About Amador County, CA

Looking at today, September 1, 2009, Amador County has 451 current active residential listings of homes for sale, forty-eight less than the 489 on August 1 and thirty-eight less than the 479 on the first of July.

These listings have an average asking price of $ 370,218 down about eight thousand dollars from the $378,356 on August 1st, and about seven thousand down from the July first average of $367,624.

The average number of days on market for these listings is 201 days, down 21 days from August first’s 222 day average

In the last month Amador County has had 61 new listings and 27 listings have sold.

Five Listings tie for the median priced house for sale in Amador County. Three in Pioneer, one in Sutter Creek and one in Ione. Each is offered for $ 279,000. That median price is down $20,000 from last month.

The lowest priced home for sale in Amador County is a 2/2 manufactured home in Meadow Pines Park, Pioneer. This home is on almost a third of an acre, with storage buildings and room to garden. Space rent is $490 /month Water is $34.96 and septic is $18.50. This park allows children.

The highest price home in the area remains this month, the “turnkey operation”-producing producing vineyard in Fiddletown, on over 137 acres with a 3250 square foot 5/2.5, with an asking price of $5,100,000.

At the rate of sales last month, it would take 17 months to deplete the current Amador County Real Estate inventory. This is often looked at to decide basic market trends. The National Association of Realtors sometimes define a market with over six months of inventory as a “buyers market”. Up here in the foothills inventory is often somewhat slower to move. Nonetheless, with almost a year and a half of inventory, buyers that are ready, willing, and able, should have their pick.
Amador County Real Estate awaits you.

If you would like to talk about your specific real estate needs, please feel free to zap me an email or drop me a line.

Read more Market Reports.

I certainly didn't have the desire to allow summer to pass without covering nearly every square inch of Amador Gold Rush country. But, there was yet another adventure which begged to be explored.

In addition to the 1850 style towns and communities I have chronicled in recent weeks, Amador County is also rich in cave, cavern and mine tour adventures.

California Caverns (pictured above) is among my favorite of spelunking experiences. Native Americans knew of its existence long before the arrival of westerners. Bret Harte, Mark Twain and John Muir were early visitors in the Gold Rush era. It was opened for public tours in 1850.

In addition to California Caverns, Amador boasts Black Chasm Cavern, Moaning Cavern, and the Sutter Gold Mine. All of these, plus Mercer Caverns in nearby Calaveras County, have wonderful cave or mine exploration capabilities available.

Moaning Cavern contains the largest vertical chamber in a public cavern that you can see in California. It is so large, the Statue of Liberty could be completely help within it! There are also California Zip Line experiences available at Moaning Caverns.

Black Chasm Cavern is another local spelunking treasure. In 1976 it was designated a National Natural Landmark by the National Park Service. Black Chasm enchants visitors with a variety of stalactites, stalagmites, flowstones and crystals. Outside the visitor center, kids will love the gemstone mining at the mining flumes.

Sutter Gold Mine located on historic Highway 49 just north of Sutter Creek, south of Amador City is a modern hard rock mine at the site of several historic mines. Nearby Lincoln Mine from which Leland Stanford made his fortune facilitated his ability to found Stanford University and to partner in financing the Central Pacific Railroad.

For ALL California Cave and Mine Tours available in Amador County, you can visit the Cave and Mine Adventures website: http://www.caverntours.com

For more information on Mercer Caverns in nearby Calaveras County, you can visit: http://www.mercercaverns.com

On Sunday evening my friend John "Scully" O'Sullivan was killed in rural Amador County. This was the first violent death in the county this year. but Even one is way to many, and John was a friend.

John and his wife and business partner Krista Clem, are area real estate developers, and we all know that right now developers are at best "looking forward to better times..."

Well I have put up a little site for John, and if you have the chance to drop by please do. If you are in a place to help get him "home to Ireland" I have added a paypal button for donations.

Thanks

We literally fell into the little town of Volcano, after exploring the Indian Grinding Rock State Park in Amador County last week. The distance between the two is a mere few miles.

Volcano (Formerly Soldier's Gulch) is another of those little Gold Rush gems, which provides rich color to the Wild West era tapestry. It is considered by many to be one of the most picturesque of the Mother Lode towns.

Dating back in history to the late 1850s, the town was originally nicknamed "Crater City." Early miners noticed the lay of the land was a bowl-shaped valley, which caused them to believe it was formed by a volcano.

There is a story that in 1849 one miner took out 8 thousand dollars worth of gold in a few days - that was in 1849 dollars. Another got 28 pounds in a single pocket.

Volcano boasts that it is home to California's first amateur theatrical company. This theatre tradition continues to this day. The town has an outdoor amphitheatre, and the Volcano Theatre Company, which stages performances at various times during the year.

Once the largest settlement in Amador County, Volcano now has a population of a mere 101 souls. In its heyday, the town boasted 3 breweries, 17 hotels, 37 saloons and a great deal of gold.

