East Bay Realty Pro Blog

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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After my latest newspaper column, “Real Estate is Like Politics,” appeared, a reader sent me this email:
“You hit the nail on the head with your article on real estate and politics. It was a well articulated rant on what I generally can’t stand about your industry. I meet SO MANY dopey realtors. It just makes [...]

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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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Oakland Magazine’s third annual reader’s survey of the “Best of Oakland” is now out. [Note: URL does say “2006,” but it really is 2008. Also, not all restaurants on the list were actually in Oakland]
You can review the picks in a plethora of categories for this year, as well as the previous two. Here [...]

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Many people are influenced more by fluff than substance
As our U.S. presidential election sweeps into high gear, various pundits pontificate about the differences between the candidates and parties. One thing is quite clear – our country is about evenly divided between those who value identifying serious concerns and how to solve them, and those to [...]

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The other day, as I stood at the front door of my new listing, I noticed the delicious smell of chocolate. As a lover of the sweet stuff, I found the scent both pleasant and puzzling. Where was that unmistakable scent coming from?

As I was outside taking flyer and Web photos of the house, I [...]

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The funniest blog comment I have read so far about the Federal government bailout of FNMA and Freddie Mac was, “There goes the American peso…I mean dollar.” It will cost each of us taxpayers, but will it help purchasers?
Given that conforming interest rates (a loan of up to $417,000 in California) fell about half a [...]

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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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