Mark Wisterman's Paradise & Lake Oroville Real Estate Blog

Take advantage of this weekend’s awesome weather in the Lake Oroville real estate market and come on out to Oroville’s 16th Annual Salmon Festival, being held today and all day tomorrow.

The celebration kicks off with Salmon and Tri-tip BBQ at the Feather River Nature Center at 6:00pm tonight and continues tomorrow from 10am-4pm with tours of the Feather River Fish Hatchery, the Downtown Oroville Street Fair, and the 10K Salmon run.

Every September for the past 16 years, the streets of Oroville between Historic Downtown and the Feather River Fish Hatchery burst with fish-flavored activities during the Annual Salmon Festival, a day of fun, food, music and information.

On this special day Oroville celebrates the thousands of spawning salmon that annually make their way from the ocean back up the Feather River.  Environmental education, music, salmon tasting, tours of the hatchery, and fun for kids and adults highlight this free event.

The Historical Downtown Oroville comes alive with a pancake breakfast, certified farmer’s market, live music, craft fair, and Family Fun Day

At the Feather River Nature Center, guests can experience the Maidu Salmon Ceremony with live dancing by local Native Americans.

This year you can nosh at the Salmon Court where recipes featuring salmon will be featured, take a spin in a kayak on the beautiful Feather River or join the fun at the Family Circus near the Municipal Auditorium.

A free shuttle to transport people between events is available.

Click here or on the picture to see the entire flyer.

It looks like Sonic Drive-In has ironed out any issues they were having with their attempted development of one of their restaurants here in the Lake Oroville real estate market.

After being delayed for nearly a year, it appears that the company is nearing the ground breaking for its newest Northern California unit. In driving to work this morning at 7:15 I noticed the “Coming Soon” sign on the vacant lot next to our new Holiday Inn Express. This will be another nice addition to Oroville Dam Blvd in an area that has laid vacant for a number of years.

I know what you are going to say, “Just what we need, another burger joint.” While it is true that there is no shortage of fast food places in town ( including the Burger King I used to own and operate), it is a positive thing for the Oroville market, as it will provide more entry level jobs, and probably 2 or 3 managerial positions. Yes, we do need more than just entry level jobs here, but it certainly better than no jobs at all. If the Feather River Recreation and Parks District can spend $4.5 million to keep 16 people employed, then it makes perfect sense for Sonic to invest somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.5 million to create 30-40 jobs.

I think is is also a recognition by a major company that this town is economically viable enough to invest in. To be honest, I am a bit surprised that we didn’t take a back seat to Chico on this one. Apparently the company execs felt Oroville was the best for them to be at this time, than the Chico market. I am sure, though that it won’t be long before Chico has its own.

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The game hunting world is all abuzz this morning as word spreads that Lake Oroville resident Pat Butler set a world record by bagging the largest Tule Elk while bow hunting on Grizzly Island  yesterday. 

According to reports from the hunting grounds, Butler, an owner of  the ever popular Wagon Wheel Market, here in the Lake Oroville real estate market,  took the 8 x 8 elk during the afternoon hunt. By late afternoon representatives from the Department of Fish and Game certifed it as the largest elk ever taken by hunting with bow and arrow, granting Pat world record status for his efforts.

I think there is elk jerky in my future!!!!!!!!

Congratulations Pat.

I recently had cause to discuss an issue with the City of Oroville Housing Department regarding whether or not a particular home located within the city limits of the Lake Oroville real estate market could be approved to be sold to the first time home-buyer that I am representing.

Without getting into the minutia of the issue, the Housing Department originally said that my client would not be able to purchase the home based on the current guidelines that were established within the grant program that is being used to fund the loans for first time home buyers that are purchasing homes within the city limits of the Lake Oroville real estate market.

In my view, the guideline that they were using was one that was very subjective and open to broad interpretation. In discussing this issue with the housing department over a three day period I think I talked to nearly everyone in the department.

I talked to Dawn, Tiffany, Vanessa, and Pat during this time and to be totally honest I thought I was going to get the proverbial government runaround that normally comes in  dealing with “policy.”

Well I was wrong. That’s right….wrong!

