Petaluma Posts $113.7M Quarter With a $3.4M Ceiling and a Median That Climbed $80K by September

The period at a glance

List prices are on file for this period; the against-asking picture appears in the segment section below. Days-on-market figures are drawn from MLS records and were reported on 70 of the 109 closings — just under two-thirds — so the speed data should be read as directional rather than definitive.

The quarter opened and closed at the same median price per square foot — $536 in July, $535 in September — but the median sale price itself moved from $920,000 in July to $1,000,000 in September, a $80,000 gain driven largely by the mix of what closed in the final month rather than by broad price appreciation. August was the softer month on both measures: 32 closings, median price $891,000, median PPSF $572. The composition shift between months — larger, higher-priced homes settling in September — accounts for much of the swing. The $2M-and-above band, just four closings for the full quarter, contributed three of them in September alone.

The sales

The table below shows the top 40 closings by price. The full quarter recorded 109 transactions.

Four transactions deserve particular attention. The quarter's high-water mark was 9 Michelle Lane, a 2,627-square-foot home built in 2020 on a 18,870-square-foot lot, which settled at $3,400,000 — $1,294 per square foot, well clear of any other Q3 closing. No days-on-market figure was recorded for this sale.

At the other end of the character spectrum: 614 E Street, a three-bedroom home built in 1880 and measuring just 1,281 square feet, closed at $1,705,000 — $1,331 per square foot, the highest rate in the roster. Small footprint, central location, and a pre-1900 build year produced the steepest per-foot number in the quarter.

2103 Bodega Avenue sits at the opposite end of the patience scale. The 1,100-square-foot single-family home on Bodega Avenue logged 123 days on market before closing at $1,065,000 — a PPSF of $968, not low by the quarter's standards, but one that clearly required time to find its buyer.

Contrast that with 609 Tulare Street: zero days recorded on market, four bedrooms, 2,470 square feet, and a $1,300,000 close. Whether that DOM figure reflects a pre-marketing sale or a recording gap is not determinable from the closing record alone.

Where the market split

By segment

All medians above are drawn from the listed sample sizes. The multi-family and multiple-on-lot segments each produced a single closing; no median is meaningful for either, and the figures in those rows are simply the one sale price recorded.

The townhouse segment — four closings — runs from $500,000 to $850,000, with a median PPSF of $568. That rate sits above the single-family median of $543, which is a product of townhouse footprints running small (median 1,304 square feet). With only four sales, this is a range to note rather than a trend to rely on.

Condominiums matched the overall market's PPSF exactly at $543, but at a $784,500 median price — $160,500 below single-family — they represent the segment with the clearest entry point for buyers whose ceiling sits below $1M. Six closings gives that median a reasonable footing without making it robust.

The single-family segment carried the quarter, as it almost always does in Petaluma, with 97 of the 109 closings. Its $945,000 median price sits above the all-segment median of $920,000, reflecting its numerical dominance of the record. The spread — $575,000 to $3,400,000 — is wide enough to contain genuinely different markets within the one label.

List price data is available for this period. Across the 109 closings, the against-asking relationship varied markedly by price band. The $1.5M–$2M band, with a median PPSF of $723 — the highest of any multi-sale band — produced nine closings. The $2M–$3M band's three closings carried a median PPSF of $868. Whether those closings came in above or below their individual asking prices requires the per-transaction list price data, which is present in the source record. The band-level PPSF figures are the closest available proxy in this summary.

By price band

The price-band picture reveals a market that behaves in at least two distinct ways depending on where a property sits. Below $1.5M — 96 of the 109 closings, or 88% of the quarter — the median PPSF ranged from $523 to $533, a narrow band that signals broadly consistent per-foot pricing across the bulk of the market.

Above $1.5M, the PPSF rises steeply with each step. The nine closings in the $1.5M–$2M band posted a $723 median PPSF, 37% above the under-$1M median. The three closings in the $2M–$3M band reached $868. The lone $3M–$5M sale, at Michelle Lane, sits at $1,294. These upper bands are driven by a small number of transactions and individual property characteristics — lot size, condition, location — rather than by broad pricing pressure, but the gradient is consistent and steep.

The $2M–$3M band, with only three closings, has a median but one that carries limited statistical weight. The range for those three sales ran from $2,100,000 (twice) to $2,125,000 — tightly clustered in this case, though that is a coincidence of the mix rather than a signal of band-level pricing discipline.

Also worth noting: no closings recorded in the $3M–$5M band except for the single Michelle Lane transaction, and nothing above $3.4M. The quarter had a ceiling, and it was reached once.

Across the period

July and September closed at nearly identical median PPSF figures ($536 and $535), while August came in $36–$37 higher at $572 — an apparent mid-quarter uptick that coincides with the lowest closing count of the three months. A smaller August pool that happened to include several compact, higher-PPSF properties could produce exactly this pattern without any underlying price movement.

The more striking number is September's $1,000,000 median price against July's $920,000. September recorded 41 closings — the busiest month of the quarter — and its mix leaned toward larger, higher-priced single-family homes. Three of the four $2M-plus closings fell in September. Strip those out and September's median would look considerably closer to July's. The month-by-month movement here is largely a story of mix rather than trajectory.

Of the 70 closings with a DOM figure recorded, 9 closed in under 7 days, 18 in 8–21 days, 28 in 22–60 days, and 15 took longer than 60 days. The longest recorded stretch was 132 days. The median DOM of 26 days sits in the 22–60-day cohort, which was the largest single group. That distribution — roughly equal numbers moving quickly and moving slowly — does not describe a uniformly fast or uniformly sluggish quarter. Properties at opposite ends of the DOM range closed in the same months.

What it means

For sellers: The quarter's 109 closings across $113.7 million in volume show an active market with a functioning upper end. The $1.5M+ segment — 13 closings — produced its highest per-foot rates in the $2M+ band, and the quarter's top sale cleared $3.4M. Below $1M, 64 closings at a $533 median PPSF suggest steady absorption but not the kind of per-foot compression that signals an oversupplied sub-market. The spread in days on market — from zero to 132 — indicates that individual property factors are doing significant work in determining how long a listing takes to close. September closed 41 transactions, the busiest month of the quarter.

For buyers: The sub-$1M band absorbed 64 closings in Q3, more than half the quarter's activity, at a $533 median PPSF. The condominium segment — six closings, median $784,500 — represents the most accessible price point in the recorded data. The $1M–$1.5M band added 32 more closings at a $523 median PPSF, very close to the sub-$1M rate. Above $1.5M, per-foot rates rise sharply and sample sizes shrink; buyers in that range are pricing individual properties more than a band. Fifteen closings in the data set took more than 60 days to settle, indicating that extended timelines do occur and are not limited to a particular price tier.

For owners not transacting: The quarter's $920,000 overall median and $943,000 single-family median sit on a market that moved 109 transactions in 92 days. The $113.7M in total volume spread across those closings averages roughly $1.04M per transaction — pulled above median by the upper-band sales. The quarter produced no evidence of band-level price deterioration: all five price bands recorded closings, and per-foot rates rose consistently with price tier.

Jake Taylor · CA DRE #02070119
[email protected] · (707) 630-1001