Average Sonoma Home Prices

Sonoma County Home Sales Prices chart since 2000
Sonoma County Home Sales Prices 2000-2022

Rising home prices are a popular topic for homeowners. Not so much for renters and others trying to buy property in a challenging market. This century witnessed prices plummet in 2008 after the financial crisis. Since the market bottom in 2011 prices have shown a steady rise year over year. Covid helped shape a new market. Working from home ballooned into the primary way office workers did their jobs. Attractive locations with low home prices relative to San Francisco and the Peninsula took off in value. Last year saw record increases in prices.

Rising interest rates make the recent price increases challenge the real estate market. A useful tool from the California Association of Realtors called the affordability index shows that only 18% of California households could afford to buy the median priced home in the 3rd quarter of 2022. It hasn’t gotten better.

Prices and interest rates are going to be the story of real estate for the foreseeable future. The steady increase of home prices over the last decade is over for now. Sellers are going to have to accept that they will not get the record breaking prices their neighbors may have gotten in 2022. Until interest rates stabilize at more affordable levels, buyers will have to accept that their choice of homes will have a lower price ceiling.

Sonoma County 2021 New Year Listings

Last year, 31 people paid less than $300,000 to purchase a single family home in Sonoma County. Almost all were in lower Russian River or west county area. By contrast, the 10 lowest price homes that have come on the market since January 1, 2021 start at 479K and go to $685,000. Fortunately, for bargain house hunters, the year is young and many buyers are holding their homes off the market until spring. This first batch of listings is also biased towards Santa Rosa which has a higher average selling price.

This Cloverdale 3/1 on a large lot leads off the New Year at $479K.

My favorite listing of the new year is a 14 acre apple orchard in Sebastopol. Historic, charming, and a perfect rural getaway for buyers in the $2.5 million price range.

As a Healdsburg-based agent, I can’t forget to mention the extensive family compound on 2/3 of an acre in walking distance to the Healdsburg Plaza.


Sonoma Country Property Fuels Dreams

Country living has a vivid place in the American imagination. You might be toiling in a cubicle today, but in your heart you are already planting the deep, rich beds of asparagus that you’ll be eating in your retirement. While you answer the next call stacked up in the queue, you can just feel the sunlight on your face as you and your significant other sip wine on the rustic porch overlooking the small vineyard…next to your chickens and olives and roses and beautifully manicured raised beds.

Sonoma County Chickens
Necessary ingreditent for country dreaming

I know that dream. I love that dream. I sell that dream.

I’m the guy who knows how deep to dig the asparagus bed, how to prime your well pump, and which septic guy to call when you need help.  I’m the one who can help you find that small dream property that pops into your head whenever work gets a little too boring or urban life starts to wear on you. That’s when you need your Sonoma County real estate agent (me) to send you a few new listings to start dreaming about.

If you’re looking for an old apple orchard or a new vineyard in west Sonoma County, this link to homes with one to five acres in Sebastopol might keep you dreaming for weeks.  If you want a Sonoma country property a little closer to the famed Sonoma square, try homes with one to five acres in Sonoma. If you’re ready for the foodie-inspired wine country lifestyle, go for broke and check out some one to five acre Healdsburg properties or the larger Healdsburg homes with six to twenty acres. Healdsburg has fewer small parcels than Sonoma and Sebastopol, but if you’re looking for a place to park your IPO proceeds, Healdsburg has beautiful properties available.

For the architecturally inclined dreamers, starting with bare land (or bare plus roads plus water plus septic plus fences plus high speed internet) might be the way to go.  Foreclosed land in the north bay didn’t exist six years ago, but today there are dozens of REO “lots and land” properties for sale in Marin, Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino, and Lake county. Sometimes the prices aren’t as low as buyers might expect from the bank owned status, but a savvy agent can help you get the best price for the land you want.

