Wine Country And Horses

Downtown Forestville in Sonoma County is hopping as last minute shoppers crowd tiny Nightingale Bakery, one of many artisan purveyors of local foods. In addition to wonderful baguette, foccaccia and sourdough, you can find local goat cheeses, butter and locally produced salumi. I have never seen this new litlle shop so busy!

Happy Holidays!

# end Sent from my iPhone

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Dining Out For Life – Sonoma County

By dining out today you can help raise money for a great cause: Food for Thought, the Forestville-based AIDS Food Bank which does great work providing healthy food to many families in Sonoma County.

Click the link above to find the list of dozens of local restaurants, from A to Z thoughout the county that are contributing anywhere from 25% to 50% of your dining check to Food for Thought. What a great way to help out and eat well at the same time!

I stepped away from the office to admire the sun streaming through a
very large Japanese maple in the back yard. It is brilliant red orange
sorrounde by the lemon yellow leaves of two adjacent mulberry trees.
This was shot with my iPhone.

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A thanksgiving turkey in all his glory

As I head off to Thanksgiving dinner in Sebastopol, I want to say how much I appreciate all of you who visit this blog, and of course I want to thank all my clients for entrusting me with the important business of selling or buying your homes, as well as your referrals to your friends and family. I am privileged to work with some wondeful people–thank you so much!

This is the 7th of the series looking at housing sales trends in Sonoma County. Windsor, sandwiched between Santa Rosa and Healdsburg, has probably the most homogenous housing supply in the county, with many tract homes all clustered in the mid-price ranges.

There are estate properties at Shiloh on the east side of 101, and many vineyard, horse and estate homes on the west side of town off Starr Road and others, and I often advise my country property buyers not to overlook Windsor because there are some beautiful wine country homes that can be easily overlooked in a search. But the preponderance are 3-4 bedroom homes priced in the mid-price ranges. Maybe that is why the recovery doesn’t look quite so strong here yet in terms of prices. The median price in October 2007 was $620,000 and is now at $357,500, up from a low of $325,000 in April (not February!). Unit sales hit a near peak last month of 42 (the two year peak was 46 and the low was 11 in December 2007 when sales in the mid price ranges started their stall.

Month’s supply of inventory followed a steep decline from a high peak of 17.5 months two years ago to a low of 2 months over the course of September and October.

I hope this series has been helpful! It has been interesting for me to look at individual towns in this way, and the stats seem to confirm my own impressions from my knowledge on the ground of the markets in each of the communities we’ve discussed. Each property, each location, each home is unique. If you would like some specific information about a home you are thinking of buying or selling, please let me know!

The Valley of the Moon represents the other Sonoma, not the county but the towns of Sonoma, Kenwood, Glen Ellen and Boyes Hot Springs. Sales volume ranged the last two years from a low of 15 units in December 2007 to a high of 45 units last May. The range of price points is very large, as in Healdsburg but overall the media price declined from $705,000 two years ago to a low of $323,000 in April 2009. It has bounced up and is currently at $390,000-down 45% over the two years, probably disproportionately aided by the slower sales of high end homes. Months supply of inventory was nearly 20 in October 2007, peaked at over 22.5 in December 2007 and is now tied for its low at 5.1 months, a seller’s market.

Kudos to blog buddy Gretchen Merrick, writing from the South Bay, for calling my attention to this wonderful animation which explains the origins of the current credit crisis in clear and simple fashion. Her post contains a link to an interview on Terry Gross’s Fresh Air Show on National Public Radio, which offers more detail. The Credit Crisis Simplified | South County Real Estate Today

I thought I would offer the video here. I love this form of visual communication when done well!


The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

These three graphs tell the quick story of pricing, supply and demand trends for housing in Sonoma County from December 2007 through 2008.  But the real story for your home depends on the price range for your house and the part of the county in which you live, or seek to live.  You cannot automatically say that every home in the country dropped 30%.  The price dropped most steeply in those communities with high rates of distressed housing:  West Santa Rosa, East Petaluma, Windsor and Rohnert Park/Cotati.

But, on average, and in summary:

The median price dropped 30% year over year.

The number of newly ratified sales contracts grew steadily all year and lead to a 184% increase year over year.

Months supply of inventory dropped dramatically (73%) and steadily all year, exceeding the drop in prices. 

From a very strong buyers market in December ’07, with over 14 months supply of homes at last December’s sales rate, this December saw only 3.7 months supply.  Six months is considered a balanced market.  Anything under is a seller’s market–in this case the banks who own nearly half the properties sold.