My understanding is that Bridget is holding her beautiful Boondock Trail Listing open this weekend, from 12PM - 4PM Saturday and Sunday, March 31st and April 1st.

You should probably double check that to make sure there are no last minute changes by calling Bridget at (530) 306-9111.

You might want to bring a picnic lunch, because it promises to be a beautiful day in a lovely part of the county.

To see more of this lovely listing, check out the slide show.

I have high hopes for a sort of Amador County Renaissance here soon. Elite Properties began in Amador County, as the brainchild of Hal Fishler and Bridget Felmley-Gay. Later, as Hal Fishler became somewhat less active in the area, Elite took on a new broker, me, and that’s how I come to be blogging about Amador County, even though, from an Amador perspective, I live way up heck and gone in western El Dorado County.

In my own defense, however, I live in the foothills. I say this because those of us who live in the foothills are sometimes inclined to call those of you who don’t “flatlanders”. That’s not to say that they live in Flatland, necessarily. Actually I’m not sure what we’re trying to say, other than we live on a hill and you don’t.

If you’re not sure how perjorative a word is, it’s probably not too bad. When teenagers are punished for using the “F” word, it turns out that “Flatland” is not the offender.

But whatever, I’m not a flatlander. Route 50 goes up two or three respectable hills to get to my house. Try it.

Even though Elite Properties began in the also not flat land of Amador County, a lot of our growth lately has been in working with our Sacramento clients. We have a lot of them. But now we’re poised for growth in Amador County as well, and we may well be hiring our first talented but somewhat newer agent soon. (Most of our agents have from four to twenty-six year’s of experience, whereas our newer agent has one year under her belt). But we haven’t hired her yet. We’re just putting on our happy faces, hoping she’ll come play with us, because of how nice and professional we are and how nice and professional she is.

I hope she likes to write. I could go on all day, but either the Sacramento blog or a client or someone pretending to be a client usually cuts a hole in my whole day. So I don’t go on all day on this blog very often, except when we’re poised for growth or we’re having an open house or something.

It turns out both are true right now.

I should write about the open house separately.

Well, this is interesting. I recently came across the following disclaimer:

This post may not be published, linked to or reproduced in any manner without the written permission, of the author …

I don’t know. That seemed to work OK.

I am not a lawyer, but it it seems to me that who I link to is up to me.

Oh, and don’t leave any comments here without my permission. (To not leave comments here without my permission, click the comments link.)

The Sacramento Bee today released an article about a law suit filed by Amador County against a proposed Casino in Plymouth.

Amador County officials, fearful of the impact of another casino in the Plymouth area, have filed a federal lawsuit challenging whether the group planning the casino actually is a legitimate tribe.

The county’s suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Sacramento, challenges the U. S. Department of Interior’s acceptance of the Ione Band of Miwok Indians as a federally recognized tribe.

The department decided in September that 228 acres in and around the town of Plymouth qualify under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act as “Indian lands” on which the Miwoks may conduct gaming. But that decision “constitutes an abuse of discretion and is arbitrary, capricious and contrary to law,” Amador County alleges in the lawsuit.

Read the full story in the Bee.

El Dorado County’s real estate market in February shows just how resilient and unusual El Dorado County is compared to whatever else you might want to compare it to.

My favorite barometer, sold price per square foot, is down slightly (2.9%), but given that this year’s crop of homes is 14.8% bigger (2349 square feet versus last year’s 2046 square feet), I’m not so sure this drop is significant. Larger homes in general sell at a lower price per square foot as a rule, as one would expect with land being the fixed cost that needs to be “amortized” over the size.

However, the more I wrestle with El Dorado County’s numbers, the more I get a sense that it’s quite possible we’ve turned a corner. This February’s average sold price of $557,749 bested last year’s average price of $500,207 by 11.5%. Over the same February 2006 to February 2007, the median price rose by 14.3%.

Unit volume is down slightly (9.4%) from 127 sold units in February of 2006 to 115 units sold in February 2007.  Expireds are practically the same (96 last year, 97 this year, a 1% increase).  The expired to sold ratio is up (75.6% last year versus 86.3% this year). Inventory is moderately into the buyers’ market side of the ledger at seven months.

