Long Term Growth but Short Term Challenges for Sonoma County

I recently read an article titled "What To Do With The Suburbs?"

The article is too long to post here, but the main points are that there will be a lot of populations growth in the years to come and there are not many good plans in place to accommodate this growth. To quote the article:

"A panel on the history and future of the "Great American Suburb" where architect and planner David Dixon, co-author of the 2009 book, Urban Design for an Urban Century: Placemaking for People, pointed out that to accommodate predicted population growth from now until 2030, 150 billion square feet of development would be built. This growth will not and cannot all take place in revitalized cities."

"The issues facing 21st century planners will be how to deal with population growth while avoiding more sprawl at the edges, and how to prevent more decades marked by (i) disinvestment in cities and older suburbs and (ii) isolation of the disadvantaged (who may well include a huge mass of elderly Baby Boomers). The consensus among planners is that to solve these problems there need to be strategies for allowing and encouraging existing suburbs to evolve into denser versions of themselves, with more of the good qualities of cities and towns."

There are some good plans for Sonoma county to do this type of growth, (downtown Santa Rosa, Sonoma Mountain Village, etc.) but there is a lot of sensitivity to "too much growth" and a lot of development costs which will restrict building.

The quality of life is great here, so people want to move to live here. Also, the demand of local population growth will add demand. Both of these demand factors, coupled with modest development supply, should spur increases in real estate prices long term.

But short term, there are still a lot of under-water mortgages (loans amounts are higher than the current value of the property) and too many people behind on their mortgage payments. (According to the Press Democrat today, 1 in 13!) So, expect many distressed properties to be available in the short term.

Ongoing demand and a continuous supply points to an active real estate market in the coming months.