A client requested per square foot pricing information on the Walnut/Sycamore area of Mill Valley, a central, sought after part of Mill Valley with the homes fairly tightly packed together. As a sample I selected a ¼ mile radius of 200 Sycamore.

There were five homes on the market … none in escrow … averaging $635 per square foot and 61 days
on the market. In the past year nineteen had sold … averaging $610 per square foot and 79 days on the market. Of perhaps greater interest were the twelve homes that hadn’t sold … averaging $788 per square foot, 30% above those homes that sold, with the sellers giving up after an average of 77 days.

When pricing homes in the salt and pepper Marin County, where massive homes are found cheek and jowl with small cottages, location still makes a huge difference. Information on Mill Valley homes (price, price per square foot, percentage of sellers who give up, days on market and so forth) varies greatly from the same set of information on Tiburon or Novato. And while towns vary in value per square foot and rate of sales, so do the mini-locations within towns ….

An illustration of this is easily seen when comparing the Walnut/Sycamore results to a ¼ mile radius of 310 Cascade, an area of less density, less sunlight (there are sunny spots but the perception is that much of the area is in shade), with relatively close proximity to town.

There were five homes actively on the market, none in escrow … and only been two sales in the past year … average days on the market for the sales was 270 … the sales statistics were distorted by a home that was abandoned by a builder who asked $1,395,000 and sold for $550,000 after 164 days on the market … yikes! ….

Also of interest in the Cascade sample were the seven owners who’d given up trying to sell after an average of 114 days at an average price per square foot of $700. (The giver-uppers include 310 Cascade, a marvelous home that was priced at $2,695,000 where the sellers reduced the price to $2,345,000 and just now relisted by Karen and Chelsea Hardesty with the enlarged commission of 6% and lower price of $2,250,000).

As another alternative I looked at the ¼ mile radius of a home I sold in the 900 block of West California. Tam Valley is a mixed area off of Loring with a mix of larger homes and some smaller ones. There are ten homes active, two of those in escrow … average cost per square foot of $589 and days on market of 65. In the past year a dozen homes have sold there with an average cost per square foot of $555 (versus an ask of $577), selling in an average of 124 days on market. There were two owners who gave up after an average of 27 days on the market at an ask of $639 per square foot.

Thus we have three great locations in the marvelous town of Mill Valley … Sycamore, with 19 sales at an average per square foot sales price of $610 (and 12 homes that did not sell priced at $788), Cascade with two sales at a distorted price (and seven that did not sell at $700) and Tam Junction with 12 sales at $589 (and two give ups at $639).

Square foot statistics is only one determinate of value, but as my former boss Astrid Trauth used to say, “statistics are like a bikini, what they reveal is interesting and what they hide can be critical.”

Posted by:  Tom Verkozen