Now that we have put the prime vacation months of July and August behind us we should be starting to see increased activity in the real estate market but unfortunately this does not seem to be the case.

Before going on to that, let me just describe how I see a "normal" year in real estate:

I have found that there are usually two quite well-defined "windows" in the year when most of the activity takes place. The first, and major, window is the period from Easter to Memorial Day. This is almost always when homebuyers are writing offers. A lot of it is related to schools of course - families moving into the area have to have a home under contract before the school district will allow them to register their children in a new school. Many agents will do half their annual business in this period.

The second window is much smaller, the period from Labor Day to Thanksgiving (sometimes even just Labor Day to Halloween). Many people just want to get the kids back to school before buying a home but once they get to Thanksgiving, the Holiday syndrome takes over so many lose sight of that new home until next year.

Now I'm obviously making generalities here. People move at all times of the year for a variety of reasons that are often not discretionary. Even so, I bet if you check the statistics for Pended homes by month in any particular year, you will find that the above is an accurate observation for any primarily residential area. I don't include vacation home areas in this for obvious reasons.

Now accepting the above, we should be starting to see increased activity by now. Yet look at these figures I just drew down from the MLS:

Pended Homes in San Ramon

June     81
July      55
August  65

So far, so good. June was still active and numbers dropped in the prime vacation months of July and August. Now we are half way through September so we should be expecting to see at least 30 and probably 40 or so homes Pended in the month to date.

In actual fact, the figure is just 18. When you consider that there are around 400 homes currently for sale in San Ramon, this really gives food for thought.

Obviously this is a small amount of data and we will have to wait until the month ends to get an accurate picture but regardless of any of these figures, it seems to me that if anybody want to have a good chance of selling their home in San Ramon in a reasonable time, they better make sure to price it very aggressively. Otherwise it will just become another home listed for sale.

Yes it's open! The new Plaza at Gale Ranch shopping center at the corner of Bollinger Canyon Road and Dougherty is now open to the public.

Anchored by the most impressive, and certainly the largest, Safeway I have ever seen, this shopping center provides residents of Gale Ranch and Windemere with support that they have been crying out for.

Right now (early September) only Safeway is open, including the Safeway discount gas station. Many of the other units have tenants already though including a Peet's coffee shop and Cactus Jack's Bar and Grill. The Safeway store has a Starbuck's in an annex of to one side and also a sit down Sushi Bar as well as numerous food stations of varying kinds, both hot and cold. The success of this sh oping center is assured and the residents of Windemere and Gale Ranch are undoubtedly well pleased.  

I just finished watching a video showing the replacement of a major section of the eastern span of the Bay Bridge over the Labor Day weekend. Charismatic main contractor, C.C. Myers, ecpalined the process and made it sound very easy and straightfoward, which I'm sure it wasn't. Nevertheless, the project was completed 11 hours ahead of schedule, undoubtedly a credit to his project management.

The Bay Bridge closed at 8 pm Friday and re-opened just before 6pm on Monday evening. This is the firsttime the bridge was closed to all traffic since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

According to all reports, numbers of visitors to San Frabcisco from the East Bay were very much the same as on any Labor Day wekend and people adapted well to the closing. BART laid on extra trains and some people just went the long way round using either the Golden Gate ot the San Mateo bridge depending on where they started from.

Now once again, San Francisco is fully connected to the East Bay.