Dave Roberts

Family friendly and conveniently located, Rincon Valley has long been one of the preferred residential areas in Santa Rosa. The schools are excellent and homes are still affordable here.

I have assembled a custom search already centered on Rincon Valley that will let you jump right into your map-based home search. Whether you want an entry level home or a more elaborate, larger move-up residence, Santa Rosa's Rincon Valley is a great place to search.

Once you are on the site you can choose whatever price range you are looking for or simply view all the properties.

I also want to repeat the news that there is a great new iPhone App that supports active MLS listings and has great built in support for the mapping features. As you drive around Rincon Valley or any other area in the BAREIS MLS territory, you can use your iPhone to see the listings nearby. It's a great tool.

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Rincon Valley is a lousy spot to look for REO property in Sonoma County. Strong neighborhoods and a continued demand for housing have kept bank-owned single family homes to a minimum. Still, there are the occasional listings and the map below will show REO properties in and around Rincon Valley. If you want to look around other parts of Santa Rosa, you can either navigate on the map or visit my reo.sonoma.net site for more maps and information on the foreclosed homes market in Sonoma County.

If you have used Zillow.com or Google Maps you have used a GIS sytstem. (GIS stands for Geographic Information Systems) In GIS, it's all about the maps and the data that can be displayed or linked to the map. Your local government might use GIS to track everything from where the water mains run to which traffic lights need replacement with the new LED lights. In the private world, sites like Sonoma County Foreclosed Homes are driven by combining map data with real time real estate information.

Our use of GIS at Healdsburg Sotheby's International Realty and our sister company, Artisan Sotheby's International Realty is due to our extensive work with rural, vineyard, and estate properties. Finding a country property when you are a long term local real estate veteran is one thing. Your brain is a part of the world's greatest walking GIS system. For everyone else including agents new to the area and industry, a GIS system is a great way to start learning about different properties and to find the remote parcels that are miles from paved roads.

Our local GIS Chapter is hosting its annual GIS Day (Geographic Information System) today and asked me to speak on a panel about private industry's use of GIS tools. The theme for the day is Do More with Less. As a real estate professioal it's easy to find ways in which GIS lets me do more with less, but one example should ring true for anybody in the audience.

In the good old days, when the MLS consisted of a phone book sized quarterly book with crappy black and white photos, you had to visit any property that you were curious about. There was no way to preview online. There weren't portfolios of color photos available, and it was rare to get enough information in a printed listing to know if the property would be suitable for grapes or horses or logging. You would get written clues, but to know, really know, about a property, you had to visit. Today, thanks to GIS tools, the internet, and high quality digital photography, it's possible to do an online preview of dozens of properties in the time it might take to drive to one.

I don't know how much gas I save by previewing online, but I know that actual in person and on the road search time with my real estate clients is very efficiently used these days. We rarely look at a property that we haven't thoroughly checked out before hand. If I was going to pick just one "Do More with Less" feature of our GIS tools, this would be the one I would highlight.

If you are interested in GIS tools for your office, start by checking out the folks at ESRI who are pioneers and leaders in the field. I'll warn you upfront that getting involved with this software requires technical curiousity and a boss who will be a champion for change. Our broker, Eric Drew, has always been an enthusiast for maps, history, and technology in real estate. His support and encouragement (and check writing) have been the key to implementing GIS in our office.

California has always been the golden state. Your first close look at a dew dappled California Poppy at sunrise will show you the gold.

First time visitors arriving in the summer may think it more brown than gold, but that's a fleeting impression that a stay into the fall and winter will correct. The slopes of our oak studded hills are beginning to wake from their summer sun slumber. Meadows still shaggy with last year's golden grasses are gleaming green with new growth in the first inch above the soil. The battle for sun favored status is taking place in every random patch of dirt as weeds, wildflowers, grasses, and bird-planted seeds from every garden flower compete for water and sunlight.

It's a foreign time for mid westerners and others accustomed to four seasons. Our Sonoma County vineyards feature a beautiful and familiar fall display along with the liquidambers, Chinese pistachios and other showy queens of color. Underneath the traditional golden autumn hues, however, the awakening greens tell a story not of a season ending, but of life beginning anew. We are spared the dormant emptiness of winter. It may be why we're an optimistic place. While the northern tier of the country battens down for a long, cold winter, we are hitting the nurseries for seedlings and garden supplies. While others prepare with snow tires and chains, we're swapping our marigolds for violas and watching the first of the spring bulbs break the surface.

It's easy for me to understand love of place. Familiar scenes, landscape, flowers and trees, and the sound of a voice like home call to people everywhere. For me, as a 40 year transplant to California, this is the home my wandering feet and eyes had sought. For Arnold, the governator, the same story holds. It may not be for everyone, but California's optimistic people and climate have an irresistible draw for those of us who love beginnings and growth.

My Sonoma County Blog features more information on seasons and the other things that make Northern California and Sonoma County in particular a special place.

Searching with an iPhone for real estate listings in Sonoma County just got personal for me. My IDX vendor, IDXBroker, has released an iPhone app that lets me have my own self-branded iPhone app to search Sonoma real estate listings.

I've always been happy with my IDX vendor's great service but now they have provided me the bragging rights to share my own iPhone app with my clients. According to some of the reviews of this application, clients are happy that the listings are live and local. They compared this very favorably to the Trulia and Zillow applications which don't always have the most current data.

According to market statistics nearly half of all Internet mobile real estate searching is on the iPhone, so whether you have one or not, a lot of your clients might.