House Hunt: New Housing Comes on the Market at Oak Leaf Ranch

The Oak Leaf Ranch development of new single-family houses off Terrace Dr in East Napa hit the local real estate market last week. The real estate market being slow over the past year, it has been a while since new construction came onto the local market. 

The Commerce Department reports May new home sales slightly down compared to April of this year, but up over May of 2010. Not surprisingly, the inventory of new homes on the market along with houses completed and houses under construction fell to record lows back in April.

Some analysts predict we could see a little growth over the next couple months and cautiously suggest we just may have seen the bottom of the housing market... for now. 

Conventional wisdom says that new homes need to compete with low prices and a glut of existing homes on the market. And of course there are still plenty of foreclosures and short sales on the market, which is keeping prices low. New homes can cost on average about 30% higher than older existing homes.                         

But according to Salley Nelson of DeNova Homes, the first week showed good activity and they have already sold one completed home and one under construction.

“The brokers have been fantastic” says Nelson. The properties start at $529,000 for a single level 2100 ft sq homes up to $625,000 for two story houses with 2900 sq ft of space.

“The houses are priced to be competitive with short sales and foreclosures” says Nelson. “New homes have the benefits of builder warranties, state of the art energy saving materials throughout and the ability for a new owner to customize the interior finishing”.

The Oak Leaf Ranch development initially began back in 2007 when part of the Oak Leaf Stables horse ranch was sold off and carved into 45 building sites. 15 of the sites were later sold and are now being developed by DeNova Homes with 4 houses currently under construction.   

For more information visit the Oak Leaf Ranch web site.