The Oakland Real Estate Blog

This Oakland California blog and web site features listings and market information for real estate in Oakland and throughout Alameda County and the East Bay, including Berkeley, Fremont, Hayward, Pleasanton, and Livermore.

We’ve Moved

In an effort to stop bleeding money on this site, we’ve moved back to our good friends over at Kattare Internet.

A few things broke along the way — you might follow a link to a page and get redirected to one of the other main pages of the site.  Also one or two links broke along the way, but those destinations will be going away pretty soon anyway.

Actually most of the move was surprisingly uneventful — which is how we like them!

Live Search Going Away Soon

Hi Gang,

The live MLS search feature of this site will be going away in a short time — basically as soon as I can get a visitor response page coded and test the existing links.  Unfortunately, this site has yet to pay for itself, so we’re needing to cut back on some of the expenses as we wind the site down.  We may also be moving to a different hosting company by and by, but that change should be fairly transparent.

What Became of the Blogathon?

It fizzled for awhile, and then rose Phoenix-like from the ashes.  I hope Phoenixes can fly, because it then flew (yes, I’m sticking with flew) to the east, to become the Amador and El Dorado County Blogathon for Hunger.  If you want to sign up for this one, please get the flier.

Where did I go?

If anyone’s been following this blog, first of all, let me say, thank you for following this blog.  I didn’t know you were, though if I thought about it I could guess since that’s after all where most of this site’s traffic comes from.

Secondly, let me apologize, to wit:  I’m sorry I haven’t been keeping up much lately.

By way of explanation, first of all I’ve been focusing maybe 75% of my work life (or more) on actually selling real estate, rather than trying to grow my web site reach.  Business has been great out in the Sacramento area, and this site for the Oakland area has so far garnered lots of visitors but failed to produce any revenue from them.

What’s up with that?

Finally, since I’ve been busy with my Sacramento business and this site’s not making any money, I’ve been dedicating any time I do have to my Sacramento blog, and my newly launched El Dorado and Amador County Real Estate Blog.  Gosh, that name’s a little long winded, isn’t it?  Maybe I should have called it Baco-Bits.

No, Baco-Bits isn’t quite right.  Though it’s located in the heart of Republican territory (I’m sorry to say), it’s actually pork free.

So anyway, that’s what’s up with me.  This blog has some pretty strong fundamentals so it stands to make money soon.  (Hint hint, you Oakland area agents.  Come work for me or buy this blog).  But meantime till it gets a sponsor I’m off playing in the near East.

Request for Input

I’ve been thinking of what the direction for this site should be going forward, so I’m interested in constructive input about this.  I’ve been blogging here for several months, and the IDX and other pages of the site are working well.  However, I haven’t yet achieved #1 ranking on all the engines as I’d like to, and Google’s remained pretty elusive.  Somewhere along the line I probably added a tweak too far, and so that can probably be fixed.

Anyway, in the meantime, here’s a site with pretty good traffic, but I haven’t been keeping up with the blogging quite as religiously as I should given my other blogs and site work, and given the potentially vicious cycle of being somewhat disappointed with the site’s results, therefore not putting the time in, therefore etc. and so on.

So, what then?  Guest bloggers?  That would be nice.  That could even include agents in the Oakland area, and we could work out some guidelines and hammer out some ideas for how we might share the benefits.

Or, I could sell the site it or lease it outright, but as I think about this it occurs to me that I might be shooting myself in the foot, since this site is poised to take off.

Any day now.

Any day now.

Real Estate Market - Oakland Condos

August’s condo market in Oakland was something of a numerical mixed bag.  Of course “we all know” (those three little words that signify something coming up that many of us think we know) that the real estate market has cooled significantly from 2004-2005.  And some of the condo numbers support this quite neatly.  The expired to sold ratio, for example, has risen from 3.6% last August to 48.2% this August.  What’s interesting however is that unit volume has remained steady, meaning more units are being offered.  Fifty-six units were sold both this August and last August, with two expiring last August to this August’s twenty-seven.

This August, the median sale price for a Condo in Oakland was $399,000, a 2% increase over last year’s median of $390,950.   At the same time, however, the average sale price dropped 5.5%, from $416,252 last year to $394,669 this year.  Curiously enough, sellers are offering their units at almost exactly the same price this year ($394,732) as they were last year ($394,637), but last year they were getting 5.5% more than list, while this year pretty much they’re getting list price.

The average condo that sold took 37 days to sell in August, as opposed to 24 days last year.

