We Buy Houses in Bodega, CA

Water is the defining issue in the village. Many homes are served by the Bodega Water Company, a small member-owned mutual with a few dozen connections, whose main source is a shallow well beside Salmon Creek. Its water right prevents using that well during the dry season, and its two deeper wells are limited in output and have water-quality problems — which is why the company and local groups have explored rainwater catchment and storage. Outside the mutual, homes rely on private wells in the creek alluvium or the hard ground above it. A lender wants evidence of a reliable, potable supply; a house whose only answer is a seasonal well or a mutual with summer limits can stall at underwriting.

Salmon Creek itself is a protected coho salmon stream, and the conservation plans written for it treat almost every extraction as affecting summer flow. That limits new wells and expansions, and it makes buyers who planned to add a unit or an orchard cautious. It also means low-lying lots along the creek can be wet in winter, with septic systems sited close to groundwater.

The houses are old. Bodega's center is a handful of nineteenth-century buildings and early twentieth-century cottages, along with farmhouses and converted outbuildings on the surrounding hills. Original foundations, single-wall construction, knob-and-tube wiring and decades of fog-driven rot are common, and many have rooms added without permits. Each is something an inspector will list and a financed buyer will try to renegotiate.

Because the village is so small, appraisers struggle for comparables. They reach to Bodega Bay, Occidental or Sebastopol, none of which is a good match for a creek-side house on a mutual water system. A failed appraisal is a common end to a financed sale here, and it is one of the problems a cash purchase removes.

The village is a short stretch of Bodega Highway with Saint Teresa's on its hillside, the Potter School nearby, and a few shops and galleries in between. Bodega Highway runs east through Freestone to Sebastopol, about a twenty-minute drive, which is where most residents shop, bank and see doctors. Highway 1 lies just west, leading to the harbor at Bodega Bay and south toward Valley Ford.

Around the village the land is open grazing country, dairy and sheep, with Salmon Creek Ranch among the working operations. Watson School, a one-room schoolhouse that operated from 1856 to 1967, survives as a county historic park a couple of miles east. Wildflowers and fog define the seasons more than heat does; the summer marine layer is what rots porches and window frames.

Buyers here are mostly retirees, artists and second-home owners from the Bay Area, plus the occasional rancher adding acreage. They love the setting, and they are wary of water and building condition. A renovated house with a confident water supply sells well; one with doubts about either sits.