Bayosphere

I was just looking over some of my blog roll links, and one that I added recently points to one of my new favorite blog roll enries — Bayosphere.

Not only are there some great articles there, but I’m also enjoying working my way down their blogroll.

For awhile I wasn’t doing a very good job of finding Bay area blogs, but now that we have Bayosphere up I can always search by ever-widening blogroll.

There must be a name for that.

Fremont Real Estate Market Update

Bubble my eye!

Fremont’s real estate market sizzled in September 2005, with that combination that sellers love — tasty high prices and low inventory. The average home in Fremont sold for $710,406, a 25.6% increase from the $565,666 average of a year before! The median home sale price in September of 2005 was $670,000.

Overall unit volume is down somewhat for this September at 259 units sold, as opposed to last year’s 316 units sold. Days on market have remained at last September’s extremely low average of 16 days.

Fremont’s inventory numbers are the lowest for any market we’ve examined so far. With 421 active residential units and 259 units sold last month, we have only 1.65 months of homes in inventory.

Oakland Crime Data

The City of Oakland publishes crime watch data on the City’s web site. You should start by reading the disclaimer and go from there. You can check by type of crime, by date range, and specific neighborhoods.

For some background on the application, see this SFGate Article.

Jenn Shreve’s Salon article poses the critical question, “What good is a site that lets Oakland, Calif., residents check on neighborhood crime stats if the people in those neighborhoods aren’t online?” Shreve goes on to interview Barry Kriberg, president of the National Council on Crime Prevention: “Rather than help neighborhood groups attack crime problems, Kriberg says the site will probably prove most useful to people deciding where (and where not) to buy homes or to insurers looking for an excuse to raise rates.”

Well, my own take on this is that I never met an insurer who needed an excuse to raise rates. As for folks being able to do research before buying a home, I see that as pretty much a good thing. One of the issues I’ve found in the other market I write about, Sacramento, is that often we get many folks from out of town finding the most inexpensive houses in inventory, and sure enough, those homes are located in the most crime-ridden neighborhoods. Of course, that’s a mistake that any beginner to the area can make, but the more people get interested in a neighborhood, the more issues like quiet and safety become important to find out about.

Some fun blogs in Fremont

I just was checking out some Fremont bloggers, courtesy of the geographical list at Globe of Blogs. I especially enjoyed finding Notes from a Yarn Hacker — that’s my new favorite Fremont blog.

I should do the right thing and put her on my blog roll.

Honorable mention goes to The Predicate, which is at least posting some news of general interest, unlike one Fremont Blogger who’s lead post was about how bad her PMS was. Yeah, well, sorry to hear it, but how many people are reading you who aren’t your gynecologist and therefore don’t really want to hear about it?

Fremont’s Mission Peak

There’s a nice shot of Mission Peak on Alison Chaiken’s Mission Peak hiking page.

Alison is shown here enjoying her tanks.

Berkeley Blogs

Find something good to read at Berkeley Blogs.

Dang, I could have gotten in there if I hadn’t been an Oakland Blog.

So close, so close and yet so far.

I didn’t get to every link, of course, but of those I did I particularly enjoyed Urbification

East Bay Blog

Can the East Bay support two great blogs (this one and another one)? Why sure. Proof of that is in the Beast Blog, because East Bay is pig latin for Beast.

In addition to unravelling such intracacies of the language, the Beast Blog will let you in on what’s happening in arts and culture in various neighborhoods.

Oakland A’s Blog

The title says it all. Play Ball!

East Bay Employment Outlook Strong

Reported in InsideBayArea.com:

“THE EAST BAY continues to see strong year-to-year job growth, with much of it coming from the construction, education and health industries, the state Employment Development Department reported Friday.

Alameda and Contra Costa counties added 15,900 jobs from July 2004 to July 2005 for a total of 1,036,900 non-farm payroll jobs. Construction accounted for 4,200 of those new jobs, with more than half in specialty trades. ”

Read Full Story.