STATS FOR LAST 7 DAYS

new listing 0, sale pending 0, sold 0, expired 0, withdrawn 1

price reduction    1890 Oak Circle, $665,000, 3 br 2 ba, 1,850 SF

new pending         

new sold

new expired                                                

withdrawn            1978 Adams Street, $1,370,000, 4 br 3 ba, 2,683 SF

AVERAGE PRICES, DAYS ON MARKET                  

current listings for sale    18   avg price $1,038,275 avg days on market 163

current sale pendings         2    avg price $1,997,000 avg days on market 116

sold in last 6 months          10    avg price $910,415 avg days on market 154

          Facts, numbers, SF from BAREIS and/or Napa County

                     tax records,  accuracy is not guaranteed

FACTS ETC

I was in Bouchon last Friday and ran across an old friend, David Cunningham. He was waiting for his daughter, Laura Cunningham, who I know as well. I asked Laura how things were coming with Vita, her new to-be restaurant, and her reply was “they are coming”. When asked if she planned to move back to Yountville, she told me she would continue with her business dealings in New York City and split her time between there and here. The only thing I can add, I can’t wait till Vita opens. There is no doubt, this will be one great place to dine.

I read the local newspaper this morning, the Napa Valley Register, and found four very interesting articles about real estate current events here. I feel anyone interested in buying property here, our anyone who has done so but does not get the Register, will find this info very useful. Unfortunately, two of the stories are a bit negative as to real estate values declining and the current economy performing poorly, but this is exactly why I am going to think positively and feel confident, this news will change soon.

Below are excerpts from the four articles. Click on the links to read the entire story.

Real declines in real Estate

The median price of a home in Napa County decreased to $406,600 in November, an annual decrease of 27.7 percent, according to the Associated Press. A recent study released by the National Association of Realtors showed that housing prices across the country last month fell in their sharpest decline in four decades.

Battle looms over eco-village

PUC originally unveiled plans for a 591-home eco-village, including a new park and stores. PUC leaders say the project — which would include homes with energy- and water-efficient features, and upgrades to the campus and Angwin’s small commercial zone — is needed to allow PUC to build up its endowment.

