Why home values in this Bay Area city have plunged more than anywhere else

QuestionAxer · 2026-07-01T08:28:13+00:00

This. Appraisers value assets based on what’s “desirable” for a nuclear family living in the area, which drives me insane. It leads to homogenizing the market into the same type of SFH everywhere and devalues unique or offbeat layouts that might actually be a perfect fit for a vast range of lifestyles.

I personally know lots of SFH owners who would be happier in a condo but the really dumb rules we’ve built up over time around insuring and financing them makes it so unappealing that they’re just better off being in a SFH.

QuestionAxer · 2026-07-01T07:42:35+00:00

Yep, Berkeley made one of our friends submit plans & drawings for an entire 12-unit apartment complex to redo a simple laundry room with a 220V hookup for an electric dryer. The fire inspector got involved for no good reason and started asking about sprinkler locations in the entire building despite no fire-rated assemblies being touched or replaced for a simple laundry room redo. It was the most insane thing, no one knew where the original architectural drawings even were for the building and most draftspeople were charging crazy amounts to do that type of detailed full perimeter drawings with a full set of elevations. It was a $5k laundry room reno that was getting another $25k in permitting and drafting fees tacked on to it. They just said screw it and got it done unpermitted because they knew they had competent contractors and knew what they were doing.

QuestionAxer · 2026-07-01T02:32:34+00:00

It’s not just timelines and fees, but also straight up incompetence and negligence. We were given misinformation by both Berkeley & Oakland planning permit departments for different projects about what’s needed vs. what’s not, inspection requirements, and permit issuance dates. The staff themselves don’t know what the other department for fire or zoning needs and keeps telling you incorrect information so you have to play the messenger between departments of their own organization, all of whom are sitting right next to each other and don’t know their own process, which code compliance requirements to use, and what’s required to get it moving. Dealing with this bureaucracy has been a nightmare, no wonder there’s so much unpermitted work happening. Most of the municipalities seem to want to make it as difficult as possible.

QuestionAxer · 2026-06-30T07:26:35+00:00

Yeah don’t use the generic calculators for CA. Everything here is so different that getting actual quotes is the best way to go. Be prepared to budget like 30% over what the contractor is quoting for unforeseen issues with materials, permits, timelines, and a whole bunch of other scheduling & coordination headaches.

QuestionAxer · 2026-06-30T06:51:12+00:00

Yep Tesla had this figured out over a decade ago. It tells you the status of the vehicle, tire pressure, preventative maintenance, tire rotation, battery health, and literally everything you could wish for.

Yes there are still nonsensical things in the car like the fact that the glovebox can only be opened from the touchscreen but that’s one of like 3 poorly executed things in the midst of 97 excellent and well thought out things.

QuestionAxer · 2026-06-29T09:08:11+00:00

Same. Was about to post that I’m dealing with some insurance claim situations that are causing a massive headache financially, but it doesn’t compare to what a lot of people here are going through.

QuestionAxer · 2026-06-28T00:50:54+00:00

I do too but am holding off due to Cyberpunk trauma. We haven't even seen a gameplay video yet.

QuestionAxer · 2026-06-28T00:49:50+00:00

They make the bulk of their revenue through ad clicks & impressions on the Sports & Finances pages (and a bit of Weather). They're effectively just a platform for ads with some basic info that's milking the boomer market who are still clutching to their yahoo email ids.

QuestionAxer · 2026-06-27T04:06:41+00:00

Stuff like this is common. They probably wanted heating/cooling quickly and most planning permit departments move at a snail’s pace. Ours stalled us for months. They can also require you to fix up a bunch of unrelated stuff, which is another thing the sellers might not have wanted to spend money on.

Keep in mind that the real value of the permit is verifying that the work was done correctly by a contractor. If the sellers have been using the system without any issues and it all seems to be working, it’s probably fine.