Oakland Real Estate Market, August 2006

Not long ago we were very “bullish” on Oakland’s real estate market.  Based on numbers for Oakland and Berkeley, and especially when we compared these numbers to the Sacramento area, Oakland seemed fairly immune to the slowing we’d seen elsewhere.

Today we reassess that opinion, since the numbers are a mixed bag at best.  Appreciation still looks ok on the face of it, with the median price rising 5.88% from August to August, and the average price risiing 6.88%.  However, at the same time, buyers are getting slightly bigger homes this year than last, so sold price per square foot has actually dropped, albeit by a very slight 0.7%.

The average home sold in Oakland in August for $619,214, or 1% more than the average list of 614,678.  The median sale price was $540,000.  Average days on market were up slightly, from 22 days last year to 30 this year, but expireds were up more significantly, from 65 total last year to 137 this year.  With declining sold unit volume as well (393 units last August versus 263 this August), the expired to sold ratio has shifted from 16.5% last year to 52.1% this year.

Inventory is currently at 4.9 months.

Oakland Condo Inventory Tops Seven Months

Traditional wisdom is that when the market adjusts downward, the first segment of the market to feel the price drops is the condo market. Today I thought it would be illuminating to look at condo sales for July of 2006 in Oakland, to see how much the sales are off. Sure enough, the median sale price is down slighty (2.04%), from last July’s median of $393,000 to this July’s value of $385,000. On a sold price per square foot basis, however, prices are down only by a very slight margin, of .21%.

Meantime, inventory is quite high at 7.6 months, and many of the units that are for sale are expiring. Last July, five units expired versus 52 sold, for an expired to sold ratio of 9.6%. This year the numbers are 22 expireds to 37 solds, putting the ratio at 59.5%.

The average condo that sold through the MLS in July of 2006 listed for $415,837 and sold for $418,795. The median sale price was $385,00.

The Enterprise of Blogging

My visible friend, Kris Berg, recently posted an interesting article about how strongly she feels about doing her own blogging, and not doing Walmart style real estate, serving clients directly, and other similar ideas.  I find that article a handy springboard for today’s I ain’t gonna publish MLS statistics no-more no-more (at least till tomorrow) rant:  Johnnie’s love-hate relationship with real estate.

I hope Kris will remain my visible friend once she reads the dastardly revelations in this post.  I’m pretty sure she will.  First of all, if blogging is indeed group therapy, as Kris claims, then I have to be honest, or it won’t work.  At least I think that’s how you’re supposed to do group therapy.

Anyway, with this in mind, I’d like to “share something” that’s been “on my chest”.  “Let go your pain, and gain strength from the sharing…”  “You’re Vulcan???”  Oh wait, that was a movie.
Anyway, here’s my big revelation.  I love doing Walmart style real estate.  Let’s face it, I’m a total mercenary.  I think that getting to be a rainmaker, out here on the Internets (as Monseiur Colbert calls them — I mean “it”) is the best thing you can do.  Then when a home buyer or seller comes in, let a friendly and competent colleague do the work and get 75% of the commission, with a nice tasty 25% referral to Johnnie for typing his fingers to the bone.  I love Walmart.  I want to have Walmart’s babies.

Ich bin ein interloper.

My ex-interloper boss, Dave Liniger, probably has a guy like me in mind when he talks about interlopers and interceptors.  And I do admire what Dave’s trying to do — passing along “free” leads to his agents.

Of course, let’s take this in context — REMAX is a broker like other brokers, and the free leads you get at REMAX cost you your split (or association fee, or what have you), so they’re not really free.  I’m not saying that’s a bad thing.  Dave is a fellow mercenary, and he’s clearly more successful at mercernarying than I am.  I am, after all, a soldier of misfortune.

Now where the heck was I?  Oh yes, I love Walmart.  I got a lead, you got a car, let’s make some money!  I want to grow up to be Walmart.  I want to have Walmart’s babies.

One problem with my Walmart business model is that it relies at least in part on a third party eight hundred pound gorilla, who for any given web venture may or may not decide I’m worthy of some banana.

But hey, no job is perfect.  But in what other job could you have as much fun as I’m having now, doing what I’m doing now, dressed as I am, with the commute I didn’t have?

I may have discovered my calling.

Concord Real Estate — July 2006 Market Update

Concord’s residential real estate marekt showed some significant slowing from last year in July. Sold units were down some 41%, from 216 sold in July of 2005 to 128 in July 2006. Moreover, units that did sell took “on average exactly” (is that an oxymoron) twice as long to sell, as average days on market rose from fourteen days to twenty-eight. We should point out, however, that twenty-eight days is still not a long time as these things go, so one might say that a well priced house in Concord still moves fairly well.

