Residents in an east San Jose neighborhood have been warned about a new tactic burglars are utilizing to monitor when residents are away from home by hiding a surveillance camera on the property then later posing as landscapers or delivery drivers visiting the residence.

As SFGate reports, a resident called the San Jose Police Department at 2:45 am Thursday reporting that people were on their property, who left before officers arrived. The resident then found a camera attached to an external power bank in their bushes, which was aimed at their home, according to San Jose police, presumably to monitor when the home was unoccupied in order to commit burglaries.

As KRON4 reports, while patrolling the neighborhood, detectives found a second camera attached to a Wi-Fi-powered device outside a home near where the first camera was placed.

“The suspects plant hidden surveillance devices, often posing as delivery service providers, to determine when homes are unoccupied before committing burglaries,” the police department said, per KRON4.

Per SFGate, the police department said in a press release it’s received several complaints of suspicious devices hidden on local residents’ properties, followed by the potential burglars ringing the doorbells while posing as delivery drivers or other workers, sometimes leaving packages on the doorstep.

Per SFGate, authorities say residents should call the police if a suspicious device is found, and not to touch it. “As a reminder, remaining vigilant and reporting suspicious activity helps keep our neighborhoods safe,” said the police department.

Anyone with information should email the police department’s burglary unit at burglarytips@sanjoseca.gov.

Image: San Jose Police Department

Daly City residents are urging city officials to take down an eight-foot-tall fence that recently appeared, blocking a public path near Thornton State Beach and featuring a handmade cardboard sign with a drawing of a gun and a message stating trespassers will be shot on sight.

As KRON4 reports, San Mateo County Supervisor David Canepa sent a letter Friday to the California Coastal Commission requesting that the property owner be ordered to remove the large, metal fence, which blocks a public path to Daly City's Thornton State Beach used by local beach-goers, hikers, horseback riders, and dog walkers.

“On the fence was a hand drawn sign with an image of a gun warning that trespassers would be shot on site,” wrote Canepa, per KRON4.

“There is only one trail down to the beach from Olympic Way,” Canepa continued, per KRON4. “This multi-use trail is a popular destination for recreation extending from the scenic bluffs and cliffs overlooking Thornton State Beach all the way down to the water.”

Per Reddit, the fence is located on property owned by Olympic Way LLC, which sits on the bluffs between the beach parking lot and the equestrian Mar Vista Stables. According to a campaign created by residents, Olympic Way LLC had previously planned to develop a private religious retreat on the land, which was shut down by the commission in 2021, as the SF Examiner reported at the time.

According to a comment on a change.org petition about the fence, some residents believe the fence was installed as retaliation for shutting down the project.

“There was zero need for the property owner to sabotage public access to a State Park by fencing off the path that borders his property other than to intimidate and seek revenge because the surrounding community did not want a religious outfit to build upon the property and take over the space,” wrote Tina of San Francisco on the petition.

“The state should purchase the property and add to the park. Keep it open and voice the need for path access to Daly City, San Mateo County and the State of California Parks system,” Tina continued. “This is such a pathetic attempt to intimidate neighbors and the use of public property.”

Per KRON4, the fence brings to mind a similar incident in which billionaire Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, tried for a decade to keep Marins Beach in Half Moon Bay to himself, as SFist reported at the time.

While most assume the property owner erected the Thornton Beach fence, some residents suspect a longtime squatter installed it, due to the highly threatening, handmade sign, per Reddit.  

“Kind of darkly funny that people are calling out billionaires when in contrast some are saying this was probably done by a mentally unstable squatter who is apparently well known to people in the area,” said Redditor m0llusk. “Property owners still have responsibility for this situation, just not in the way  many are thinking.”  

“I am urging the California Coastal Commission to stand up once again and oppose any efforts to restrict access to public beaches by private landowners and to have the property owner specifically to dissemble the fence restricting access to Thornton State Beach,” concluded Canepa, per KRON4.

Per Reddit, Daly City residents are encouraged to attend a city council meeting on Monday evening and leave a public comment before 4 pm Monday.

Image: Jin Chen; Bay Area Hikers/Facebook

Related: Silicon Valley Billionaire Wants $30 Million For His Beach Access, National Media Shames Him

A long-running neighborhood feud in Sausalito over a home remodel and an accessory dwelling unit (ADU) has escalated into heated arguments, police calls, restraining orders, viral videos, and accusations from both sides.

