale-to-list-ratio looks at what homes are selling for versus their list prices – a high ratio over 1 indicates a hot market with lots of competitive bidding.

The sale-to-list ratio in the San Francisco metro rose to the highest it’s been in the past several years in late March, peaking at 1.13. It has since decreased to 1.1. During the same period in 2021, it was 1.09, while in 2019 the ratio was 1.07.

“It’s definitely cooling down quickly,” Marr said, but noted that this is a lagging metric, and we have still “yet to see how much demand has dropped off from Bay Area sales.”

He said that since rates have risen, it reduces the purchasing power of buyers and he expects the ratio to “continue to dive and it may even fall below 1 at the end of year, given how much mortgage payments have risen.”

Homebuyer demand

Redfin’s seasonally-adjusted Homebuyer Demand Index looks at data points including home tour requests and other home-buying services, and as of June 19 the index showed a 16% year-over-year decline nationwide.

Data from the Mortgage Bankers Association shows both a monthly and annual decline in mortgage applications in California. Purchase applications are down 11.9% from April to May, and 26.8% year-over-year, while refinance applications have decreased 25.3% from April to May, and 83.5% year-over-year. The agency does not have more localized data.

Wei said other signs that suggest a slowdown are properties are staying on the market longer and days-on-market are a little bit higher, which suggests a decrease in competition. According to data from the California Association of Realtors, San Francisco’s median days-on-market for May is 12 days, which is a 9% year-over-year increase.

“There are not as many multiple offers on the market, which suggests the market is not as hot as before,” Wei said.

Data from ShowingTime , which tracks real estate showings across the country, shows that the seven-day moving average declined 47% from the start of 2022 in California.

What comes next?

Renee White, a broker associate with Keller Williams who is based out of Walnut Creek, said in the Bay Area if a home has the quality and is priced right, there will always be competition, particularly because of the lack of inventory. While she’s still seeing offers come in on listed homes, she believes we’re currently in a “flat market.”

“We might have to ignore the gains we had this year; those people were lottery winners,” she said, adding that “now is the time to buy when everybody else isn’t buying.”

Marr said the first signs of cooling have been more pronounced in expensive coastal markets because they tend to be more sensitive to higher rates and worsening financial market conditions.

The housing market first started to show signs of moderation in expensive coastal cities as early as February with fewer offers and mortgage applications, a decline in touring activity and more price drops on active listings, Marr said.

Nationally, real estate companies including Compass and Redfin have recently announced layoffs , and average monthly mortgage payments in the Bay Area are more than 50% higher than they were a year ago. According to Redfin, searches for “homes for sale” on Google for the week ending on June 18 declined 14% from a year ago.

Oscar Wei, deputy chief economist for the California Association of Realtors, said that “just like across the nation, California as well as the Bay Area is seeing some slowdown in terms of sales,” which is “not exactly a surprise.” Like Marr, he also said that buyers in the Bay Area are probably more sensitive to financial market activity.

“We anticipate a continued slowdown in the coming month and probably into the second half of 2022,” Wei said. “In the coming months we’ll see more increases in interest rates. One of the reasons why we’re seeing the impact is the cost of borrowing… This impacts people’s desire to buy a home.”

Wei said the prospect of a recession brings uncertainty to the economy and the housing market, so potential buyers will probably hold off for a bit.

Kellie Hwang is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected]

• Real Estate: Track home prices in every Bay Area city and ZIP code

“In general I would characterize the Bay Area as a cooling market alongside a lot of other markets that are also cooling ,” said Redfin deputy chief economist Taylor Marr. “We’re seeing the entire country’s housing market react to interest rates.”

Sheila Cunha, president of Bay East Association of Realtors, said she’s seen a slowdown for the last month. She just put a home in San Leandro on the market and didn’t receive any preemptive offers, which would not have been the case just a few months ago.

“I hate to use the words ‘normal market,’ but I’ve been doing this for over 20 years and been through all of the markets, and this is becoming a more normalized market,” she said. “I’ve been sitting in on so many meetings lately where people say they didn’t get 20 offers, they only got three.”

We examined three key metrics to show where the Bay Area and California housing market stands.

Home sales are declining

One of the most obvious signs of a real estate slowdown is a decline in the number of home sales.

