{"id":3138,"date":"2017-11-14T17:09:05","date_gmt":"2017-11-15T01:09:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/blog\/?p=3138"},"modified":"2024-10-16T15:03:16","modified_gmt":"2024-10-16T22:03:16","slug":"northern-california-fires-affect-real-estate-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/blog\/northern-california-fires-affect-real-estate-market\/","title":{"rendered":"Firestorms in Northern California: How They Affect the Real Estate Market"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cUnchartered territory. Unbelievable, uncertain. Every word begins with \u2018un\u2019 in front of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Craziness does not even begin to cover what\u2019s going on in the real estate market in Northern California right now. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/agents\/karen-maxwell-ca-01459597\">Karen Maxwell,<\/a> one of the top real estate agents in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/santa-rosa-ca\/top-real-estate-agents\">Santa Rosa,<\/a> sat down with us for 30 minutes last week to talk about the aftermath of the Northern California firestorms, and how the real estate market is handling it.<\/p>\n<p>Beginning on October 8th, 2017, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/projects\/la-me-northern-california-fires-structures\/\">7,500 structures<\/a> and 245,000 acres of land burned.<\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"https:\/\/robinkraft.github.io\/norcal-fires-imagery\/map.html\" width=\"300\" height=\"550\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h5>Above is an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/blog\/\">interactive aerial view of the damage<\/a>\u00a0that Robin Kraft, a native Santa Rosa resident, built for other homeowners and family members like himself.<\/h5>\n<p>So, one month, later, where are Northern California residents finding a place to call home?<\/p>\n<p>The real estate market is in a state of gridlock.<\/p>\n<p>According to Maxwell, \u201cThere\u2019s nothing on the market for rentals. There\u2019s no rentals available, there\u2019s hardly any homes available. Homes that have been sitting on the market for 6 months at 2 million dollars&#8230;were just flying off the shelves like hotcakes. All of a sudden the fire hit and people are buying and selling homes that had been sitting for 6-9 months.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/sonoma-graph-fires-market-1.png\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"775\" height=\"499\" src=\"https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/sonoma-graph-fires-market-1-775x499.png\" class=\"attachment-content size-content\" alt=\"A graph of the Sonoma county real estate market pre, during, and post fires.\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/sonoma-graph-fires-market-1-775x499.png 775w, https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/sonoma-graph-fires-market-1-768x495.png 768w, https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/sonoma-graph-fires-market-1-64x41.png 64w, https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/sonoma-graph-fires-market-1-128x82.png 128w, https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/sonoma-graph-fires-market-1-192x124.png 192w, https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/sonoma-graph-fires-market-1-432x278.png 432w, https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/sonoma-graph-fires-market-1-500x322.png 500w, https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/sonoma-graph-fires-market-1-800x515.png 800w, https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/sonoma-graph-fires-market-1-300x193.png 300w, https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/sonoma-graph-fires-market-1-419x270.png 419w, https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/sonoma-graph-fires-market-1.png 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 775px) 100vw, 775px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/\">HomeLight data<\/a>, the real estate market in Sonoma county took a steep dip at the start of the fires, but in days after the containment began, sales crawled back up. In fact, sales are creeping back to the level they were at this time last year, despite fire cleanup and aftermath. This supports the seller\u2019s market Maxwell was talking about. Instead of overpriced homes sitting on the market, they\u2019re selling right away. As soon as a listing hits, buyers come in with their best offer.<\/p>\n<p>Though it\u2019s good for homeowners looking to sell, this isn\u2019t ideal for homebuyers in affected Northern California areas.<\/p>\n<p>Even if you find a house to buy, the odds are slim that you\u2019ll actually get to purchase it, even with a competitive offer. With a <a href=\"https:\/\/therealdeal.com\/2017\/11\/05\/heres-what-northern-california-markets-could-look-like-after-the-fires\/\">supply and demand problem in the area pre-fires<\/a>, the loss of homes has made available real estate 20x worse, said Maxwell. The competitiveness of the seller\u2019s market means that buyers have to compete with 10-15 other offers, all significantly over asking price.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_8366\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8366\" style=\"width: 700px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8366\" src=\"https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/37657542842_8e2fb5b226_k-e1549650390624.jpg\" alt=\"California fires 2017 real estate market\" width=\"700\" height=\"445\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/37657542842_8e2fb5b226_k-e1549650390624.jpg 700w, https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/37657542842_8e2fb5b226_k-e1549650390624-64x41.jpg 64w, https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/37657542842_8e2fb5b226_k-e1549650390624-128x81.jpg 128w, https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/37657542842_8e2fb5b226_k-e1549650390624-192x122.jpg 192w, https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/37657542842_8e2fb5b226_k-e1549650390624-432x275.jpg 432w, https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/37657542842_8e2fb5b226_k-e1549650390624-500x318.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-8366\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: (Robert Couse-Baker \/ flickr, via <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/legalcode\">Creative Commons<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>On top of this, people are starting to take advantage of the housing shortage.<\/p>\n<p>Maxwell took a client to see a house listed at $699,000 that backs up onto a busy street. The client loved the house and decided to make an offer, so Maxwell set out to run a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/blog\/fair-market-value\/\">comparable market analysis.<\/a> Oddly, when she started pulling homes together, the listing price online for this house was different than what she had on file.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat day, probably while we were [viewing the house], the seller increased the price to $825,000\u2026.He increased the price by $126,000 dollars because of supply and demand.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The real estate agent on the deal got so many calls from furious agents that she and her broker pulled the listing.<\/p>\n<p>As you can see, in Maxwell\u2019s words, \u201cit\u2019s a very volatile market right now. A lot of agents are now looking for other jobs, because we don\u2019t know where our next listing is going to come from.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So what\u2019s on the horizon for the Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, and Northern California real estate markets? It\u2019s a question that everyone is asking, but no one yet knows the answer to. There could be <a href=\"https:\/\/beta.latimes.com\/politics\/la-me-santa-rosa-fires-housing-shortage-20171019-story.html\">plans to develop entire blocks of homes all at once<\/a>, after some significant work to clean all of the burned and affected areas.<\/p>\n<p>As for now, agents are trying to trudge forward, help the clients they can, and figure out what to do next.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s nothing like we\u2019ve experienced before,\u201d said Maxwell, \u201cand we are in the trenches of uncertainty.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cUnchartered territory. Unbelievable, uncertain. Every word begins with \u2018un\u2019 in front of it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":8368,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[320,1198,334],"tags":[383,1205],"class_list":["post-3138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-add-value","category-california-real-estate","category-news","tag-real-estate-market","tag-selling-a-house-in-northern-california"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.0 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Northern California Fires Impact Real Estate Market Trends<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Northern California Fires Affect Real Estate Market: Uncharted, Unbelievable, Uncertain\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/blog\/northern-california-fires-affect-real-estate-market\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Firestorms in Northern California: How They Affect the Real Estate Market\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Northern California Fires Affect Real Estate Market: Uncharted, Unbelievable, Uncertain\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.homelight.com\/blog\/northern-california-fires-affect-real-estate-market\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"HomeLight Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/gohomelight\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-11-15T01:09:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" 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