Wine Country And Horses

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.

As we enter 2008, everyone is wondering what this year will bring for the real estate market.   Typically January sees relatively low inventory levels as sellers wait to bring their homes on the market for the conventionally busy spring buying season.  Many properties that didn’t sell in the previous year are withdrawn for the holiday season and brought back on in the new year.   According to Ann Scherbert’s post, the situation is similar in parts of San Francisco.

How to know what to expect as spring comes on?

 In looking at this winter’s inventory levels, it is interesting to see the disparity in three distinct Sonoma County real estate markets.   Market activity here varies greatly depending on location and price point but some cities on an aggregate level appear to be more hurt by the slowing market and morgage trends.  For example, Santa Rosa inventory levels are down this January over the peak last summer and fall.  However there are nearly 1100 single family homes for sale versus just over 700 at this time last January.   There remains a lot of undigested inventory from last year and some incredible bargains are to be had.

In Healdsburg and Sebastopol, levels are very similar to last January’s, and still showing a seasonal adjustment.   What do you think that bodes for each marketin terms of prices?

You can see that in Sebastopol, inventory figures have trended down from a peak in August of 2006 and are actually over 10 percent lower than a year ago at this time.

  Healdsburg inventory levels are just slightly (10%) higher than last January with a much smaller sample size than Santa Rosa, certainly within the same ballpark as a year ago.  Both Sebastopol and Healdsburg are smaller communities than Santa Rosa, and real estate values there tend to trend higher and to attract a higher percentage of second home or lifestyle buyers than Santa Rosa as an overall percentage of sales, whereas Santa Rosa has a much larger chunk of entry level homes and larger scale housing tracts, which have been more impacted by the subprime mortgage crisis.    How will this glut at the lower end ultimately effect our higher end market?    Kevin Boer has an excellent post on this phenomenon in the mid-peninsula market of the San Francisco Bay Area.  I’ll comment in more detail on this topic and prices in another post.

As I sit here in my office contemplating the extraordinarily heavy rains falling at the moment, the first of 3 expected to hit Northern California in the next few days, I am checking my supply of batteries and flashlights, firewood and dry hay and feed for the horses. They are safely blanketed with water-proof sheets and two are standing out in the open, the third intelligently under his shelter. Thought I’d take a look at PG and E’s website to see what they suggest for storm preparation, and found this neat new animation about all the various ways our power can go out during a storm. I hope you are staying dry and warm, unless you are a horse!