Chronicle columnist Emily Hoeven has the full details on the saga: In 2017, Jake Beyer and Georgia Glassie bought a 1920s cottage and, in 2021, proposed a major remodel — adding a third story and an ADU under California’s housing laws encouraging new units. Despite multiple community meetings and design revisions, neighbors pushed back over blocked views and concerns about neighborhood character.

The Sausalito Planning Commission approved the project in late 2023, but the City Council reversed that decision in early 2024 after a tense meeting, requiring design changes including removal of rear decks and additional neighbor consultations. As the Pacific Sun reported last year, Beyer said he was “confused and disappointed by the lack of clarity” in the council’s decision, hinting at possible legal action.

Architect Michael Rex criticized Sausalito’s planning process as inconsistent, pointing to staff turnover and unclear code interpretations. “The department interpreted the code willy-nilly for this project,” he told the Pacific Sun. “The applicant was not instructed correctly.”

As the Chronicle reports, tensions spilled beyond City Hall, with police called twice to local businesses over altercations involving Beyer and neighbors — once about a thrown food item, and another over a middle finger allegedly directed at the couple’s children.

The dispute also played out online with competing Google reviews and heated posts on neighborhood forums. Beyer and Glassie produced a slick, documentary-style video and website to share their perspective.

Tensions continued at parks and community events, with accusations including spitting and intimidation. The couple says they faced harassment, were followed and filmed without consent, and reported dozens of incidents to authorities. Neighbors say they felt unsafe as well, leading to several restraining orders being filed — most of which were denied.

The Chronicle writes that in March 2024, the City Council unanimously approved a revised version of the project, calling for compromise and including changes such as larger setbacks and removal of decks.

Later that year, Beyer and Glassie sent open letters to Governor Newsom and state housing officials, accusing Sausalito of misapplying local codes to limit their ADU’s size. The city attorney disputed this, saying the couple chose a smaller unit to preserve backyard space.

By then raising four children, the couple argued that state housing laws allowed them to build a larger ADU without extra city review. State officials found no violation, though some housing advocates disagreed.

As the Chronicle reports, the main remodel eventually moved forward with approval in 2025. The couple later applied to restore the full ADU size but say the city unfairly delayed their application.

This dispute highlights the deep challenges Sausalito faces around housing reform. Despite state mandates and urgent affordable housing needs, local opposition remains strong, complicating projects like this.

Contributor’s Note: The original version of this post too closely matched the tone of the Chronicle article. We have revised it to better attribute the original reporting. We regret this oversight and sincerely thank the Chronicle for their thorough coverage.

Image: Screenshot via Vimeo

As if the Bay Area housing market isn’t already chaotic enough, a crucial software service used by real estate agents to manage property listings has been hit by a cyberattack, causing a major meltdown for the industry.

For nearly two weeks, real estate agents have been grappling with the fallout of the attack on Rapattoni Corporation, a Southern California-based company that provides property listing data to multiple listing services (known as “MLS”) used by realtor associations nationwide, as the SF Business Times reported. And there’s no end in sight yet.

The breach has reportedly paralyzed several workflows across the industry. Agents rely on Rapattoni's services to input and edit new listings, which automates the process of updating and sharing property information with buyers. Now, they’re apparently forced to manually update hundreds of listings and even print out the information a la early 2000s Mapquest.

Rapattoni Corporation, in a tweet last week, acknowledged the cyberattack and noted that they were actively investigating the breach. The company mentioned that they were working tirelessly to restore the system but couldn't provide a specific timeline for when services would be fully operational again.

"It is wreaking havoc everywhere," David Bellings, a long-time real estate agent, told the Chronicle. Damon Knox, President of the San Francisco Association of Realtors, added that it’s an inconvenience and there might be financial repercussions.

The incident has triggered a federal investigation, and Rapattoni’s insurance carriers are in talks with the hackers to try to get the software operating again, as the RealDeal reported.

It’s unclear what type of cyberattack hit Rapattoni, but ArsTechnica reported that it’s likely a ransomware attack, in which hackers access the business’ network and private data, then demand payment in exchange for unlocking the data or not publishing it. That could lead to a whole host of even bigger issues for real estate sellers, buyers, and agents.

Feature image: Feverpitched via iStock/Getty Images Plus.

