Berkeley: Is There Such A Thing As Condo One-Upmanship?

Because if there is and you are prone to it, this is the sort of home its realtor hopes you will snap up to get one up on your condo-owning friends by living in a house.

It’s a one-bedroom 1920s “cottage” priced at $395,000 which sounds competitive until you find out it works out at $718/sq ft.

I had to wonder what I would have made of this place had it not been smartened up and staged.
Because it presents well – nice black and white tile in the kitchen, a decent sized bedroom on the back, a very pretty back garden with a soothing water feature and off-street parking.

Strip out the tasteful furniture though and it would look very different. There’s nothing architecturally distinctive here.

And the house is on Ashby Avenue which is one of the busiest main arteries in Berkeley. There will always be traffic noise, particularly in the bedroom and living room.

Maybe it’s worth revisiting some of those condos after all.