Oakland Ca Real Estate's Blog: All Categories

Imagine trying to sell your home in a town where industry analysts believe the inventory currently available could take five years to deplete. This is what is being reported from the Central Valley.

The problem is that the pace of homebuilding in the Central Valley kept steady over the past couple of years even though sales were slowing. This has led to a five year supply of homes in the city of Stockton, great news for buyers but not so good for sellers. It is expected that prices in Stockton will fall 8-10% over the next year.

If you have ever exited highway 13 in Oakland and driven through the hills of Montclair, you have seen first hand why Montclair real estate is so desireable. Montclair was actually developed before Oakland was founded, although many of the homes are contemporaries now. The architecture in Montclair is a mix of contemporary, ranch homes, craftsman bungalows, shingled cottages and other types.

Montclair is home to several species of trees, but the eucalyptis is probably the largest and most prominent tree in Montclair. The price range of single family homes in Montclair ranges from the low 600's to multi million dollar homes. Snake and Scout road, Grizzly Peak boulevard and Girvin drive are some of the longest streets in Montclair. Many of the streets in…

Prudential California Realty certainly has an interesting history, which is directly connected to the Bay Area. The history dates back to 1887, when Prudential California Realty was founded by Joseph Mason, who was later joined by Duncan Mcduffie, hence the name Mason-Mcduffie which was the original parent company.

There is an interesting connection between Duncan Mcduffie and the Bay Area, because Mcduffie was a real estate developer who is responsible for the St. Francis Wood residential Park in SF, and the development of the Claremont and Northbrae communities in Berkeley, two areas which remain desireable to this day.In order to promote the Northbrae community, it is said that he proposed that Berkeley be designated the Capital of the state.…

By now every Oakland real estate agent knows what a short sale is, because we are seeing record numbers of them. If you are a real estate agent and you started your career less than four or five years ago, then it is very possible that you didn't even know what a short sale was until recently.

Unfortunately, today short sales are simply a reality if the business and the market that we are in. From the perspective of a real estate agent, a short sale is much more of a riskier edeavor. In a typical sale, the decision that is made on any offers that are received is made by the owner of the home, which makes perfect sense.

However, in a short sale situation, any offers that are received are subject to lender approval. Since the lender will most likely be…

In the past several months, several of the nations largest lenders have closed their doors. The ones that are still around have tightened up their standards in terms of who they lend money to, which puts home ownership out of reach for thousands of individuals.

Even the below market interest rate programs have adjusted standards. Some people who were wating to pull  the trigger on purchasing, and did not have interest rate locks were suprised to learn that their interest rate had risen by about 1/2 point over night. This happened to a client of one of my colleagues, and it wasn't a happy situation.

When the market was super hot (2002-2005) lenders came out with all types of programs to get people into homes who otherwise could not afford them, now that…

The annual Carnival celebration came and went on Sunday, and I have to say I had a great time. The combination of parades, music, dancing and good food made for an impressive event. This was my first time attending Carnival, and it left me wondering how I missed out for all those years!

It's amazing to see how many people put so much work and energy into the costumes and parades. From young to old, people were dancing for blocks and blocks behind the parades, one after the other. So many ethnic groups were represented, and they all were strutting their stuff and showing off elaborate costumes and floats. It's a real reflection of the amazing diversity that the Bay Area offers, and I'm the glad the Bay Area is able to host this event every year. 

After…

For us Realtors, it was sometimes frustrating that we couldn't access the listings in other counties in Northern California. Luckily, now we have a more integrated MLS that allows us to access the MLS listings in the Central Valley MLS, Bay East MLS and the Contra Costa MLS.

This is good for us because we can serve clients in these areas without having to become members of each individual MLS board. We've been waiting for this for a while and I"m glad the day has finally come, at least the first step anyhow. Ideally, we would have access to all listings in all Northern California Counties. This would be the best scenario, and hopefully that will be a reality in the near future.

The Fox Theatre is a 3800 seat theatre that originally opened as a cinema in 1928. After several unsuccessful ventures, it closed in 1970 and has remained vacant ever since. There were several efforts to demolish it, but over the years it has managed to remain intact. The building's status as a historical landmark is most likely the reason it's still there.

Luckily soon it wiil be restored and will no longer be the eye-sore on Telegraph ave that it was for so many years. There is an organization called friends of the Oakland Fox that has launched a campaign to raise $1,000,000 to renovate the building. American Express recently donated $75,000 to the fund, and there are plans for the Oakland School of the Arts to move in once the building is ready. This…