But what about Land?

You had to ask.  Vacant land in El Dorado County are moving less well than homes are, with 27.4 months of inventory currently available.  We talked about traffic impact fees in an earlier post.  These fees haven’t gone away, and as one of my colleagues pointed out the other day, having homes at $500,000 and land at $350,000 doesn’t help.

Incidentally, if you’re curious about exactly how much those El Dorado Traffic Impact Mitigation (”TIM”) Fees are running, here it is from the horse’s mouth.

On the positive side, inventory does seem to be down from the last time I looked at it, even though the raw number’s still pretty alarming.  We’ll keep an eye on it.

We’ve put together a slide show that highlights the beauty of Bridget’s gorgeous listing on Boondock Trail. Bridget tells me that to really appreciate it, however, you should probably get out there and take a look for yourself.

In fact, we’re all so proud of this one that I was all set to make checking out this listing the featured stop on my second Amador County adventure. Then I realized that Fairplay was in El Dorado County, and I’m already living an El Dorado County Adventure each and every day.

To check out the slide show, click the picture!

And yes, you do get a copy of the slideshow burned onto a nice CD as one of our closing gifts when you move into the home…

     It looks as though spring is in the air! Along with Spring comes the fury of home buyers and sellers looking for the best deal in town. I have the totals for the number of homes and properties sold in Pymouth, Fiddletown, River Pines, Sutter Creek, Ione, and Jackson during the month of February, I am anxiously waiting  to compare these numbers to March in a few weeks. According to the Amador MLS none of the homes in Plymouth or Fiddletown sold, however one property sold in River Pines, and the little (growing) town of Ione sold 7 homes with an average price of $245,285.00! A total of 6 homes sold in Jackson with an average price of $264,666.00 and in Sutter Creek 4 homes sold with an average price above all of $490,250.00.

Remember Ross Perot? Reform party presidential candidate whose voice sounded a lot like Frank Perdue’s.

Now there was a little short guy with big ears who loved his charts.

Lately I’m starting to feel like Ross Perot, because I’ve become enamored of charts. (Fortunately I’m still tall, and my ears are pretty average, and I have a nice baritone).

Anyway, this chart frenzy is probably a passing thing, a result of having created the mother of all Amador County real estate statistics spreadsheets.

But until the fever lifts, here’s the latest one — and I must say I really like this one because I’ve been able to draw an hourglass, using only Excel and MLS and some Polynomial Trend Lines.

Don’t feel bad, I had no idea what a Polynomial Trend Line was until I started falling under the influence of Ross Perot-ism. Fortunately for us, Microsoft’s Excel support tells us:

A polynomial trendline is a curved line that is used when data fluctuates. It is useful, for example, for analyzing gains and losses over a large data set.

The chart is below, and shows units sold and average days on market.  As you can see, as the seller’s market reached its peak in late 2004 and early 2005, as we would expect, unit volume was up and the value for average days on market was down.  Of course, as the market cooled, homes took longer to sell, and less of them sold.

As always, the real data is a jumbled mess, but by golly you get a pretty nifty picture when you throw in your polynomial trend lines.

I don’t know why Maureen Francis thinks statistics are dull.

HOPE Flyer    Are you looking to buy a home in Amador or El Dorado counties? We are holding a workshop to help you prepare yourself for the home buying process,  on Saturday March 10th from 9am-1pm at Placer Title in Jackson, you will have the opportunity to talk with lenders, Amador County Realtors, Title & Escrow officers, and receive assistance in understanding your credit.  Please call or e-mail Bridget at Bridget@BridgetSells.com  (530) 306-9111 reservations or required. We will have a list of homes in various price ranges in areas such as: Plymouth, Ione, Sutter Creek, Jackson, Pine Grove, Mt Aukum, Fairplay, and River Pines.

I thought I’d give you all a preview of our new look. I promised Bridget I’d figure out how to upload images from within Wordpress and let her know.

Anyway, here’s roughly how our new sign will look.

Hey, that was too easy.

We owe special thanks to Linda Bartlett of Truffle Gateau for putting that together for us. We’ve already incorporated it into our Sacramento site.