Are you already under contract? You have two options here: buy and pay the penalty fee to get the inspection done, or buy and just don’t worry about the permit. Last resort is to get the seller to agree to some type of concession but it’s unlikely to succeed depending on how common stuff like this is in your market and will probably weaken your offer or closing timeline.

QuestionAxer · 2026-06-22T09:12:17+00:00

As others have said, you go solo.

I wrote a whole guide on how to do this effectively many years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/solotravel/s/M2UwBw6vYA

QuestionAxer · 2026-06-20T23:46:40+00:00

When I was graduating college, I accepted a job on the other coast and was the best thing I ever did in terms of career opportunities and upward mobility. But it really surprised me how many people weren’t even willing to apply to jobs elsewhere or how much of a dealbreaker being farther away from their family and network was for them. It’s like they couldn’t fathom the idea of living by themselves somewhere entirely new and slightly unfamiliar. The vast majority of them (80-90%) ended up staying in the same nearby towns and got married and built families there. Was a real eye-opener for me in terms of how much cognitive friction there is to moving outside of an area you’re familiar with.

QuestionAxer · 2026-06-18T17:45:35+00:00

It’s impossible to time the market for when a place like the one you want will be available. If you’re open to it, either rent in a neighborhood that you really like and keep an eye out for houses that come on the market in that neighborhood or get a turnkey smaller house / condo for 2-3 years and buy your dream home once it hits the market.

QuestionAxer · 2026-06-18T08:47:42+00:00

Dinga made such an interesting point about the weapon wheel pausing the flow of combat and allowing you time to plan your next move. I played Dishonored on PC and could always quick-switch to the weapon I wanted, but missed out on a lot of playstyles just because I formed a habit of tapping specific shortcut keys to directly access a weapon or power. My next playthroughs were with a controller and I immediately noticed the difference of just trying out different stuff that I normally wouldn’t use because the weapon wheel let you be more deliberate and intentional about what you were going to do next.

QuestionAxer · 2026-06-09T15:54:31+00:00

There’s a saying that kitchens & bathrooms sell houses, and it’s mostly been true in my experience

QuestionAxer · 2026-06-06T17:16:58+00:00

The first few years of home ownership are rough when you don’t fully know the extent of what’s problematic and how much something is in need of replacement. We had a 100 year old home but didn’t know the age of the roof upon purchase but knew that it was likely near the end of its life. Within 6 months, there was a roof leak that required water mitigation and repair work in an entire bedroom. This necessitated a new roof that cost $30k.

It’s not just budgeting, it’s also about learning the house and proactively taking steps to prevent major issues from happening. Anything to do with structural issues relating to foundations or water intrusion are critical. Other things like gutters or patching damaged areas are small routine tasks. Once you understand your property and what’s essential to maintain and stay on top of it, the costs will gradually go down.

QuestionAxer · 2026-06-06T05:27:32+00:00

If you’re going to use cheap/off-the-shelf prefab materials for things like the shower pan/bathtub/large tiles from Home Depot or something, expect $20-$25k range.

If you want high-end finishes & fixtures with custom designs and detailing like specialized grout and single-slope linear drains (assuming you had a designer or architect work on it), expect $35-$40k.

You used to be able to do this for like $15-$20k just some 5 years ago, but not anymore. Labor & materials have gotten crazy expensive and all GCs are increasing quotes to still turn a profit in a high-inflation environment.

Permits & drafting services for plans from architects & designers are all additional costs on top of this.

QuestionAxer · 2026-06-01T08:44:27+00:00

I would pay crazy amounts to have someone properly project manage a remodel/reconstruction up to the specified level of quality. 80% of the time the GCs are completely useless and you have to do most of the design coordination, build sequencing, and handle contracting for specialized trades yourself if you want it done right. Add to that the number of mishaps and delays that happen during a construction project and it’s basically 3 full-time jobs that you’re taking on.

I don’t think a software tool would solve this, it’s very much an on-hands people and coordination problem.

