Archive for the ‘Alameda County: Berkeley, Oakland’ Category
August 10, 2008
It seems you are considered “worldly” if you visit real-estate blogs now (but you knew that already, it’s why you’re here). That, and perusing www.bbc.co.uk, apparently mark you out as sophisticated and cosmopolitan.
It must be true because it says so in the New York Times.
Along with blogs, the online real-estate world throws up more offerings every day. I decided to road-test one interesting site that was highlighted in the Chronicle’s real-estate section recently.
On first impressions, I like StreetAdvisor.com, described as “the easy way to find out what people REALLY think about the street they live in”. The site’s core content is provided by people who live, have lived, or have visited a particular street.
Because the site is relatively new it isn’t particularly useful at the micro-level yet. For instance, I tapped in my own street as well as a couple of Berkeley streets which have new listings (Channing Way and Arlington Avenue). None produced any reader reports. At the moment if you want to find out about Berkeley streets, the reports are essentially limited to main thoroughfares such as Shattuck, Telegraph and Dwight. But hopefully that will change if the site takes off.
I like the clean presentation and intuitive navigation, as well as the idea of its new “Best Streets (In and Around)…” feature. Because its intentions are good, my verdict is it is worth registering on the site and contributing your 2 cents worth. Then check back in with them in a while and see how they’re doing.
The Chronicle article mentioned several other sites, including NeighborCity.com, MortgageMarvel.com, ReelSeekr.com and ProxioPro.com, the last of which is principally targeted at real estate agents. Have a look at them all though — as we all know, all information is good information.
August 8, 2008
While the advice may be to avoid selling one’s home at the moment, given the sluggish state of the housing market, a good number of homes continue to appear on the MLS every week. Here are some intriguing recent listings to explore:
First up a home with not one but two swimming pools. Unusual to say the least. You don’t often see single pools, let alone two in this neck of the woods. Technically the second pool at 51 Vicente Road in the Claremont hills is a “Roman tub”, and the first is an “indoor endless pool machine” which makes them sound rather unappealing, but they look rather fine in the photos. The price seems right too for this 4/3, 3,588 sq ft contemporary house (pictured below) with all mod-cons, including a 2-car garage. It’s $1,595,000 or $445/sq ft.
Next up a cute 2/1 bungalow in the Monterey Market neighborhood. 1471 Hopkins Street has an eat-in kitchen, nice garden and is in a good spot — walkable to BART and lots of foodie stores. Price: $689,000 ($549/sq ft).
Lastly, 335 Panoramic Way (pictured below), a 2/2 wood-clad contemporary which looks like it has the potential to be a stylish pad. It has great views, as you’d expect from the name of the street, and while it’s obviously up the hill, it’s also close to UC Berkeley — walkable I would say in fact. Price: $799,000 ($582/sq ft).
August 6, 2008
Oooh it does annoy me when they do that.
I’m referring to the practice of re-listing a home, often with a new, substantially reduced price, the point of which, I can only assume, is to trick the general punter into thinking this home is new to the MLS with no awkward baggage to speak of.
I wrote about 2 Westminster Drive in the Oakland hills (pictured below) back in February. At that point it had been on Redfin for 142 days and was priced at $4.2 million. Here it is again, although now they claim it is a new listing (12 days today) and they are asking $3.7 million — a hefty half a million cut. This may be a perfectly kosher move — there may even be a legitimate reason why the house vanished and then reappeared on the listings radar — but it gets to me nonetheless.
Two other price reductions to report:
906 Contra Costa Avenue, a 2/2, 1,850 sq ft one-level home in the Thousand Oaks neighborhood, has had its price cut to $970,000. It’s in a good location and comes with views, but that still strikes me as steep for two bedrooms, even if they are both “master” suites.
506 The Alameda (above) a 4/3 home originally designed for a UC prof by architect Donald Harms, has canyon views, huge decks and a wine cellar. Nevertheless its price has been reduced from $1,799,000 to $1,699,000.
