Homescopes

Just finished reading a very interesting book about the City of Napa by Lauren Coodley with Paula Amen Schmitt titled “Napa The Transformation of an American Town“.

Couple of facts I discovered from reading it:

• “In 1924 Rudolph Boysen, a farmer and amateur horticulturalist, developed the boysenberry while living on Third Avenue, by combining pollen from a blackberry and “some other kind of berry.” When he left for Anaheim in 1925, he took six vines with him, which he planted in an orange grove. His new berry was 50 percent bigger and juicier than the blackberry, but no one was interested until 1932, when George Darrow, a scientist from the U. S. Department of Agriculture, went to Anaheim to find him. Darrow asked Walter Knott, a local berry expert, for help in the search. The two of them tracked down Boysen, who had become a city parks superintendent. He led them to the orange grove where the vines remained half dead, on the verge of extinction. They transplanted vines to Knott’s farm, and began selling berries at their farm stand in 1935. The size and popularity of what Knott dubbed “boysenberries” led to the sucess of Knott’s Berry Farm.”
• “A spectacular event occurred on F Street in 1915. Napa Register reporter Phyllis King described it as “the sounds of music and voices heard throughout the city seeming to come from the heavens. Many thought the world was coming to an end and scrambled for cover.” The sounds were produced by Peter Jensen and Edwin Pridham, who had moved to Napa from San Francisco to work on a new type of telephone receiver. Jensen recalled that “San Francisco businessman Dick O’Conner sent us out in the country where we could work undisturbed.” They bought their bungalow at 1606 F Street for $2,500. When they developed the “dynamic loud speaking telephone,” Jensen wrote, “It was the first `great voice’ … which became the voice of public speakers, the voice of film, and last but not least, the voice of radio.” Jensen and Pridham entertained Napans by playing records over their loudspeaker all that summer. The two left Napa in 1916 to establish a factory in Oakland, naming their company Magnavox, the Latin word for “great voice.”"
• “Theresa Tamburelli owned and operated the Depot Restaurant along with her husband Joseph. The Depot was next to the train station, across the street from Rough Rider and the Brooklyn Hotel, next to the train station. In 1930, Tamburelli ran out of pasta dough while cooking for a visiting team from San Francisco baseball players. Remembering her mother’s cooking, she boiled up tiny dumplings of ravioli filling, and named it “malfatti”.”

I truly enjoyed reading this book and hope you will consider it. ENJOY

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Unlike previous housing booms, this isn’t a traditional seller’s market buoyed by rising prices or reduced supply. Today, bank-owned properties and so-called “short sales” drive the market — both types commonly called distressed properties in the real estate industry. A short sale is when the lender agrees to list a property for less than what the homeowner owes on his or her mortgage.

Multiple Listing Service statistics, which track every home on the market, show that 75 percent — 239 of 317 — of the Napa County homes or condos currently under contract are distressed properties, such as bank-owned homes or short sales.

Additionally, 57 percent — 73 of 129 — of Napa County properties closed in the past 30 days were “distressed” properties.

Meanwhile, the pipeline of distressed homes remains full.

DataQuick statistics show that Napa County notices of default increased 6 percent in the second quarter of 2009 compared to second quarter of 2008. A notice of default marks the first step in the foreclosure process. But during the same period the number of trustee’s deeds recorded, the final step in a foreclosure, decreased 30 percent.

STATS FOR LAST 7 DAYS

new listing

price reduced   1 Forrester Ln, $769,000, 3 br 2 ba, 1,204 sf

                                1978 Adams St, $1,164,000, 4 br 3 ba, 2,715 sf

new pending

new sold

average prices, days on market                  

current listings for sale    24   avg price  $988,163; avg days on market 206

current sale pendings          2   avg price  $905,000; avg days on market 173

sold in last 6 months            6   avg price  $965,917; avg days on market 140

new listing 3, price reduced 5, sale pending 3,  sold 0

new listing           2021 Olive Ave, $840,000, 3 br 2 ba, 1,750 sf

                                 905 Allison Ave, $880,000, 2 br 1 ba, 1,060 sf

                                 1340 Madrona Ave, $1,395,000, 2 br 3 ba, n/a

price reduced    1093 Mariposa Ln, $642,000, 3 br 2 ba, 1,316 sf

                                 50 Hillcrest Rd, $1,200,000, 7 br 3 ba, 3,772 sg

                                 1590 Chablis Cir, $1,395,000, 3 br 2 ba, 1,936 sf

                                 1122 Victoria Dr, $1,395,000, 2 br 2 ba, 1,591 sf

                                 861 Deer Park Rd, $1,800,000, 6 br 3 ba, 2,836 sf

new pending       1910 Silverado Trl, $399,000, 1 br 1 ba, 990 sf

                                 920 Charter Oak Ave, $595,000, 2 br 1 ba, 1.026 sf

                                 1337 Allyn Ave, $2,350,000, 4 br 3 ba, 3,517 sf

new sold

average prices, days on market                  

current listings for sale  111   avg price  $2,731,504; avg days on market 150

current sale pendings         9   avg price  $1,461,544; avg days on market 208

sold in last 6 months         29   avg price  $1,078,375; avg days on market 129

new listing 2, price reduced 2, sale pending 1, sold 1

new listing           810 Lommel Rd, $995,000, 4 br 5 ba, 3,371 sf

                                 369 Kortum Canyon Rd, $8,800,000, 3 br 5 ba, 7,500 sf

price reduced    1106 Berry St, $649,000, 3 br 2 ba, 1,100 sf

                                 1314 Washington St, $779,000, 2 br 1 ba, 1,215 sf

new pending       1857 Lake St, $295,000, 2 br  ba, 1,008 sf

new sold              2429 Debbie Way, $350,000, 3 br 2 ba, 1,361 sf

average prices, days on market                  

current listings for sale    62   avg price  $2,153,410; avg days on market 174

current sale pendings        6    avg price  $930,500; avg days on market 149

sold in last 6 months         19   avg price  $759,316; avg days on market 172

Sweet Shop in Los Altos is now open, originally uploaded by David Blockhus.

The Sweet Shop at 994 Los Altos Avenue has opened. Check it out for
coffee, smoothies and sweet treats.

I subscribe to about 20 different blogs which I generally read daily. I do slip every once in awhile and than often scan the articles to catch up. During one such scanning session, a post on Calculated Risk Blog, one of my favorites, caught my eye and am I glad I stopped and took a closer look.

Being 63 next Tuesday, I am coming of the age where you wonder how the number of Baby Boomers will affect things, especially Social Security and Medicare. With all the hoopla about health insurance and the potential hidden costs, it is more prevalent there ever and Calculated Risk comes to the rescue, or maybe that should be nightmare. They have produce a great graphic showing the U.S. Population Distribution by Age, 1950 through 2050. Their graph changes ever two seconds showing the age distribution every five years based upon population data and estimates from the Census Bureau. Below is the starting graph for 1950 but you need to go to their site to see the entire range.