NOBE (North Oakland, Berkeley, Emeryville), what?? (real estate, high crime, house)

[DocGoldstein]

NOBE Neighborhood, East Bay - YouTube

Is this an actual 'hood now in the East Bay, or is this simply realtor marketing speak?

[DocGoldstein]

Hey ssmaster, can you keep it on topic? There have already been post deleted because of people going off-topic. If you want to discuss the riots in S.F, you can start a thread on that. Thank you.

[mayorhaggar]

Only in the Bay Area could someone say a 3 bedroom house going for $600,000 was "affordable."

[Ruth4Truth]

It's not at all clear what neighborhood they're talking about. "Revitalized"? The only area in N Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville that's been "revitalized" or that needed revitalizing is Emeryville and West Berkeley. The agent must be pushing gentrified properties. West Berkeley and Emeryville used to be "the other side of the tracks", but gradually has been developing. The section closer to the Oakland border is a high crime area.

[DocGoldstein]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

It's not at all clear what neighborhood they're talking about. "Revitalized"? The only area in N Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville that's been "revitalized" or that needed revitalizing is Emeryville and West Berkeley. The agent must be pushing gentrified properties. West Berkeley and Emeryville used to be "the other side of the tracks", but gradually has been developing. The section closer to the Oakland border is a high crime area.

Exactly! Thank you. I'm trying to figure out if these people being interviewed are being paid to say these things or if it's all a marketing scam. The area of Oakland she's describing is horrible, and has problems with drugs and prostitution. Hardly what I'd call a hip, upcoming, neighborhood.

[Larry Siegel]

It's mostly marketing hype - a neighborhood that has been up and coming since the 70's but that never really up and came - but there are beautiful, overpriced properties scattered among the weeds. ($600,000? Three bedroom? Affordable?) A very long-term investment that may or may not pay off.

But remember that all 'nice' neighborhoods started out identified by real estate developers' monikers from them. Pacific Heights, Berkeley Hills, you name it, real estate developers were touting them before anybody really wanted to live there.

[DocGoldstein]

Originally Posted by Larry Siegel

It's mostly marketing hype - a neighborhood that has been up and coming since the 70's but that never really up and came - but there are beautiful, overpriced properties scattered among the weeds. ($600,000? Three bedroom? Affordable?) A very long-term investment that may or may not pay off.

But remember that all 'nice' neighborhoods started out identified by real estate developers' monikers from them. Pacific Heights, Berkeley Hills, you name it, real estate developers were touting them before anybody really wanted to live there.

Long term investment = Decades.

[Larry Siegel]

Originally Posted by DocGoldstein

Long term investment = Decades.

That's right. I was being partly facetious. The investment may not pay off ever, or it might in decades.

[DocGoldstein]

That's one of my other points about places like "North Oakland", or West/East Oakland. Even if they were gentrifying like this realtor is trying to imply, it could be 30-40 years before it becomes a higher class 'hood with good schools, and an acceptable crime rate. For most us, that puts gentrification of those hoods in the realm of irrelevancy, most of us will be dead or in our 70s-80s.

When you take into account that Oakland has been a high crime city since the 60s-70s, that's 50 years now. I wouldn't hold my breath about NOBE become the next Silverlake IMO.

[Carlite]

That's a large area, not really one thing. I've never heard or read NOBE, that's a realtor coinage as so many neighborhood names originally were.

Parts of the area are, in fact, improving, I see that as I go through them (I'm not a realtor or a property owner, I have no financial interest). Others are still in pretty bad shape. There are certainly still issues with Oakland schools, but most households don't have school age children in them, others would put their kids in private school no matter where they lived. I'd say that anybody living within that zone would have to be willing to deal with some social issues, but it's not the bombed out ghetto some folks are acting like it is.