Redfin data shows home sales stayed high and relatively steady for most of 2021, when the market was hot and rates were low.

At the start of 2022, there was a decline in sales, which appeared to be seasonal, then a return to growth. That momentum slowed in March; then, home sales began to decline in mid-April and are now down 19% year-over-year for the period from May 23 to June 19.

Countywide data shows the number of homes sold in San Francisco started to drop off in mid-April, and the year-over-year decline was 25% from mid-May to mid-June. There are similar patterns in other Bay Area counties, with home sales falling 22% year-over-year in Alameda County, and declining 23% in Contra Costa. Santa Clara County saw even larger declines of 26%.

Price drops are becoming more common

Redfin data shows that in the San Francisco metro, which also includes San Mateo County, the percent of active listings with price drops was at just 1% at the start of the year, and has gradually increased since, with a sharp ascent at the beginning of April. It’s now over 4% for the period from mid-May to mid-June.

“There are close to one-in-five homes in the region that are dropping their prices, and it’s a little bit higher in San Jose,” Marr said.

Homes are selling for closer to their asking price

This sale-to-list-ratio looks at what homes are selling for versus their list prices – a high ratio over 1 indicates a hot market with lots of competitive bidding.

The sale-to-list ratio in the San Francisco metro rose to the highest it’s been in the past several years in late March, peaking at 1.13. It has since decreased to 1.1. During the same period in 2021, it was 1.09, while in 2019 the ratio was 1.07.

“It’s definitely cooling down quickly,” Marr said, but noted that this is a lagging metric, and we have still “yet to see how much demand has dropped off from Bay Area sales.”

He said that since rates have risen, it reduces the purchasing power of buyers and he expects the ratio to “continue to dive and it may even fall below 1 at the end of year, given how much mortgage payments have risen.”

Homebuyer demand

Redfin’s seasonally-adjusted Homebuyer Demand Index looks at data points including home tour requests and other home-buying services, and as of June 19 the index showed a 16% year-over-year decline nationwide.

Data from the Mortgage Bankers Association shows both a monthly and annual decline in mortgage applications in California. Purchase applications are down 11.9% from April to May, and 26.8% year-over-year, while refinance applications have decreased 25.3% from April to May, and 83.5% year-over-year. The agency does not have more localized data.

Wei said other signs that suggest a slowdown are properties are staying on the market longer and days-on-market are a little bit higher, which suggests a decrease in competition. According to data from the California Association of Realtors, San Francisco’s median days-on-market for May is 12 days, which is a 9% year-over-year increase.

“There are not as many multiple offers on the market, which suggests the market is not as hot as before,” Wei said.

Data from ShowingTime , which tracks real estate showings across the country, shows that the seven-day moving average declined 47% from the start of 2022 in California.

What comes next?

Renee White, a broker associate with Keller Williams who is based out of Walnut Creek, said in the Bay Area if a home has the quality and is priced right, there will always be competition, particularly because of the lack of inventory. While she’s still seeing offers come in on listed homes, she believes we’re currently in a “flat market.”

“We might have to ignore the gains we had this year; those people were lottery winners,” she said, adding that “now is the time to buy when everybody else isn’t buying.”

Marr said the first signs of cooling have been more pronounced in expensive coastal markets because they tend to be more sensitive to higher rates and worsening financial market conditions.

The housing market first started to show signs of moderation in expensive coastal cities as early as February with fewer offers and mortgage applications, a decline in touring activity and more price drops on active listings, Marr said.

Nationally, real estate companies including Compass and Redfin have recently announced layoffs , and average monthly mortgage payments in the Bay Area are more than 50% higher than they were a year ago. According to Redfin, searches for “homes for sale” on Google for the week ending on June 18 declined 14% from a year ago.

Oscar Wei, deputy chief economist for the California Association of Realtors, said that “just like across the nation, California as well as the Bay Area is seeing some slowdown in terms of sales,” which is “not exactly a surprise.” Like Marr, he also said that buyers in the Bay Area are probably more sensitive to financial market activity.

“We anticipate a continued slowdown in the coming month and probably into the second half of 2022,” Wei said. “In the coming months we’ll see more increases in interest rates. One of the reasons why we’re seeing the impact is the cost of borrowing… This impacts people’s desire to buy a home.”

