Janis Mara covers East Bay real estate as a freelancer for Berkeleyside. She has worked at the Oakland Tribune, the Marin Independent Journal, the Contra Costa Times, Adweek and Inman News, an Emeryville-based national real estate trade publication, winning California Newspaper Publishers Association and Digital First Media awards for investigative work, business coverage and education writing. Email her or follow her on Twitter.
Secrets, and sometimes deceptive practices, are revealed when a house goes up for sale and home inspectors peer into basements, attics and behind electrical panels.
Only a tiny percentage of real estate agents in the U.S. are people of color, and the same is true in Berkeley and the East Bay despite the relative diversity of the area.
It’s now possible to whip out your phone at work and fire up your crockpot, turn on the heating and re-lock your front door at home. Smart-home gadgets are in the ascendant.
Cal’s undergraduate student population increased 15% in the last decade. The university is making some progress, although slow, at adding more housing.
Hundreds of people gathered Thursday night to hear what kind of housing could be built at the North Berkeley BART station. Officials vowed to be as transparent as possible.
Berkeley and BART officials are holding a meeting Thursday night to allay fears and start the discussion about what could be built. There are no current plans to build anything.
Sometimes when neighbors object to a project and work with the developers, the building gets better. Sometimes it just gets stopped.
Senior co-housing, like one such community in Oakland, is on the upswing as more aging adults look for alternatives to institutional living.
Some locals are fine with the 8-story apartment building proposed for a vacant lot on San Pablo. Others cite spoilt views and increased traffic congestion as objections.
SB 827, that would have California cities allow denser, taller housing developments near transit hubs, has ignited controversy in Berkeley and nationally.
Local homeowners are besieging Alameda County tax officials with questions about the best way to handle their property taxes under the new federal tax code passed by Congress.
Growth may be slowing locally, but that doesn’t spell a downturn in terms of local real estate, according to real estate experts on the ground.
Construction work revealed vintage signage for a long shuttered ice cream parlor at 2101 University Ave.
Thi two-bedroom, two-bath Oakland condo is the last available unit of six in a converted Methodist church, a historic landmark built in the early 1900s.
The Oakland-San Francisco-San Jose metro area is one of the top 20 homebuying markets in the country for single women, according to a new study.
It is generally not the best idea to sell a home “off-market,” because fewer people learn about a home, which might limit the sales price. Sometimes, though, it works.
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