WOW! This is fantastic news as apparently other areas are also experiencing multiple offers on Luxury Homes. Overall across the US Luxury Home sales have increased 7.2 % in March for homes One million or more.
See the Bloomberg article here.

Now 18 months later this property is what I would consider a “Trophy Property “ Views of the Bay, Hardwood Flooring, Modern Finishes, roof Deck with Glass Rail for unobstructed views.

My oldest son happened to be along with me on a trip when the builder was picking the flooring and got him involved with which one of the dozen options to go for. Months later I brought my son along for another look and it was great to see his expression when he walked in the units and saw the flooring he picked.

This property is located on Leavenworth and is walking distance to the water front. This will be a hard project to duplicate as the market has changed dramatically in the past 18 months. My client who has decades of experience taught me a very important lesson. As bad and pessimistic everyone was about Real Estate this was the time for him to go out with me and make things happen. Even though I have been doing this for 20 years most of us including myself have not seen as bad downturn as this past one. It was another Life Lesson.

If you have a property in Russian Hill or any other desirable San Francisco location give me a call and I can put you together with my clients who also do remodel work. Need drywall work? Yes they are active in that business also. Residential and Commercial.

By the way if you don’t call me don’t be surprised if I mail, and or call you directly.

Sonoma county Luxury Homes are on a recent tear with 29 million dollar plus homes entering contract in the last 30 days. That’s more than the 3 previous months combined.

So what’s now fueling this multiple offer market and renewed interest in Luxury Homes?

I can write a lengthy article here about buyers on the sidelines and pent up demand and lots of independent theories…..but I won’t. I think it’s quite simple..

Don’t Fight The FED!!!   that’s it. It is common knowledge the banks are printing and that the FED is accommodative..and that eventually this will stimulate the Real Estate Market. Well it appears its finally working.

A client of mine that I represented in the purchase of a few buildings in San Francisco is just now putting up for rent the units he purchased and rebuilt in brand new condition.

These Russian Hill units have Bay views of Alcatraz and Golden Gate. The rents he is getting are up an astounding 35% from the time we did the analysis during the purchase phase and he has no shortage of renters.

My most recent buyer closing is one of the original iphone engineers and is still with Apple. Full price close in 30 days. Last time I wrote an offer like this was the spring of 2007. Many agents are experiencing similar situations and there is definitely a feeling of a market change.

Now of course this is all before the Facebook IPO which is slated for this week.

Who knows maybe the 29 buyers of the million dollar price homes are all the parents of some of the new young billionaires that will be born this week.

Pretty exciting stuff that’s for sure.   Local News Here.

A New York Times article by Michael Cooper goes into further detail.

In Santa Rosa Real Estate news the market inventory has definitely tightened up. It’s a little early yet but showings and inquiries for Luxury Homes are the highest in many years. I am receiving calls form agents throughout the county and Marin asking if I know of any new properties coming on the market.

One of our in house team of agents Charles Himes and Larry Tristano received 16 all cash offers on a fixer in Petaluma in early February of this year. The fact that ALL offers where cash is a very strong signal that the market could very well be on the road to recovery.

In another situation I was made aware that an offer of $30,000 above asking in a Fountain Grove home was not enough as another party offered more and put the home in contract.

Last fall I wrote in this blog that I believed that the Luxury Home Market values had bottomed in Sonoma County. With recent news of a pending Bank Deal with the State AG’s and the HARP 2 program that allows people to refinance with no CAP on the LTV (incredible) it certainly feels like the market could see some positive results this spring.

Unfortunately I do not have any Facebook employee friends….maybe I could Facebook Friend some of them….if I did I would be writing on their wall about what a great place Santa Rosa and Sonoma County are to spend some cash and buy a couple of homes for the price of one in Palo Alto.

I am not certain sometimes how the main street media gets the story so wrong especially regarding the direction of the Real Estate market in San Francisco. This particular blog lays out the statistics that shows a positive direction…..downing-co.com

Regarding the local Santa Rosa Luxury Home market other great news. I have been with Pacific Union Real Estate since the summer of 2000. A great brand representing the high end market.

This past week Mason McDuffie and Coralee Barkela the former owner of the local Pacific Union offices in Santa Rosa and Petaluma joined together to form a new local high end brand under the brand Wine Country Group of Better Homes and Gardens.

Now consisting of several hundred agents the Wine Country Group is poised to not only represent the interests of high end sellers and buyers but also have number of agents throughout all of Sonoma and Napa County that can easily service this clientele base.

Based on my experience of the past 11 years with the Pacific Union brand I am more than comfortable becoming part of the Wine Country Group as they also have the same tools and partnerships required to service the needs of clientele through ought all price ranges.

The addition of Santa Rosa and Petaluma now brings the total of 12 offices serving Sonoma and Napa counties. That’s what I call synergy !!  WineCountryGroup.com

I would like to personally thank Coralee Barkela as she was instrumental with my introduction to the high end clientele in Sonoma County that I currently work with. Her past 30 + years along with other agents has helped develop many of the high end properties in this county. This has helped pave the way for the rest of us to offer these properties to the local move up buyers and of course to new buyers moving into this most prized area of this Country. It is a very rare type of person that is an active agent to refer multi million dollar clientele when she could just as easily do this herself.

Thank You Coralee.

I remembered that LuxuryHome.pro does have an audience as several hundred visitors visit this site monthly of which a full 25% + are local. When I run an adwords campaign traffic triples. A few years ago most of the Traffic was coming from New York, now its San Francisco…..New York is #7 in visitor’s traffic and #2 is Santa Rosa.

The first half of 2011 sales results are in with the following statistics. $1.5 million – $5 million closed sales for Santa Rosa are up approximately 35% from the same period last year. In the $1.0 mil to $1.5 mil closed sales are down 40% from last year. Entry level closed sales 100k – 400k identical to last year.

Values are down year to year with a noticeable shortage of available inventory. I believe this to be Transitory as our friends in Washington are prepared to be accommodative if necessary and have taken steps and have made plans to “Tighten” monetary policy if necessary.

Looking at the Santa Rosa Crystal Ball so to speak…….I believe that the bottom in values is in…..and what we in the field like to use as a barometer is under contract and pending statistics that are UP and the fact that the number of buyers looking in the Million plus range is up considerably.

Only question is…will they pull the trigger? If they do delay it will only be Transitory.

Google Voice: 707-902-3139
Cell: 707-695-8811
Fax: 888-578-5677
[contact-form]

Gus Kyriakos
Pacific Union International
Santa Rosa Ca

Google Voice: 707-902-3139
Cell: 707-695-8811
Fax: 888-578-5677
[contact-form]

View Larger Map