Category: Buying A Home

We love helping people find and buy homes. We especially love helping first-time buyers learn the ins and outs of the process and the market. However, it can be a daunting process with the competitive market here in Oakland and in the San Francisco Bay Area in General. Working with first-time buyers and those on tight budgets during last spring’s overheated sellers’ market was heartbreaking. So many offers made and so many passed over in favor of higher or all-cash bids. One of the most frequently-asked questions we received was “Aside from increasing the amount of money we’re offering, what

If you’re one of those people who won’t buy a product or use a service until you’ve checked the online reviews, then you are as pleased as we are with the proliferation of review sites. Do you ever wonder if a lot of the glowingly positive reviews are fake? Hey, we don’t blame you – skepticism is healthy. And, thankfully, some sites, such as Yelp, have strict policies to ensure that the reviews are from real people who’ve actually used the product or service. It’s not as easy to find reviews of real estate agents as it is, say, a

With the median home value in Oakland hovering near $700,000, you might be staring at your latest bank account numbers and looking like this:  There are few things in life more frustrating than that longing to own your own home, combined with the very real fact that your bank account is a bit on the skimpy side. You know that buying your own home is part of #adulting and will help you build equity and stop throwing away money on rent, and on and on. But I totally get it. Saving money for that down payment, especially when you live

Are you a millennial? Hey, me too! Do you know the number one reason that so many millennials aren’t getting into the housing market in Oakland? Often, it’s all about that stubborn student loan debt. Grr, education! ::shakes fist:: In fact, a recent study by the Federal Reserve claims that the 12 million of us millennials in our 30s with student loan debt owe more than those in their 20s. ::shakes fist again:: The average student loan balance for the former sits at slightly more than $34,000 and most of us are, or were, grad students, according to U.S. News