Poets Corner, Pleasant Hill

From its street names. Many of the streets here are named after poets and writers: Longfellow Drive, Chaucer Drive, Byron Drive, Keats Circle, Whittier Road, Emerson Court, and Stevenson Drive among them. Together they gave the neighborhood the name it goes by today, and it is one of the easiest neighborhoods in the city to recognize on a map.

Mostly mid-century single-family homes: California ranch houses, single-story, with low-pitched roofs and attached garages, on established lots with mature trees. Many have been remodeled or expanded over the years, and a few apartment buildings sit along the edges near the main roads.

What should you look for in a Poets Corner home? Homes from the late 1940s through the 1960s are old enough that the basics deserve a close look. Check the electrical panel and wiring, the original plumbing, the roof, and the foundation, and look at how close large trees and their roots sit to the house. Ask about past additions and whether they had permits. Native oaks and other native trees of a certain size need a City permit to remove. There's no ordinance requiring a sewer lateral certificate in Pleasant Hill, however a sewer lateral inspection is recommended.

Pleasant Hill Middle School, a public middle school for grades 6 through 8, sits on Santa Barbara Road beside Pleasant Oaks Park. Pleasant Hill Elementary School, for kindergarten through grade 5, is just to the southwest on Oak Park Boulevard. Both are in the Mt. Diablo Unified School District. The Santa Barbara Road campus is also home to two smaller district programs, Horizons School, an independent study program, and Prospect High School. School boundaries don't follow neighborhood names, so check the district's boundary map for any address you're considering. The Pleasant Hill page lists the public and private schools across the city.

Downtown Pleasant Hill, with shops, restaurants, a movie theater, and a Saturday farmers market at City Hall, is a few minutes north. Downtown Walnut Creek, with Broadway Plaza and the Lesher Center for the Arts, is a few minutes south. The Iron Horse Regional Trail passes through Pleasant Hill for running and biking, and the Rodgers Ranch Heritage Center on Cortsen Road preserves an 1860s farmhouse from the city's farming days.

Pleasant Hill has no extra city transfer tax, only Contra Costa County's. There's no ordinance requiring a sewer lateral certificate in Pleasant Hill, however a sewer lateral inspection is recommended. The City does ask for one form of its own: a time-of-sale weatherization disclosure, a short checklist of energy items like attic insulation, weatherstripping, and an insulated water heater, which the buyer returns to the City after closing. Most of Pleasant Hill is not in a state fire hazard severity zone, but it is worth checking the address; a home in the small High zone on the city's west edge adds a routine defensible space inspection. My Pleasant Hill home selling page explains the steps.

Homeowners move on for all kinds of reasons including (but not limited to): upsizing to a second or third home, divorce, relocating for work, or the passing of a family member.

Tanja Odzak is a Top East Bay Realtor with eXp Realty, helping buyers and sellers in Pleasant Hill and across the East Bay. Poets Corner is a residential neighborhood at the south end of Pleasant Hill, next to Walnut Creek, known for its streets named after poets, its tree-lined blocks of mid-century homes, and Pleasant Oaks Park and Pleasant Hill Middle School at its center.