Sausalito, CA

There’s nothing like Green to attract Green. In this case, the just concluded AlwaysOn Going Green 2008 Conference over in Marin attracted a slew of VC and Biz Dev money looking to invest their portfolios in green tech. The summit as a whole brought together serious money looking for innovative ideas but to say that all the ideas and companies behind them offered true green innovation and philosophies would be somewhat akin to out and out greenwashing.

Early conference sessions including the solar breakthrough panel discussed various solar advances such as the Mono-crystalline silicon solar cells yet to us dialogue seemed rather pat and lacked needed a jolt.

The abundant clean green water session got a little splashier and brought forth honest panel responses such as "The water industry is dysfunctional. Like a train wreck." To us it seemed appropriate with the water price gouging, privatization of water companies and the like that the panel compared the water policies of many companies to Pyongyang economics.

If the Agricultural Revolution discussion meant to deliver a shock and awe philosophy then they certainly did their job. From the outset the panel consisting of David Cope, President & CEO, Purfresh Inc., Michael Dowgert, EVP Marketing & Business Development, Netafim, Richard Hamilton, CEO, Ceres Inc., and Rengarajan Ramesh, General Manager, GE Water & Process Technologies managed to fill the discussion with ideas of Genetically Modified crops as sustainable. Not only that but they promoted GMOs and commodity crops as the saviors to our economic, energy and food shortage woes. Maybe we had stepped into a parallel universe? The panel basically wrote off the local-sustainable food buying trend as something not serious. They discussed that there might be a way to buy Chilean grapes without herbicides, and even so did they simply forget about shipping those grapes 6000 miles or so? To keep the party rolling, Richard Hamilton uttered, "Sometimes you want to buy produce at a farmers market and other times at WalMart”. That comment brought a slew of comments from the live chat room display including one that said, “Hamilton (Ceres) is scary.”

What the heck are these guys making up this “Green” panel anyway? We might as well had four guys from Monsanto up there uttering the benefits of GMOs and how many benefits they bring farmers. Ceres and Mendel Biotechnology (part of the Next Generation Biofuel panel) who made the Going Green Top 100 companies mentioned their partnerships with, among others, Monsanto. Oops did someone not do their green due diligence homework? Maybe they could add Exxon-Mobil as a top 100 green company and have their CEO speak as a keynote for next years conference.

As of September 5, 2008 a mere 7% of available listings in Sausalito are in escrow.

For the month of August 2008 only 4 homes sold in Sausalito for an average final selling price of $2,843,000.

The average original asking price of these homes was $3,124,250.

The range of final selling prices was from a low of $602,000 to a high of $6,250,000.

It took these homes an average of 171 days to sell.

Of the 4 homes that sold, all sold for less than their original asking price.

For more information about this area visit my website or contact me directly.

(The picture below is Sausalito as seen from the North end of the Golden Gate Bridge.)

As of June 7, 2008 20% of available listings in Sausalito are in escrow.

For the month of May 2008 12 homes sold in Sausalito for an average final selling price of $1,298,167.

The average original asking price of these homes was $1,379,250.

The range of final selling prices was from a low of $530,000 to a high of $2,653,000.

It took these homes an average of 81 days to sell.

Of the 12 homes that sold, 1 sold over the asking price and all others sold for less than the asking price.

For more information about this area visit my website or feel free to contact me directly.

As of May 10, 2008 only 18% of available listings in Sausalito are in escrow.

For the month of April 2008 only 6 homes sold in Sausalito for an average final selling price of $1,655,000.

The average original asking price of these homes was $1,816,579.

It took these homes an average of 101 days to sell.

Of the 6 homes that sold, 1 sold at the original asking price and all others sold for less.

If you are interested in learning more about this area visit my website, or feel free to contact me directly.

Special thanks to Alberto Pinto for providing this photo of downtown Sausalito in 1864. Off to the left of the man standing in the foreground is a sign that reads, "Walk Your Horses." A special platform was created to load horses onto the ferry to San Francisco. The street you see above was called Water Street that is now named Bridgeway in honor of the Golden Gate Bridge.

If you'd like to see more amazing historical photos, and stories of Marin County from "days gone by" check out my web site with the Marin Independent Journal at: Marin History