Wine Country And Horses

Just got an interesting email from my broker Rick Laws.  Rick compiles many of the Sonoma County real estate market statistics used by the Press Democrat newspaper.  I ‘ll have more in depth reports on January 2008 real estate sales in a couple of weeks.  But briefly, Rick says,

“There are 260 pending SFD sales reported (so far) for January. That is the strongest month since last July.The median price has bounced back up to $500K from $466,500 in December.” 

 As many of you know, the market for country property in Sebastopol, Healdsburg and parts of Santa Rosa, has been reasonably strong.  What is interesting is that we are seeing much more activity at the troubled lower end of the market, with many more multiple offer situations on short sales and REO’s.  Maybe buyers are starting to notice that here are some great bargains out there in Santa Rosa and Sonoma county real estate.  More information as the data comes in….

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.