April 2007

Jade - Another new Condo Development in Downtown Oakland

Friday, April 27th, 2007 at 3:26pm. 36927 Views, 0 Comments.

Jade is another one of the newest condo developments in Oakland. It's centrally located, similiar to Broadway Grand and Citywalk and was designed with urban living in mind. It's located at 15th and Jefferson, and the units range from 625 to 1544 square feet. There are studio, 1 and 2 bedroom condominium flats, and there are 2 bedroom townhome style condominiums. The developer is Meritage Homes, and they claim that extra attention was paid to insulating for sound suppression. The floorplans are open and modern, which is the trend for new condo developments.

One of the unique features about Jade is the state of the art parking system which uses a type of hydraulic shelving system to literally "stack" cars on top of one another. The development also uses…

Read Full Post »

Oakland Real Estate | The City Walk Condos

Thursday, April 19th, 2007 at 1:28pm. 3370 Views, 6 Comments.

Oakland's City Walk is a community of 252 homes, consisting of flats, lofts and live-work city residences. It will feature 6 levels of metal stud construction, with below-ground parking and 2500 sq feet of retail space at the ground level.

These condos are centrally located, and according to City Walk they feature the following:

• Gated Community
• 24 hr concierge and fitness center
• covered garage with motorcycle and bike spaces
• high quality steel and concrete construction
• floor to ceiling windows
• spacious, well designed floorplans
• Urban retreat with Zen-like sensibilities
• First class design and finishes in the homes and common areas
• Structured Cat5 wiring

The units range from…

Read Full Post »

Oakland Real Estate-Sub-Prime Market Update

Monday, April 9th, 2007 at 1:24pm. 947 Views, 0 Comments.

The collapse of the Sub-Prime mortgage industry means that it will be much harder to obtain 100% financing for those who have low credit. In recent years, lenders offered 100% financing to anyone who met the basic qualifications, and the minimum credit score necessary to obtain these loans was pretty low. 

Both lenders and borrowers relied on ever-appreciating home values to offset the risk involved with such loans. The problem is, many of these loans were interest-only type loans which allowed the monthly payment to be significantly less than they would be with a fixed payment. Many borrowers didn't understand how much the payment could increase once the interest rate reset after the two or three year period of interest only payments. In many cases,…

Read Full Post »

Mortgage Fraud In the Bay Area

Monday, April 2nd, 2007 at 1:49pm. 1125 Views, 0 Comments.

The FBI recently opened a new office in Contra Costa County to deal with the mortgage fraud caseload in the Bay Area. Unfortunately, mortgage fraud is most prevalent in markets with the highest activity, such as ours. There are many variations of loan fraud, but one of the most common scenarios is when a buyer submits an offer on a home and requests credits back at the close of escrow. Typically, credits to the buyer (for repairs or closing costs) are limited to 6% of the purchase price of the real estate. However in recent years, buyers have been requesting credits of 50-100k at the close of escrow. Techinically it was mortgage fruad then, but these credits were approved with most lenders when the market was hot. In reality this type of credit inflates…

Read Full Post »