As the song says, “don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.”. There’s room in everyone’s head for a small place in the country. The lucky and hard working alike have a chance to move it from their head into the real world.  When you’re ready to get serious about finding and buying your country place, please get in touch. In the meantime, those links are there for dreamers. Even real estate agents have country property fantasies…

Update:

I would be remiss not to mention the fantastic blog about an urban transplant moving to Sonoma County for chickens… She doesn’t have big acreage, but she’s got chickens, a great garden, bees, and wonderful stories about all of it.

Sebastopol Residential Sales

Sebastopol home sale volume - 6 month intervals
Sebastopol Home Sales 2006 through June 2011

Sebastopol recorded 24 residential sales in June which helped bring the first half of 2011 to a close with 102 homes sold.  That matches nearly exactly the figures from the first half of 2010, but without the First Time Home Buyers Tax Credit that drove many buyers into the market in 2010 in search of tax credits. This year we also have a more challenging lending environment with tough qualifying standards and higher down payments required more frequently.

Sebastopol residential sales by REO, short sale and open market sales
Sebastopol Monthly Sales by Sales Condition

The mix of REO, short sale and open market sales (shown as NONE in the charts) varied significantly from month to month so far this year, but the samples size is too small to draw any useful significance. It’s enough to note that  Sebastopol home sales include mainly open market and REO sales with a decent proportion of short sales thrown into the mix.

One of the anomalies of Sebastopol that has persisted for years is a  slower reaction to the housing bubble bursting than the rest of the County.  Most other cities in Sonoma County showed significant valuation declines until early 2009 and have maintained a reasonably stable price plateau since then. Sebastopol, on the other hand, maintained bubble-level pricing somewhat longer and has continued to search for a market bottom.

Sonoma Average Home Sales Price 2006-2011
Sonoma Average Home Sales Price 2006-2011

To illustrate this, please look at the Sonoma 2006-2011 chart and find the first month that the average price dropped below $600,000 and then find the same price drop in the Sebastopol chart. (For non-chart-followers, it was August of 2008 for Sonoma and not until March of 2009 for Sebastopol.  Prices in Sonoma fell all the way under the $400,000 barrier for several months in that early 2009 time frame, but have since recovered and haven’t tested the $400,000 floor again since then.

Sebastopol Average Home Sales Price 2006-2011
Sebastopol Average Home Sales Price 2006-2011

Sebastopol, on the other hand, continued to have price declines after spring 2009 and has had several months in the first half of this year with the lowest numbers in the five years of the chart’s time frame.  I have a few ideas why Sebastopol remained strong early, but is currently a softer market than Sonoma, but I don’t think anyone has a definitive answer.

In any case, Sebastopol home sales closed out the first six months of the year in strong fashion.  I expect this desirable town will continue to have a strong real estate market. Great schools, charming country properties, and a pleasing climate all add to the charm of Sebastopol and make it a must-visit town for prospective Sonoma County  home buyers.

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 of the Sonoma County cities to show up on a chart.

Sonoma County Residential Sales Volume by city
Residential Sales Volume by City

The first chart shows the volume of residential real estate transactions in Sonoma County’s busiest markets. The 17 transactions in Glen Ellen marked the lowest volume I included, so many smaller cities like Monte Rio, Kenwood, Occidental, Penngrove, Geyserville, Jenner, and Graton don’t show up at all.

Even with the elimination of many cities with small sales volumes, the bottom of the chart shows very little differentiation among cities.  Even the middle of the chart with Sebastopol, Healdsburg, and Cloverdale make it hard to see much difference.

I created an identical chart without Santa Rosa. All of a sudden, the small changes among the cities are more visible. You can actually use the chart to make reasonably good estimates for the actual number of units sold.

Sonoma County Residential Sales Excluding Santa Rosa
Residential Sales by City Excluding Santa Rosa

In this example, it’s easier to see that Sonoma has almost exactly twice as many sales as  Sebastopol did during this time frame. Sometimes you have to make a chart excluding Santa Rosa to show trends that can’t show up when the scale is so distorted. So, no disrespect to Santa Rosa, the undisputed champion of residential sales in Sonoma County. It’s just that your shadow blocks the view for everyone else.

 

Top image is from Florence Street in Sebastopol

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