East Bay Realty Pro Blog

Yesterday, while at an inspection of a home I just sold in Alameda, I was told about a “spite house” only a few doors away. Built to “spite” a neighbor, at only ten feet wide, it is the narrowest house I have ever seen. Online research reveals that there are other spite houses around the [...]

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With the weather being so wonderful, it is a great time to take advantage of Oakland’s free walking tours before they end for the season. Running from May through October, there are eight itineraries. A few examples are “Old Oakland,” “City Center,” “Uptown to the Lake,” and “Waterfront.”
Check the full schedule at the City of [...]

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The California Association of Realtors (C.A.R.) has just added a new information service to its Web site sharing great tips and ideas on how to green your home, office and life. “At Home with Green”™ includes an index of green resources, terminology and principles. It also offers information on buying a green home, greening an [...]

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On September 27th, I took part in the sixth annual Walk Around the Lake for the Oral Lee Brown Foundation. The circuit is around Lake Merritt and I’ve participated every year since the beginning. Unfortunately, this year I forgot my camera, but have included some photos from previous years.

Besides supporting a great charity, the walk [...]

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Years ago, I was introduced to “cemetery walks” by my wife, Sonia. At first, I thought it rather ghoulish, until she taught me that many cemeteries were planned specifically for the living as much as memorials for the dead. One of the most beautiful of these is right here in Oakland.
Dedicated on May 25, 1865, [...]

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We are approaching the 140th anniversary of the Great Hayward Earthquake. It hit on October 21, 1868 and was reported as either a magnitude 6.8 or 7.0 — one of the most destructive in the history of California. This was also known as “the Great San Francisco Earthquake” until the more famous 7.9 disaster [...]

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In 1850, California was the 31st state admitted to the Union. The following year Oakland’s first post office opened. It was located in the Oakland House on Broadway, Oakland’s first hotel. Mail was addressed to “Contra Costa” until 1855, when the name Oakland was accepted by postal authorities. For earliest photo of Broadway, taken in [...]

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San Francisco saw increased numbers of ships carrying new arrivals during the Gold Rush, but it was Oakland that was “the mainland staging point for passengers and cargo traveling between the Bay and the Sierra foothills.” (Oakland City Timeline)
On January 24, 1848, gold was accidentally discovered at the building site of Sutter’s Mill in Coloma, [...]

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Archeological evidence shows that Oakland and surrounding areas were inhabited as early as 4000 BCE. Around the 6th century AD, tribes, collectively referred to as the Ohlone, migrated into the area extending from San Francisco down to Big Sur and east into Contra Costa County. The Ohlone were never one tribe, rather they were comprised [...]

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