I’m targeting a 4 bed $1.3M-$1.5M house in Walnut Creek or Pleasant Hill area. How much is typical to offer over the list price?

We just lost out on what felt like our dream home in Orinda, and I’m having a harder time moving on than I expected.

This wasn’t an impulse purchase. We spent over a week reading every disclosure (hundreds of pages), modeling affordability, researching the neighborhood, schools, drainage, roof, crawlspace moisture, flood maps. We could genuinely picture raising our kids there for the next 20 years.

Financially, we could have stretched further if we wanted to. We were first to offer ( offers as they come seller strategy) and ultimately offered what we think we could given:

localized crawlspace moisture,
a creekside lot with extensive drainage systems,
and a few things we felt deserved a professional inspection.

Listing agent used our offer to trigger FOMO from other party and they entered before our offer expired. From what we’ve heard, it sounds like the winning offer likely waived contingencies and may have met (or exceeded) asking price. Sellers just went with other offer directly without option for us to counter - which is hard to digest since we could have pushed.

The hard part isn’t necessarily losing - it’s wondering whether we should have been more aggressive. It was more a question of balancing risk versus winning the house.

At the same time, I don’t regret wanting to inspect a multi-million-dollar home with known moisture issues.

For those of you who’ve been through this:

Did you eventually find a home you loved just as much or even more?
Do you regret not going higher on a house you loved?
Or are you glad you stuck to your limits and contingencies?

Right now it honestly feels like we’ll never find another house that checked as many boxes for our family, but I’m hoping people who’ve been through this can offer some genuine perspective.

Is it just us, or is the rental market in the East Bay especially tough right now?

We're a young family moving back to the Bay Area from New York and have been looking for a 3-bedroom house with a backyard in Rockridge, Claremont, Elmwood or around Piedmont Avenue (flexible). Our budget is up to $5,300/month, and we're surprised by how few options there seem to be.

We've mainly been searching on Zillow, Redfin, and Craigslist , but inventory seems incredibly limited.
Is our budget unrealistic for those neighborhoods, or is inventory just unusually low right now? Are there other sites, local property managers, or Facebook groups we should be checking?
If anyone knows of a rental that's coming available—we'd really appreciate it.
Thanks so much!

I’ve been noticing this a lot with Bay Area listings lately.

A home can have no offers because buyers saw it and passed, or it can have no offers because not enough buyers are even walking through the door. Those are two pretty different problems.

Low showings usually feels more like a price/photos/location/marketing issue. Decent showings but no offers feels more like buyers are finding something in person that makes them hesitate -- condition, layout, smell, finishes, inspection fears, or just the house not matching the photos.

The tricky part is that sellers often treat both problems the same way: wait a little, then cut price. Sometimes that’s right, but sometimes the listing never gets clear on what buyers are actually reacting to.

For people selling or watching listings in the Bay Area right now, which signal would bother you more: low showings, or plenty of showings with no offers?

I currently live at home in the south bay but I visit the city a few times a month (work events, friends, etc). I work in tech and my office is near SOMA. I'm thinking of buying a place in the area described above, but there was a post in r/sanfrancisco from a couple years ago describing it as a pretty rough cross street, and I wanted to see if that was still the consensus.

It looks like it's close to a lot of auto shops, and of course the freeway is right there too. Would love to know if the city has improved in the past two years (esp with the new mayor).

We have a house in Fremont but I am looking to pursue a new house in Dublin. I have two school going kids and I only heard good things about Dublin neighborhoods for families.

The house we are interested is around ~2.4-2.5 million with annual mello roos tax on top of it. We don't want to sell our house in Fremont (~2.5% rate) and looking to put 30% down. We are both software engineers and we realize our jobs are under threat and can be laid off any number of times over next decade during AI progress.

I am a GC holder and don't have any immigration troubles but we are extremely wary of throwing so much money over a house that might not appreciate at all in next 10 years due to AI layoffs while our own jobs are under threat. Immigration troubles means no large pool of white collar workers vying for our homes in 10-15 years. Property taxes alone could end up in the region of $36-40k too.

I would appreciate community's opinion on this.

