Davis inventory of active listings remains relatively low

Davis is braving the storm well on the supply side. Here’s how our current inventory as of tonight shakes out relative to some nearby communities in Greater Sacto:

                     #  homes on the market       average price of homes for sale 

Davis                    136                                            $610,976

West Sac              321                                            $370,431

Woodland             321                                             $348,787

El Dorado Hills     386                                              $890,296

Roseville              769                                             $439,378

Elk Grove           1,322                                           $372,613

Joe’s Neighborhood Tour of Davis: West Davis

 

WEST DAVIS

If you’re west of Highway 113, welcome to West Davis, home to the following communities: Stonegate, Village Homes, West Manor, Westwood, Aspen and Evergreen. Stonegate is the furthest west, so we’ll begin there.  Stonegate has it’s own Country Club, sans golf course. Its pride and joy is the man-made lake of the same name. At night the twinkling lights reflecting onto the water from the lakefront homes are a beautiful sight. The club features tennis courts, a soccer field, a fitness room, outdoor swimming pools and a community center.  Sailboats and canoes are available for use, too. Stonegate was built over a span of many decades, so the established homes on the southside near Russell Blvd. share little with the newer homes of the 80’s on the north end. Stonegate includes two rather quiet condo developments, Lakeside Greens, and Stonegate Woods, aka Woods Circle.  

Village Homes is a world reknowned passive solar neighborhood built on a former tomato field. Built in the late 70’s, the developers, young Michael, later to become mayor, and Judy Corbett fought the city planners on a number of issues, from streets perceived to be too narrow for emergency vehicles (in an attempt to reduce summer temperatures with less pavement), to lack of storm drains, (the common back yards dip into swales to catch storm runoff).  Supposedly, the year after Village Homes was completed, much of West Davis flooded with the exception of Village Homes. The Village has been visited over the years by a few traveling dignitaries, Rosalyn Carter and Francois Mitterand to name a few. Village Homes is replete with orchards, community gardens, common lawns and an outdoor swimming pool.  Far from cookie-cutter production, no home is replicated more than once in the neighborhood, and in an attempt to de-emphasize the auto, most homes were built without garages.

The West Manor neighborhood, sandwiched between Village Homes and Stonegate, features homes built by Stanley Davis in the 70’s. The street names are rivers of the world, such as Tiber, Feather and Ganges (Eel Avenue and Eel Place are peculiar choices). West Manor Park is surprisingly large, due to the fact that it’s rather hidden from any main street. It features tennis and basketball courts, a playground, a picnic area, an athletic field and a roller hockey ring. The West Davis pond, another great birding spot, lies to the northeast of the neighborhood.

East of West Manor is Westwood, a collection of larger homes on spacious lots, built in the 70’s on streets named for U.S. presidents – Buchanan, Eisenhower, Fillmore and the like. The neighborhood’s southern boundary is Russell Blvd. and its scenic black walnut tree-lined bikepath which connects to the UCD campus. A new mixed-use UC Davis community, West Village, is planned for the farmland south of Russell and west of Highway 113.

The newer Evergreen neighborhood lies at the northeast corner of West Davis, just west of Hwy 113 and south of Covell Blvd., and traversed by Shasta Drive. The majority of homes have a Mediterranean style of exterior with stucco walls and tile roofs.  Arroyo Pool, with its highly popular water slide, and Arroyo Park are at the southern edge of the community. Patwin Elementary sits west of the pool. The eastern portion of Evergreen is within the Willett Elementary boundary line and there’s a most convenient bike and pedestrian bridge over Highway 113 leading to the school and adjacent park.

Tucked to the west of Evergreen is the Aspen Neighborhood which includes Muir Commons, “the first cohousing community newly constructed in the United States,” according to its website. The remainder of Aspen is mostly larger, custom and semi-custom homes on cul-de-sacs bordering either a greenbelt, or the West Davis pond, nice choices to have.

Joe’s Neighborhood Tour of Davis: North Davis

The most salient feature of Davis neighborhoods is how interconnected they are. The Davis planning department excels at weaving our greenbelts, or emerald necklace (to borrow a term from Cleveland, Ohio) throughout the distinct neighborhoods, making access by bike, foot, skateboard, scooter and in-line skates (my preference) a breeze. The core area (downtown) has no greenbelts but the street bikelanes downtown are top notch. Davis has more bicycles per capita than any city in the U.S. Kids can easily navigate the greenbelt bikepaths to the nearest schools and parks. We have six parks within a short bike ride of our house, and one quickly learns which is the shadiest (Village Park) before venturing out on a 103-degree July afternoon.

Davis is known for many things apart from its bikes, not the least of which is the infamous toad tunnel under Pole Line Road (the butt of late-night talk show humor) connecting a marsh with a popular breeding ground for toads adjacent to the post office. Supposedly, no toad ever survived the journey due to the excessive heat of the tunnel. Local HVAC contractor, Blakes, should have installed central air, I guess. Ribbit.  Another bit of Davis trivia: a house on Madrid St. in the North Davis enclave of Covell Park was used to film Sorority Life, a popular MTV series. It’s inconclusive whether that raised or lowered property values on the street at the time. So let’s begin our journey there, in North Davis.

