June 22, 2008

The Day I Made The Acquaintance Of A New Berkeley Neighborhood

A listing caught my eye a couple of weeks ago because it mentioned that the Berkeley home was located in the “Bateman neighborhood”. This was news to me — I had never heard of this area, so I decided to investigate.

Turns out Bateman Street (zip 94705) is one I know fairly well having driven down it a couple of times under the (false) impression I would be able to make a nifty short cut through this maze of leafy residential streets west of College Avenue near to The Elmwood district.

For the fact is this is more what I would call “Lower Elmwood“. Bateman Street itself (mapped above) is quite special. It is narrow and pretty and slightly disheveled in a chic-shabby way, and very much reminds me of an English country lane — and I know agents use this description with some abandon, but I really mean it here — or perhaps even more so of a quiet street tucked away in one of London’s former “garden suburbs” such as Hampstead.

I would question how a street, particularly one this short, could constitute a neighborhood — unless one embraces surrounding streets such as Regent Street and Hillegass Avenue. But something tells me the residents of these streets would not consider themselves residents of the Bateman area.

Bateman is what in England we refer to as a “dead-end”. This doesn’t reflect how we feel about the place — just that it’s a no-through street, although I’m pretty sure this fact isn’t advertised (hence my mistake of opting to drive down the street only to have to ignominiously turn around and come back).

3020 Bateman Street, the 3/2 “story book English country style” home (right) went on the market for $799,000 in early June and was pending very quickly — which suggests this is a popular neighborhood.

The house scores a whopping 97/100 on Walk Score and its crime rate looks reasonable if not wildly encouraging (but do they ever?). It’s also very close to Alta Bates Hospital, which could come in handy.

There are no other homes on the market in the “Bateman neighborhood” right now. But I’ll be keeping my eye out from now on. After all, it’s not every day you discover a whole new neighborhood in your own backyard.