New settlers scoop up lots, new homes in Sonoma County’s burn zones

Derek Moore, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

In Santa Rosa’s Fountaingrove neighborhood, Bill Wallace walks a vacant lot bordered by blackened oak trees and describes his plans to build the home of his dreams.

Sporting a black T-shirt emblazoned with the name of his family’s company — West Coast Diesels of Santa Rosa — Wallace, 32, highlights some of the home’s planned features, including an entryway leading to an open living space and a second-floor master bedroom suite. He’s also installing a water filtration system to guard against toxic benzene, another of the lingering concerns, along with dead trees, of the monster fire that two years ago roared through Fountaingrove, leveling the house that formerly stood on Wallace’s lot, most of the neighborhood around it and more than 3,000 homes in the city.

A Windsor native, Wallace never imagined being able to afford living in the hillside enclave of Fountaingrove, where many homes have sweeping views of Santa Rosa and price tags to match. But the Tubbs fire, which destroyed more than 1,500 homes in the Fountaingrove area — and more than 5,300 across Sonoma County — upended the region’s long-term housing market.

In doing so, it opened up real estate options for people like Wallace and others, settlers who didn’t previously live in the burn zones but who are now plotting their futures there — in Fountaingrove, Coffey Park, Larkfield and Sonoma Valley — where property has become available after the disaster, often at a relative bargain.

Read more at https://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/10058600-181/new-settlers-see-homes-rising