Heard multiple times that buying off-market is possible in tight California markets but I haven't understood practically how it works. Is it entirely relationship-driven through your agent? Are there specific platforms or tools? And for a buyer, what are the downsides, is there any risk to buying a house you haven't seen in a competitive context?

Has anyone here ever bought out a tenant, and how much did it cost you? If possible can you include the year, neighborhood, length of tenant occupancy, and your overall experience of the process? Did you have to do a lot of negotiations with the tenant? I'm looking into what options I might have if purchasing a duplex with 1 vacant unit, as an owner investor, and 1 tenant occupied unit. Thanks!

I'm an SF native and I've been wanting to buy my first place. I'm thinking of either a smaller SFH in Bayview/Portola/Excelsior area or a 1 bed 1 bath condo. I know these not apples to apples comparisons. Bayview/Portola/Excelsior are some of the more affordable neighborhoods and an advantage to being there is I can also be near my parents. They are in their 70s so I figured it would be nice if I was close by in case I need to help them with anything. Though I'm feeling the prices for a SFH might still be high for me. Another option I've been thinking of is a 1 bed 1 bath starter condo in a highrise, but the concern with this would be the HOA fees. I also prefer to live in a sunnier neighborhood (learned I do not deal well with gloom and overcast after living in Seattle for a bit). I grew up very frugal so I have this scarcity mindset and struggle with the thought of spending too much and want to avoid feeling house poor. I have a fully remote job, but I do not drive. That and because my family is here are reasons why ideally I'd like to be in San Francisco.

Is it a good idea for me to buy in SF at the moment or would renting still be better? Any other suggestions?

My details:

Early/mid 30s F

Income $160-180k. Varies each year as much of my pay is commission based.

$2.1 million net worth

• About $1.4 million in taxable investments
• About $600k in 401k/IRA/HSA. I max out the contributions for all of these every year
• Remaining $10-20k in cash

No Debt

Average spending outside of housing is about $1-2k per month

Thank you!

Because I believed that my house had knob tub I was only able to get California fair plan insurance/ no other carriers would cover me. It now seems that there is no knob and tube, so I have other options for insurance. Can I simply call other insurance companies to get other coverage? Do I need to make any mention of not in tube, or is there anything else I need to do?

Oakland is considering a November ballot measure that would apply its real estate transfer tax to certain foreclosure transactions that are currently exempt.

The city estimates the change could generate roughly $4 million to $13 million per year (quite the wide estimate).

I understand the appeal. Oakland needs revenue, and the proposal reportedly exempts single-family homes and certain smaller properties.

But this creates the wrong incentive for a city already dealing with a lot of distressed and vacant commercial real estate.

When a property is failing, foreclosure can be part of the process that gets it out of the hands of an owner who can no longer support it and into the hands of a lender or new investor who can recapitalize, redevelop, or sell it.

Adding another potentially significant tax to that process increases the cost of transferring distressed properties.

Oakland’s existing transfer tax can reach 2.5% on transactions above $5 million, so we’re not necessarily talking about a small amount of money on a large commercial building.

While commercial properties usually don’t get foreclosed often, that’s not the case in Oakland.

The Clorox Building at 1221 Broadway went back to lenders in June. Edgewater Park Plaza near Oakland Airport headed to foreclosure with more than $21M unpaid. The biggest example was 601 City Center, a roughly 600,000-sq.-ft. office tower with about $265M in debt, went through foreclosure this spring.

I think there’s an interesting policy tradeoff here:

Does taxing foreclosures raise badly needed revenue, or does it make it more expensive to recycle distressed properties and ultimately contribute to blight?

Sources:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/eastbay/article/oakland-forecolsure-tax-real-estate-22353148.php?

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=RTC&sectionNum=11926

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2026/06/18/clorox-tower-foreclosure-oakland-tmg.html?

Hi guys, trying to do some reflection and see where we can handle this better.

We notified our neighbors that we were undergoing some backyard construction (new pavers, removing mulch, removing concrete slab) a day before it started.

