Nice homes for sale in Oakland Home. We have two ! Click pictures to find yours

Mary Janaitis has listed for sale the three-bedroom, 1.25.-bath home at 349 42nd St. in North Oakland for $698,000.

Janaitis acquired the property in Jan. 2009. The 1,794-square-foot house was built in 1915. It is located in Temescal subdivision. Deborah Lopez of Paragon Real Estate Group is the listing agent for the home.

Janaitis is a human resources generalist and the founder of MSJ Consulting. She previously served as director of human resources for the Asia Pacific Region of Arthur D. Little, a management consulting firm. She was a program facilitator at NAWBO-SF Bay Area and an interim HR director at Eden Housing Inc.

She received her bachelor’s in English from Cornell University.

According to BlockShopper.com, there have been 463 home sales in North Oakland during the past 12 months, with a median price of $388,000.

Nice two bedroom with large backyard $130,000

Superb live/work loft near Emeryville and I-580, only minutes to downtown Oakland.

Drummer Max Weinberg and his wife Rebecca are selling their mid-century home in the Hollywood Hills for $3,399,000, says the Real Estalker.

The house — near Runyon Canyon Park, the celebrity-heavy running and hiking area – was once owned by Stephen Gyllenhaal and Naomi Foner, the now-divorced parents of Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Check out the listing on REALTOR.com®.

Situated behind gates, the house is very intimate with the outdoors, having huge banks of windows and pivoting doors that open to the back yard. There is also a shower outside to go along with the five bedrooms and three baths inside.

Where once the Gyllenhaal-Foner’s had xeriscapic landscaping designed by Jay Griffith, the grounds are now green with lawn under the short-lived Weinberg administration, the Real Estalker points out.

The Weinbergs bought the house in February 2009. They are known to be, the Real Estalker says, “prolific flippers,” having bought and sold many properties for a scant profit.

Weinberg, you’ll remember, was with Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band from the mid-’70s through parts of the ’90s but he was Conan O’Brien’s band leader on Late Night…. starting in 1993. He followed O’Brien west when he took over The Tonight Show from Jay Leno, only to see O’Brien ousted after a short tenure and Weinberg along with it.

Celebrity Real Estate Stories

* Attachmate founder Frank Pritt re-lists his Portabello Estate (photo above) in Corona Del Mar, CA, for $49.5 million — a huge drop from the original list price of $79 million in 2006. [Source: Wall Street Journal's Private Properties]
* Hollywood couple Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds bought this modern mid-century home in Los Feliz, CA. [Source: The Real Estalker]
* The “Malibu Party House” sells for $14.9 million to shoe and handbag-design couple Bruce and Kathy Makowsky of Long Island, N.Y. [Source: LA Times Hot Property]
* Actor Liam Neeson’s Central Park West co-op sold for $1.35 million after being on the market for just five days. [Source: Curbed NY]
* MSNBC host Rachel Maddow buys West Village Apartment from REM lead singer Michael Stipe. {Source: Curbed NY]

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Second watch spotlighting mortgage modification system.

Read our related post.

“Bad Luck” music by Harold Melvin & Blue Notes and thanks to most home lenders.

Owner waited too long. Hope for a loan mod !

short sale information.

The homeowner waited to long to put their home on market to short sale their home. Lenders are longer patient, homes are going into foreclosure is less than 60 days not 180+ days like earlier this year !

Read an article from the Wall Street Journal.

We are short sale experts and licensed Realtors. We have save over 17 distressed homeowners save their credit since January and over three dozen distressed property owners since 2007. Lenders want to approve more short sales.
Seventy percent (70%) of our listings are sold in less than 6 weeks, not 6 months !
Lenders are not playing around. ACT NOW BEFORE YOUR CREDIT DETERIORATES FURTHER AND LOSE YOUR CREDITS CARDS AND MORE !

Hire us today, www.wmpre.com, no cost to you ! Banks pay commissions and costs.

Loan modifications failures lead to foreclosure - hire us to save your credit

Another quality listing and sale By Le Ronda Gaines, www.wmpre.com

View my recent transactions.

Le Ronda Gaines, Realtor Watermark Properties

Direct :510.469.8979
leronda@wmpre.com

$105,000

1 Bedrooms
1 Baths 687 Est. Sq. Ft.

View details.

Theresa can sell your property in weeks.

Theresa Ubungen, Realtor Watermark Properties http://www.wmpre.com

3150 Hilltop Mall Road, Suite 2
Richmond,CA94804
510.734.0415
510.734.0415
theresa@wmpre.com

Twitter: @tubungen

Q: I’m house-hunting, but with all the bad news coming out about the housing market, I wonder if I should wait a few months or even years. Do you think I should?

—San Diego

A: If you need a home, then keep looking. If you find a home that suits your needs and is reasonably priced compared to similar homes, make an offer. It doesn’t make sense to try to time the market—because nobody can. Unless you plan to stay in your home for only a year or two, you eventually will accrue some equity, even if you buy before housing in your area hits bottom. In the meantime, you will enjoy federal tax breaks, and avoid the rent hikes that are inevitable as demand for rental housing grows, fed by millennials entering the workforce, former homeowners who have gone through foreclosure and would-be homeowners like yourself who are waiting for home prices to fall.

