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The sales pitch
This 14-year-old Mediterranean-style condo has one bedroom and 728 square feet. The living area features a gas fireplace, wood laminate floors and a bay window. Adjacent kitchen includes oak cabinetry, white appliances and a tiled breakfast bar. And “it’s freshly painted in designer colors,” says Brian Santilena, CRS, senior sales associate with Pacific Union International Inc.
Price: $199,000
Area median price: $558,200 in the San Francisco/Oakland/Fremont area (up 1.3 percent from one year earlier)
Amenities
1 bedrooms/1 bath
Approximately 728 square feet
Assigned parking spot in covered garage
Features
Gas fireplace
Wood laminate floors
Bay window
Listed by: Pacific Union International Inc.
The bedroom has wood laminate floors and a walk-through closet to bathroom with cultured marble vanity and combination tub and shower.
The unit also has a closet with stacked washer and dryer, a deck with storage and one assigned parking spot in the covered garage.
Built in the mid-1980s, this is one of the newest condo developments in the area, Santilena says.
What else you can get for $200,000
Oakland homebuyers with $200,000 to spend don’t have it easy, says Anne Bruff, president of the Oakland Association of Realtors, director with the California Association of Realtors and owner of Anne Bruff & Associates. But “there are some options,” she says.
In Oakland, $200,000 will buy a two-bedroom, one-bath condo with 1,000 to 1,200 square feet “in a not-great neighborhood,” she says. Or you can go a little smaller — 900 square feet or less — and get a “very nice” 20- to 30-year-old one-bedroom unit, or a small, new downtown loft, she says.
The single family housing stock in Oakland “is older — normally from the 1930s,” Bruff says. “These are older houses, little bungalows.”
A spacious newer house goes for $700,000 and up and new homes sell for $1 million and up, Bruff says.
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