Healdsburg, CA

Check out this article for good affordable home maintenance tips – no more 1-800-Landlord! You’d be surprised how you can save money on your home….if you do it right especially for you first time homeowners.

Hiking on a beautiful Russian River bench property today with very fun and athletic buyers who like to hike. Climbing between the pond and the crest of a view site we came across the wonderful specimen you see.

Country Property

Here are some things to consider when purchasing country property. One of the first things to do is to go to the County of Sonoma office and check on the history of the property. Does what is on record match with what is actually at the subject property. Is the number of buildings and size a match to what is being sold. Are all of the permits there and executed. Make copies of all the information that you can such as building permits, well information and septic system information.

Boundaries, One big difference between country property and residential is clarity of property lines. In residential it is fairly clear where the property lines are at . In country property it is much more difficult and if there are any disputes now is the time to remedy them. Some of these properties may not have been sold for decades. There may have been some good neighbor deals over the years that you do not like. You may even find that a neighbor built a barn that is right on the property line and the line needs to be adjusted.

Wells, If you are in the country you will probably rely on a well as your source of water. Have it tested for volume and purity. In Sonoma County there four types of water zones. Area one is in the valley’s and is the most abundant. Area four is the water scarce zone and can be found anywhere. Your local well company will know these areas and can tell you exactly what you need to be assured that you will not have water issues in the future. If you really love a place and it is in an area four zone now is the time to decide if you want to endure he joys of living with very little water.

Septic, If you are going to live in the then you will be on a private waste system AKA a septic tank. Part of the purchase process will be to have the septic tank pumped and inspected. The sanitation specialist will do a visual inspection of the leach field as well. The leach field is the part of the system that distributes the treated waste evenly underground. It is a great idea to have enough room adjacent to the leach field that is equal to the size of the existing leach field for expansion. This may be mandated by the County of Sonoma anyway.

Insurance, It is a great idea to check with your insurance agent early on in the process. Some country property may have greater risks than residential properties. The property may be in a high fire danger area or a flood area. There are areas that are prone to slides that need to be identified. A good insurance agent will be able to mitigate any of these issues.

Zoning, Zoning can affect your future uses for the property. If you are planning on developing a horse property now is the time to make sure that the zoning will allow it. What if there is a granny unit on the property and you want to use it as a vacation rental. Now is the time to discover what you can or cannot do with the property.

Healdsburg residential real estate includes everything from humble bungalows smaller than 1000 square feet to sprawling vineyard estate compounds with multiple houses, pools, stables, and vineyards worth more than $100,000 per acre. It's hard to look at any short period of time and try to pull useful decision-making intelligence from averages or medians with such a complex market.

Instead, let's look at a longer time frame and look at trends across different price segments. I chose to use an annual quartile analysis and see what we could learn about Healdsburg residential market trends that span the bubble in housing prices.

I only captured the tail end of 2006, so the numbers are a little spiky. The red line starts out at nearly $400,000 for Quartile-1, the low end of the market. What we are seeing is the near panic to get a house, any house, before prices rose too high to qualify. Lots of buyers were competing for any available home and the low end of the market was the most accessible. Better qualified buyers had already gotten their homes, for the most part, so the action at the bottom was intense.

2007 shows a full year's worth of data and makes a good starting point for tracking the fall from the height of the bubble. Look at the year from the red Quartile 1 at under $100,000 to the top blue line representing Quartile-4 at over a million dollars. That spread of nearly $1,000,000 represents the maximum spread of Healdsburg real estate values. We see a relatively uniform spread between the other quartiles as well. $500,000 represents the 2nd quartile and $685,000 the third quartile.

You can track the bubble deflation through 2008 into 2009. The lowest quartile strengthens and maintains a steady presence in the low hundred thousand dollar range. The other quartiles decline at nearly the same rate and by 2009 on the chart, the spread between high and low has been reduced from $1,000,000 in 2007 to $650,000. Since then, the market has been quite stable with only the second quartile showing a measurable decline of about $35,000.

The end result is that Healdsburg has a more compressed pricing environment. You will still pay in the millions for estate grade properties at the top of the market, but the spread in the middle of the market is reduced from the extremes of the bubble.

This 2011 healdsburg residential sales chart only reflects sales that have been reported to the MLS, so several sales of over $6,000,000 are not shown.

Healdsburg has a well deserved reputation as a great town for food and wine. Visitors flood the streets, especially now during harvest time when the weather is spectacular and the colors in the vineyards are starting to change. A certain percentage of well-heeled visitors end up falling in love with our area and decide to acquire property for a second home, retirement, or just for relocation to be here full time.

Typically, our inventory of Healdsburg luxury homes is small. There just aren't that many million dollar and up homes or land on the market. There actually aren't that many homes like that in the area, period. We do have plenty of agricultural million dollar properties with planted vineyards selling for $50,000 to $65,000 per acre, but there are only a few neighborhoods that define the luxury housing segment for Healdsburg.

On our agent weekly tour of Healdsburg properties yesterday we got to see four new luxury listings and they were all wonderful examples of wine country living. Three of them had vineyards connected to them, and one was an in-town bungalow on Matheson St. with all the charm you could want in a house that's an easy walk to the Healdsburg Plaza.

Two of them were variations on French country style homes. On Chalk Hill is a lovely, older home with mature landscaping beautifully maintained. The home is rambling with high ceilings and lovely details, a pool, multiple terraces, multiple outbuildings, and a charm that only comes with age.

The Westside Road listing is a more modern home, but loaded with authentic old-time feel. The floors in the top image are wonderful, rustic oak floors with square nails holding them in place. It's stunning. The house is open and light with doors opening to the outside from nearly every room.

Both these homes have vineyards.

If you happen to be in the market for a fantastic wine country residence or country property, I would be happy to share my love for this area with you.