Moreover, there are hopeful signs in the San Diego housing market. If you consider the July data for existing homes released by the National Association of Realtors, San Diego is performing better than the country as a whole—partly because it was one of the first markets to fall when the bubble burst. In the U.S., sales were down 25.5% in July and prices up 0.7% from a year earlier, but in San Diego, sales were down 15.2% and prices up 4.6%. Similarly, according to RealtyTrac, San Diego County is doing much better than the rest of the country when it comes to foreclosure filings, a leading indicator of a market’s health. In July, the county’s foreclosure filings, which include default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions, reached 5,032, a 37% drop from a year earlier. By comparison, foreclosure activity nationwide fell only 10%.

Still, it’s premature to declare that San Diego’s market is definitely on the upswing, especially since consumer confidence remains shaky in the face of a weak job market. While the country’s overall unemployment rate stayed flat at 9.7% in July from the previous year, San Diego’s crept up to 10.8% from 10.3%. Other statistics are troubling, too: According to the San Diego Association of Realtors, the available inventory of unsold homes rose 23.3% in July from the year before, while the number of days homes remained on the market in July increased to 87 from 72 a year earlier for attached homes, and 71 from 69 for single-family homes for the same period. Meanwhile, affordability remains a problem. San Diego remains one of the most expensive markets in the country, with an average attached home price of $266,899 and single-family price of $506,540.

As you can see, the picture is too mixed for me—or anyone for that matter—to say with certainty where San Diego is in its housing cycle. But rest assured that it is a cycle, and that when it does become clear that the market is headed up, buyers will jump off the fence, prices will stabilize and interest rates may rise. So you may as well take the plunge now.

Send questions and comments to June Fletcher at fletcher.june@gmail.com

Kira Vilanova and Mario Sanchez have listed for sale a three-bedroom, two-bath home at 264 Moultrie St. in Bernal Heights for $899,000.

Vilanova and Sanchez paid $645,000 for the property in June 2004. It was built in 1909. Shelley Trew is the listing agent.

Ms. Vilanova is an award-winning television host and producer. She has served at KDTV Univision, most recently as an account executive in the sales department.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and telecommunications from the Grady College at the University of Georgia.

According to BlockShopper.com, there have been 178 home sales in Bernal Heights in the past 12 months, with a median sales price of $740,000.

264 Moultrie St.

By JUNE FLETCHER

Q: I am a first-time buyer trying to buy a condo, but every time I put in an offer, someone else gets it instead. In some cases, I was muscled out by people who could pay cash. I can’t afford to do that. Is there any other way I can win one of these bidding wars?

—Loma Linda, Calif.

A: Although it remains a buyer’s market in most parts of the country, you’re looking for a place where there’s scant inventory: According to a search earlier this week on Loma Linda Real Estate, there are only seven multifamily homes for sale within the town borders. With such short supply, it’s not surprising that prices have skyrocketed: DataQuick reports that in March, the median price for a condo was $176,000, up 120% from a year earlier.

Still, there are ways to get ahead of the competition; here are some tips:

1. Be first: I presume you’re working with a buyer’s agent; if you’re not, you should be. Make sure that the agent knows that you want to jump on any appropriate property as soon as it becomes available. Also, put a tight deadline on your offer so the listing agent can’t use it to solicit other offers from interested buyers.

In a blistering-hot market, I once made an offer on a condo, sight unseen, on the day it was put on the multiple listing service. I made it clear that because I didn’t want to get into any bidding wars, the offer would be withdrawn in exactly one hour. My offer was accepted–including the clause that gave me the right to back out of the deal if I didn’t like the unit after I saw it.

2. Be pre-qualified: Although you can’t pay all cash, if you have a letter from a lender saying you’ll qualify for the necessary loan, you’ll be in a stronger position. Because lending standards have toughened, be prepared to make at least a 20% down payment. To prove you’re serious about buying, offer the seller a substantial earnest-money deposit as well—up to 3% of the purchase price.

3. Be highest: Obviously, sellers want to get the highest price possible for their property, so a generous offer will trump an all-cash one. But ask your agent to do a comparative market analysis first so you don’t pay more than the market price. If you do, your deal will fall through–or you’ll be asked to put up more cash–once the lender has the condo appraised.

4. Be easygoing: A survey last year done by the California Association of Realtors found that three-quarters of all sellers are putting their property on the market because of financial difficulties. So although I would never suggest that you waive an inspection contingency, don’t demand any monetary concessions, like a decorator’s allowance, or help with closing costs. Similarly, ask your agent to find out if some accommodation on time would suit the seller’s needs–perhaps a quick closing date for a seller who’s having trouble paying the mortgage, or conversely, a long rent-back after closing for sellers who need time to find another place to stay.

Write to June Fletcher at fletcher.june@gmail.com