$ 1 million-plus homes selling again in Sacramento region

By Bob Shallit
bshallit@sacbee.com


There's life again at the upper end of the region's residential real estate market, with a spate of recent home sales in the $1 million to $2.5 million range.
"We haven't seen anything like this in two years," says Kim Pacini-Hauch, a Lyon agent who specializes in upper-end homes.
Among the 30 or so closed escrows since April 1 in the $1 million-plus category: a home at 630 Hawthorne Road, for $2.23 million and one at 1213 Mariemont Ave. for $1.8 million, both in Sacramento County; a home at 1964 Shoreview Drive in El Dorado Hills for $2.23 million and one at 6110 Terracina Court in Loomis for $2.5 million.
Among sales currently pending: a home at 2671 Huntington Road in Sacramento County that had an asking price of $2.3 million.
Why the recent pickup after a two-year stretch of extremely limited activity?
Pacini-Hauch cites several factors, including "realistic" pricing by motivated sellers, attractive interest rates and a decision by buyers – many of them sitting on cash – to finally get off the fence.
"They're feeling confident," she says, "that we've found the bottom" of the market.
Stop, thief
Credit a sewer upgrading crew with taking a bite out of crime in south Sac.
The crew, from Insituform Technologies, is working to reinforce an eight-mile stretch of pipeline running from Power Inn and Fruitridge roads to the sewage treatment plant in Elk Grove.
On a recent afternoon, project superintendent Rich Frymire heard a woman screaming that her purse had just been snatched. He saw a guy jump into an SUV and tear off.
Frymire, a former Marine, got into his truck, followed the bad guy and flagged down a cop. An arrest was made, the purse returned.
The victim was thankful, says Dillon Miele, a project engineer with the Sacramento Area Sewer District.
"She bought the whole crew lunch," he says.
Planning on the cheap
A Sacramento company has come up with a novel way to help cash-strapped municipalities complete general plan updates: It's teaching them to do the work themselves.
After a year of preparation, Mintier Harnish has just taken the wraps off of a three-day training program it's offering to cities and counties for between $10,000 and $25,000.
That's compared with the $1 million or more regional planning firms like Mintier Harnish often charge to update general plans, which guide municipalities in development and land-use decisions.
"We're giving away some of our trade secrets, I suppose," says principal Jim Harnish. "But it's an opportunity to benefit us and the public agencies as well."
Get a whiff of this
Turns out that Sactown magazine may have a "first" after all with that dazzling citrusy scratch 'n' sniff cover on its current issue.
We reported last week about the "Best of the City" issue, suggesting it could be the first time such technology was employed on a mag cover. Then we threw some cold water on that assertion.
The New York Times had also written in a blog about the unusual cover – prompting a reader's e-mail pointing out that Wired mag had published its own s 'n' s cover in 1999.
Sactown co-editor Rob Turner did some research and found that Wired merely used a sticker. It didn't embed a scent into its cover, as Sactown did.
So Sactown rules.
Still, Turner gives props to Wired, which mimicked an underarm odor on its cover.
As he notes in a posting on the Times' site, that's "nothing to sniff at either."