Sonoma County Shrank - Two Towns Didn't

Sonoma County lost residents last year - and yet every single city and town added housing. Population fell by 742 while the county built 1,729 new homes. Only two places actually grew, and where people are moving within the county tells you more about the market than any price chart.

- Sonoma County Airport just got a lot more useful - Southwest arrived in April and Alaska is stacking on routes - and yes, that comes with more jet noise over the west county. We weigh the trade.

- If you have Anthropic stock you could save $500k on buying a Healdsburg vacation rental!

- Americans are drinking less wine, but spending more on it, and Healdsburg's sold-out food and wine weekend hints at why that could actually be good news for this corner of the map.

Pour a glass for the patio - this one's a good Friday read.

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Sonoma County News

The County Shrank Last Year - but Two Towns Grew Anyway

Here is the headline number from the latest California Department of Finance estimates, released May 1: Sonoma County's population fell to 484,022 as of January 1, down 742 residents over the year. At the same time, every jurisdiction in the county added housing. The county built 1,729 new homes while losing people - the gap between where homes go up and where people actually live just got wider.

The internal picture is more interesting than the flat county total:

• Santa Rosa was the only city with meaningful growth, adding 1,012 residents (up 0.57%). It now sits at 179,798.

• Healdsburg was the only other place to grow, adding 49 residents - small, but the right direction. Every other city lost residents.

• The unincorporated areas - Guerneville, Forestville, Bodega Bay, Glen Ellen and the rest - fell by 1,114, the largest drop in the county.

• Petaluma lost the most among the cities in raw numbers, down 235.

• The average county home value sits around $792,000, off about 2.3% over the year, with homes going pending in roughly 24 days.

The why is a mix of declining school enrollment, an aging workforce and a cost of living that pushes younger families out. For buyers and sellers, the signal worth reading is direction: Santa Rosa and Healdsburg are the two markets pulling people in while homes keep getting built around them.

If you are trying to figure out which Sonoma County market to buy or sell in this year, hit reply to get in touch or download our moving to Sonoma County Guide, where we cover the pros and cons of each city

Lifestyle News

The Part of Your Wine Country Home You Forgot to Budget For

We spent twenty years dreaming about kitchens and bathrooms and almost never about the yard - and in Sonoma County, that is backwards. Our newest video sits down with the owner of Geared for Growing, Megan Mokri, a Healdsburg design-and-build landscape firm that has been working local properties for 43 years, to talk through how to actually plan an outdoor space.

A few things worth stealing from the conversation:

• Your yard is an extension of your home's square footage. Here you can live outside roughly six months of the year - something Bay Area transplants rarely got in the city - so the patio, the dining area and the garden are not afterthoughts.

• Budget on the front end. Their landscape projects in Sonoma County run from about $25,000 to effectively uncapped on larger estates. The trick is breaking your wish list into chunks - outdoor kitchen, pool, wellness area, vegetable garden - pricing each, then prioritising.

• The common mistakes are avoidable: overplanting that makes a garden feel chaotic, irrigation that is not dialled in for our long dry summers, and skipping low-cost lighting that would let you actually use the space after dark.

For vacation-rental owners, the wellness stack - sauna, cold plunge, integrated gym - keeps coming up as the feature guests book for.

Watch the Full Video Below

Real Estate News

The Quiet Fight Over Whether You Can See Every Home for Sale

This one is national, but the principle lands close to home. This week one of the big home search portals abruptly lost thousands of listings in the Chicago market - dropping from roughly 5,000 to 1,700 in a day - after the regional listing service (MLS) cut off its data feed. The fight underneath it is about private, or "pocket," listings: homes marketed quietly inside a single brokerage's network instead of out on the open market. It is worth understanding where this one comes from.

A big part of the push has come from Compass, the country's largest brokerage, which has been encouraging sellers to market homes within its own private network rather than on the open market. The appeal is framed as exclusivity, but it has a side effect: it keeps more listings inside one brokerage and gives the wider market a little less visibility. The lawsuits and the Chicago listing blackout are what happens when that approach collides with the open portals - and consumers are the ones left seeing fewer homes.

Two things are worth separating here:

• It is not happening to Sonoma County listings. Homes here run on the BAREIS multiple listing service and still show up across the search sites. There is no local blackout.

• The trend it represents is the part to watch. As more inventory gets routed into private networks before, or instead of, hitting the open market, buyers searching on their own can quietly miss homes that exist.

For sellers, the math is simple and unsentimental: the more buyers who see your home, the more competition, and competition is what moves the price. Hiding a listing from most of the market to feel exclusive usually costs money - it is a big reason our sellers average above their original list price. For buyers, it is the case for working with someone who can see the entire market, not just the slice a portal - or a single brokerage - chooses to show you.

