Holliday Development

After months of stagnant sales, buyers are starting to snatch up East Bay condos.

A boost in sales activity comes after developers converted hundreds of units into rentals or chopped prices. That along with low interest rates and tax incentives for homebuyers have helped bump up sales.

The Oakland-Emeryville market had about 665 units available in August at about a dozen projects, according to Polaris Group, a real estate marketing and research firm. Projects such as BayRock Residential’s Eight Orchids, which has been on the market since early 2007, is down to its last 30 units out of 157. Other projects such as the Ellington in Jack London Square and Adeline Place in Emeryville began selling units earlier this year.

“Sometime in May or June, consumers got tired of waiting, developers dropped prices and sales started happening,” said Miles Garber, director of research at Polaris. “There’s a huge surge of first-time homebuyers for projects where you have condos in the $200,000s.”

"There's a huge surge of first-time homebuyers for projects where you have condos in the $200,000s."