For more detailed history on Volcano you can visit Volcano's AmadorGold webpage

Directions to Volcano from Sacramento: Take Highway 16 through Sloughhouse, and on until you reach Highway 49 toward Jackson (travels through Dry Town, Amador City, and Jackson). Take the Highway 88 turnoff toward Lake Tahoe. Turn left on Pine Grove-Volcano Road. The settlement is about 3 miles from Highway 88. Mileage is about 50 miles from Sacramento to Volcano.

Ok, We took the little steps towards some “GREEN” for Amador County Real Estate in the last post. Now we can look at some bigger steps. These certainly will not be for everyone, but information can only help, so don’t feel bad if these opportunities are a bit out of reach, just do what you can and try to think about what you are doing…

The biggies, or” How dark is your green?” But first some background...

In the last post we talked about turning off the stuff you aren’t using and CFL’s now lets talk about making your own energy. In case you didn’t know it, energy generation is a misnomer. You can’t actually “generate” energy. You can only change its form into one that you can more easily utilize. And all of the energy on this planet comes from only three real sources: atomic, kinetic, and solar. So you might say atomic and kinetic, but I think the local atomic (here on earth) and atomic from that big star we see everyday rate their own mention. The kinetic friction is the stuff that gives us geothermal heating and volcanoes, it has some affect on the planet’s temperature but it is a very stable affect in the big picture. We use atomic energy to heat water into steam to run turbines to turn generators to give us electricity. Only a small percent of our energy gets to us this way, it is rather dangerous in many people’s eyes, and the left-overs are going to be a real challenge.

Lets break those three sources down a bit

There is a little bit of tidal power being tested but so far only on small scale. That would be kinetic… The moon draws tides that in one way or another spin generators, or in some cases “pull” generators… don’t ask… How ‘bout hydroelectric? Well that is really solar. The sun evaporates water into clouds that move by wind (we will get to that next) up mountains where they cool and the rain/snow falls out, eventually ending up above a dam or water wheel that turns a generator…
But what about wind? Yep, that is solar too, the reason that wind happens, is changes in temperature of air over different parts of the planet’s surface, the changes in temperature are due to the sun heating some areas more than others. Hot air rises and is less dense than cool air. The changes move air around that in turn can spin blades… you guessed it, that turn generators. And of course there is that sexy Photo-Voltaic, This is a more direct conversion for photons to electrons due to exciting stuff in thin panels of layered silica and assorted metals, (Ok, it is magic) By the way Gas, diesel, oil, coal, wood, bio diesel, alcohol, are all solar, just stored in other forms.

I could go on… but I bet you see where I’m going. But how does this fit in to Real estate?

I’m glad you asked…

If you play your cards just right you can take advantage of at least one of the three energy sources we have, in and around your own home. We ought to leave that tricky atomic stuff out. It is rather dangerous. And Geothermal heating is also rather large scale for all but the very luckiest of us, unlike geothermal cooling witch is different. But you can reasonably think about solar in its different forms.

Most of us think of big black panels up on roofs when we hear solar and that is because that is the most popular alternative power system for individual homes these days at least here in the USA. Those panels are Photo-Voltaic (Light-Electricity).

You also see Solar-Thermal (that is sunlight to heat) often on residential roofs. Solar-Thermal is a great way to cut heating bills, these systems coupled with on demand water heaters, and radiant floors or even pool heaters, all make great sense. But we really think most about PV. These days, systems are being sponsored by government at all levels, from Federal down to City. Programs abound, and many of us can actually finance these systems to the point that the monthly savings on electric bills can counter the monthly cost or the systems. Break-even dates are ever closing with the cost of systems dropping and the cost of electricity on the rise. These days it is common to see systems pay for themselves in five to seven years. That is about the historic amount of time between average house re-sales here in California. Now remember that these systems often have 25 year warranties and tests show very little degradation even at the 50 year mark. So if they pay off in five years, that means FREE POWER for the next twenty years minimum.

Look at your last bill, what could you get with that much cash each month? Installing a PV solar system could easily get you that savings in a few short years.

Don’t forget how that cost savings could affect the ability of more buyers to purchase a given house… If the system saves $100.00 per month that means around $16,000 more house (assuming 6%, 30 year fixed) The ability to convince appraisers and banks of this simple math is growing but the average buyer can understand it already.

Programs to bundle improvements like this into purchase loans have been in the market for decades, but they are really just catching on now.

PV is a great answer for many of us, but it’s not the only answer. Wind is getting more and more popular, It has its problems sound, sight, safety, and vertical space issues, Not to mention the long term /big environmental issues with slowing down the wind ( I will come back to that in some other post), but it is something to think about and if you are lucky enough to have a stream on your property, micro-hydro-electric is a fast growing technology.

Very few of us in the US have the opportunity to plumb into geothermal heat sources, that tech is growing fast in other parts of the world, but it may never get to the point of individual homes being powered that way, but towns or neighborhoods maybe… I will talk more later about geothermal cooling, that is much more available to the average person, although not cheap to ad on, but with the cost of energy going up, I expect to see more and more of this wonderfully sensible technology.

For most of us this stuff in just background, or things to think about. If you would like to talk about ways that these things can help you in you real estate endeavors, feel free to give me a call (209) 257-4590 email me, or click over to Mainstreet Brokers' website. In the next post we can talk about some Building technology to help put some of these things together