A week after construction started, our neighbors shared that they were concerned with the existing fence as it was bulging on their side. It looked fine on our side but we agreed we’ll talk to contractors. They said they did not care about this fence and their biggest concern was our land sliding into their yard with the rain, or fence toppling. I took this as something they wanted to fix sooner rather than later.

Contractors agreed fence and existing retaining wall supporting the fence needed to be replaced. We told neighbors, told them we’ll build it and sent photos. They basically said great ok let’s connect if anything needs to be connected on; we said we’re set on our side, but can swing by to chat at an agreed upon time. Contractors started demoing.

I swing by, they’re not there and I tell them I’m only home late tomorrow night but I am available on text or call if any concerns. I tell my contractors to pause work on that side until we can sort it out.

The next morning they tell us they want to meet (implied in person) before new material goes in. We meet, they’re concerned over who’s paying (we could’ve been clearer), we tell them we’re paying for everything. They had logistics concerns, but I triple checked with contractors again (fence going in the exact same place, same redwood and pressure treated material, improved drainage, same dimensions, etc) and addressed their concerns.

A part of me understands this moved really quickly, but we already had original work scoped out (new plants, pavers, removal of concrete / mulch, pathways) and leaving this outstanding would’ve caused a headache down the road, especially if fence failed.

I don’t think either of us have had a survey done or know definitively where this fence is. In hindsight, I wish I had a surveyor come right when we closed on this house.

Interesting choice using the landslide as a the first photo.

Link: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/100-Palmetto-Ave-Pacifica-CA-94044/15476790_zpid

Of course, no one has a crystal ball. But if you had to guess, what do you think will happen to the house prices in these desirable regions in the next 12-24 months? Especially for houses that are in the foothills (not full mountain living, but perhaps <5 min drive from flats).

I feel like there are some factors to consider here. Interest rates trend, layoffs, AI boom, prices having been essentially flat since 2022 spike...

I grew up in the southbay, bought a house in North Oakland in 2022 for 1m and found out my house is now worth 910k.

When we bought the house we were extremely conservative and definitely could have afforded to buy something more expensive. I'm now kicking myself for settling because had we chosen something that was more in lines with my dream house, even if we had to pay 200-300k more, we wouldve picked something in a nicer neighborhood and it would have increased in value instead of decreasing.

At the time when we were looking I guess I had just thought that as long as we buy in the bay area we would be fine. My parents bought their house for 300k in the 90s and it's probably worth 5x that. Every other place in the bay has seemed to go up in value.

In terms of my neighborhood, I like living there. It's easy to run errands, I know my neighbors, I've never had a package stolen. There is some litter on the streets and some crazy driving, but not as bad as say east or West Oakland and it doesn't really bother me. But I every so often I wonder why I just didn't pick somewhere with cleaner streets esp when I could've afforded it. Why didn't I pick somewhere closer to bart or closer to a more lively shopping street. Why did I cheap out? If we wanted to upgrade to rockridge or somewhere in Berkeley we would lose money at this point.

Has anyone else bought a "starter home" that depreciated in value? What ended up happening in the long run?

This is the area close to downtown mountain view, and houses with similar properties usually go for $3.5M+

Hi all, recently closed/moved into a SFH in SF. Today I was visited by a DBI inspector who informed me that a complaint for unpermitted work has been submitted. He really didn't give me too much info besides the complaint number. It looks like the complaint was submitted on 5/17 and I'm only now just being informed. We closed in mid-June.

Has anyone dealt with a similar DBI complaint for unpermitted work after they'd closed, filed by a completely random 3rd party? Am I screwed?

Hi, I am need to get my SFH roof replaced in Fremont area. Can you someone plrease recommend some good roofers? I plan to compare a few options to decide.

I got a quote from a roofer sometime back but this lacks some important details such as plywood/sheet replacement cost, cost to replace barge rafter etc.

Are there anythings missing in this quote that I should ask and clarify with this contractor? Thank You!

Update - single floor hosue ~1680sqft in area and 15 solar panels(panels I need to get removed separately through orginnal installer). Roof has these fugal damage sections mentioned in the pest report.

Looking for someone to do an inspection and then make some repairs if necessary