Dave Roberts

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.

Sell it fast or sell it cheaper. Most real estate professionals understand the direct link between "Days on Market" and selling price. Homes that linger on the market for months normally drop their price to attract buyers or else accept a much reduced selling price. This is true in all regions of the country and all price brackets. Homes that have been on the market for more than 90 days rarely sell for full price.

I'm working with some out-of-state buyers who are new to Marin County and the North Bay and wanted to help them calibrate their pricing mindset. I produced this chart of all the single family homes in San Anselmo that have sold this year. The height of the bars indicates how close the sales price is to the original listing price. Most of the bars on the left side of the chart are near the 100% mark. Each bar represents one or more sales. As you read towards the middle (checking the bottom of the chart for the Days on Market) you start to see that many fewer homes are near the 100% mark. After Day 90, the highest value for selling price is only 90% of the original listing price. As you move to the far right of the chart near the six month DOM range, many homes are selling for less than 80% of their original listing price.

Armed with this type of information, my buyers are able to make informed offers that are backed by real market data.

REO Sales in Marin

I went out on a limb in April and said our local Sonoma County markets had bottomed out in late February. I don't get paid to write these predictions, so I don't have an editor to fire me. On the other hand, anyone who reads my work or listens to my advice should know whether my crystal ball (and spread sheet work) is clear.

I printed this chart and pointed out where the trend lines were bending upwards.

I have this more recent live chart below showing that as of late October of 2009 my earlier prediction about a late February housing bottom in Sonoma County is still showing up as a good predictor of price changes. Still, prognostication success aside, I'm not going to tempt fate and promise continuing improvement going into the slower selling season on both sides of the holidays.

I will mention that prices have moved up between $50K and $100K in this Santa Rosa zicpcode depending on the price range. We're nowhere near the peaks of the market and may not regain those for a very long time, but the smart buyers ( Dick Miller you know who you are) were able to act on my advice and purchase homes for very good values in the spring.

Families looking for good schools and friendly neighborhoods often look at Rohnert Park and Windsor, the two cities that bracket Santa Rosa on the south and north. Both are reasonably recent towns built during the last half of the last century. Windsor is slightly newer, but Rohnert Park has Sonoma State University and better proximity to Marin and San Francisco.

They have each struggled with the crash of the housing bubble and I wanted to look at the numbers to see the state of the market. I pulled all the sold listings from July through September of 2009 for single family homes selling for less than $300,000.

I was surprised most of all by the vitality of Rohnert Park. The transactions at the entry level of the market continue on a torrid pace of overbidding that makes it hard for first time buyers to compete. At the same time, however, it shows a very healthy interest in home ownership and investment.

What you see in this chart is an average overbid of about $13,000 in Rohnert Park, and an average underbid in Windsor of about -$4,000. Even though Windos starts off with a higher average listing price (in the less than $300,000 price range), the average selling price ends up higher in Rohnert Park. I don't think you can draw a lot of conclusions from this. If I were advising first time buyers on a limited budget where they should be looking at property, I might steer them to Windsor just to avoid getting into as many bidding wars.