Heard on the Grapevine
Up and coming cool Sonoma County country property listings: West Sebastopol  1 acre 3/2 house in scenic area $759,000 end of Feb Prime close-in country location near downtown Sebastopol  $825,000 "ish" 3/2 1/5+- acres coveted end of lane location Prime wine country home and 3.5 acres surrounded by vineyards and horse properties. Now set up for horses, eminently plantable to Russian River pinot noir or Syrah or? Pool, 4BR, 2BA. Lovely views and fabulous bucolic setting on a quiet lane. Price TBD. South Sebastopol mini-farm with horse setup, house and granny, in the $800's. Coming end of February. Healdsburg 2 useable acres in prime end of lane location surrounded by larger parcels, lovely views, modest 2BR comfy home. $850,000 ish. Later this spring. Call or email me to check on these or other upcoming properties in Sonoma county,...
Bay Area Real Estate Buyers out in force as the sun shines
Well they have been out in force even in the rain, but it is sure a lot more fun to look at property when the sun is shining. Our local Coldwell Banker Santa Rosa office had 23 open escrows last week which is a noticeable post-Super Bowl bump perhaps.  In a "normal" market we average 20-30 escrows a week opened but December and January were down under 20 for the most part. Marian Bennett in Coastal San Mateo county notes a similar trend in a recent post: "They came from the Frenchman’s Creek neighborhood, Fremont, San Francisco, Sonoma, even southern California…tired of waiting for the bottom to hit, or starting the spring house-hunting…and many checking out our coastside communities on one of our “10″ days on my subjective weather meter."   Even in the rain two weeks ago, I had buyers come from all over the Bay Area to view a lovely Sebastopol country property I was holding open.  Buyers who may feel like Redfin employee Susan Brady--a self-confessed mid-Peninsula resident with Sonoma Country property aspirations, on the outside looking in. If you want to see that same property in the sunshine so that you can appreciate the fabulous 360 degree views in a typical Sebastopol mini-farm setting on nearly 2 acres at the end of a peaceful country lane, please come see me tomorrow, February 17  at 5611 Hessel Avenue in Sebastopol, Ca 95472 from 1 pm to 4pm.  This property is listed by my friend Izetta Feeny, and is extremely well-priced at $725,000. See you there!  5611 Hessel Avenue, Sebastopol Open House this Sunday 2/17 from 1 to 4 pm....
How many miles of trails in Sonoma County?
Many people live in Sonoma county or want to buy real estate here in order to take advantage of the great access to hiking, horsebackriding and mountain biking trails. Road bicycling is another draw--just ask local bike racer Levi Leipheimer where he trains during the off-season when not competing in the tour de France. I was curious just how many miles of trails there are--especially for horsebackriding. My personal favorite. The Sonoma County Horse Council compiled a list and I did some totalling. This is a partial picture of a page at their site. Sonoma County Regional Parks total 2659 acres of parks with 30 miles of trails. California State Parks that allow horsebackriding total 16460 acres of parks with 111 miles of trails, including 11 miles of trails along the Sonoma Coast at Bodega Bay--great on a hot summer day! Annadel State Park with over 5200 acres and 35 miles of trails in the heart of Santa Rosa is borded by many horse properties with direct access to the park, and deserves its own post. I think I need to take a ride out there and tell you more about it. The Army Corp of Engineers runs Warm Springs Dam at Lake Sonoma above Healdsburg which is a spectacularly beautiful location with stunning views and 35 miles of trails on 17,000 acres. Many of these parks allow camping and some allow horse-camping. Much of Sonoma County is within an hour or so trailer ride to Point Reyes National Seashore and its campgrounds as well....
