Bakersfield lives up to the phrase ‘hot market’

You hear it while dining at the Seven Oaks Country Club, then from the mouths of the well-heeled as they ogle showcase homes, and again at nighttime patio parties when the summer heat finally loosens its grip.

“It’s like you’re not in Bakersfield,” they’ll say, with awe.

Beginnings

Ever since novelist John Steinbeck immortalized the southern San Joaquin Valley in “The Grapes of Wrath,” Bakersfield has struggled to overcome its reputation as a dusty and desperate way station to someplace better.

Good news

The Depression’s over now.

Witness a construction boom in this city of about 400,000 residents that is turning the sun-browned landscape into tracts of green: high-end and mid-level homes, shopping centers, schools and parks. Government numbers released in June document a housing price surge of 33.67% in the last year, making Bakersfield the nation’s No. 1 market for appreciation.

“This is a happy time,” said veteran Realtor Terri Collins with Coldwell Banker. “There were so many years when I wanted to go out and buy a Grim Reaper outfit.”

Insider’s viewpoint

Most of the city’s recent growth centers on the southwestern and northwestern quadrants, where new usually equates with bigger and better in residents’ minds. Schools in these areas boast higher test scores, and when a new restaurant opens, odds are good that McMuffins won’t be on the menu.

In the master-planned community of Seven Oaks in the southwest, several golf-course-adjacent mansions are on the market for well over $1 million, a sum that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. But just across the main thoroughfare of Ming Avenue where it intersects the complex, one can still snag a Seven Oaks address with a gated, albeit guardless, entrance for as low as $250,000.

Drawing cards

“We feel really lucky to be where we are,” said Anna Yaplee, who built her 5,000-square-foot Seven Oaks home 10 years ago.

Yaplee and her husband Steven moved to Bakersfield from Louisiana. Her three daughters know the city as home, and with her husband’s ophthalmology practice thriving, she has no plans to leave. “We can do whatever we want here. We’re two hours from skiing, we travel. Who cares if it gets hot?”

While downtown’s Westchester neighborhood, known for its older, tree-shaded bungalows, may exude more community spirit -- the Fourth of July parade and potluck is straight out of countless home movies circa 1950 -- residents say they like the convenience of the city’s western half.

There, a shopping-dining-amphitheater complex along the Kern River is under construction, and residents wonder what might come next. (Still no Nordstrom, but the city’s first California Pizza Kitchen recently opened its doors.)

Chris and Susan Hamilton, who just renovated their home in the southwest’s Haggin Oaks neighborhood, recently closed on the last near-acre golf-course lot at Seven Oaks’ high-end Grand Island development. Susan, however, was nervous enough about a housing price bubble that she first took an online stock market/real estate course. Armed with some new knowledge, she’s comfortable with their decision.

“Besides, even if the bubble does burst, we’ll still be here. I see us holding wedding receptions in our backyard.”

Report card

On the 2004 Academic Performance Index, the southwest’s Stockdale High School scored 737 of a possible 1,000, and the northwest’s Liberty High and Centennial High scored 689 and 648, respectively. The southwest’s Tevis and Warren junior highs scored 816 and 697, respectively. Among southwest elementary schools, Christa McAuliffe Elementary scored 760; Ronald Reagan, 860; Buena Vista, 831; and Hart, 833.

Historical values

Residential resales:

Year...Median Price

1990...$84,500

1995...$84,500

2000...$89,000

2004...$175,000

2005...$221,000*

*Year to date

Sources: Terri Collins, Coldwell Banker; California Department of Education, api.cde.ca.gov/reports.asp; office of Federal Housing Oversight, DataQuick Information Systems