August 5, 2008
Yesterday, I was talking to an East Bay real estate agent who knows Oakland like the back of her hand, particularly East Oakland, and she described a lot of investment activity going on right now. Basically, folks seem to be snapping up homes for under 200k, doing minimal renovation, then renting them out at rental market rates. (She has one client alone who bought three 200k homes in the span of a couple months and then rented them all out just as quickly). And now today, my fellow blogger Janis Mara asks Would You Ever Rent Out Your House? So we have some interesting phenomena dovetailing: folks who bought at the height of the bubble barely able to hold on to their homes and considering selling or renting out along with folks getting into the market due to its bottoming out to invest but not necessarily to live-in the homes they are buying.
I checked out Craigslist for going Oakland rental rates. Yup, rents have gone up (some, way, waaaaay up) since I last rented in Oakland (which was under 2 years ago). While there are still “reasonable” rents out there (2-bed apartments going for $800-$1200) there are a lot of pristine SFR’s up for rent that are going for what must be “bubble” (e.g. height of the bubble pricing) mortgages. It seems that with home sales down, the rental market has gotten much tighter. Here are the rental ranges I found for 2-bedrooms renting in Oakland per the Craigslist categories:
Downtown: $1200-$2900
East Oakland: $850-$2450
Oakland Hills/Mills: $1050-$2995
Lake Merritt/Grand:$1050-$2595
North/Temescal:$950-$2400
Piedmont/Montclair: $1295-$3200
Rockridge/Claremont: $1590-$3150
West Oakland: $976 (3-bed listing)-$2200
So does it make sense to buy as an investor and rent out? I’m not sure. While prices are diving like never before, you would still need to come up with 20% down, and on a 200k home that still ain’t cheap. The you would need to be able to find renters for the home and make sure you are charging enough to cover not only the mortgage but all other expenses (maintenance, utilities, insurance, etc.). Not to mention all the complexities that go with being a landlord. But then again, if you can find a home that’s in decent shape, it just might be a great investmet. Below I’ve included current homes for sale around town that could be good investment candidates: they appear to be in fairly decent shape and at decent prices. Let me know what you think.
East Oakland: Fruitvale Area
2050 35th Ave. 2bd/2ba $199,900 742 SF
East Oakland:San Antonio District
2449 E 21st St. 2bd/2ba $190,000 792 SF
1950 E 20th St. 2bd/1ba $239,900
East Oakland: Maxwell Park
2947 Octavia St. 2bd/1ba $223,900 953 SF
Mills College Area
6139 Seminary Ave. 3bd/1.5ba $250,250 1252 SF
East Oakland: Eastmont
2692 76th Ave. 2bd/1ba $109,900 1080 SF
West Oakland
1131 Wood St. 2bd/1ba $187,900 765 SF
1137 34th St. 5bd/1.5ba $229,000 2015 SF
3012 Linden St. 2bd/1ba $129,000 1097 SF
3120 Linden St. 4bd/2ba $195,000 1124 SF
North Oakland
861 Apgar St. 3bd/1ba $255,000 1409 SF
August 4, 2008
A dash of architectural pedigree is always a bonus if you are selling your home. While the mid-century modern aesthetic is not to everyone’s taste, it will always attract a core fan-base.
A recent listing caught my attention because the house was designed by Roger Yuen Lee who has been described as “one of the Bay Area’s great forgotten architects”.
Lee, who died in 1981, designed more than 100 houses, mostly in the East Bay but also throughout Northern California, Nevada and Hawaii. According to this 2003 piece in the Chronicle, he adhered to “the ideals of European modernism — that architecture should be functional, unadorned and elegant and make a difference in the lives of everyday people”.
978 Creston Road (pictured above), perched up in the north Berkeley hills, is a 2/1, 1,068 sq ft home Lee designed in 1953. It has lots of original details, Lee’s trademark use of large, plate-glass and “panoramic, 3-bridge views”. It is priced at $795,000 which makes it a steep $744/sq ft, but there’s presumably a premium to be paid for that sort of architectural heritage.
Another mid-mod home for sale, also in north Berkeley is 590 Cragmont, (pictured above). Described as a 3/2 “vintage marvel” it looks like a house that would appeal to the real period purists — those for whom modernization is a dirty word. With the original kitchen and fireplaces, as well as those requisite “panoramic” views, it is priced at $995,000 ($415/sq ft).