Leaving the Bay Area for Greener Pastures (Literally)
Last Sunday I held open a wonderful country property in Sebastopol, listed by my good friend and colleague Izetta Feeny. It is a great value, a four bedroom house on nearly two acres withing good commute range of San Francisco. The family that currently owns the house home schools their four children there and there is an assortment of goats, chickens, geese and two miniature donkeys and four big dogs that round out the family. The house is nicely situated on a knoll with 360 degree views of the surrounding countryside and hills. This morning I bet they can even see snow on some of those hills. As the house is set at the end of a series of country lanes, I was curious how people found me. It turns out that all of the eight parties or so who came by had found about the open house via our on-line ads. People had driven from as far as Fremont and Oakland with their children to see this one house, and one person came with her realtor. We had a great time chatting and comparing notes. In 1998 I was doing the same thing, driving up to look at properties on weekends from my home in the East Bay. Like me many of these people were looking for a different lifestyle, but concerned about what they might give up by being "so remote". I had to laugh because I certainly don't feel that way any longer. Seems like a lot of people want more room to roam, either for themselves, their children or their four legged friends....
Entry level buyers gain success not realized 2 years ago
I heard a great story from one of my wonderful colleagues, Delia Nieto at Coldwell Banker yesterday.  I spotted her meeting with clients in the office so that they could remove all contingencies on the purchase of their first home, priced well under $500,000 in Santa Rosa.  They have rented the same tiny apartment for 6 years and are bursting at the seams with 3 children. Two years ago at the peak of the frenzied Sonoma County real estate market, the median home was priced around $600,000. Although this family worked closely two years ago with Burbank Housing , a Sonoma County non-profit that works with low-income residents to get them into affordable housing, their jobs as a special needs teacher and landscaper did not quite qualify them to buy at the peak prices.   But the downward spiral of entry level prices and their diligence over the last two years, as well as the Acorn Housing Loan program offered in this case in conjunction with Bank of America  are enabling them to buy their first home. Through the Acorn program they each took numerous classes in home ownership and responsible credit management.  Meanwhile, the house they would have paid $540,000 for two years ago, will now cost them $460,000!   Astonishingly, Bank of America's appraisal for this same house for their CURRENT loan, came in at a hefty $530,000. Delia and I are both puzzled but this occurence, but her very happy clients will take it.  Meanwhile, yesterday's Press Democrat newspaper's front page story, confirmed my little anecdote as a trend.  Buyers' market People priced out in recent years jump in as costs fall, supply rises  Nice to see the press making some lemonade (along with smart first time buyers) of the current market....
Why shouldn't consumers have access to sales data?
Some local MLS's (multiple listings services) are now starting to enable consumers to search "sold" listings as well as actives and pendings. This has been a controversial move for the old guard in real estate, stemming from the days when the licensed realtor high priests held data to themselves and were able to pronounce as from the Oracle of Delphi, what property values might be for a given potential listing or buyer purchase. Not hard to hold that data tight to your chest when the only access was the printed MLS book updated weekly. A little impossible to defend in the days of Zillow, etc.  Personally, I want my clients to have as much information as possible so they can make informed decisions, and we work as a more powerful team that way....
I knew the deal was in trouble when…
... we noticed that the claw foot tub in the guest bathroom was supported by foam blocks and the home inspector had not noticed. My contractor husband came by to inspect the property informally with me as I performed my agent's visual examination.  This was a new home in the country outside NW Santa Rosa, with fantastic style and my clients fell in love with it on-line and we wrote an offer after they flew in from San Diego to see it in person. It stood up at first glance and matched their on line infatuation.  Kind of like a successful first encounter after meeting on Match.com! Anyway, the home had been built on spec by an architect and built by himself and his buddies, we later found out.  Something didn't seem right somehow--it had never been occupied and had been finalled by the county inspectors earlier in the year.   When Bruce (my husband) came by to look at the property (unofficially--i.e. not retained by my clients) he was able to point out a large number of items that had either been done improperly or were never finished. For the most part, they were minor but added up to a huge punch list. Given that the property had been "finished" nearly a year earlier, that was cause for concern. The most egregious item was the aforementioned claw-footed tub. Bruce was able to easily tap the foam supports away and said, "Can you imagine what would happen the first time the tub was filled with water?" Apparently the only thing supporting it was the exposed drain pipe running down to the subway tiles!   While we called for an official plumbing inspection to further investigate, my clients tossed and turned and lost a lot of sleep until we decided that the best course was to cancel the escrow due to the results of their investigations.  That was in August of 2007. The house is still on the market, but on November 30, my clients closed escrow on a FANTASTIC new home in Healdsburg built by a very successful and conscientious builder. There was a happy ending after all.  My husband, the contractor, said that oftentimes in new construction, it takes a large cast of inspectors to really evaluate a property.  I am not so sure, and have changed home inspection companies....