NORTH DAVIS

Its boundary line is simple enough, everything north of Covell Blvd. we call North Davis. Covell Park, a mature neighborhood with Spanish-named streets, features many mid-century modern home designs built by Streng Brothers in the 70’s and early 80’s, paralleling Eichler architecture of the Bay Area. Covell Park is situated close to the core area, with easy biking to the library, Davis Arts Center, Community Park and downtown venues. 

Northstar is a newer community to the north of Covell Park with semi-custom and custom homes built in the late 80’s and early 90’s. The neighborhoods are joined by Northstar Park which features two popular bird ponds, (popular to our feathered friends, as well as birders).  There is a nice kiddie playground filled with sand near one of the ponds, and a well-manicured soccer field, to boot. Senda Nueva is another smaller North Davis development to the west of Covell Park, just a stone’s throw from The Marketplace shopping with Safeway, Peet’s Coffee, Jamba Juice, Dos Coyotes Border Cafe, et al. 

Hopping east over F Street and the railroad tracks is the site of the former Hunt-Wesson tomato canning plant, which is now proposed by Lewis Homes as the Cannery Park neighborhood. While the plant operated, trucks brimming with tomatoes would parade down Covell Blvd. To the north and east of the Hunt-Wesson site lies unincorporated farmland, the site of a recent and contentious battle between the developers of the proposed Covell Village neighborhood and its opponents. The project was supported by Davis city council members, with the exception of mayor Sue Greenwald, and the decision to go forward was placed on the ballot as Measure X. The measure was subsequently defeated by the electorate with 60% opposed.

To the east of Pole Line Road and north of Covell Blvd. is the Green Meadows subdivision comprised mostly of attached, two-story, townhouse-stye homes with small yards. The popular Davis Athletic Club is on Picasso Ave. Moving to the north is La Buena Vida, aka the McKeon Condos. With prices hovering in the mid $200,000s, the McKeons are the most affordable homes in Davis. In the spring and summer of ‘05, at the peak of the market when the inventory of condos for sale was very tight, some units were fetching over $300,000, but since then, prices have tumbled over 20%. Between ‘98 and ‘05, the rising tide of price appreciation in Davis lifted all boats equally, from McKeons to luxurious custom homes, but condo prices have fallen more steeply than single-family residences in the ensuing years.

Roughly a decade ago, the large Wildhorse community was developed to the north and west of Green Meadows and McKeons. Wildhorse features a hilly, eponymous golf course whose inhabitants include burrowing owls. If you take a brief walk along the path to the east of Rockwell Court just before sunset, you’ll discover these protected birds standing guard over the abandoned squirrel holes they call home.  A few years ago, I golfed in a Kiwanis charity tournament, and hopefully no owls were lost due to my errant hooks and slices.

With the exception of custom and semi-custom properties along Rockwell Court built by a variety of local contractors, the Wildhorse homes were built by production builders including Meritage, Morrison, Greystone, Forecast and Ryland. Many of the homes have scenic views of the course, or views of the horse ranch to the east of Caravaggio Drive. On any given Saturday, Sandy Motley Park and Nugget Field adjacent to Pole Line Road are teeming with kids playing soccer.  A bike tunnel under Covell Blvd. connecting Wildhorse with East Davis is currently under construction.

Joe’s Neighborhood Tour of Davis: East Davis

EAST DAVIS

North, West and South Davis are clearly delineated from Central Davis by Covell Blvd., Highway 113 and I-80, respectively. For East Davis, no well-defined boundary exists. However, L St. is as good a candidate as any. East Davis follows a growth pattern typical of many city neighborhoods with older sections closer to the downtown business district composed of smaller, older dwellings.

A large swath of older East Davis offers production homes built by Stanley Davis in the 60’s and 70’s. Named for California counties, Stanley Davis built six plans, the El Dorado, Shasta, Marin, Sonoma, Alpine and Trinity. The plans differ in size from 900 to 1,600 square feet, with most in the 1,200 to 1,400 range. A few notables: the Alpine is the only two-story plan; the Trinity, the only plan featuring a detached garage; and the El Dorado, the only plan with just one bath. Stanley Davis built these plans in smaller quantities throughout North, West and South Davis, as well.

Chestnut Park and Slide Hill Park are two of the larger parks within older East Davis. The re-designed Manor Pool complex at Slide Hill is currently under construction. Both Birch Lane Elementary and Valley Oak Elementary lie in older East Davis. The school board has voted to close Valley Oak after this school year due to shifts in enrollment. Many Davis residents oppose the closing and prefer it to operate as a charter school.  Davis Manor Shopping Center, (aka the Popsicle Mall), Davis Cemetery, and Rancho Yolo, a senior mobile home community, are other neighborhood landmarks.