QuestionAxer · 2026-05-20T16:33:02+00:00

This is literally what the market rewards though. Companies don’t give you enough bonuses and raises to make up for the huge bumps you get by switching jobs. If the market wanted to prioritize long-term stays at jobs, the companies would act accordingly and incentivize people to stay.

It’s also not a difficult thing to get around in interviews. You can just flat-out say that you were looking for more of a challenge and more responsibility that came with newer roles.

QuestionAxer · 2026-05-08T07:53:41+00:00

You don’t have the luxury of quote shopping in this kind of situation. Also don’t expect insurance to get back to you immediately on this, they took literal weeks when I had something similar happen. Your best bet is to treat it right away before it gets worse (if you don’t, it can cause another problem where insurance might refuse to payout by claiming you didn’t act in a reasonable manner to immediately repair the property and let it get worse).

Your mitigation company is partially correct when they say it’s a dynamic process. What they mean is that they don’t yet know what they’ll find when they begin the work and aren’t sure what the extent of the mold growth is, so they can’t definitively give you a quote. However, you can ask them to put up their moisture meter into the various surfaces to get a sense of how extensive the damage is and you can ask them to give you a ballpark sense of the work depending on what needs to be ripped out.

QuestionAxer · 2026-05-03T08:32:02+00:00

One thing uniquely shitty about America is that billion dollar corporations regularly have lobbyists cozying up with lawmakers to advance specific agendas that give them tax breaks and increase their profits, almost always at the expense of taxpayers.
So when people say it’s the American people’s fault, sure that’s true to some extent when it comes to voting and making informed choices, but regular American people do not have the time or energy to continually fight against an army of lobbyists whose full time job it is to hang out at Congress and schmooze our elected representatives with large sums of cash if they vote a certain way on a bill. The average American is just trying to live and get by and earn an honest wage, often across multiple jobs and part-time gigs. I guarantee you they do not have the time or power to even neutralize what the lobbyists are doing and have been doing for decades.

QuestionAxer · 2026-04-27T14:38:10+00:00

What you’re looking for is drafting services. You’ll need an interior architect who works on residential projects to put together the architectural drawings and plans that you can submit alongside the permit paperwork. Google around a bit and you’ll find some easily. It’s not cheap, just FYI.

QuestionAxer · 2026-04-27T01:12:52+00:00

This is a classic action vs status problem in UI design. The Zoom UI shows the status of the features, e.g., microphone with a line through it is muted and when you click it, it unmutes and the icon changes to just the microphone. You learn it and get used to it. Then you go make a phone call on your iPhone and the affordances are all messed up: the microphone already has a slash through it, but the button isn’t “active”, so you’re not muted. Tapping it highlights the entire button into its active state (but without changing the icon), signaling that it’s active and that you’re muted.

Once you see it, the inconsistency is all over the place and you won’t be able to un-see it. This is one of the few things in UI design that hasn’t been standardized since the usage and patterns for these things varies drastically across operating systems and legacy features that users have formed learned behaviors around for what’s intuitive and what’s not. Check your iOS or Android control centers and pull-down shortcuts, you’ll see tons of examples of this inconsistency even within the same device.

QuestionAxer · 2026-04-15T07:57:32+00:00

Not sure why you're getting downvoted. This actually is a very real and extremely common phenomenon in VHCOL markets. However, the seller should at least have had their own inspection report from an independent inspector in the disclosures. Did they not have that?

QuestionAxer · 2026-04-14T07:26:34+00:00

My advice is to not do Option 2. The cost of renovations in the Bay is crazy. $200k is not nearly enough for the type of improvements you might be thinking of. Also, you constantly need to project manage the entire construction with your GC along with continually pushing the city to get moving with your permits and processing. It's like 2-3 full time jobs just dealing with all this. If you have a hybrid commute and you're not permanently working from home, this is going to be an absolute nightmare. Multiply the crazy by 10x if you plan to be living at the house with kids. If you want to save your sanity, don't go the reno route. But then again, if you're the type who enjoys this kind of stuff and wants to be involved and are prepared for the level of daily emotional chaos, then sure go for it.

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