Larkfield-Wikiup is an unincorporated area of Sonoma County between Santa Rosa and Windsor. It is sometimes referred to as the Mark West area as well. It's big enough to form a small town, but a street-light district is about as close as the residents have come to collective political activity. There is shopping available at the Larkfield Center including Molsberry Market, a great local supermarket in the old fashioned tradition of a family owned business with high service standards. Great cheese selection. There's a Starbucks across the street, a handful of decent restaurants, a couple of gas stations, including one that features south Asian groceries. It's a fun little place.
The housing mix here (3,500 total dwelling units) includes single level condos built in the sixties and seventies, some very nice hillside view homes, a couple of traditional subdivision neighborhoods, and some newer homes and condos built in the last decade. Prices vary from the low hundred thousands up to the million dollar mark, but this is a middle class area and the prices are clustered in the affordable range for most buyers.
The first chart shows the average prices for condos and homes during 2011. You will note from the absence of a few columns that the volume is low enough that some months don't have a recorded sale of a condo. That is related to both the relatively small number of condos available at any given time and the presence of some 55+ condo housing that limits the buyer pool.
The prices for houses are mainly in the $300,000 to $400,000 price range for Larkfield-Wikiup, but some months the average is over $500,000. That is primarily due to a few higher end sales in the hills that overlook Santa Rosa and Windsor with great views. Those homes are bigger with more acreage than the homes in the flatlands on both side of Old Redwood Highway, the main north south corridor through the area.
Volume of transactions is small. Out of the 3,500 homes and condos in the area, only 72 were sold in the first nine months of the year. Guessing at a figure of 100 sold homes total for the year would make the turnover in housing about 3% per year. That's quite stable and indicates that most residents are happy to be here.
The second chart shows the distribution of residential sales in Larkfield-Wikiup by sales condition. The relatively few sales overall make this a jerky chart with some months showing no sales activity for short sales and some with no sales in the REO category. I have included about three weeks worth of October sales data so you can see the continuation of selling into the fall. The mix among different sales types varies from month to month. Open market sales are the leading type generally, but the distressed REO and short sales together make up a majority of the market in some months.
A collection of affordable neighborhoods with content residents would be an apt summary.
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