Will a pink house sell…or sit?

Pink may be the color of a Barbie Dreamhouse, but this vibrant property in Oakland, CA, could be someone’s real-life dream home. With a bakery downstairs called Angel Cakes and a two-bedroom rental upstairs that pulls in $4,000 per month, this property is listed for $565,000. Here’s more about this eye-catching investment from co-owner and manager Jason Wallace.

Q: First off, why pink? “Back in the 1970s, a woman named TJ Robinson opened a bakery and expanded into a restaurant. She intended to create a magical place. She decorated the building to the nines, very Candyland, lots of gingerbread characters. After she passed, it went out of business and sat vacant for years. A previous owner stripped the pink paint down to bare wood. So from the beginning, we were planning to repaint.”

Q: How did you end up with this property? “We bought the building to serve as a bakery for Jen Angel. She’d been renting off-hours at commercial kitchens, but as her business grew, that became unsustainable. There’s also an apartment upstairs that went to friends of friends.”

Q: How did people react to the new pink paint job? “People loved it. Eight people stopped in that first week just because of the color. A bakery is a bit of an impulse purchase, and the pink literally stopped people in their tracks. Jen Angel died in 2023, so the bakery is now an all-women baker co-op. We had hoped they’d buy it, but they’re too busy baking.”

Q: What should a buyer know about this property? “Two things: One, the building is turn-of-the-last-century Victorian construction—good bones, but it’s an older building, more like buying an old house than buying a commercial property. Two, it’s next to the freeway, so it has more car-based customers than pedestrians. Oakland has had economic ups and downs, and there’s a lot of development upside here that hasn’t fully materialized yet. An investor here should think long-term.”

Q: Does the new owner need to keep it pink? “We’d like that. It’s not in the contract, but pink is the right color.”