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Buyer Guide

Florence St in Sebastopol

Santa Rosa Dominates Real Estate Sales

Santa Rosa rules the real estate market in Sonoma County. No city is close in population or number of housing units, so any chart either has to have an extended scale or leave Santa Rosa out of the figures. I made two charts to illustrate just how tough Santa Rosa makes it for the rest [...]

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Sonoma Lamb

Sonoma County Small Acreage Homes

A place in the country. A hobby vineyard outside Healdsburg. A few acres of vines east of Sonoma. A little ranch near Sebastopol. Sonoma County country real estate is driven by buyers looking for their piece of the American dream. Cities are crowded. Suburbs are less crowded, but a garage or bedroom is what you’re [...]

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Sonoma County Residential Sales Trends

Sonoma Market Report

The S&P /Case-Shiller Home Price Indices for the first quarter of 2011 came out a few days ago and showed a decline below the previous low water mark from two years ago in almost all regions of the country. I called that 2009 market bottom in Sonoma County at the time and wanted to know [...]

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REO Sonoma Selling Fast

Sonoma County Home Sales Report

I plead guilty to liking numbers. I don’t track the Giants batting averages, but I do know how much houses in Sonoma County are selling for. I also know which areas are hot and which could use more buyers. As a potential buyer or seller of a home in Sonoma County, watching these trends for [...]

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Sonoma County Real Estate Trends

Sonoma County Residential Sales

I’ve been diving into 2010 residential sale details trying to understand the Sonoma County real estate market for myself and my clients. The result that is clearest and a surprise to me was adding 2010 results to the chart of sales for the past four years. This chart shows clearly that we seem to be [...]

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Sonoma County Short Sale Gull Image

Short Sale Players

A reader emailed an interesting question asking about the decision makers are in a short sale. My quick answer is that a short sale has at least one extra party compared to a normal real estate transaction. The lender who financed the home to the current owners becomes an important player and decision maker whenever [...]

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Level slopes and drainage

Houses, Slopes, and Water

Today my clients looked at a house sited downslope from the road with clearly insufficient drainage. Clearly because you could simply look at the driveway and follow the path of least resistance for the water right under the garage door into the garage…which showed clear water damage including a big crack in the floor. There [...]

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Cherry Historical District

Searching Sonoma County Real Estate

The internet has changed everything about how buyers find houses.  The old MLS guild mentality* still exists in some places, but northern California is online in a big way. Most Sonoma County listings are on realtor.com,  zillow.com,  trulia.com, and a host of other syndicating sites. Craigslist is a dominating force all over the country, but [...]

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credit cards

Improving Your Credit Rating

How can I improve my credit score? Now that you’ve established some credit (or even have bad or moderate credit), you want to know how to improve it. Although there are many additional steps you can take to improve your credit, the following actions are a great place to start: Getting current with past due [...]

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Thumbnail image for Home Buying Milestones

Home Buying Milestones

Home buying is almost as much of a “project” activity as home building. Both require tasks performed in sequence to complete the owned/finished home.  A successful project of any type has well defined milestones that serve as markers for completion of different phases.  Let’s apply that logic to a simplified task list for the purchase [...]

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