OAKLAND — A historic housing tower in downtown Oakland was recently bought for roughly half of its assessed value from a year ago, according to documents filed on March 30 with the Alameda County Recorder’s Office.
HillCastle Apartments, at 1431 Jackson St. near Lake Merritt, was purchased for $6.95 million, documents show. In January 2025, the building had an assessed value of $13.9 million.
HillCastle Apartments, a 10-story housing tower at 1431 Jackson St. in downtown Oakland, as seen in February 2025. (Google Maps)
A San Francisco-based group bought the 10-story tower, which is between 14th Street and 15th Street, through an all-cash deal, property files show.
The purchase price for the 160-unit complex is a fresh sign of tough times for the Oakland and East Bay apartment markets.
On April 6, a lender foreclosed on two complexes in Oakland’s Uptown district – the 97-unit Telegraph Arts and 78-unit The Moran.
Assessed values are only one of multiple metrics that can be used to determine property price trends.
Recent deals in the shaky apartment market for Oakland might help shove property values lower in the coming weeks as the Alameda County Assessor’s Office finalizes its latest guesses for property values in its jurisdiction.
A nosedive in values has implications for local government agencies and the services they provide. If values falter, the decline could imperil a crucial revenue stream from property taxes for cities, counties, regional agencies, and school districts.
HillCastle Apartments was originally built as a hotel and formally opened in 1930, according to an Oakland Tribune article posted by the Oakland Local Wiki group.
The tower was built for Henry G. Hill and his wife Ida Hill and was designed by Miller and Warnecke, which was a prolific architectural firm in the East Bay, the Oakland Wiki page states.
The article described the then-hotel as “beautiful,” and a 1938 advertisement described the tower as “luxuriously furnished,” the Oakland Local Wiki page states. It wasn’t clear when the tower morphed into a rental apartment property.