Factual versus Actual: The Bay Area Real Estate Tide floats Sonoma County's Real Estate Boat
Have you ever visited the US Army San Francisco Bay Model? It is really great to see when the model is running and you can view the really complex tidal patterns that circulate through San Francisco Bay--I had the chance once when I attended a sailboat racing lecture there--tides being really critical to your success racing on SF Bay. With Homescopes, I hope that we can use our informal network of agents on the ground, to help us as a region get a feel for the ebbs and flows of our inter-related Northern California marketplaces. Many of us in the real estate market in the North Bay are fairly convinced that our market in Sonoma and Napa is very influenced by the strengths and variations of the Bay Area real estate market whether in terms of general trends (Hot, Cold or Indifferent) as well as localized effects such as the tides of Palo Alto and the Peninsula, San Francisco and the East Bay Insterstate 80 corridor. I spoke to my friend Izetta Feeny yesterday, a long time Coldwell Banker agent in Sonoma County and shared with her the 3 Ocean's Real Estate recent post about rapid median price apprection in Palo Alto and other selected markets in the Bay Area. "Oh! That's good," she said, "That means we'll see the effect up here in 18 months." As if the rising tide of the heart of the Bay Area's market would eventually ripple north to Sonoma and Napa counties and lift our boat. When our boat is eventually lifted by the Bay Area high tide, we attract at least 2 types of buyers from out of town: entry level buyers who can't afford to live where they work in Marin or San Francisco, and upper-tier buyers with equity in strong, competitive Bay markets that want a lifestyle change and move here full time, or who are looking for a weekend getaway or wine country estate. As the most desireable markets in the Bay Area are strong, then we see a more immediate impact on the markets that will serve the budding country squire (and squire-ess). Virtually all the buyers I have worked with this year fall into this category of new "lifestyle" immigrants to the wine country. As you view the upper quartile median price points for many of Sonoma County's cities (well, towns), the cities with the most cachet for out of town...
Homes on the auction block
One of my colleagues asked me to accompany him to a home auction at the fairgrounds in San Mateo County last weekend. Now, when I think of auctions I think of the Keeneland Yearling Sales in Kentucky, the Napa or Sonoma Wine Auctions or livestock auctions. The concept of auctioning peoples' HOMES, I found depressing and sort of difficult to imagine, as if the homes would be paraded around the livestock ring on a lead rope, with numbers stickered on them, and the happy buyers would roll them away in shopping carts. So last Saturday I decided to go, and to help Miguel and Cecilia, his wife, as their agent, and see what the scoop was. The auction was run by LandAuction.com, a company which primarily has run land sales, but recently has started to move more homes due to the subprime mortgage situation and the amount of homes in default. The process of buying a home in this way is appealing to a lot of people (they think they are getting a deal, and the average time of a home on the block (2 minutes--or 500 homes a weekend) certainly shortens the sales cycle! In Australia, many homes are sold at auction. The process is fraught with risks however, and is about as different as can be from the "standard" California home purchase transaction as it can be, without completely disregarding California laws concerning seller disclosure and buyer investigations in real estate transactions. In the case of the auction, the buyer generally must do ALL of their investigation prior to bidding on the property buy the property as is and with no contingencies close within 21 days of the auction Unless you are very familiar with an area, and have thoroughly investigated a property, you could find yourself in the position of losing your earnest money deposit if you change your mind after your "winning" bid and decide not to go through with a purchase. This is the reverse of the sequence and a vastly different process on a "normal" purchase where the buyer is in the driver's seat during a negotiated contingency period and can cancel a purchase during their timeframes if the property does not pass their inspections or their loan is not approved, for example if the property doesn't pass muster with either the bank or the appraiser. There is no loan contingency period unless you use the lender affiliated with the...