http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/MoneyTalks/23996 For Sunday, I picked five recently sold homes and researched their sales history to get a snapshot of what's going on in the local market. A reader e-mailed me this morning to express her sadness over the absence of any east side homes. To all on the east side: I don't hate you. Really. I considered picking homes from each quadrant of the city. But in the end, I decided I wanted to be as neutral as possible picking the homes. Why? Because, yes, I wanted to bring the price fluctuations of individual homes into focus. But I also wanted to give a little bit of an idea of what's selling, and where. I used the Excel software's random number generator to assign numbers to all the houses sold the first week of February. Then I sorted and picked the top five. Turns out, I got a selection of northwest and southwest homes. While five is hardly a scientific sample, the results turned out to be pretty representative of the sales that week. West side sales outpaced east side sales, and more than half of the homes' sellers were banks (in other words, lots of sales of foreclosure homes). That said, anybody got a sense of what's selling on the east side? Are houses in your neighborhood selling? And what kind of prices are they getting compared with, say, 2005? -Vanessa Gregory, staff writer (and northeast resident) For Sunday, I picked five recently sold homes and researched their sales history to get a snapshot of what's going on in the local market. A reader e-mailed me this morning to express her sadness over the absence of any east side homes. To all on the east side: I don't hate you. Really. I considered picking homes from each quadrant of the city. But in the end, I decided I wanted to be as neutral as possible picking the homes. Why? Because, yes, I wanted to bring the price fluctuations of individual homes into focus. But I also wanted to give a little bit of an idea of what's selling, and where. I used the Excel software's random number generator to assign numbers to all the houses sold the first week of February. Then I sorted and picked the top five. Turns out, I got a selection of northwest and southwest homes. While five is hardly a scientific sample, the results turned out to be pretty representative of the sales that week. West side sales outpaced east side sales, and more than half of the homes' sellers were banks (in other words, lots of sales of foreclosure homes). That said, anybody got a sense of what's selling on the east side? Are houses in your neighborhood selling? And what kind of prices are they getting compared with, say, 2005? -Vanessa Gregory, staff writer (and northeast resident) en-us <p><span style="font-size: small">Vanessa, it might be of interest to people to show&nbsp;sales comparisons for each zip code -- for instance, we live in the 93304 zip&nbsp;code and very little has been sold in our area in the past year.&nbsp; On our street alone, the last house to sell was the one across from us and that sale was completed in Feb. 2007.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small">Anyway, keep up the research and sharing the results with us.</span></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/MoneyTalks/23996/#c_218396 http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/MoneyTalks/23996/#c_218396 <p><span style="font-size: small">Vanessa, it might be of interest to people to show&nbsp;sales comparisons for each zip code -- for instance, we live in the 93304 zip&nbsp;code and very little has been sold in our area in the past year.&nbsp; On our street alone, the last house to sell was the one across from us and that sale was completed in Feb. 2007.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small">Anyway, keep up the research and sharing the results with us.</span></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;East Bakersfield ( vicinity east of Union Ave. on California) is not a location for everybody. Most neighborhood homes are dated. No gated new home developments to speak of. Hwy. 178 east of Fairfax is new homes sprouting like mushrooms. Is that East Bakersfield? Panorama Drive is expensive homes. I seldom hear that area called East Bakersfield, usually College Heights, or some other name reflecting Bakersfield College.</p> <p>I reside in the vicinity of Beal &amp; Bernard, a short distance from Old Town Kern on Baker St. My observation jibes with the above post. Doesn't seem to be many For Sale signs.</p> http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/MoneyTalks/23996/#c_218474 http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/MoneyTalks/23996/#c_218474 <p>&nbsp;East Bakersfield ( vicinity east of Union Ave. on California) is not a location for everybody. Most neighborhood homes are dated. No gated new home developments to speak of. Hwy. 178 east of Fairfax is new homes sprouting like mushrooms. Is that East Bakersfield? Panorama Drive is expensive homes. I seldom hear that area called East Bakersfield, usually College Heights, or some other name reflecting Bakersfield College.</p> <p>I reside in the vicinity of Beal &amp; Bernard, a short distance from Old Town Kern on Baker St. My observation jibes with the above post. Doesn't seem to be many For Sale signs.</p> Thanks, Rettchr. I'll keep the ZIP code idea in mind. -Vanessa http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/MoneyTalks/23996/#c_218512 http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/MoneyTalks/23996/#c_218512 Thanks, Rettchr. I'll keep the ZIP code idea in mind. -Vanessa