Real Estate News

One Seller Will Take Anthropic Stock — and Knock Off $500K

We have closed a lot of unusual deals in 20 years of Wine Country real estate, but this is a first: the owner of 10936 Eastside Road in Healdsburg has agreed to sell his vacation rental for $2 million in Anthropic stock instead of cash — a $500,000 discount off the $2.5 million asking price. It is a deal built for the Bay Area buyer whose net worth is parked in private-company shares they cannot easily spend, and who would rather move that equity straight into an income-producing home than sell stock and hand the IRS a capital-gains bill.

Why 10936 Eastside Road is worth the attention:

• It is one of the very few properties around Healdsburg eligible for a short-term-rental permit. The permit does not transfer with the sale, but a new owner can secure one.

• Beau Maison, a top local property manager, forecasts $178,000 in annual rental income.

• It sits on 3.25 private acres ten minutes from the Plaza, with a new pool and spa, three bedrooms, and a second permitted septic already in for a future pool house.

The backdrop is what makes it rare. Inside the Healdsburg city limits, vacation rentals are pretty much off limits, and so are the vast majority of unincorporated areas — either the underlying zoning does not allow it, or the cap is already maxed out. The majority of the unincorporated zone around town is either the wrong zoning or above its 5% limit, new permits are largely frozen apart from in certain pockets. Only 28 eligible vacation rentals came to market across the entire area in all of 2025. So when an eligible one shows up and the seller is open to taking equity, the math gets interesting fast.

Want the full details on 10936 Eastside Road, or to talk through whether a stock-for-home deal works for you? Hit reply and we’ll get back to you

Lifestyle News

Americans Are Drinking Less Wine - and It Might Help Wine Country

The grower-side numbers are genuinely tough. Wine grape prices keep sliding, oversupply is stubborn, and the volume of California wine entering the U.S. market has fallen roughly 25% in under a decade. Closer to home, Sonoma County tasting-room visits were down about 8% in 2025 - though that is actually better than Napa, which fell 18%.

Now the more hopeful read sitting underneath the gloom:

• Americans are drinking less wine but spending more on it. U.S. wine spending hit a record of more than $115 billion in 2025 even as volume fell - growth driven almost entirely by premiumization.

• The losses are concentrated in cheap wine. Bottles under about $10 are sliding hard, while the $15-and-up tiers are holding or growing. The phrase the industry keeps using is "less, but better."

• That is the lane Sonoma County already lives in - premium, experiential, food-and-wine driven rather than high-volume.

The proof point this month: the Healdsburg Wine and Food Experience ran its fifth year May 14-17 and sold out marquee events even in a soft market, with grand-tasting tickets at $275. The honest caveat is that local direct-to-consumer sales are still down, and younger drinkers buying less is a real long-term headwind. But for buyers eyeing a vineyard estate or a Wine Country investment, the region's premium-and-experience tilt is the part of the wine business holding up best.

Travel News

A Little More Jet Noise, a Lot More Places to Fly

Let's be honest about the downside first. Noise complaints around Sonoma County Airport have exploded - from about 1,135 in 2023 to nearly 30,000 in 2025, with roughly 15,500 in the first quarter of 2026 alone. The cause is a 2024 FAA flight-path change that funnels departures lower and more concentrated over west county - Sebastopol, Graton, Occidental and Forestville. For people living under that path, it is a real nuisance, and county officials are pressing the FAA on it.

Here is the other side of the ledger, and why we think it is a trade worth making for most:

• Southwest Airlines launched at the airport in April with four routes - San Diego, Las Vegas, Burbank and Denver.

• Alaska added a daily Ontario flight in March and is bringing on Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Boise starting November 1.

• That is the most useful the local airport has been in years for anyone who would rather not drive to SFO or Oakland.

For Bay Area second-home owners, that convenience is a quality-of-life upgrade that makes a Sonoma County place easier to actually use. Case in point: this August I am skipping the SFO marathon entirely - flying out of Sonoma County, a short hop to Seattle, then a direct flight on to Reykjavik. A bit of extra noise on departure is a small price for that.

Local News

New Fire Maps Are Here - Know Which One Applies to You

If you own in Sonoma County, there are two different fire-map updates in play, and confusing them is easy. The new news this month is city-only: the Santa Rosa City Council approved expanded fire-hazard areas, with a final vote set for June 12 and the rules taking effect 30 days after. The redraw adds roughly 3,082 parcels and removes about 811 - close to 3,900 properties affected - pulling in parts of Bennett Valley, Oakmont, and neighborhoods near the Fairgrounds.