August 2, 2008
It struck me again while viewing a recently listed home (6468 Benvenue Avenue) how helpful staging can be. This particular house needed the skills of a makeover artist less than some, but nevertheless the stagers had done a grand job.
And there are scores of homes for whom the sprinkling of some stager’s magic dust can make the difference between a quick, profitable sale and a long painful wait to find a buyer.
To my mind there are two Oakland companies making an impression in my patch at the moment.
A home office staged by Scout (left) and Scout Home Hardware (right)
First up there’s Scout, which also runs a cool hardware/home-style store on Telegraph Avenue in Temescal. I’ve seen their work in many homes around Oakland and Berkeley and you start to know a “Scouted” home almost as soon as you walk in: the spare, shabby-chic look, a penchant for old maps and retro accessories — an antique manual typewriter perhaps — and lots of beautiful but impractical white linen upholstery.
(Other stagers have their signature look too. But the one thing you can be sure of is that all stagers use beds and sofas that are on the small side, to give the appearance of bigger rooms, and the color palette is always muted and inoffensive.)
Before and after: a living room staged by Nest Home Design.
Nest Home Design is also based in Oakland. Its website is stuffed with photos of their work, including some compelling “before” and “after” pictures and an amusing time-lapse video of one transformation of the living room of a home in the Oakland hills. Depending on the type of home, their aesthetic is cool and contemporary with some vintage pieces thrown into the mix.
I think it’s significant that stagers are increasingly doing makeovers for homeowners who have no intention of moving. Who doesn’t need a little interior design savvy now and then?
[Photo credits: www.scoutstaging.com and www.nesthomedesign.com]
July 31, 2008
No you haven’t stumbled into a time warp. According to an upbeat piece in the Wall Street Journal it is still possible to cash in on real estate.
Before you start feeling a tingle of excitement at the notion that you may be able to snag a bottomless bag of cash, let me warn you that this article refers to concepts such as “foreign real estate”, “second homes” and” yachts” — scratch that: “big yachts”.
We’re patently not talking about, or to, ordinary punters here — it is the WSJ after all. Still it’s always amusing to see how the other half (make that 0.1%) live.
The article reports that there are four real-estate related opportunities that are holding up despite the current economic downturn:
• Rural land: Rising food prices, demand for corn-based ethanol and a growing desire by many urbanites for a place in the country are making rural land more valuable.
• Foreign real estate: Although home price growth is slowing around the globe, some countries are still on a tear, according to GlobalPropertyGuide.com. While none of these places may be your first choice for a vacation hideaway, in the first quarter of this year, home prices rose 29% in Slovakia, 28% in China, 15% in Bulgaria, 13% in Cyprus and 9% in Australia over the same period a year earlier.
• Dockominiums: With higher gas prices, the market for both dry and wet slips for small boats has been softening. Not so for the big yachts, meaning those over 80-feet long. Real estate brokers say demand for big-boat docks is so high that having one in the backyard can double a property’s value.
• Fractional real estate: Many people who don’t want to acquire and maintain a second home in a declining market still yearn for a vacation getaway. That’s a big reason why fractional real estate, where an owner buys a deeded share of a residence, is gaining popularity.
Read the full, eternally optimistic piece, here.
[Photo credit: www.pbase.com/dkn2k/image/35303406]
July 30, 2008
Of course you have to feel sorry for the people who signed up to own homes in Diablo Grande (above), what was to be a “world-class destination resort and planned residential community” in Oak Flat Valley, Stanislaus County which has recently filed for bankruptcy.
The story is one of lack of foresight as it seems the overriding problem is lack of water. The water that the few residents are currently being fed is brown and smelly. One homeowner, Kristina Ross-Ortiz, was quoted as saying: “We’ve been told not to breathe the vapors, so I can’t let my 2-year-old son play in the bathtub.”
Grim indeed.
But I admit that my sympathy is tinged with schadenfreude because part of me secretly feels rather pleased that this project looks like failing. And I earnestly hope that other developers with similar grandiose but ill-judged projects on their drawing boards are considering tossing them in the shredder.
