What we've learned about Martinez
Cleaning an old house here is partly a logistics problem. There is often no driveway, the parking sits on a grade, and the front door is at the top of a dozen exterior steps. Crews carry a smaller kit up in one trip rather than running back to the curb. Once inside, the payoff is real: picture rail, deep baseboards, transom windows and floors laid long before plywood.
Away from the old grid the city looks like the rest of the county, all 1970s and 1980s tracts with attached garages and level entries. What links the two ends is the water. The strait and the refinery sit at the bottom of the hill, and homes facing that way pick up a gritty film on north-facing sills and window glass that ordinary dusting smears rather than lifts. Those get a damp pass and then a dry one.
The housing stock in Martinez
Two stocks, one city. Downtown and the streets climbing away from it hold 1,000 to 1,800 square foot homes built between 1890 and 1930: narrow stairwells, painted woodwork, original single-pane sash, and floors sanded more than once. Newer Martinez, north and south of the old core, is the familiar three or four bedroom tract house on a flat lot with a slab and an attached garage. The older properties take longer per square foot and we quote them that way.