Where are the largest homes in Berkeley?

What about the newest homes?

Carol told my cousing Mimi that there’s nothing I love more than being in a new city in another country with my photographer’s vest filled with maps and guidebook.

I’m particularly interested in Art Deco Architecture, so whereve we travel, I create databases with the addresses of interesting places, and then map them. Here’s a map I created for Washington DC, Baltimore & Philadelphia; another for Los Angeles.

I knew I could use the same technology to give a sense of what the Berkeley Real Estate Market is like.

First and foremost – this is not meant to show Berkeley’s entire housing stock – they are created using data only from homes sold through MLS from 2007 through Jun 2011.

Data is from East Bay Regional/Berkeley MLS and doesn’t include all home sales. I also didn’t filter it for duplication (many homes have been sold more than once in that time frame) … but since it represents over 2,000 sales, I thought it gave a good representative sampling.

Since prices change from year to year, and this data spans several years, I didn’t create a price map.

Visit my Berkeley Real Estate Market Research Page for lots more graphs and maps …. more …

Click on the map to join the Berkeleyside Berkeley iPhone faceoff discussion!

There’s a spirited conversation at berkeleyside.com on the relative merits of the AT&T and Verizon iPhones.

Carol told my cousin Mimi that there’s nothing I like more than being dropped into a new city with maps and a guidebook … so I love maps.

When I discovered the Wintec WBT-202 GPS Data Logger I was in mapping heaven… I could see exactly where I’d been, and useHoudahGeo to automatically geotag my photos … no matter where in the world I took them.

So how better to satisfy my love and maps with my inner-engineer’s love of research and analysis .. than to create a map of the Verizon iPhone Signal strength.

We had a particularly varied route in today’s Berkeley Tour – Thousand Oaks neighborhood to upper Albany, then past the Marin Circle, up Spruce and Shasta Road in the Berkeley Hlls, down through Northbrae, North Berkeley, Le Conte, Elmwood and Rockridge … then through North Berkeley and back home to the Thousand Oaks Neighborhood.

I jotted down the Verizon signal strength, then annotated the GPS map of today’s journeys.

The Alameda/Hopkins to Martin Luther King/Rose nexus has been a real black hole of AT&T service – I’d almost always lose the call when driving along that route.  Someone else commented that Marin & Santa Fe was particularly bad.  Verizon had 3 bars at the both locations, and I was even able to make (and keep) a phone call there.

More amazingly – last week when previewing homes in the Park Hills neighborhood east of Grizzly Peak … I was able to call Carol (she was about 50 feet away and we were also able to wave to each other). That’s been an AT&T dead zone for years.

I didn’t test my assumption that more bars would lead to better quality calls, and better data transfer … but I think it’s fair to assume that few bars would result in lower quality calls and data.

You’d expect that major streets with commercial buildings would have better cell coverage.  I was delighted to see how strong the signal was in residential areas of Albany, Berkeley and the Berkeley Hills.

This blog post is dedicated to S.I. Cheng, my Cooper Union Chemical Engineering Professor, whose mantra “Collect Data – Publish” was imprinted into my psyche.

Click on the map to join the Berkeleyside Berkeley iPhone faceoff discussion!

There’s a spirited conversation at berkeleyside.com on the relative merits of the AT&T and Verizon iPhones.

Carol told my cousin Mimi that there’s nothing I like more than being dropped into a new city with maps and a guidebook … so I love maps.

When I discovered the Wintec WBT-202 GPS Data Logger I was in mapping heaven… I could see exactly where I’d been, and use HoudahGeo to automatically geotag my photos … no matter where in the world I took them.

So how better to satisfy my love and maps with my inner-engineer’s love of research and analysis .. than to create a map of the Verizon iPhone Signal strength.

We had a particularly varied route in today’s Berkeley Tour – Thousand Oaks neighborhood to upper Albany, then past the Marin Circle, up Spruce and Shasta Road in the Berkeley Hlls, down through Northbrae, North Berkeley, Le Conte, Elmwood and Rockridge … then through North Berkeley and back home to the Thousand Oaks Neighborhood.

I jotted down the Verizon signal strength, then annotated the GPS map of today’s journeys.

The Alameda/Hopkins to Martin Luther King/Rose nexus has been a real black hole of AT&T service – I’d almost always lose the call when driving along that route.  Someone else commented that Marin & Santa Fe was particularly bad.  Verizon had 3 bars at the both locations, and I was even able to make (and keep) a phone call there.

More amazingly – last week when previewing homes in the Park Hills neighborhood east of Grizzly Peak … I was able to call Carol (she was about 50 feet away and we were also able to wave to each other). That’s been an AT&T dead zone for years.

I didn’t test my assumption that more bars would lead to better quality calls, and better data transfer … but I think it’s fair to assume that few bars would result in lower quality calls and data.

You’d expect that major streets with commercial buildings would have better cell coverage.  I was delighted to see how strong the signal was in residential areas of Albany, Berkeley and the Berkeley Hills.

This blog post is dedicated to S.I. Cheng, my Cooper Union Chemical Engineering Professor, whose mantra “Collect Data – Publish” was imprinted into my psyche.

Every Thursday Carol and I visit over a dozen homes on the Berkeley Real Estate Broker’s Tour.

I’ve alway been intrigued by maps, so bought a Wintec MBT-202 GPS Data Logger to record my latitude and longitude.

Here’s a typical day in the life of Ira & Carol …on real estate broker tour previewing homes for our buyers and keeping on top of the real estate market for our sellers.