It’s clear that with water shortages, the ever higher cost of gas and plunging home prices we should all be looking towards the urban formula for our future housing needs: dense building, public transit, walkability… you know the type of thing, you see it in every well-planned city in the world (not that there are enough of those).
Neighborhoods built before cars were invented provide a good model. And, thanks to reader Pop, I discover that such places offer the added bonus of helping you lose weight. According to a new study, “Those who live in neighborhoods built before 1950 are trimmer than their counterparts who reside in more modern communities.”
A report on the study cites the case of Amy Crook, a 34-year-old freelance graphic designer, who gained 30 pounds over the course of two years after she moved to a sprawling neighborhood in Bowie, Md. because she drove everywhere — even to the grocery store two blocks away because there were no sidewalks.
But after she relocated to a more walkable neighborhood in San Leandro, she dropped the weight without even trying.
Think of the future folks — the real one, not the one based on the dream suburbs of yesteryear — think of your waistline, and remember to check the walk score of that new home you have your eye on.
(Oh yes, that reminds me. Out of curiosity I looked up the walk score of Diablo Grande. The nearest grocery store, a Save Mart, is 5.28 miles away, the nearest movie theater 19 miles away. Its total score? Zero.)
[Photo credit: Robert Hollis, Special to The Chronicle]
July 29, 2008
Redfin is extending a personal invitation to you for its next Bay Area Red Carpet event. In June, we had an event down at the Peninsula offices of venture capitalists Draper Fisher Jurvetson in Menlo Park which was very well attended, and in July the announced SF event got so big it was moved to Schroeder’s German Restaurant. This next time around, we are going to make room in the SF Redfin offices, where you will have the opportunity to take a class on the home-buying process, packed with useful links, checklists, neighborhood pricing data and insider insights on getting a good deal, meet Redfin agents, and maybe even meet some of our very own Sweet Digs bloggers, so you can tell ‘em what you really think. (Be gentle, please.) And they will even throw in some pizza and beer.
The event is packed with good information. The schedule goes like this: 4:30 to 6 you can meet with agents (one-on-one) and ask questions about Redfin and how it works, pick their brains about neighborhoods and prices, and get a feel for what Redfin is trying to do. From 6-7 pm is the class “Home Buying, Zero to Sixty,” which brings you info on the home buying process, along with checklists, hard data, and insider insights. After that is some pizza and beer, and then a sneak peak at the super secret upcoming release of Redfin.com. (Feeback welcome and encouraged.)
So mark your calendar for Wednesday August 13th, and be sure to RSVP for the home buying class early (you can also sign up for agent one-on-ones), otherwise you just may miss out (the last event became full very quickly). For all the details, click here.
Recent Sweet Digs Posts
Simple Ways to Go Green
SF: One of the Top Ten Best, One of the Top Ten Most Expensive.. or Both?
SF Hits the Top 10 Again
It’s All Happening on Berkeley’s Benvenue
An Eco-Village Grows in Richmond
July 28, 2008
There’s a flurry of activity on Benvenue Avenue at the moment — a street which takes in Berkeley and Oakland, and includes The Elmwood and Rockridge neighborhoods, all the while remaining perfectly lovely: tree-lined, peaceful, friendly. (Or so I like to imagine — anyone out there with real-life experience, feel free to contradict me.)
First up, the distinguished looking home that is 6421 Benvenue Avenue (above left) — a 3+/2.5 traditional designed by John Hudson Thomas circa 1916 is already “sale pending” after barely a fortnight on the market. Its starting price was $1,095,000. It will be interesting to see what it went for. (This house sold 10 years ago for $428,000 — aaah, those were the days…)
In contrast, the two-level, 1,000 sq ft condo at 6422 (above right) across the street is finding it difficult to snag a buyer. It has been on Redfin for 118 days and has been reduced from $649,000 to $599,000.
But there were practically lines out the door on Sunday to see the first open house a little further north at 6468 Benvenue — a gorgeously renovated 3/2 Craftsman with a particularly lovely master suite and kitchen, as well as a ludicrously large back garden (actually two yards made over into one). I predict this $1,295,000 brown shingle will sell quickly, and for above asking, because it ticks lots of boxes: location, charm and state of repair among them.
