theFrontSteps – San Francisco

Condo complexes aren’t really selling condos these days. Instead, they sell a feeling, an image of the lifestyle that would too become yours if you buy in. And by “buy in” I mean in both senses, because first you’d have to buy that owning a condo at, say, the Hayes, would make you instantly urban-chic-hip; [...]

When I was working at C__________, my boss was a big coke-head. As a result, the atmosphere was, to understate, lax. Everyone drank and ate copiously (never paying for it), sat down and/or danced randomly in the middle of the restaurant, swore, and slept with one another. All of the aforementioned took place during open-for-business [...]

Prop 8 is not one that encourages sedate emotion. People are either vehemently for it, or they are just as vehemently against it. The debate between the two camps, heated as it is, often erupts into full out fighting, which we all know from our rhetoric classes is actually the opposite effect civilized, fair debate [...]

Hello out there, theFrontStep Readers! You may (or just as likely, may not) know my name from my blogs for Redfin. I’ve kindly been invited to write also for theFrontSteps, so here I am, on the steps, with my first blog. So here’s the setting: last night, 2:00am, sultry night, people walking up from the [...]

Ever wondered what a letter from a lender to a homeowner would read when they’re about to foreclose your house? Wonder no more. This came to us via the intertubes (re-typed for privacy…of course). From Wells Fargo Home Mortgage to Homeowners THIS LETTER IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. THIS IS NOT A DEMAND FOR PAYMENT. [...]

Where readers ask and we (the community) try to answer: I am considering buying a condo in the Noe Valley/Mission Dolores (around 21st and Church) area and I am trying to understand what the going rate for a garage is in this area. I have the option to purchase a space with the condo. I’ve [...]

…and continuing with our education for the week, we’re introduced to Walk Score from another reader. Really, we haven’t been living under a rock, honest to God, but keep sending us information and we’ll keep getting edumucated. What is Walk Score? “Walk Score’s patent-pending technology calculates a Walk Score for any property and shows a [...]

File this under absolutely nothing to do with real estate, but everything to do with living in San Francisco. This is such a common problem that the only trauma hospital in San Francisco has its own classification for accidents like this, they call it “Ped vs. Muni”. You’ve seen it before, you’re sitting at a [...]

As you might have learned, if you’ve read our site for a while, if we can remotely spin it towards real estate, your “tip” has a good chance of getting on the site. Today a lesson on what happens when you flush your pipes. From our reader: Hello, It was really great that you did [...]

From “zang”: Assistant Arrested in Killing of Real Estate Agent-[NY Times] “[the agent, her boss] ‘just kept yelling at her…’” That’s just plain sad, and for the record we think it is awful, but we want to know if you’ve ever wanted to kill your Realtor (figuratively of course) for any particular reason. Such as, [...]