As hard as it might be to believe, in the 1980s you could buy property in Bernal Heights for next to nothing. A long period of decline and neglect had left the proud, working-class neighborhood in such a state that businesses and homeowners alike had fled, leaving boarded-up storefronts and empty Victorians in their wake. Even the Bank of America, which had kept a presence on Bernal’s Cortland Avenue for decades, considered moving out.
Today, such an exodus seems absurd, especially in a neighborhood recently called the country’s “hottest” by Redfin. Buyers now target Bernal Heights so often that neighborhood homes routinely sell for well over their asking price, sometimes after fierce bidding wars. Bernal Heights is well past its “low” point. ...