63% of our $2M sales closed in cash

Cash is quietly running the top of the Sonoma County market, the Fed just refused to blink, and one local taqueria now pours its own beer. Here is what actually moved this week and what it means for you.

• Sixty three percent of our $2 million plus sales this year closed all cash, up from 55 percent a year ago

• The Fed held rates steady on a divided vote, and the buyers waiting for a cut may be waiting a while

• Eight new neighborhoods are reshaping one Wine Country town, and we filmed all of them

Pour something cold, the patio is calling, and this one is worth the read.

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Market Insight

Cash Just Took Two Thirds Of The Luxury Market

Here is a number from our own closings, not a national survey. Of the 182 Sonoma County homes that sold for more than $2 million so far this year, 63% closed all cash. A year ago it was 55% on 158 sales, an 8 point jump in twelve months.

What makes it interesting is how calm these buyers are. Only 24% of those $2 million plus sales drew multiple offers, down from 30% a year ago, and the typical home still sold at about 96% of asking. More cash, fewer bidding wars.

One local twist the national headlines miss: as the county leaned harder into cash, Healdsburg, our strongest luxury market, held flat near 53%. Across the country, luxury buyer interest has doubled this year. Here, it already closed.

If you are weighing a sale at the top of the market, reply to this email and we will walk you through the numbers.

Real Estate News

Eight New Neighborhoods Are Reshaping One Wine Country Town

One Sonoma County town is being rebuilt in real time, and most people driving through have no idea how much is coming. We counted eight new developments in Windsor alone, and one of them is selling before the grand opening sign goes up.

• Boutique new construction near Robbins Park, from the high $600s, some plans with attached ADUs

• Single-story luxury out toward Chalk Hill, roughly $1.25 to $1.3 million, only eight lots

• Transit-focused rentals and custom golf course lots near the Windsor Golf Club

• Quail Acres, a 301-home master-planned community on the east side, the biggest the town has approved in memory

Add the SMART train already running through town, new roads, and protected bike lanes, and you get a place actively deciding what it wants to become. Buyers who position early in cycles like this usually end up glad they did.

We walked through every project, who is building it, and what it is likely to cost.

Real Estate News

A Quiet MLS Change Just Hid Half The Photos On Sold Homes

Starting this week, the local MLS changed how it handles listing photos the moment a home stops actively selling. When a property moves to pending, closed, withdrawn, or expired, every photo except the primary one is now automatically marked private, so the public listing sites stop showing the full gallery.

Here is why it matters if you like to research homes online. That gorgeous set of interior shots you screenshot while a place is for sale can vanish from public view the day it goes under contract. The full history does not disappear, it just moves behind the curtain, where agents, appraisers, and clients can still see it for valuation and market analysis.

For sellers, it is a small privacy win, no more strangers scrolling through photos of your living room months after you have moved. For buyers trying to study what sold and why, it is one more reason a working relationship with someone who has full MLS access beats refreshing a portal.

We look at that complete history every day when we price a home or advise a buyer. If you want the full picture on a specific street or sale, just ask.

Market Insight

Everyone Braced For A Move. The Fed Sat On Its Hands.

The Federal Reserve held rates at 3.5 to 3.75 percent on July 29 in a divided 9 to 3 vote, and all three dissenters wanted a hike, not the cut buyers keep waiting for.

Then the bond market threw a fit. Chair Kevin Warsh gave a press conference long on ambiguity and short on specifics, and investors read it as a credibility problem. What followed nationally:

• The 30-year Treasury yield climbed to 5.23 percent, its highest level since 2007

• Traders now put the odds of a September rate hike at 60 percent

• Several Wall Street economists are forecasting a series of hikes, not cuts

• The 30-year fixed mortgage is sitting near 6.8 percent with no relief priced in Fed meeting minutes land August 19, which is the next real tell

Waiting for the Fed to rescue your purchase is now a strategy with negative expected value. What is actually working in your favor is local: Sonoma County inventory has loosened, homes are sitting longer, and sellers are negotiating on price, credits, and rate buydowns in a way they were not doing a year ago.

The rate you can refinance later. The house you only buy once.

Real Estate News

A Lawsuit Just Put The Hidden-Listings Playbook On Trial

The fight over who gets to see your home for sale is now in federal court. This spring, Zillow sued brokerage giant Compass and a major Chicago multiple listing service, accusing them of conspiring to hide listings from buyers and choke off competition.

A judge has already weighed an injunction, and in July a House antitrust subcommittee summoned both companies' chief executives for questioning, setting an August 5 deadline for answers. Consumer groups have asked federal regulators to open their own probe.

Here is what the companies are actually trying to do. Compass has been urging sellers to list privately, inside the brokerage's own network, before a home ever reaches the MLS or the big public portals. It gets marketed as exclusive. In practice it is a walled garden, and that is the problem.

The entire point of listing is exposure, and the national portals pull the overwhelming majority of buyer traffic. Keep a home off them and you shrink the pool of buyers competing for it. When a single brokerage controls both the listing and the buyer, it can also work both sides and keep the full commission, which is exactly what Congress is now asking about.

