9/9/20, the day the Bay Area skies turned orange from all the smoke mixed in with the welcome return of our marine layer. An historic heatwave thankfully let up, but the historically poor air quality deteriorated further due to our historic fire season. Nobody will be able to forget this day when science fiction became reality and our atmosphere in the Bay Area looked more like the red planet than our own third rock from the sun. I write this on the evening of 9/9/20, and due to all the fires raging around the state there’s no telling when the skies will be clear again. One thing is certain, they will be clear again. We just need to be patient and stay indoors if possible until the bad air passes.
With that in mind human beings went about their business on 9/9/20 in what has become typically voracious fashion. This is especially true on the free corners of the internet. I posted a free ad on both Nextdoor.com and Craigslist for some outdoor lawn furniture my stager told me she won’t be needing in the yard of a house I’ve got coming on the market (on Montecillo Rd). In two hours I received over 50 messages! I had to close the flood gates and take the posts down. Once I sell the house I’ll be posting a lot of indoor furniture for free, and I suspect I’ll be equally inundated by people clamoring for the used but still good goods.
9/9/20, it has been such a bizarre day. When I got up at 8:45am it was still dark outside from all the smoke and fog. I slept in, my body was fooled by the darkness. Throughout the day the sky at different times appeared red and orange and yellow. Car tires kicked up ash in the street, almost like driving through a very thin layer of snow. When I pulled my car up to the curb outside my house I was surrounded by a cloud of ash, like Pig Pen’s dirt cloud from the Peanuts.
On this day I spent some time in the office. Of course I followed the COVID protocols, taking my temperature, signing in and using hand sanitizer. Our numbers in Marin are looking better, but COVID is still a very real, life threatening disease and we all need to keep our guards up six months and counting into the pandemic. Fires, smoke, COVID, blackouts, heat waves, economic disruption and collapse, unemployment through the roof, with all this going on you would think the housing market would cool: not here on Mars.
The wildfires began on 8/15/20 ignited by, you guessed it, an ‘historic’ lightning storm. On 8/20 I put a house on the market at 549 Montecillo Rd in Terra Linda. We received 4 offers. This was during a week where I was doing my COVID cleanup between showings and sometimes keeping the windows closed due to the smokey skies. August is typically a slower month of the year, but this has been no typical year.
Next Friday I have 552 Montecillo Rd coming on the market. Last month I closed 530 Montecillo Rd. Contrary to popular belief I do not only market to the 500 block of Montecillo Rd. Sometimes I market to the 600 block. Really, it’s true. Back in November I actually closed a house on the 600 block. I like Montecillo Rd, and apparently the people on Montecillo Rd like me too!
Just so you know, I am considering expanding my marketing to the 700 block of Montecillo Rd. That would truly be other worldly.