Old San Leandro

Like much of San Leandro, Old San Leandro is made up of…well…older homes. Given the name of the neighborhood, I guess the surprise would be if it were not made up of older homes.

Though single family homes are the majority of the housing available here, there are also a fair number of apartments, condos and townhomes here as well. The far southern end of the Old San Leandro, for example, is made up of a late 70’s era condo development—the kind of condos people moved into after the kids moved out if they were divorced—that’s what I associate them with anyway. They are a bit on the small side for raising a larger family, but okay if you are childless or only have one kid. There is even a little motor home park just to the south of the condo complex in case those are out of your price range.

North of these there is a mix of boxy 70’s style apartment buildings—fairly well-kept mostly—and some nice older homes. The homes are mostly small but many of them have really nicely trimmed front lawns and those wall high windows that give them a sort of Modernist touch that is pretty nice.

My favorite part of Old San Leandro, however, is on the far northern section where the homes are particularly nice. These are a mix of homes with Tudor accents, Mission Revival style homes, and even just good old well-kept Ranch homes and bungalows. The streets and homes though are just really well cared for, making you feel like you have jumped back in time to a bygone era when people really took good care of their neighborhoods. (A time that probably never existed but that we think we remember.)

The median home price in Old San Leandro is $250K with the most expensive homes—those in the $300Ks and $400Ks being in the northern section of the neighborhood.

Now this is a nice area, but I am not sure if I would want to raise a family here. It still suffers from many of the problems that you find in the rest of San Leandro. First, the schools are just not very good. McKinley Elementary, for example, has abysmally low test scores, as does Bancroft Middle School. San Leandro High manages to be average, which I suppose means your education will be what you make of it there, but if you are going to live here you probably will have to pay extra to send your kids to private school to really give them the kind of education they will need to survive in the world that we have created.

The second problem is crime. There have been more than a hundred assaults in the neighborhood in the last 6 months.
Overall though, this is a pretty nice area that I wouldn’t mind living in one day when my own kid is older.

I have came here a few times looking at the real estates here. I really like this area. The housing is affordable, big, clean, and quite new. There are a lot of trees and green, with just the right amount of people and cars. Not too much so that the streets are crowded, and not too little that it seems deserted. The streets are also neat and clean.
I really like the houses here, and I'm still planning to buy from here. It's a great place to raise a family or for young couples to live here. Shopping is easy especially with a car. Near by there is a Costco, and there are lots of small grocers and shop. If you don't feel like cooking, there's also lots of unique restaurants.