Our approach is the opposite. We put your home everywhere buyers are looking, then let them compete. That is how you get the highest offer, not just the most convenient one.

Market Insight

The Insurance Bill Is Overtaking The Tax Bill

For decades, property tax was the housing bill people feared. That is flipping. New national data shows that in 15 states, homeowners now pay more each month for home insurance than they do in property taxes. In Tennessee the typical insurance bill runs about $284 a month against $143 in tax, close to double. Nationally, tax is still the bigger line, roughly $311 a month versus $200 for insurance, but the gap is narrowing fast.

The reason is simple. Insurance keeps climbing. Premiums are up about 46% since 2021, roughly three times inflation, and they are expected to rise for a fifth straight year. Property taxes have grown too, up more than 30% since 2019, but insurance is rising faster, and in disaster-exposed states from a base that has already passed the tax bill. Most of those 15 states share one trait: real exposure to hurricanes, tornadoes, or wildfire.

California is not on the list yet. Proposition 13 keeps our property taxes moderate against today's home values, so tax is still the bigger number here. But nobody feels rising premiums more than wildfire country, and in Sonoma County the trend points only one way.

Here is the part that quietly changes what you can buy. Lenders count insurance in your monthly qualifying payment, right beside principal, interest, and tax, so a higher premium does not just cost more, it shrinks how much home you can borrow. CJ Kerls, Branch Manager and SVP of Mortgage Lending at Rate, laid this out in a sharp local breakdown, insurance is the new interest rate, showing how a tough insurance file can wipe out six figures of purchasing power before you have negotiated a thing. It is why we tell buyers to get a real insurance quote on the actual address before they write an offer, not in week two of escrow.

Area Guide

We Charted Every Recent Lakewood Sale

Windsor's Lakewood is one of the tightest, fastest-moving pockets in the county, the kind of neighborhood where well-priced homes go quickly and sellers quietly do very well. So we did the work most listing sites will not: we pulled every recent Lakewood sale into one place and charted what actually happened, from list price to final number to days on market.

If you own in Lakewood and have wondered what your home is really worth today, or you are a buyer trying to understand why inventory moves so fast here, the pattern is clearer than you would expect once you see it laid out.

Lifestyle News

Steal A Billionaire's Home Gym Without The Billionaire Budget

Someone got a good look at Mark Zuckerberg's home gym recently, and the surprise is not the price tag, it is how copyable the setup is. A reviewer who has toured hundreds of celebrity gyms called it genuinely smart, then pointed out that most of what makes it work does not require a tech fortune.

• A sturdy squat rack, the anchor of any real gym, starts around $99, not the $12,000 designer version

• A functional trainer with cables covers most everyday strength work in a small footprint

• A simple weighted vest does more than half the fancy machines

Why bring this up in a real estate newsletter? Because the home gym has quietly become one of the features buyers actually ask us about, right alongside the home office and the outdoor kitchen. A garage corner or a spare bedroom set up well can add real day-to-day value to a house, and it photographs a lot better than an empty room. You do not need a mansion for it. You need about 60 square feet and a plan.

Lifestyle News

When Life Gives You Lemons, Sonoma County Bakes

Peak lemon season is a quietly great time to eat your way around the county, and a handful of local kitchens do it better than anyone. If you are looking for an excuse to make the drive up this weekend, here is where we would point you for all things bright and citrus:

Six spots worth the drive, one bright yellow reason each:

• Acorn Cafe, Healdsburg: Beryl Adler's lemon ricotta hotcake is a single absurdly thick pancake loaded with house lemon curd, whipped ricotta and oat crumble, then finished with a scoop of lemon lavender ice cream.

• Marla, Santa Rosa: the Railroad Square bakery from Amy Brown and Joe Wolf turns out a lemon meringue tart you can buy whole, which is either a dinner party move or a Tuesday, depending on your character.

• Oliver's Market, Cotati, Santa Rosa and Windsor: the lemon mousse cake layers fluffy mousse between vanilla cake, wraps the whole thing in white chocolate and tops it with tangy lemon curd.

• Wild Flour Bread, Freestone: the seasonal scone board rotates constantly, but a lemon version almost always shows up, currently Meyer lemon with poppyseed and fresh blueberries.

• Willi's Wine Bar, Santa Rosa: the Meyer lemon pudding cake is a longtime Stark Restaurants staple, silky and light under vanilla creme fraiche, strawberries and mint.

• Patisserie Angelica, Sebastopol: the lemon zest cake stacks lemon cake with Meyer lemon curd under a French-style buttercream.

Wine country, but make it citrus.

Each brings its own take, from bakery-case showstoppers to a simple, perfect tart. It is the kind of small, sunny pleasure that reminds people why they wanted to live here in the first place, and exactly the sort of afternoon our out-of-area readers tell us they daydream about between visits.

