Pacifica, San Rafael, Berkeley

[mburns]

If you like the beach, need highly regarded public schools, want a decent commute time, and are in the $500,000 range, then I would recommend Alameda! It has a close knit community on Bay Farm Island and the East End is also nice.

[ripley44mag]

Try Moss Beach. Regards Ripley

[JRE]

Before buying a house on or near a landfill find out the history of the landfill. Many, many landfills contain trash, including toxic waste.

[artemis78]

Okay. We've been through this before, but people don't seem to quite grasp it. There is a HUGE difference between a place that is built on a landfill (trash is piled up, capped, and allowed to grow over with grass, etc.) and a place that is built on land fill (soil/earth that has been dredged to make a waterway bigger or a hill shorter, and moved over to form a land mass where there was once water). Cities and waterfront communities all over the country have areas that have been filled to turn marshes into solid ground that the city can grow into.

Alameda is the latter. Parts of it (not the whole city, even) are built on bay fill that was dredged in the late 19th/early 20th century. There *are* some soil issues in some areas (old navy base, etc.)---but they're not because it's fill; they're because the land was used for heavy industrial activities and shipping *after* it was filled. But most of that area doesn't yet have any housing on it to buy, anyway. The only reason to worry about being built on fill in the Bay Area is that, depending on other factors and what's underneath the fill, it may affect how vulnerable you are to liquefaction from an earthquake.

The only thing I know of that is distinct about Alameda is that, because much of it is fill, their soil is often sandy, whereas soil in Oakland, Berkeley, and other areas is heavy clay, so it's a different gardening climate. But I'd take sand over clay any day---it's much easier to amend, whereas clay is a pain to dig out.