Your Real Estate Expert for Berkeley and Beyond
“Marilyn is exceptional. Her knowledge base, enthusiasm for her job, professional ethics, organization, sensitivity to our aesthetic requirements, loyalty and gentle perseverance set her apart.”
-- Bill and Carol Seidel
Marilyn Garcia, PhD
Broker Associate, Realtor®
DRE# 02014153
District Homes
1758 Solano Ave.
Berkeley, CA 94707
Direct:
(510) 390-5406
THE OUTLOOK: North Berkeley & the Berkeley Hills, Annual 2021 & Winter 2021-22 results
It’s time as usual to look at the previous year’s results for our local real estate market, and also talk about the results for the winter season just ended. 2021 started off with a bang. A big upswing in buyer interest led to major competition between buyers, which led to big price increases. The craziness moderated somewhat later in the year as interest rates started increasing and more homes came on the market for sale, but values stayed at the new higher levels. In 2021, there were more properties on the market in both North Berkeley (127 active listings) and [...]
Variations in Sold Price per Square Foot
If you are a regular reader of this newsletter, you have many times encountered the notion that, everything else being equal, the amount a property sells for per square foot of living space tends to be lower for large homes, and higher for small homes. To illustrate this point, I grouped the detached homes sold in North Berkeley and the Berkeley hills* over the course of 2021 by size category, and found the average sold price per square foot for each category. The results are above. As you can see, the pattern holds as a general rule: the larger the [...]
REAL ESTATE ANSWERS: Why are most sellers in our area no longer accepting “love letters” from buyers?
Why are most sellers in our area no longer accepting “love letters” from buyers? In our market, where buying a home is a super-competitive process, it used to be the case that buyers would include a “love letter” with their offer in hopes that it would influence the seller in their favor. The letter would tell the seller about the buyers, their qualifications, and why this property would be the perfect home for them. It also often included a photo of the buyers. The idea was that, because many (even most) sellers have some emotional attachment to the property they’re [...]