With the exception of Sunnyside Village,  a little development of approximately sixty homes built in the late ’90s just east of the cemetery with its streets branching out on either side of E. Eighth St., the newer development in East Davis is the large master-planned community of Mace Ranch. Most Mace Ranch homes were built in the mid-to-late 90’s. Lake Alhambra Estates features large custom homes surrounding a man-made lake, (the lake is smaller than Davis’s other man-made lake, Stonegate Lake).  Beautiful Mace Ranch Park is the community’s centerpiece, with athletic fields, playgrounds, a picnic area and protected open space for burrowing owls, jackrabbits and other Davis critters. Korematsu Elementary is adjacent to the park, and Harper Junior High, the newest of Davis’s three middle schools, is on the neighborhood’s northeast corner, near the Covell Blvd. – Mace Blvd. curve.  A “green” Target store is planned to open in ‘09 just northwest of the I-80 Mace Blvd. exit.  Like the Covell Village proposal, the decision was put before the voters. Big-box won at the ballot box by a razor-thin margin.

A wind turbine on every roof?

A personal wind turbine to power your country home in Yolo County? This San Diego company wants you to consider it, (whether the Yolo County planning department will allow such a device on your roof is another story). Visit Helix Wind to learn more about installing a turbine. American Wind Energy Association is another informative site.

Davis CA nerd power

I often tell prospective Davis home buyers that we’re one of the most highly educated cities in the U.S.  Years ago we ranked second on the list of per capita graduate degrees to Chapel Hill, NC.  Here is Money Magazine’s recent top 25 list for brainiest cities for 2006, and wouldn’t you know it, we take the silver again.

Here are the cities with the highest percentage of residents with graduate degrees.
Rank	City	% residents with graduate degrees
1	Arlington, VA	35.7%
2	Davis, CA	34.6%
3	Brookline, MA	32.5%
4	Evanston, IL	31.2%
5	Bloomington, IN	31.2%
6	Towson, MD	31.2%
7	Oak Park, IL	29.1%
8	Bethesda, MD	29.1%
9	Alexandria, VA	29.0%
10	West Hartford, CT	28.9%
11	College Station, TX	27.7%
12	Ames, IA	27.5%
13	Columbia, MO	27.5%
14	Iowa City, IA	27.4%
15	Newton, MA	26.9%
16	Cambridge, MA	26.3%
17	Corvallis, OR	25.7%
18	Palo Alto, CA	25.4%
19	Berkeley, CA	24.5%
20	Lawrence, KS	24.3%
21	Champaign, IL	24.1%
22	Irvine, CA	24.0%
23	Santa Monica, CA	23.8
24	Catalina Foothills, AZ	23.7%
25	Gainesville, FL	23.7%

Champaign, IL made the cut at #21, and it is interestingly among the U.S. cities with the highest beer consumption, I believe. Probably correlates with my alma mater, U. of I., having the largest greek system in the country.

High end of Davis market heating up

In just the last 3 days we’ve seen 4 new pending sales of homes of $799,000 or higher:

43428 Almond Lane, in Willowbank, 2,318 sq. ft., asking $799,000 sold in 6 days

5604 Cowell Blvd. in South Davis’s Warmington development, 2,836 sq. ft., asking $839,000 sold in 15 days

3708 Los Cerros Place in Lake Alhambra, 2,813 sq. ft.. asking $949,000 sold in 2 days

1501 Chalupa Place, also Lake Alhambra, 4,870 sq. ft., asking $1,695,000 sold after 118 on the market.

The Davis market often heats up in February, and this one is proving to be no exception. We are nearing the bottom of the price correction which begun in late 2005, in my opinion. The inventory of listings remains low with multiple offers becoming more frequent, two bullish factors. 

January 2008 Davis Residential MLS stats

Only 10 sold residential properties in Davis in January 2008.  Considering that there are roughly 200 agents who are members of the MetroList MLS in Davis, it was a rather bleak month for agents. Keep in mind that these properties represent closed escrows, not new pending sales, and so the stats best reflect the state of the December 2007 market.

January 2008

Average selling price   $549,300

Median selling price   $525,750

Average days on the market   92

Median day on the market   112

Average price per square foot   $325

Median price per square foot   $312

Let’s compare to January 2007:

Average selling price   $520,548

Median selling price   $505,000

Average days on the market   88

Median days on the market   81

Average price per square foot   $301

Median price per square foot   $332

What’s your take on Cannery Park?

I’d especially like to hear from fellow Davisites on this issue. Are you in favor, or opposed? Why?  

No doubt about it – the location is superb. Unlike the much larger, and much discussed Covell Village neighborhood which was shot down by voters, this planned community proposed by Lewis Homes lies within the Davis city limits.  No measure J on the ballot requiring voter approval to annex adjacent open space land, therefore. 

Click Here to link to Cannery Park!

Welcome!

This blog exists to enrich Davisites and others just Davis-curious about real estate in this unique corner of the planet. 

My expertise is residential real estate, as a broker associate and EcoBroker with Coldwell Banker Doug Arnold Real Estate.  We’ll discuss Davis housing issues, complete with market stats and insights from yours truly.  It may be a good forum for discussing new developments, such as The Cannery, West Village, etc.   If you have a hankering to search for all homes for sale in Davis, click on LiveInDavis.com. 

 I look forward to your comments.

   

Joe Kaplan

Broker Associate

EcoBroker

Coldwell Banker Doug Arnold Real Estate

530-304-5978

LiveInDavis.com