A Gothic Tudor mansion on Russian Hill that will be familiar to some as it is highly photographed in shots of the Bay and the Hyde Street cable car has just hit the market for $12 million. But if you want to keep the snazzy views that keep those photographers coming back, you'll have to be prepared to pay a bit more.

Socketsite ran the listing and picked up on the fact that an adjacent Hyde Street lot owned by the seller is advertised as buildable. That's available to be purchased with the home for an additional $3,500,000 — otherwise, it's presumably going on the market. So really, basically, the house is $15.5 million.

The price for this particular six-bedroom, six-and-a-half bath residence, built in 1914, has fluctuated a bit over the years. As Curbed provides the timeline, in 2006, it was purchase by the screen actor Nicholas Cage, a figure known for such classics as Face/Off, Con Air, and perhaps most notably National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets. At the time, Cage paid $9.4 million for the house and the lot, but he later sold them at a loss for $8.5 million. Curbed ties Cage to the area via his uncle, Francis Ford Coppola — Cage's legal name is Nicolas Kim Coppola, after all.

But Cage's loss — not his only one, as the actor has had notorious problems with foreclosures — is your gain, new homeowner! Imagine it: At parties, you can invoke Cage, gesture around the rooms, and say that decisions like these are the reason he's taken every movie contract he can get, no matter how terrible, for the last decade.

Unit 4 at 2170 Jackson Street is a safe space for the concerned and electromagnetically sensitive among us.

Though it was sold back in 2007, it was still, as Curbed puts it, a "dated" co-op with interiors that "looked like they hadn't been touched since the 1970s."

It's been updated since then, and now it's back on the market with an asking price of $8.6 million. The space occupies an entire floor and comes with three bedrooms, four and a half bathrooms, and a spot in the garage. But wait, there's more!

Unique features include guts of the apartment that are thickly coated with semi-conductive graphite paint to block EMF or electromagnetic fields, the kind of poisons emitted by phones, wireless routers, and almost everything else you might use as a member of modern society.

The paint ain't the half of it. The apartment is also shielded from the world with wire tape strips, and every window is coated with a film of EMF-shielding polymer. In short, it's what's known as a Faraday cage. No, that doesn't refer to an isolation chamber for lunatics. Well, it sort of does.

But it looks pretty nice. At least for, as Curbed dubs it, the housing equivalent of a "tin foil hat."

Come and see NN guru Tim Wu, Art Brodsky, Richard Clarke, Lawrence Spiwak, and a host of others. Why should you care about Network Neutrality? Here's why.

Al Gore took the initiative in creating the Internet during his service in the United States Congress for YOUR benefit. You should return the favor by showing an interest in how it's run (at least until the day the United Nations takes it over or Cyberdyne Systems finally gets SkyNet up). And if you're a lawyer, this is a painless way to get tons of MCLE credit. See you there! If you can't make it to the campus, then check it out on your PC via uStream starting at 8:30 AM.

More details, after the jump.

We know we're treading in slightly dangerous territory here -- while we're fairly sure a good chunk of our readership are homeowners (condo, single-family, multifamily, whatever), we know an even larger chunk are not, and could care less about the burdens of homeownership, predatory mortgage-ship, and property tax increase-ship.

But for those of you that this applies to (or those of you thinking about owning property in the future), consider this a bit of a PSA.

Property owners should have all received their reassessment statements by now. Prop 13 will only let the city increase its valuation of your property for tax purposes by 2% -- but should you let them take even that much in a down market (understatement? perhaps; we'll leave that to the experts)?

Point is, you might want to think about contesting your reevaluation. What not everyone knows is that you have until Sept. 19th to contest it -- go to the city assessment appeals board's site for explicit details. We're afraid that forms are indeed involved. But should the government make more money if your place isn't actually appreciating? Yeah. Thought not.

The study looked into the idea of creating bus only lines, either the center lane or outside lanes. One scenario envisioned would consist of two lanes towards the center with an island dividing those lanes with the rest of the road. Both scenarios would increase decrease traveling time by a little less than 15 minutes. Oooh.

Of course, the idea of fixing up Geary Street (part of the BRT plan) comes complete with pooh-poohing business owners, most notably David Heller, president of the Greater Geary Boulevard Merchants and Property Owners Association. He's saying that the lanes would eliminate some parking and that would be bad. They're so unhappy, in fact, it's part of the reason they want a recall of Jake McG.

If the idea comes into fruition, authorities say the whole thing could be finished by 2011.