Wei said the prospect of a recession brings uncertainty to the economy and the housing market, so potential buyers will probably hold off for a bit.

Kellie Hwang is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected]

The statewide number bounced back up on Tuesday with 42 new daily coronavirus cases per 100,000 residents after nearly a month hovering around 35 cases per 100,000.

California has now reported more than 10 million cases since the start of the pandemic, according to state data analyzed by The Chronicle , with the Bay Area crossing the threshold of 1.5 million total cases. And those figures do not include results of widely used home tests that are not reported to officials, nor cases that go undetected.

The state’s test positive rate, which tracks the percentage of tests coming back positive for COVID-19 , also increased to 13.2%. That rate has steadily climbed since mid-March and is now nearly double what officials reported on June 1. Infectious disease experts say it should be under 5% to control the spread of the virus.

“You’re just having a steady state of people getting infected,” said Chin-Hong.

While the high volume of cases has not caused excessive strain on the health care system, the number of hospitalizations is steadily rising. There are 3,405 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 across the state, up 46% from the beginning of the month. California is reporting about 15 deaths per day due to the virus.

The Bay Area is currently seeing about 49 infections per day per 100,000 residents. A spate of community events and gatherings, starting with Memorial Day concerts and celebrations through to crowded parades for the Golden State Warriors and San Francisco’s Pride , may keep those numbers high, with fast-spreading offshoots of the omicron coronavirus variant tightening their grip on the region.

“Whenever you see an outdoor event, there are a lot of indoor gatherings associated with those things,” said Chin-Hong. “There is a lot of spillover from high-risk events, where people gather in bars or go to after parties.”

BA.4 and BA.5 made up a combined 52% of COVID-19 cases in the United States last week, according to estimates published Tuesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The highly transmissible sublineages are crowding out BA.2 and BA.2.12.1, with BA.5 making up about 36.6% of new cases nationally and BA.4 about 15.7%. And experts say they’re responsible for a larger number of COVID reinfections than earlier subvariants due to their ability to evade preexisting immunity.

The proportions are roughly the same in the Northern California region. Many public health officials are uncertain about what impact these newer BA.4 and BA.5 mutations will have on levels of severe disease.

“The more people you have getting infected, the more will be going to the hospital,” said Chin-Hong.

San Francisco may already be feeling the impact of the subvariants as the city is averaging about 52 daily cases per 100,000 residents, a number that has barely budged over the past week.

On Tuesday, the coronavirus test positive rate in San Francisco skyrocketed to 15.4% — higher than any other point during the pandemic except the winter omicron surge. Mayor London Breed announced earlier last week that she was among those who tested positive.

There were 115 people hospitalized with COVID-19 in the city’s hospitals as of Monday, about 26% more than a month ago.

“It’s like a slow burn,” said Chin-Hong. “It’s continuing to put pressure on the workforce but no one is talking about it because we’ve been doing it for so long that everyone just accepts it. I think the cumulative effect is hard on people.”

Other Bay Area counties are also reporting rates above the state average. Alameda County has about 49 daily cases per 100,000 residents; Contra Costa County is reporting 44; San Mateo, 51; Santa Clara, 54; Solano, 46; and Sonoma, 44.

Despite the lack of progress against the pandemic, many local health officials are scaling back their pandemic efforts.

Alameda County dropped its indoor mask mandate, which it reinstated in response to the rising case counts, after just three weeks on Saturday.

“Conditions have stabilized following the sustained increases in case reports and hospitalizations we saw throughout May,” Dr. Nicholas Moss, the county’s health officer said in a statement. “While we expect continued impacts from COVID-19 in the coming weeks and masks remain strongly recommended, it is appropriate to step down from the health officer masking order at this time.”

Officials in Sonoma County similarly dialed down their response, with plans this week to reduce a temporary workforce of about 60 staff within the county health department by a third.

“It’s understandable why they may be scaling back now,” said Chin-Hong. “We have the tools. We know what to do. They have other things to deal with, like monkeypox. But I would caution scaling back as a permanent fixture. What they should be doing is a flexible model. We don’t know what will happen in the fall.”

Aidin Vaziri (he/him) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected]