In contract this past March after reducing its list price from $5,500,000 to $4,795,000, as plugged-in people know 5950 Margarido over in Rockridge fell out of contract when the sale of the buyer’s house fell out of contract as well.
Relisted for $4,300,000 in June, on Friday its list price was reduced to $3,950,000.
Oakland makes the bright lights of Socketsite once again (smile and a BIG sigh). I truly love Oakland and I want the best for my City! I really, really wanted this house to sell in the 5’s however felt as though when listed, 3.5 was an acceptable ‘asking’ or starting price. We will see…
Go Oakland! This is coming from a LA Dodgers fan.
I love Oakland too. I don’t love the particularly callous murders that seem to take place there weekly.
@realtormom, it all depends on which part of Oakland, just like which part of San Francisco.
I have to second Oakland Chap’s love of Oakland in that I feel that the Rockridge/Claremont area is one of the most unique collections of historic residential architecture in Northern California.
I also wish the best for the builder on this wonderful home.
No, the very scary and real problem with some of these recent slaying is that they’re in the burgeoning downtown restaurant area. And I’m sorry but Oakland and SF are not even remotely comparable when it comes to murder rate.
The house is beautiful, but “unparalleled views” seems a bit exaggerated.
Wow, assuming that the agreed upon price for the sale that fell apart was somewhere around 4.3 (and probably exactly that), it’s down around 7% in 5 months. That’s north of 15% per year that property is losing value.
That had to hurt, being so close to a sale, and coming to grips that the market is falling that quickly.
tipster, I look at it this way. The would-be buyers who (voluntarily or not) changed their minds must be dancing in the streets at their good fortune.
This house is further from the recent downtown murder(s) than most houses in Piedmont are, so try not to get too hysterical.
most of the dangerous parts of oakland are well isolated from the nicer areas.
so far in san francisco this year
alamo square 1 homicide
sunset 2 homicides
noevalley 1 homicide
richmond 1 homicide
castro 1 homicide
hayes valley 1 homicide
each of these neighborhoods have had more homicides than the entire oakland hills.
oakland really keeps housing projects away from the nicer areas.maybe that was the intent in sf but noe valley,hayes valley and protero are now fairly desirable areas very close to housing projects(which each seem to have the requisite gangbangers)
I understand all of that and no one is hysterical. the problem is the particularly callous nature of the recent ones in restaurant areas where average Oakland residents will indeed venture out to. If you do not think it is a problem you have not recently spoken to anybody in the food industry about the issue.
The would-be buyers who (voluntarily or not) changed their minds must be dancing in the streets at their good fortune.
I am not sure they are dancing, as they obviously had problems selling their own property. Good thing they had that contingency checked.
The lower asking price might be a good incentive for them to lower THEIR own asking price to make a sale and snatch this coveted property.
That’s one of the ways price drops tend to propagate across the market. Opportunity balanced with lower expectations.
^^^^ Of course it is disturbing, but it has little to do with the desirability of this house.
If this house were located a mile south, it would be much closer to the murders, but be in Piedmont, and folks would be complementing how close it was to Dracena park!
realtormon: Not sure what you’re referring to in Oakland that is any different from the violence that happens in the Mission. (Which continues to have a thriving restaurant/bar scene in spite of itself…) No doubt the Oakland brand is in need of some serious rehabilitation but really reality is nowhere near perception.
That’s not true. You don’t have six kids with their shirts off in the middle of the street stopping cars in the Mission. You don’t have a father and son getting ethnically profiled by predators and then brutally beaten in broad daylight in the Mission. You don’t have people getting robbed for $17 and then shot and killed in broad daylight the Mission either. The Mission has problems and people are foolish to think it does not, but it’s not the same thing. Plus the gang injunctions in the Mission are working.
I’m not sure what the six kids stopping cars is a reference to, but there are some great things to do in Oakland, and it’s great that the stats show crime is down relative to 2009, despite the recent high profile violent crimes.
However, the recent budget cuts and the fact that Oakland cops intentionally don’t investigate many types of crime will result in people trying to take the law into their own hands, creating only more violence. It’s sad to think that Oakland’s crime and violence situation could get worse before it gets better. The Chron detailed this recently:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/17/MN6R1EFHC0.DTL
I’m not sure what the six kids stopping cars is a reference to
Why not?
realtormon, that’s some ignorant arguments you have going on. I live in the hills, and almost never go to downtown. Piedmont Ave, Aockridge, and Montclair are where I, and everyone I know in the area frequent.
Sounds to me like you’re just an Oakland hater. Probably because you’re worried about people moving to Oakland instead of your sainted San Francisco.
realtormon — care to provide a link? I’m familiar with the other stories that you mentioned, but not that one.
It’s not like the Mission doesn’t have random daytime violence though:
http://missionmission.wordpress.com/2009/05/21/beatdown-and-mugging-on-capp-and-24th/
Of course one of the hipsters comments as is stereotypical: “lol mission still got it.”
It’s something that has happened to myself and to a few friends. One guy, who teaches in Berkeley, told me it happens constantly. Just an anecdote is all, but some kids on some blocks over there can’t be bothered in the slightest, and I’d be surprised if you need to read it on the internet in order to believe that.
are we actually fighting for bragging rights on whose town is the most violent?
No. I’m saying Oakland is in the middle of a real crisis, and SF is not.
“Oakland is in the middle of a real crisis, and SF is not” (@realtormom 4:20pm)
Really? What about what happened in Dolores Park two days ago?
http://sfappeal.com/alley/2010/07/man-beaten-robbed-stabbed-by-group-in-dolores-park.php
realtorman -you are seriously trying to say the mission doesn’t have a gang and violence problem after this incident this past weekend?
(07-31) 18:14 PDT San Francisco — A 40-year-old San Francisco man was clinging to life today after being stabbed repeatedly and robbed early this morning in the city’s Dolores Park, police said.
The victim, whose name was not released, was in the park near 19th and Church streets at about 1:30 a.m.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/31/MN031EN2CE.DTL#ixzz0vaXV8xbr
No, I didn’t say that and the Dolores thing was certainly very awful. In fact I said that the Mission has problems and people are foolish to ignore that. Not an Oakland hater at all. I’m an Oakland supporter who has had to change the way I view Oakland in light of recent events. Getting jumped in a park at 2:00 in the early morning hours, alone, is not the same thing as getting shot in the face in broad daylight in a restaurant district. OK?
Dolores Park is now officially in Noe Valley.
I know it’s fun to argue on the interwebz with anecdotes, one-upping each other with individual incidents (“Oh yeah? Think THAT’S bad? Then whatddaya think of THIS? HUH? HUH?”), but I thought I’d take an intermission with some facts about violent crimes, normalized by population, for SF:
http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-San-Francisco-California.html
and for OAK:
http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Oakland-California.html
I’ll let the data speak for itself, as I’ve never been a victim of violent crime, so I don’t have the qualifications to be sufficiently emotional.
If anyone can provide better links (e.g. that show similar population normalized stats for 2009 and 2010), that would be cool.
kurt brown-my point is that the majority of homicides in oakland are specific parts of the city (east and west oakland)
the oakland hills and foothills are very safe residential areas especially when compared to
middleclass/affluent areas of san francisco
so far this year
alamo square 1 homicide
sunset 2 homicides
noevalley 1 homicide
richmond 1 homicide
castro 1 homicide
hayes valley 1 homicide
the entire oakland hills 0 homicides
in addition piedmont ave,jack london sq,grand/lakeshore,rockridge,mountclair village ,old oakland have a signifigant number of oaklands nicer restaurants and they have much fewer homicides than the mission ,hayes valley,soma,tenderloin which contain about one third of the sf chronicle’s top 100 restaurants for sf.
i believe where the crimes occur is important.
if you buy a $2 million dollar sfh in noe valley or alamo square and someone is murdered a block away it hard to argue it’s not important(although a lot of people in sf do)
“if you buy a $2 million dollar sfh in noe valley or alamo square and someone is murdered a block away it hard to argue it’s not important(although a lot of people in sf do)”
Hence the platitude “SF is block by block” that you often hear around here and elsewhere.
i honestly don’t understand
mountclair 6-7 miles from east oakland,the city of piedmont between east oakland and mountclair, and maybe 1 homicide in the last 10 years is dangerous but the sunset with 2 homicides in the last 4 months and 6 in the last 3 years is considered safer?
it just dosen’t seem logical.
Nobody said Montclair is dangerous.
This area is lovely, but this fantastic home is just a bit ahead of the rest of the market there. Having the best home on the block can be a prize, and also a kind of curse. Even in some of the nicest areas of Marin, Woodside, Los Altos Hills, or Saratoga a house such as this would still stand out. If this were located at the top of Piedmont then it might have sold by now.
Not to detract from the conversation, but the latest neighborhood comp is shown as under contract. Across the street, 6001 Margarido (4,953 sq.ft.) received a NOTS on May 18, 2010 and was listed for $1.55 million (purchased for $2.15 million in Oct. 2005 with $1.935 million from Countrywide). Should provide an interesting data point once it closes. And perhaps a comp to be, two houses over from that, 6025 Margarido (6/5 3,500 sq.ft.) has had a streaks of NODs, NOTS, and cancellations. The latest NOD, from World Savings Bank, was recorded on June 11.
FYI, I took and I’m taking no position in the argument about which city/nabe is more or less dangerous besides the one that says “sometimes data is helpful.”
I’m from Detroit. Everywhere is safe to me.
No surprise you can find condos in Oakland under 100K that you wouldn’t even dream of finding in SF for 300 or 400K (with parking!). A few minutes of BART away, but a complete separate universe.
Every house in Piedmont is closer to that burger king than the house featured on this thread.
lol which universe is the tenderloin and hunters point in?
i get the feeling a lot of SFers like to pretend these areas don’t exist or that drug dealers and gangbangers in sf are special because….well…..it’s san francisco.wh
Right. The bustling restaurant scene of Hunters Point! The fine dining of the Tendo (OK, maybe there are a few, but not at Hyde and Polk or surrounding).
I made one point, and one point only, and it was to do with the unfortunate aspect that is the burgeouning downtown Oakland resto scene getting ruined by a series of bad events by bad actors.
meep,
even BV/HP are more expensive than pretty mellow areas of Oakland.
1242sf of New construction in Oakland for 99,900
http://www.trulia.com/property/3015357906-1425-8th-St-Oakland-CA-94607
In Bayview, to get just under 300K on condos over 1000sf you have to go BMR at 4800 3rd street…
realtormom, the point meep keeps making and you keep refusing to acknowledge is that the purported “burgeoning restaurant scene” in *Downtown Oakland* (never mind that the most buzzed about new restaurant in Oakland is on Piedmont Ave) is nowhere near this house and is therefore pretty much irrelevant to this post. I live in Piedmont and am far more likely to go out to dinner in SF (20 minutes away) as I am to go out anywhere in Oakland (10 minutes away). And of the places I have eaten out in the east bay, exactly one of them (Pican) was downtown.
What happens (or doesn’t) in DT Oakland really doesn’t affect my life one way or the other. And this house is even farther away from DT Oakland than I am.
I get that and I’ve addressed that. If you want to say that these folks up on the hill never ever go downtown, or that having an unsafe city center does not effect quality of life, whether indirectly or not, then that’s your opinion. But I doubt it.
Lots of great restaurants downtown Oakland so I’m sure the recent high profile crimes haven’t helped business.
http://www.meetdowntownoak.com/listing.php?CID=36
Check out Flora if you haven’t been. Worth the drive (or even better the BART ride) to the East Bay.
Still the, chances of actually getting mugged is pretty low…Gotta weigh the risks/rewards.
realtormom, the relevant “city center” for me, and, I suspect, most people who live in Oakland, Piedmont, and Berkeley, is San Francisco, where I spend 50-60 hours a week working, and where it’s (therefore) easiest for me to get to for dinner (or whatever) on any day other than Saturday or Sunday.
When in the East Bay, most of the places I go are *not* in DT Oakland. Not because I’m scared away from it, but because there are other areas (e.g., college avenue) that are both closer and have more going on. So whatever “high profile crimes” may be happening in downtown Oakland really don’t have any effect on my quality of life at all. This is presumably true for most of the other East-Bayers who don’t live in or particularly near to downtown Oakland.
(To put a point on exactly how irrelevant these supposedly “high profile” incidents are to me, your posts on this thread are the first place I’d even heard of any of them. Not that this proves they’re unimportant generally (e.g., to people who live there), but certainly that downtown Oakland and what might go on there has no bearing whatsoever on my life. Local news and crime reports about this area are just not something I’d ever even think to look at or care about. I think the fact that this house is more or less in the suburbs is what accounts for its failure to sell for $5M — not the fact that there have apparently been some violent incidents in DT Oakland recently.)
Shza, this house is a 12-15 minute (challenging) walk to the Rockridge bart, and is possibly less “suburban” than wherever you live in Piedmont 🙂
As you mention, Piedmont is literally surrounded by Oakland, and closer to its ghettos than this house, but I have *never* heard anyone disparage the quality of life in Piedmont for things taking place in the Oakland killing fields.
As for the price, who knows? I suspect the reason it doesn’t sell for 5 million is the same reason it wouldn’t sell for 10 million. But there’s a google bus that leaves from West Oakland (!), so maybe they should keep the faith 🙂
dub dub & meep,
Thank you for posting interesting facts. I really think this says it all from meep:
“most of the dangerous parts of oakland are well isolated from the nicer areas.”
so far in san francisco this year:
alamo square 1 homicide
sunset 2 homicides
noevalley 1 homicide
richmond 1 homicide
castro 1 homicide
hayes valley 1 homicide
I have discussed with many the fact that crime in Oakland is rarely targeted (or near) the innocent in ‘decent’ neighborhoods or the majority of Oakland. East & West have their fair share of problems no doubt where generally the crime involves known or associated victims.
The recent serious violence wave Downtown will fade. If you compare Oakland’s Downtown district crime stats to many Downtown districts across America, you will find similar problems.
Give it a few seconds to load:
http://tinyurl.com/2fa8baz