The average home sold for $535,044 in July, or 99% of the average list price of $538,345. The median sale price was $525,000.

This year’s crop of homes was somewhat larger than last year’s. As a result, the 2.25% increase in the average sale price from July to July can be considered somewhat “nominal”, since the average cost per square foot declined by an almost equal amount, 2.28%, during the same time.

Inventory is getting fairly high by Bay Area standards, at 5.8 months.

Some navigation changes

I’ve just made a few changes to the site navigation to make things easier for users, and to try to get more of the important stuff up front where it belongs. The general real estate articles have been pushed further in to the site, but they’re now available through this single index, rather than cluttering up three links from the home page. Meantime I’ve also created a modest list of Oakland Area Links for your viewing pleasure. This is not everything and the kitchen sink — just a few favorites.

Walnut Creek Weirdness

The data for residential real estate sales in Walnut Creek in July 2006 are something of a puzzle.  Inventory is not too bad, at 4.4 months.  Average days on market are up from 12 to 18, but that latter number is hardly the end of the world.

The strangest thing about the numbers is that the average home size for sold homes has shrunk 27%, from 1747 square feet in July of 2005 to 1270 square feet in 2006.  As a result, we’re presented with a situation in which price per square foot has gone up 25%, while the median sale price is down by 14%!

Expireds are not especially high in Walnut Creek, with the expired to sold ratio currently at 27.8%.

The average home that sold in Walnut Creek in July 2006 fetched a hefty $570 per square foot, listing at $730,585 and selling at $723,859.  The median sale price was $672,000.

Hayward Real Estate Market, July 2006

July’s residential sales in Hayward, California has slowed significantly compared to a year ago, according to my most recent look at BayEast MLS statistics.  Ninety-eight units sold in July, down 43% from the 172 units sold last July.  At the same time, the number of listings that expired rose from 12 to 43, bringing the expired to sold ratio up from a meager 7% in July of 2005 to 44% in July of 2006.  Inventory is fairly high at 6.4 months.

The average home sold in Hayward in July for $577,778, a tad more than the average list of $576,247.  The median sale price was $572,000.

In terms of appreciation, this year’s numbers are still up slightly over last year’s. Price per square foot rose 1.9% over the period, while the average price increased 5% and the median increased 4%.

Feeding Frenzy in Fremont

OK, I admit it — sometimes I’m just too impressed by what one can do with aliteration to think things through. When I was a kid the other kids would accuse me of being aliterate. At least I think that’s what they said.

So I’m not sure if there’s really any kind of feeding Frenzy going on in Fremont, but boy it made a good title. Less poetically, one might say that Fremont’s real estate market is down like everyone else, but holding its own considering what other areas are seeing.

Appreciation from last July to this July has been low, with the median sale price up 5.03%, the average up 2.4%, and the sale price per square foot rising a mere 1.8%. And unit volume is way off, down 42% from last year’s 270 units to a total number sold this year of 157. Inventory is somewhat high by bay area standards, at 3.8 months — in other markets this would hardly be considered a disaster.

Strangely enough, however, this year’s expired numbers (26 total, 16.6% expired to sold ratio) are actually better than last year’s (47 total, 17.4% ratio). Perhaps more than anything else this points up how hard-wired the human brain is to expect regularity in the data. Sometimes the data have other ideas.

The average home sold in Fremont in July for $456 per square feet, listing for $698,901 and selling for $696,856. The median sale price was $680,000.

On Not Giving Up

Well, I’ve been blogging about Oakland and surrounding areas for some time now.  It’d be nice to see a few more requests for information or the like come through.

It’s interesting to see how much the Internet real estate landscape has changed even in the past few years.  When I started my first site for the Sacramento area, there weren’t that many Realtors® competing on the Internet — perhaps less than 50%.  Now some 70% of my colleagues have a web site of some sort.  Of course, that makes my job tougher, because my dirtly little secret (to the extent I have one) is that I want you to call off of this site.

Oh, he’s running a business!  Well, sometimes I think so, anyway.  In Sacramento I am.

Anywho, I’m sure that as I continue to write things will turn around, it’s just a question of when.  I don’t think it’s possible to have fifty gazillion pages indexed and not be on the top of all the search engine results.  Like Kirk building his cannon to fire at the Gorn, “If he has the time, Doctor…if he has the time.”

Sorry — just a bit of a whiney interlude.