Each of these public servants listened to my concerns and my position with an open mind  and in the end understood that the guideline was in fact extremely subjective and worked diligently to do the right thing for my client , as well as for future users of the First Time Home Buyer Loan Program, of which many in the Lake Oroville real estate market have availed themselves.

The postition that these ladies are in cannot always be an enjoyable job. Dealing with REALTORS®, lenders and first time home buyers while trying to keep up with, and communciate, the many changes that occur in the grant programs that make the loan programs possible has got to be quite a challenge.

A big thank you to Pat Clark, the Director of Business Assistance and Housing Development, and the entire staff in the department for their help. It is refreshing to see that common sense and fairness are alive and well in the halls of our city in the Lake Oroville real estate market.

You knew it wouldn’t be long before I made it easier for you to utilize your smart phone to access this blog site, search for properties in the Lake Oroville, Paradise  and Chico California real estate markets, and get the latest in interest rates and other real estate news and advice.

Today I am announcing the launch of my very own iPhone app that is now available for download at the App Store. With this highly sophisticated, but easy to use, app you now have not only my contact information in the palm of your hand but you can now access all the services of my blog site with just the touch of a button. No more addresses to remember and no more passwords to forget. This is just another investment I am making for you in order to provide a service, that nobody else in the Lake Oroville real estate market will,  in order to make current and relevant real estate information readily available to you.

See my current listings, check out my latest blog post, or even find my Facebook, Twitter, and Linked-In pages. Spend as much, or a little time as your prefer because there is NO COST to you to download this App. Check back often, though because updates and come cool additions are coming soon.

And unlike many of today’s apps this app will be compatible with Blackberry and Droid users. Look for the rollout annoucement for these phones on the site sometime before Labor Day.

Download your app at the iTunes App store and search for AgentNTouch. After downloading, launch the app and in the Agent I.D. box enter 5303704691.

I would greatly appreciate your feedback and suggestions. My goal is to always be an AgentNTouch.

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Here are the numbers for last week’s Lake Oroville real estate market. This is the third week in a row that the number of Oroville home sales has been in single digits, and the 7th week out of the past 8 for this. With inventories still low, and a lot of that inventory in disrepair it is becoming more and more difficult to find properties for Oroville area buyers.  All of my team members have pools of buyers that they simply cannot find decent properties to show them.

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 Another ho-hum week for Lake Oroville real estate market as sales activity continues to under perform. But once again we find that the inventory of Oroville homes for sale has dropped to another low. 

If the current activity in the office of our Oroville market is any indication we may soon be seeing a change in these sales numbers. Our Oroville agents have been very busy this week showing property and writing offers. It is good to see that maybe the spring-like weather is bringing buyers out.

If you are thinking of selling, now might be the time to get your home on the market.

 Sales for the Lake Oroville real estate market took a turn for the better this past week. The average sold price was the highest it has been in a very long time thanks to the sale of a couple homes that had been on the market for quite some time. The sale of these two particular homes was also the reason for the nearly doubling of the “days on the market” time. One of the homes had been on the market 928 days and the other had been for sale for 897 days.

Once again, though, the number of the week to lookout for is the number of Oroville homes currently on the market. This number has hit another new low for this blog site and is threatening to go under 300 for the first time in probably two years.

Welcome back, once again, to your weekly sales update for the Paradise, California  real estate market. Market activity remains stable this week when compared to last week. The astute observer that you are probably noticed a revision in the housing numbers that I reported last week.  The revision was made because my intent is to report home sales activity for the town of Paradise. Last week’s report also included the Magalia area.

Which brings me to the question of what you want to see in these Paradise numbers. Do you want to see  just Paradise stats or would you like to me to include numbers for the Magalia area too?

Paradise, listings, homes for sale, properties, Lake Oroville, Oroville, Creal estateA Butte county

 It seems that this week’s Lake Oroville real estate market report reflects some ongoing reporting issues the local REALTORS are having with our new multiple listing service system.

It looks as though that the inventory of unsold homes is beginning to increase slightly. This may be an effect of some sellers trying to get a head start on what most people think is the peak selling season of Spring. Hopefully we can get the bugs worked out of our new MLS system soon. Watch for the weekly sales numbers for the Paradise real estate market later this week.