The piece that trips people up:

• This applies to the city of Santa Rosa, not the whole county.

• The unincorporated county already did its version last year. Cal Fire released updated maps in February 2025 and they took effect automatically a few months later, pushing the unincorporated "Very High" hazard area from about 11 acres to more than 7,500.

• Both are built on the same statewide Cal Fire hazard maps - the difference is just which jurisdiction adopts them and when.

What it means in practice if a property moves into a higher zone: defensible-space requirements, wildfire-hardened building standards for new construction or major work, and a fire-zone disclosure in any sale. It can also factor into insurance availability and cost. If you are buying or selling, the practical move is to check which map - city or county - actually covers the parcel.

New Listing

The Tax Behind Your Favorite Trails Is Headed Back to the Ballot

County supervisors voted to put a renewal of Measure M - the eighth-of-a-cent parks sales tax voters first passed in 2018 - on the November 2026 ballot. The key thing for anyone who hears "tax measure" and tenses up: this is not a new tax and not a higher rate. The renewal would simply continue the existing penny-eighth and drop its 2029 expiration date.

The track record voters will be weighing:

• Since 2019 the measure has generated more than $89 million, with close to $70 million already spent.

• It currently raises north of $15 million a year, going to trail expansion, recreation-facility upgrades, wildfire-risk reduction, and improved access to the outdoors.

• It carries accountability strings - independent citizen oversight and annual public reporting on where the money goes.

Why it lands in a real estate newsletter: trails, open space and well-kept regional parks are exactly the quality-of-life amenities that pull Bay Area buyers and retirees toward Sonoma County in the first place. The outdoor lifestyle is a big part of what people are buying when they buy here, and this is the funding that maintains and expands it. Worth tracking as November approaches.

New Listing

The 1,354 Square Feet That Punches Above Its Weight

Here's a thought experiment. It's Saturday morning. You wake up on Fitch Mountain. You walk barefoot onto your wraparound deck with coffee, the trees still doing their early-morning thing. By 10 a.m. you've pulled tomatoes from your own garden for breakfast. By noon you're on a trail that started, roughly, at your front door. By 2 p.m. you're at the farmers market downtown. By 4 you're tasting something you can't pronounce in a room full of people who can. By 9 you're back in the hot tub, under actual stars, wondering why you waited this long.

1870 N Fitch Mountain Road is a 1947 cabin that quietly became a 2025 home — quartz counters, dual-pane windows, updated plumbing and electrical, the unsexy stuff that matters. Three bedrooms. A remodeled kitchen that actually wants to be cooked in. Mature trees doing the privacy thing for you.

It's not a compound. It's not a project. It's the rare turnkey on Fitch Mountain that does more in 1,354 square feet than most homes do in three thousand.

Book a private tour — before the next person reading this newsletter does

Current Listings

What’s Happening This Week

Healdsburg Future Farmers Country Fair
Where: Rec Park, Healdsburg, CA 95448
When: Friday–Saturday, May 22–23, 2026 (following Thursday’s Twilight Parade)
Why You Should Go: This is the biggest outdoor event of the year in Healdsburg — a full country fair with livestock, games, food, a circus, and the kind of small-town energy you don’t find anywhere near a Bay Area freeway. Students showcase FFA and 4-H agricultural projects they’ve been working on all year, and the Saturday livestock auction takes things up another level. Bring the kids. Bring the in-laws. This is wine country with boots on.

Summer Music Series: 7th Sons — B.R. Cohn Winery
Where: B.R. Cohn Winery, 15000 Sonoma Hwy, Glen Ellen, CA
When: Saturday, May 23, 2026 • 12:00 PM – 4:00 PM | Free with tasting
Why You Should Go: Classic rock hits, panoramic Olive Hill vineyard views, wood-fired pizza on-site, and B.R. Cohn wines in the glass — this is the kind of winery afternoon that looks like a screensaver and sounds like your college playlist. Founded by the longtime manager of the Doobie Brothers, no less.

Claudine's Wine Garden — Opening Weekend
Where: Dry Creek Vineyard, 3770 Lambert Bridge Rd, Healdsburg, CA
When: Saturday, May 23 & Sunday, May 24, 2026 • 12:00 PM – 4:00 PM | No reservation required
Why You Should Go: Dry Creek Vineyard just reopened their beloved outdoor wine garden for summer — and the star of the show is Claudine, a vintage 1975 Citroën van transformed into a mobile wine bar. Self-guided flights, wines by the glass, scenic vineyard views, and zero pretense. This is the kind of wine country afternoon your Bay Area friends will absolutely be jealous of.

Share The Love

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• Check our YouTube channel for weekly local market updates (and occasional winery mishaps)

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.