Hotter, Wetter, or Different - How's Your Weather - 05/31/10 07:17 PM
I'm a gardening fool, so weather has always mattered to me. Whether the season is going to be right for tomatoes or make for better than usual roses isn't earth shaking information to the general public. On the other hand if you follow every diet guru's diet advice to eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, you might have noticed that lots of the produce in the supermarkets is more expensive than usual. This isn't just a California fruit phenomenon. Fruit exports from Spain declined sharply during the first part of this year as well. 
Meanwhile, in the midwest, weather as much … (7 comments)

Speechless Sunday - Grape edition - 05/30/10 10:54 AM

It's a little early to start planning the bottle tasting, but a Sonoma County grape is still worth sharing even if you can't drink it. If you want to make dolmas, now is the right time to gather your leaves. If you're more interested in the wine, you'll have to wait. This emerging grape is at least four months from harvest time.
… (3 comments)

myFICO Resource Site - 05/30/10 10:43 AM
I'm writing about credit for home buyers on my Sonoma.net site since more of my transactions are running into obstacles during the loan approval process. Rules are changing and underwriting standards have gotten really hard to meet. In one case, my buyers have stellar credit, but the property isn't up to par. On another transaction, the buyer and the house are fine, but FHA has guidelines about how long the house has to be exposed to the open market before a sale can happen. Most of these situations are going to get resolved, but in the meantime, they can cause anxiety … (0 comments)

Home Buying Milestones - 05/29/10 12:01 PM
Bill Burke wrote a post about "writing the offer" that made me think about the timeline issues our buyers face. For many buyers who were in the market this spring for the first time homebuyers tax credit, the entire experience was new. Other buyers are old hands at the purchase of a home, but even for experienced buyers, new paperwork, strict new appraisal and financing guidelines, and a changing market present challenges to the smooth flow of a transaction. In fact, buying a home has just as much of a project aspect as building a home, represented in the picture on … (2 comments)

Rohnert Park REO Market - 05/23/10 02:24 PM
Rohnert Park was ground zero for REO sales in Sonoma County last year. Residential sales in this home to Sonoma State University during January through April of 2009 was all about REO property. Since then, short sales and open market sales have begun to take their shares of the market back from bank owned house transactions. Last month, REO sales were still the biggest share of the Rohnert Park housing market, but open market sales were almost equivalent and short sales still represented at least 25% of the overall market. 
Along with the trend in volume of transactions, we saw a … (0 comments)

Speechless Sunday - Bottlebrush Revisited - 05/23/10 01:40 PM

I like sequels. They avoid the hassle of relearning the main narrative thread and keep continuity with the characters. I introduced bottlebrush blooms last Sunday with a flower just starting to emerge. This week we see what a bottlebrush flower looks like when half of the buds have opened to reveal the extended shape of the tightly coiled flower heads.
… (9 comments)

REO, Short Sale, and Open Market Sale Trends in Sonoma County - 05/18/10 02:48 PM
Sonoma County Sales Trends
It's been awhile since one of my graph-a-palooza posting sessions, so I decided to look at some of the trends in residential sales in Sonoma County. Market trends aren't always visible in the short run, so I grabbed sales data from January 1, 2009 until the end of April of this year. That's a 16 month overview and is long enough to span two quiet times in the market and what I called the market bottom in a post in April of last year. 
There are two clear trends that are worth noting here. First, Sonoma County … (2 comments)

Speechless Sunday - Emerging Bottlebrush - 05/16/10 12:47 PM

Australia has given us many beautiful plants including a wide variety of Eucalyptus trees and drought resistant shrubs. One of the most colorful imports is known as the Bottlebrush which features amazing red flowers that look almost exactly like the kind of brush you use to scrub bottles. I took this photo yesterday which captures a bottlebrush flower in the process of opening. 
 
 
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Calling out Adobe - 05/16/10 12:09 PM
There is a tech battle brewing between Apple and Adobe. The two companies partnered to develop desktop publishing more than 25 years ago and there is a wonderful shared history. Recently, however, debates over the role of Adobe's Flash technology have created a vigorous intellectual debate. I may get some of the details wrong according to enthusiasts for one side or the other, but the gist is that Apple thinks the Adobe Flash technology is outdated, a resource hog on mobile devices, and prone to crash. Adobe thinks Apple is refusing to abide by open market principles that foster competition. If … (6 comments)

Speechless Sunday - Bleeding Heart - 05/02/10 01:05 PM

The winter is gone and my bleeding hearts are back. They'll only bloom for a few months, but are a lovely, graceful perennial that does well in partial shade. This particular plant shares a big planter with some ferns and they both seem happy to live together. The botanical name for the bleeding heart is dicentra spectabilis.
… (1 comments)

 
Dave-color Rainmaker_large

Dave Roberts

Healdsburg, CA

More about me…

Healdsburg Sotheby's International Realty

Address: 409 Healdsburg Avenue, Healdsburg, CA, 95448

Office Phone: (707) 433-4800

Cell Phone: (707) 869-1884

Email Me

Real estate and green building information for Sonoma County California with an emphasis on Healdsburg, Sebastopol, Forestville, Guerneville, Graton, and the Russian River Valley, Dry Creek Valley. and Alexander Valley.I write a lot about REO property, fixers, luxury estate homes, and vineyard property. I love to analyze sales trends.


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