The San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area is one of the hottest real estate markets in the nation, and, strangely, part of the fuel for this red hot market is the selling of long ago purchased homes by many Blacks in the area.

On the west side of the bay (San Francisco) Blacks are moving out and have been moving out of the city to other places since 1980's. Many are selling their expensive properties, which they acquired years ago, for under- value in the current market. Many Blacks, as other people, purchased their homes for $20-40,000 then and those properties are worth millions now.

Likewise, in the East Bay (Oakland and Berkeley) many Blacks living there purchased their homes long ago and now San Francisco prices have extended to the eastside of the bay.

During the 1950's Berkeley had most Blacks on the eastside of the bay; gradually, Oakland saw a great influx of Blacks so that the city became almost majority black. The new Blacks bought homes at $15-30,000 then and lived and worked to pay those homes off so they could leave them to their children. But a strange thing happened. Whereas, the parents were from the old school that stressed "holding on to your house," their children, born in California and acculturated to the California lifestyle started to sell, trade, and mortgage those homes for cash and buying into the consumer culture that is the hallmark of California living.

Now with the real estate market red hot, the dot com millionaire fever over, the sure bet is real estate. What those Blacks who held on to their properties rather than sell and capitalized them are now seeing is that their actions were wise.

Small, three-bedrooms home in many parts of Oakland and San Francisco are now worth millions of dollars and asking prices have become bidding prices. In San Francisco, neighborhoods that are not drug-ridden and not good but not bad neighborhoods are seeing outrageous prices being asked for homes and being gotten. Real estate has become the dotcom millionaire cycle for those who were prudent enough as short as 10-years ago to purchase a home.

Today, unless you are earning at least $100,000 a year, you cannot buy a decent home because most such decent homes are at least $700-1.2 million. And those who purchased some years ago, are now Black millionaires in real estate equity that can be cashed in or held on to, as the cultural ethos of their parents once had it.[]

Gibbs

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