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Health & Fitness

Real Estate Market Snapshot: Pleasant Valley

A look at recent sales and how the market is performing in your neighborhood. First in a new series.

Real estate is not only local, it’s hyperlocal. That means the market in Hamilton may be different from Pointe Marin which is different from San Marin and so on.

That’s why it can be useful to look not only at sales data for all of Novato, but also data broken down by neighborhoods or areas.

Every Sunday I’ll provide you with recent sales information for a particular Novato neighborhood. Let's look today at Pleasant Valley.

Find out what's happening in Novatowith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Pleasant Valley Overview

Pleasant Valley is an established area, located in West Novato. It's considered one of the most desirable parts of Novato due in large part to its popular elementary school, Pleasant Valley, which has some of the highest test scores in Novato.  People also like the feel of Pleasant Valley, with its abundance of trees and many lovely homes.

A few of the main streets in Pleasant Valley are Santa Maria Dr., Vineyard Rd., Sutro Ave. and Eucalyptus Ave. People use the term “Pleasant Valley area” to loosely refer to several small neighborhoods, such as Wild Horse Valley and Verissimo Valle.

Find out what's happening in Novatowith free, real-time updates from Patch.

For home buyers who want Pleasant Valley Elementary School, it can be a bit tricky because not all homes in this geographical area feed into the school. For example, not all Vineyard Rd. addresses feed into PV. Yours might but the house across the street is assigned to Lu Sutton Elementary.

Market Information

(From BARIES MLS. All information below is deemed reliable but is not guaranteed.)

Active listings: 12

Price range: $445,000-$1,895,000

Recent Sales (past 90 days, all single-family homes*)

Address                                       Bd/Ba           Sq Ft                  Sale Price

175 Michelle Cir.                        3/2                 1,258                 $385,000

60 Gertrude Ln.                           3/2                1,173                 $425,000

19 Santa Maria Dr.                      3/2            not listed             $450,000

7 Devonshire Dr.                        4/2.5            1,915                  $565,000

3 Brooke Dr.                                 4/2.5            3,244                 $683,000

856 Sutro Ave.                             6/4               4,800                 $910,000

2463 Vineyard Rd.                    4/3                3,590                 $1,020,000

*I only included homes that feed into PV Elementary in order to keep criteria as similar as possible. As a result, 2 sales on Vineyard Rd. were excluded from this data.

Market performance February 21-May 21, 2011  

Sales data                                   Past 90 days               Same period in 2010          Change

Number of sales:                             8                                         21                                   down 71%

Average sale price:                   $618,250                        $584,643                              up 6%             

Median sale price:                     $536,500                       $559,000                          down 4%

Average size:                                2,516 sq ft                       2,090 sq ft

Avg. Price/Sq Ft                           $246                                   $280                                down 12%

# of bank or short sales                  2                                             6                                  down 67%

Days on market:                               68                                          74

 

Why did sales drop off compared to last year during the same time? It could be due to the length of the sample period. While 90 days is good for looking at the very latest activity, you do run the risk of seeing bigger swings in the data.  In Novato as a whole, year-over-over sales were flat during this 90-day time period. When I looked at 2009, there were 14 sales during this same time span.

Do you live in Pleasant Valley? How do you like it? 

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