It’s the economy, stupid

STATS FOR LAST 7 DAYS

new listings 1, sale pendings 0, sold 2, expired 0, withdrawn 1

new listing              6585 Oak Leaf Court, $550,000, 2 br 1 ba, 768 SF

new pending         

new sold                  1907 Vintner Court, $665,000, 3 br 2 ba, 1,384 SF

                          12 Tallent Lane, $2,800,000, 4 br 4 ba, 3,600 SF 1.01 acres

new expired                                                

withdrawn               1974 Adams Street, $1,295,739, 3 br 2.5 ba, 2,195 SF

AVERAGE PRICES, DAYS ON MARKET                  

current listings for sale    20   avg price $1,041,597 avg days on market 158

current sale pendings        

sold in last 6 months           11    avg price $924,241 avg days on market 160

          Facts, numbers, SF from BAREIS and/or Napa County

                     tax records,  accuracy is not guaranteed

As visitor-dependent Napa Valley businesses brace for the full effects of the “slow sea­son,” which traditionally runs from December through February and into March, local businesspeople are sharing concerns that this off season will be considerably more “off” than usual because of the nation’s economic crisis.
But read some of the public­ity currently being circulated about Yountville, and it would seem this little village is posi­tioned to fare better than most in the weeks and months ahead. Yountville looks good in print.
Last week The Earth Times released a story on Business Wire with the headline “Oasis in an Economic Downtown: Napa Valley’s Yountville Sports Silver Lining With Impressive Stats on Tourism; Estimated $100 Million in New Construction and Bo)ost in Room Rates.”
Earth Times, a news website that publishes reports on a wide variety of topics, opened its Yountville story as follows, “As the economy sizzles into the sea, one city in Northern California is bucking the tourism trend with impressive results. As top destinations are struggling with falling occu­pancy and average daily room rates, this city located 55 miles north of San Francisco posted a $25,000 increase in transient occupancy tax revenue (TOT) for July/August ‘08, annual 8.3 percent gain in average daily room rates and annualized occupancy rate of 75.6 percent which represents a miniscule 0.4 percent drop!”
It doesn’t stop there.
“In these trying times, scur­rying for the competitive tourism dollar has translated into transport promotions, rock bottom room rates and added-value attractions driving most destinations. While there are always off-season deals to be had throughout Napa Valley and Yountville, this culinary bastion of just four square miles has quietly evolved into a textbook study of recession-proof marketing ..
“With nine hotels and six coveted Michelin stars, the town’s silver lining is due to a variety of factors, from careful master planned growth to a strong loyal. base of clientele and solid mix of group/leisure business. Add to that an esti­mated $100 million in new construction of hotels, restau­rants and renovations in 2008/2009, a recent Stardard & Poor’s AA+ rating (July /2008) due to strong local tourism ­based economy, exceptionally strong financial performance and dedicated revenue stream from the town’s TOT, and the message is clear: This is the Little Town that Could.”
Yountville’s key survival techniques were identified as “an aggressive marketing com­munications program posi­tioning Yountville as the West Coast’s top epicurean and favorable ‘green touring’ option linking all visitor assets via walking or biking.”
Intervicewed by Earth News for the story were Mayor Cindy Saucerman, Town Manager Steve Rogers and Villagio Inri’s Director of Sales and Marketing Steve Andrews.
If Yountville is being seen as green, it is about to get even greener in the New Year, with the planned opening of the Bardessono inn on February 2.
While these 62 inn units are yet to be experienced first­hand, the application of green features have already attracted ink in a number of building industry publications, and the public relations firm handling the property is positioning it as “Amedca’s Greenest Luxury Hotel.”
Aspiring to achieve Platinum LEED Certification for the inn, eco-developer Phil Sherburne, as his publicity describes him, wants to erase the notion that being green involves “wearing a sack-cloth coat.” His concept is that the highly personal nature of Bardessono hospitality may be nurturing and restorative.
The property will get approximately half of its electricity from a 200-kilowatt photovoltaic solar system dis­cretely mounted and con­cealed on the inn’s flat-topped roofs.
To heat and cool guest rooms as well as the property’s domestic water supply, a sys­tem of 82, 300-foot geothermal wells were drilled to work with a specially developed ground source heat pump system.
“Up-cycled” materials are being incorporated throughout the new inn, and they include recycled steel, green glass tiles and fly ash concrete. (Fly ash, a glass-like powder recovered from gases created by goal ­fired electric power genera­tion, is a recyclable material often ued as a replacement for Portland cement.)
Locally-sourced and sal­vaged Monterey Cypress, Walnut, Redwood, Eucalyptus and California Bay Laurel wood is being used for every­thing from siding and ceiling beams to furniture and bath­room flooring.
The hotel’s entry features local stone salvaged and recut from the Bardessono family’s original homestead.
Meanwhile, Thomas Keller’s name and stellar repu­tation on the international stage of culinary arts, continue to generate so much media the Yountville Chamber of Commerce suspended its clip­ping service several years ago because it couldn’t afford to pay for the constant blizzard of clippings Keller generated with a Yountville mention. (A clipping service tracks mentions of a specific word or words for its clients by clip­ping the stories bearing those words from thousands of pub­lications of all types from around the globe. Clients gen­erally are charged a basic fee as well as a certain amount for each clip containing the word or words it has specified.)
And Keller is developing his own green profile. In May he will be honored by the Monterey Bay Aquarium with the Conservation Leadership Award at the Cooking for Solutions celebration for his efforts in promoting food prac­tices that protect the health of the ocean and the soil.
And more local publicity is sure to come from the Keller organization next month, when French Laundry sous chef Tim Hollingsworth goes to Lyon, France, as the first American to compete in the prestigious Bocuse d’Or World Cuisine Contest.
Whether this proliferation of publicity will actually pro­pel paying customers into local inns, restaurants, galleries, tasting rooms and shops remains to be seen, but tiny Yountville is generating more than its proportionate share of industry ink.

STATS FOR LAST 7 DAYS

new listings 2, sale pendings 1, sold 0, expired 0, withdrawn 0

new listing              6 Jasmine Street, $675,000, 3 br 2 ba, 1,204 SF

                                    1 Forrester Lane, $899,000, 3 br 2 ba, 1,204 SF

new pending         1907 Vintner Court, $699,000, 3 br 2 ba, 1,384 SF

new sold

new expired                                                

withdrawn

AVERAGE PRICES, DAYS ON MARKET                  

current listings for sale    20   avg price $1,078,884 avg days on market 153

current sale pendings         2    avg price $1,997,000 avg days on market 116

sold in last 6 months           9    avg price $744,628 avg days on market 171

          Facts, numbers, SF from BAREIS and/or Napa County

                     tax records,  accuracy is not guaranteed

FACTS ETC

Bottega opened for lunches last Friday. If you want lunch there during the winter, it needs to be Thursday through Sunday. I haven’t had a chance to eat there yet, but I hear it is very good. As soon as I get a menu and imbibe, I will post it here and let you know how the food is.

Bay Area home sales decelerated in November but beat the year-ago mark for the third consecutive month. The allure of discounted foreclosures continued to drive sales in affordable inland markets, which helped push the median sale price down to its lowest point since former President Bill Clinton was in the White House.

The median price paid for all new and resale houses and condos combined in the nine-county Bay Area fell to $350,000 last month. That was down 6.7 percent from $375,000 in October and down a record 44.4 percent from $629,000 in November 2007, according to MDA DataQuick, a San Diego-based real estate information service.

