Blog

Mar

Mortgage Assistance, First Time Homebuyers, Berkeley, Oakland, Alameda County

Posted In: First Time Home Buyers, Mortgage & Finance

http://www.oaklandnet.com/government/hcd/loansgrants/homebuyers.html

Mar

Zilpy.com : Great Rental Resource

Posted In: Rentals

What Is Zilpy? Zilpy is a free online rental market facts and analysis service dedicated to help you make better rental and investment decisions. We do exactly what you would do if you had to do the analysis yourself – collect data from all available sources (newspaper classifieds, online classifieds, apartment rentals, etc.) and filter the data based on your [...]

Mar

Housing Snapshot: Seven Bay Area Counties: February 2009

Posted In: Local Market Statistics, Mortgage & Finance, Uncategorized

Mar

Rate Watch 3/5/09

Posted In: Mortgage & Finance, Uncategorized

30 Year Fixed Conforming: 5.375%/5.411%APR 30 Year Fixed Agency-Jumbo: 5.625%/5.742%APR 15 Year Fixed Agency-Jumbo: 5.000%/5.194%APR 5 Year Fixed Conforming (1 Point): 4.375%/4.483%APR 5 Year Fixed Int.Only Conforming (1 Point): 4.490%/4.502%APR

Mar

Oakland Athletics 2009 Home Schedule

Posted In: Community, Fun for Grown Ups, Fun for Kids, Oakland

Oakland Athletics 2009 Home Schedule (Updated as of 2/2/2009) APRIL DATE OPPONENT START TIME (ET) Saturday, April 4 Giants at Athletics 1:05 PM Friday, April 10 Mariners at Athletics 7:05 PM Saturday, April 11 Mariners at Athletics 1:05 PM Sunday, April 12 Mariners at Athletics 1:05 PM Monday, April 13 Red Sox at Athletics 7:05 PM Tuesday, April 14 Red [...]

Mar

Homebuyers in California To Enjoy $18,000 Tax Credit- No Wonder We Are In Trouble

Posted In: New Home Sales, Taxes

Ok, stop the insanity. No wonder California is broke. There’s the $8,000 federal tax credit for first-time home buyers. And now California has upped the ante, offering a tax credit worth up to $10,000 to any home buyer, first time or not, of any income level, who buys a home between March 1, 2009 and March 1, 2010. There’s just [...]

Mar

What Is Your Architectural IQ?

Posted In: Architecture, For the Heck of It

Rusticated lintel on dormer’s roundel? Huh? Travesty! What better way to appear all cool and sophisticated at your next cocktail party than to impress those around you with your knowledge of architecture by using obscure architectrual terms? Here are a few key interesting ones to remember- click on the image for a larger view.

Feb

Reassessment of Property Taxes in Alameda County

Posted In: Taxes

A reader pointed me in the direction of this, taken directly from the assessors website: “If property taxpayers wish to request an individual informal review of their property’s 2009-10 assessed value after receiving the July 2009 notification, they may do so by returning a simple, printable form available on the Assessor’s website http://www.acgov.org/assessor/reassessments.htm. Property owners not in agreement with their [...]

Feb

Berkeley Broker’s Tour- I’m Happy

Posted In: For the Heck of It

Here is a napkin I picked up from an agent serving snacks during broker’s tour. I just had to share!

Feb

Days On Market, Last 2 Years: Berkeley, Albany, El Cerrito, Kensington, Richmond and Oakland

Posted In: Albany, Berkeley, El Cerrito, Kensington, Local Market Statistics, Oakland, Richmond

Let’s take a look at what the average days on market has done over the last two years in each of our neighborhoods. Percentages are from Jan/07 vs. Jan/09. Albany, down 66% Jan 2007 24 Jan 2008 43 Jan 2009 8 Berkeley, all, down 7% Jan 2007 45 Jan 2008 43 Jan 2009 42 Berkeley Hills, up 7% Jan 2007 [...]