The first ten lot sales after the fire are now final. Half a dozen are from Coffey Park and the others are in Larkfield and Fountaingrove. These are mainly smallish lots from around 5,000 square feet up to a quarter of an acre. It’s impossible to rank the lots as far as views or amenities, so I am going to stick with “just a lot” for now. Prices ranged from a low of $20 per square foot to a high of just under $40 per square foot. The highest value per foot was for a 6,000 square foot lot in Mark West Estates.
Approximately half the prices were over $30 per square foot and half were under. One outlier that I excluded from the calculations was a parcel just over 6 acres in the Riebli/Wallace Rd area. It sold for $620,000 which was more than double the price of any other lot, but was only $2.30 per square foot. That still works out to nearly $100,000 per acre which is an aggressive price for Sonoma County planted vineyard, but high for a rural homesite.
When you are evaluating large property for sale or purchase, it’s still best to use a standard analysis of utility, location, views, water and septic, and other factors to establish the value of the core home site and then figure the additional acreage at a reduced rate.
There are dozens of additional listings that are either pending or contingent, so we will have more granular data to look at over the next few weeks. In the meantime, you can use $30 per square foot as a first guess at value. Feel free to get in touch if you would like help analyzing a lot sale or purchase. One warning to anyone shopping for a lot. Median days on the market for this first batch of lots was 20 days. Not 20 days to get an offer, but 20 days from listing to closing with many cases of multiple offers. Be prepared, my friends. Be prepared.