By Home Girl, aka real-estate blogger Tracey Taylor

If you are selling your home, Berkeley is the place to be doing it, according to a piece in Forbes which ranks the ten best suburbs to sell a home. (Suburb? Ouch that hurts.) This is how they put it:

Berkeley known sometimes as a hippie haven, is becoming a hotbed for home sales. Prices in the Bay Area suburb are up 9% this year, with homes selling for a median price of $790,986. Properties are sitting on the market for 73 days on average, the lowest of any area with positive price trends within the confines of the country’s 75 largest Census-defined metro areas. Only 37% of sellers have been forced to reduce their prices, one of the lowest rates in the country.

“Only 37%” of sellers reducing their prices? Shows just how bad it is. Other California spots to make it into the Top 10 include Encinitas and Venice.

The report draws on stats from Altos Research and the really interesting angle — and one Forbes fails to mention — is provided by Altos CEO Mike Simonsen on his blog. He says this was a difficult one to call:

Their editors called and asked, “Where are the best selling suburbs for sellers right now?” It’s a tough question because the answer, really, is nowhere… By our Market Action Index, there are essentially no markets with demand levels high enough to call them “Sellers’ Markets”. We settled on identifying ten suburbs whose demand trends … simply weren’t horrible.

Of course, a Forbes ranking of “10 suburbs to sell that simply aren’t horrible” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

[Photo credit: www.cityofberkeley.info]

By Home Girl, aka real-estate blogger Tracey Taylor).

Go to Piedmont and you feel you have entered another world. That’s if you live in Berkeley or Oakland or anywhere else where you are a mere mortal.

I suppose Piedmont is the East Bay’s equivalent to Pacific Heights. Rarefied, privileged, cocooned. The median list price here for a SFH is $1,236,000 (admittedly a tad lower than Pac Height’s $3,357,000, but you get the picture).

I saw a couple of Piedmont listings this weekend. The first was a pink chateau (above) priced at $3,295,000; the second, a 1950s one-level given a complete contemporary overhaul (below), was $745,000 less expensive, but by far the more interesting proposition in my humble opinion.

If you are the old-school type who favors traditional interiors and bourgeois accommodations, the chateau is for you. If, however, you like something a little more risque — a splash of California indoor-outdoor living, a few floor-to-ceiling windows and a handful of sumptuous bathrooms thrown in — then opt for the newer model (below).

Both homes have been on the market for 64+ days, and I would want to know why the second one, at 43 Farragut Avenue, has changed hands no less than four times in the past 11 years (beginning in 1997 — a snip at $1,250,000). But if you’re after more bang for you buck than in the Heights, these are both worth investigating.

Oh, I did visit a third open house on my tour of Piedmont:  224 Ricardo Avenue is a perfectly nice house in a perfectly nice area, but it costs $1,275,000 and, to be honest, I felt like I was slumming it. That’s the effect Piedmont has on you if you spend more than enough time there.

Above: your new neighbors should you choose to buy 43 Farragut Avenue in Piedmont.

By Home Girl (aka real-estate blogger Tracey Taylor, former Redfin Sweet Digs maven, making her first guest appearance on The Front Steps. Thank you Alex!):

It doesn’t surprise me that this 3bed/3bath, 1946 house (pictured above), which comes with the distinguished Bay Area architect Walter Ratcliff‘s moniker attached, should be listed on the San Francisco MLS as well as on its East Bay equivalent.

This is the type of home that might just tempt a city dweller to cross the pond and put urban living on the back burner for a while. Set on 36,000 sq ft of wooded land, it features a great room/kitchen that opens to a patio and hot tub and a dramatic fireplace. And, of course, spectacular views of San Francisco to assuage any homesickness for those that made the leap.

But — and there is a but — the interiors look like they need some serious attention. And the big question, and possibly the reason the house hasn’t had any takers after more than 40 days on the market, is why it hasn’t been better presented. This is a house crying out for some sleek retro staging  — as you will, I’m sure, agree when you check out the listing photos.

A rash of Walter Ratcliffs hit the Berkeley market at the tail-end of last year: 2 Somerset Place, a 1920s beauty near John Hinkel Park saw its price slashed from $3.2m to $2.6m before disappearing from the MLS, and 2957 Avalon Avenue and 22 Tanglewood Road sold for $3.1m and $2.3m respectively, near asking price and no quibbling involved. But that was then.