Oakland Ca Real Estate's Blog: All Categories

Perhaps you live on the east side of town where orchards once dotted the hillsides and valleys of an early Oakland. The Greek, Italian and Portuguese families who planted these trees often included stay-at-home moms who harvested the fruit and turned out delicious jams, pies and other delights. However, residents today, as you know, live under different circumstances. People are too busy and too tired to pick peaches or peel, slice, core and stew apples. The problem is -- no one told the trees, which means -- the fruit still falls in the backyards. More often than not, it rots. But that is starting to change, because one homeowner has found a solution.

Several Oakland organizations are banding together for the second year to harvest your fruit and…

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    HOW TO CUT YOUR PROPERTY TAX BILL   Proposition 8 - allows a temporary tax reduction when a property’s market value on January 1st, is below the prior years assessed value.   Ask your Assessor - if your home is worth less than you paid, chances are you can get a temporary reduction in your property taxes. It’s free and easy to do yourself.   Assessors in some Bay Area counties hit hard by the housing downturn – Contra Costa, Alameda, Santa Clara and Solano – are automatically reviewing homes purchased in the past few years to see if the homeowner qualifies for a cut in assessed value for 2008-09.   Even in these counties, homeowners who think their home’s market value on Jan. 1 was lower than the assessed value on their last property… Read Full Post

With so much Bank Owned real estate on the market, us Realtors are starting to see certain "patterns" play out in term of how the Banks are pricing them. What I've been noticing is that they are not hesitating as much to lower the price if it's been sitting for a while. I often talk to buyers who have their eye on a bank owned property, but want to wait until they reduce it further before they write an offer. However, in most cases as soon as the Bank reduces the price to a very attractive one, multiple offers come in, and now all of a sudden you are in competition.

In some situations, it may be a better strategy to go ahead and write an under-asking price offer, cutting ahead of the competition that may jump out once the price is officially reduced. As…

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It's great that the new FHA guidelines were rolled out last week, but it seems like the only way for that to make a real serious impact is if it is made permanent. It's just a fact that real estate in Oakland and the surrounding Bay Area cost more than in most other parts of the country. Therefore it makes sense for us to have higher FHA guidelines...and not just temporarily. We are already almost a quarter of the way through 08', and currently the raises in the guidelines are only in effect until the end of 08'.

I've been following sentate hearings on the economy and housing issues, and it seems many of our elected officials agree with me.

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Interestingly, a colleague in my office recenly listed THE lowest priced single family home Oakland! It might be in a rough area, it might be boarded up and bank owned, but there IS a single family home in Oakland for sale for $95,000 which is remarkable. It will be interesting to see how quickly it goes, and what price it sells for. It's the type of property that will most likely be bought by a contractor/investor who could rehab it and turn it into a rental home.

I was surprised to hear that there was a single family home in any condition for under 100k, but I guess it's just a sign of the times.

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Some may have a perception that when the Fed meets and lowers interest rates, then that means mortgage interest rates are going to go down too. However when you look at the dynamics of our economy you see this is not always the case.

A good example is the recent cuts that the Fed has announced in recent months. The last cut was a whopping 3/4 point, but as we see this did not cause mortgage interest rates to go down...in fact they went up. Just a month or so ago the 30 year fixed interest rate was around 5 3/8%, now it's about a full percentage point higher...which is a HUGE swing. To put it plain and simple, Fed rate cuts actually hurt mortgage interest rates much of the time.

Whats happening is that when the Fed lowers the prime rate, this causes the…

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I haven't done a short sale yet, but from what I hear I shouldn't be anxious to do one anyways. I mean it's already hard enough selling property right now, a short sale just adds layers and layers of uncertainty. The fact that offers on short sale properties must be reviewed by the lender is one of the biggest problems. It's not so much the fact the offers have to be reviewed, but it's the time that it takes for them to do it that's the problem.

I've spoken to several agents who have short sale listings, mostly because I get so many inquiries on short sale real estate, and I usually hear something like "well we've sent three offers to the lender but it's been over two months and we haven't heard anything".. WOW. Ok, so as a buyers agent I have to tell my…

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The amount of Bank Owned properties on the Market in Oakland is crazy, and with more adjustable rate loans resetting soon there are sure to be even more of them. The positive side of REO property is that the banks usually price the homes well in order to sell them. On the other hand, the banks don't always get inspections done, so buyers have to go in blind and pay for their own inspections after they get into escrow.

It would be great if the banks would at least get pest or home inspections on their properties, that way us Realtors can help our clients determine the condition of the home before they consider submitting an offer. Then there is the issue of agents who are terrible about returning calls and emails. It seems that there are a handful of…

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