The November median sale price - the point where half of the homes sold for more and half for less - stood at its lowest since it was $350,000 in September 2000. It was 47.4 percent below the peak median of $665,000 reached last year in June, July and August.

The median has fallen on a year-over-year basis for 12 consecutive months, yanked lower by several factors: price depreciation; a shift toward more sales in the less-expensive inland markets; slower high-end sales; and buyers’ preference for lower-priced foreclosures.

Last month 47.6 percent of all homes that resold in the Bay Area had been foreclosed on at some point in the prior 12 months, up from 44.0 percent in October and 10.1 percent a year ago.

At the county level, foreclosure resales last month ranged from 10.0 percent of resales in San Francisco to 63.6 percent in Solano County. In the other seven counties, November foreclosure resales were as follows: Alameda, 44.4 percent; Contra Costa, 63.0 percent; Marin, 22.6 percent; Napa, 40.8 percent; Santa Clara, 38.9 percent; San Mateo, 21.8 percent; Sonoma, 51.6 percent.

My sense is this is true for Napa County as well even though the statistics show the home sales for previously foreclosed homes to be 40.8%. In one recent MLS search for a first time home buyer with a maximum purchase price of $250,000, 19 of 37 homes and condos in the City of Napa were previous foreclosures, 51.1% and another 13 were short sales, a 86.5% total for all distressed sales. And as a Realtor working in the trenches every day, I haven’t seen any sign of this changing yet. I will keep you informed when I do.

STATS

last 7 days activity:      new listings 0, sale pendings 0, sold 0, expired 1, withdrawn 0

new listing(s)              

new contingent(s)        

new sold(s)                                                 

withdrawn                  

            current listings for sale    19 average price $1,168,502 average days on market 156

            current sale pendings       1 average price $3,295,000 average days on market 191

            sold in last 6 months         9 average price $744,628 average days on market 171

Facts, numbers, SF from BAREIS and/or Napa County tax records, not guaranteed

FACTS ETC

Bottega did have its soft opening on Friday and it was packed. Everyone was there. To see what they serve, check back and as soon as I can get a copy of their menu, I will post it there. The food was very good and quite reasonable as prices go here.

In 1831, George Calvert Yount saw the Napa Valley and declared, “In such a place I should love to clear the land and make my home. In such a place I should love to live and die.”

As the first non-native settler in the Valley, Yount enlisted local Wappo Native Americans to help him build a Kentucky blockhouse and a mill. In 1855, he commissioned a surveyor to lay out the city. The new community was christened Sebastopol, even though there was a town with the same name in nearby Sonoma County. George Yount planted the first grape vine cutting into the fertile soil of the Valley. In 1867, two years after Yount’s death, the town was renamed Yountville in honor of its founder.

Gottleib Groezinger established a massive brick winery, wine cellar and distillery in 1870, and the community was soon planted with grapes. In 1884, the Grand Army of the Republic established the Veteran’s Home to honor and care for those injured in service to their country. The Home was given to the State of California in 1897. Gradually Yountville became a quiet residential town. In 1965, it was incorporated as an official California city, and shortly thereafter, the old Groezinger property was revitalized as Vintage 1870, a complex of shops, galleries and restaurants which turned Yountville into a charming visitor attraction.

Through the years until the present day, Yountville has retained its rural charm and residential character while encouraging the commercial centers to retain the charm and taste that has become synonymous with Yountville. Today’s visitor will find a variety of gourmet restaurants, charming lodgings, exquisite retail shops, antiques and art galleries, and world-class wine tasting opportunities. Sunrise hot air balloon rides, an afternoon of golf, a historical walking tour, a set of tennis or a bicycle ride down a quaint vineyard lane are just a sampling of what Yountville has to offer.

In Yountville, the seasons come to life with festivals, celebrations and events! In March Yountville celebrates the Napa Valley Mustard Festival with “A Taste of Yountville!” This all-Yountville showcase features traditional samplings of gourmet restaurant fare, olive oil, vinegar and mustard as well as fine wine and micro-brew tastings. A cornucopia of lifestyle demonstrations by retailers and innkeepers, including fashion shows, tours, furniture restoration demonstrations and celebrity chef mini-workshops awaits visitors.

Christmas past comes to sparkling life the day after Thanksgiving with the kick-off of Yountville’s “Festival of Lights,” heralding a joyous month-long celebration of holiday events and entertainment through New Year’s Eve. Strolling musicians, jugglers, face painters and artists join Yountville’s restaurants and wineries along Washington Street. Vendors offer sumptuous samplings, holiday treats and the wine that makes the Napa Valley famous. That evening join Santa as the entire town is set aglow with thousands of sparkling white lights.