The GPS Data Logger is very accurate … and with the right software, Houda Geo , I can easily batch-geotag hundreds of photos at a time.

Just look at the “tick marks” and you can see where we stopped to see the home.

Wandering with Google Earth – a special presentation by Karin Tuxen-Bettman from Google Earth.

Thursday 16 Sep 2010 7-9 pm

Details at the Berkeley Path Wanderers Association Website

It’s free and open to the public

(I copied the details above from a postcard I received from them)

I was showing homes in the Berkeley Hills this morning, and took a stroll up Rose Walk, one of Berkeley’s magical places.  I first discovered it in the late 70’s when I lived at 2833 Buena Vista Way.

Here’s the link to the Berkeley Path Wanderer’s Association web page about Rose Walk

Rose Walk was designed by Bernard Maybeck, and buildings were designed by Henry Gutterson.  It’s right next to Codornices Park and the Rose Garden.  There’s a terrific concrete slide in the park; a tunnel under Euclid Avenue takes you to the tennis courts and Rose Garden.

Rose Walk – It goes from Euclid on the west to Rose Street on the east. The lovely “Renaissance Revival stairway” is just to the east and south of the crosswalk on Euclid.

The Berkeley Rose Garden is a traditional place to watch the sunset, and since todays’ the Summer Solstice I thought you’d be interested seeing where the sun rose and set on the longest day.

Rose Walk is at the blue circle bottom right corner.  The large trapezoidal structure is (was?) a reservoir. Codornices Park is north of the reservoir; you can clearly see the Rose Garden Amphitheater and Tennis Courts; The Tennis Courts were a WPA (or analogous) project.

Close up view. The hemispherical landing is filled with people at sunset.

And here’s how the sun rises and sets on the Summer Solstice!

Sunset over Marin.

And the Winter Solstice in Sydney Australia.  The sun sets at 4:54 PM for our friends down under.

And why I love looking at photos of the beautiful Sydney Harbor!

When I first got my iPad about a month ago, I spent hours searching the maps – places we’ve been too (atop the Sydney Harbor Bridge, a hotel next to the Pantheon in Rome) and also our wonderful neighborhoods of Berkeley.

What delighted me was the insights that satellite maps give about our neighborhoods.

Here are two examples.

This map shows the Thousand Oaks Elementary School on Colusa Avenue, just north of Solano.  The trees to the left of the circle, where the Blackberry Creek was daylighted.  What I didn’t realize till I looked at the map is that the beige walkway likely shows the path of the creek as it travels from Colusa Avenue to the daylighted section.  If you’re familiar with the area, that section of the school is actually a bridge – which literally and figuratively bridges the creek.  How cool is that?

North Berkeley - Lovely Tree Lined Mariposa Street

This map shows Marin Circle at the top left.  What I was intrigued with was the band of green connecting the top right corner with the center bottom.

Greenery usually indicates creeks.

In this case, is shows the magnificent trees along Mariposa Avenue – one of Berkeley’s special streets.  Grand homes, grand trees, and a delightful Halloween Festival every year.

You can see why we love living in Berkeley!

I love to read maps.

Thanks to Guy Kawasaki’s Holy Kaw! Alltop Blog, I know know how to integrate my FourSquare Check Ins with Google Earth!

I can think of all sorts of cool ways to integrate my love of mapping with my love of Berkeley’s wonderful neighborhoods.

Click on the map to learn how you can do this … and 9 other FourSquare Secrets!

Part of our Facebook Series – 365 Things To Do And Places To Go In Berkeley California

http://facebook.com/365berkeley

#7 Our Wonderful Neighborhoods – North Berkeley has something special for you tomorrow!

Wed 24 Mar 2010 6-9 pm is “Taste of North Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto:Benefit for Food & Social Justice“

I’ve taken lots of photos of North Berkeley/Gourmet Ghetto and posted them on my Flickr Site. Click on the map and you can see the actual locations where I took the photo. Here’s what I wrote about the neighborhood …

Home of world famous Chez Panisse restaurant, but I think its real claim to fame is the French Hotel, where Angel, one of the wizards in the cafe make an excellent and inexpensive Giant Capuchino. I’ve never had better coffee, so, I’ve dubbed it the “Best Capuchino In The World”

The Cheese Board, just up the street, makes great breads and KILLER goat cheese pizza. Cheese Board Pizza, and Goia’s Pizza in Northbrae Berkeley are our Berkleey favorites – only Bell’s Pizza in Amherst, MA and The Boonton Inn in Boonton, NJ were better. It’s very different from New York style (go to Arinell, in downtown Berkeley for the most-like-New-York-pizza).  Lococo’s, about a block north, is another favorite.

Saul’s Deli has really good pastrami and kishke.. almost (but not quite) like being back in The Bronx. Then again, I can’t get pastrami and kishke back in The Bronx anymore… so I guess it’s better.

Want more information on Berkeley’s North Berkeley (Gourmet Ghetto) Neighborhood? Visit my North Berkeley Neighborhood Page

That’s today’s most interesting phone call!

So Carol went to our tax records and found all homes in zip code 94707 which were built in 1917.

Me?  I love maps, so I quickly created a map of all the homes, then emailed the link to the caller.

Curious?  Here’s where they are.

I’m so glad to have lived long enough for the technology to catch up with the ideas in my head.  Just click on the map to see it full-sized.

Berkeley Thousand Oaks Neighborhood - Mapy of Homes built in 1917