Lifestyle News

A Wine Country Taqueria Now Pours Its Own Beer

Order a beer at El Gallo Negro in Windsor and you can now drink one with the restaurant's name on it. Owner Pedro Diaz teamed up with Sonoma Springs Brewing Co. to create a house beer he describes as the sweet spot between a lager and a pilsner, poured on tap right alongside the tacos.

He is not alone. Across the North Bay, restaurants, markets, and even local causes are teaming up with small breweries to can their own signature beers, turning a pint into a piece of local identity. The timing is interesting: national craft beer volume slipped about 4 percent in the first half of the year, yet neighborhood taprooms are the bright spot, growing by leaning into exactly these kinds of local collaborations.

We are partial to this one because we have eaten our way through the county's taquerias on camera, and El Gallo Negro earned its spot. Watch our rundown of the best Mexican food around, then go order the beer that started as a side project.

New Listings

One Budget, Four Completely Different Versions Of Wine Country

Right now, about $2 to $3 million buys four completely different lives in one Wine Country town, and we have all four listed. It is the clearest proof we know that in this market the number on the price tag tells you almost nothing until you know the property behind it.

• Just Listed: 7616 Highway 128, $2.575 million. A weekend retreat on three flat Alexander Valley acres, with a saltwater pool, an outdoor kitchen, and roughly two and a half acres of estate vineyard that pours its own wine.

• Price Reduction: 3229 West Dry Creek Road, $1.995 million. A to-the-studs rebuild on one of the region's most coveted roads, six private acres and minutes from the Healdsburg Plaza.

• Coming Soon: 778 South Fitch Mountain Road, $2.7 million. Turnkey and walkable to the Plaza, yet private on a third of an acre with a pool.

• Current Listing: 10936 Eastside Road, $2.35 million. A rare vacation-rental-eligible property with a resort backyard. Only 28 rental-eligible homes sold in all of Healdsburg in 2025, and permits do not transfer with a sale, so this eligibility is genuinely scarce.

Four homes, four versions of the same dream, inside a $700,000 band. Knowing which one fits how you actually want to live is the whole game, and it is exactly what we do.

Our Listings This Week

• 1650 Jonive Rd, Sebastopol | $2,885,000. A large home in the redwoods in coveted west county, apple-and-vine country.

• 7616 Hwy 128, Healdsburg | $2,575,000. The perfect Wine Country home for entertaining, with a pool and every outdoor living amenity imaginable.

• 5095 Knollwood Court, Santa Rosa | $2,450,000. Custom new construction with an elevator and spectacular views.

• 10936 Eastside Rd, Healdsburg | $2,350,000. Ten minutes from Healdsburg and vacation rentable.

• 3229 W Dry Creek Rd, Healdsburg | $1,995,000. Modern luxury meets peaceful Wine Country living on six private acres.

• 16530 Laughlin Rd, Guerneville | $1,495,000. A rare Guerneville property with a pool overlooking a vineyard.

• 516 Grove St, Healdsburg | $1,475,000. Walkable Healdsburg under $1.5M, close to the plaza, the perfect pied-a-terre.

• 2563 Mill Creek Rd, Healdsburg | $1,400,000. Mill Creek Road seclusion west of Healdsburg, and a great vacation rental.

• 5762 Owls Nest Dr, Santa Rosa | $1,350,000. A spacious Northwest Santa Rosa home with a large lot, privacy, and endless potential.

• 15621 Riverside Drive, Guerneville | $899,000. A river front property complete with your own dock, ready to enjoy the summer. Reduced from over $1M.

• 21360 Santa Clara Ave, Monte Rio | $649,000. A STR-eligible property ready to start earning you approx $70k per year.

• 180 Johnson St, Windsor | $550,000. The rare sub-$600k entry point in Windsor, the county's tightest, fastest-moving price band.

What's Happening This Week

Sonoma County Fair
Where: Sonoma County Fairgrounds, 1350 Bennett Valley Road, Santa Rosa.
When: Opens Friday, August 7, through Sunday, August 16. Gates from 10 a.m. Friday to Sunday, noon on weekdays.
Why You Should Go: Ten days of carnival rides, Wine Country horse racing, the Floral Fandango Hall of Flowers, and local food, and the free ice cream is back. This year's theme is Festivals, Fiestas and Fun.

The Australian Pink Floyd Show
Where: Luther Burbank Center for the Arts, Santa Rosa.
When: Saturday, August 8, 8 p.m.
Why You Should Go: The world's most meticulous Pink Floyd tribute brings the full lights-and-lasers spectacle to Santa Rosa for one night.

Vinyl Sunday: Stanley Mouse Appreciation Day
Where: Winery Sixteen 600, 589 First Street West, Sonoma.
When: Sunday, August 9, afternoon.
Why You Should Go: The tasting house becomes a gallery of Stanley Mouse's legendary Grateful Dead poster art, with live music from Where's West on the back deck and food from Allikai Eatery.

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David & Jonathan here – the guys who write about real estate but really just want to talk about our favorite taco trucks. Hit us up about anything Sonoma County (or beyond). Whether you're buying, selling, or just want to know which wineries actually welcome dogs – we've got you covered.