Selling Sunol Selling Sunol (March 18, 2005)

Natalie Bianco finds setting up her agency on Main Street quite rewarding
by Jeb Bing

Natalie Bianco has found a home in Sunol, her real estate business, which she established nearly three years ago as an agent for Better Homes Realty. It's the only real estate agency officed in Sunol, an historic unincorporated community off Niles Canyon Road that is home to about 1,200 residents.

That's not many for a Realtor, but Bianco's office, located above the popular Bosco's restaurant on Main Street, has walls lined with scores of historic and contemporary homes she has sold, as well as a number in Pleasanton, Fremont and Livermore, which she also covers as an agent.

Bianco's typical weekday starts at 7:30 a.m. when she drives her daughter Ashley, 16, to Foothill High School, where Ashley is a junior. Another daughter, Jessica, 21, a senior at Sacramento State, is also a Foothill graduate.

Then it's back to Sunol where she meets with the "regulars," longtime residents of Sunol who gather for morning coffee and chatter at the grocery store on Main Street. By 8:30, she's in her modern office suite fielding early calls from some of hundreds of prospects who want to move to Sunol, as well as other locations.

Bianco, who expects to finalize a sale of a rebuilt cabin at 12028 Glenora Way early next month, which is in escrow at $765,000, up from the $60,000 it sold for in the 1970s, is well-known in Sunol. Sales like this are common as clients line up for other similar "bargains." She sold another home on Kilkare Road, the only 3-1/2 mile long road leading up the hill to Glenora Way, for $750,000, just four months after an investor bought it for $520,000 and spent $50,000 "fixing it up."

"We talk about how prices keep increasing in Pleasanton and other nearby cities, well that's true in Sunol, too," Bianco said. "This is not a first-time-buyer type of town, but it's a great commute town, located near the freeway and other transportation. In the 1960s, you could buy homes on Kilkare for as little as $10,000. Today, it would be hard to find anything in Sunol for less than $500,000."

Some of the more popular homes for sale are on Kilkare or off on narrow one-lane streets that lead into the hills on both sides of Kilkare and to a half-dozen driveways and homes. Most buyers don't move after going to Sunol, content with the woods, hills, nearby Pleasanton Ridgeland which starts at the end of Kilkare and the quiet, mountain-like neighborhood.

"People who live a hectic, busy work schedule all day find that when they come home to their Sunol house they have the serenity of being in the mountains," Bianco said. "I have sold homes to clients who had cabins up in the High Sierra and used to go there on weekends to get away. After they bought in Sunol, they sold those because they didn't need that escape any more. Where else can you walk in the woods right from your front door and also be on the freeway in 10 minutes?"

According to Bianco, the Glenora house that she is selling for Mark Nelson is typical of the 100 cabins built in the late 1920s as a resort, but the lots were then sold off for practically nothing when that project was dropped. Nelson, head of the Drama Department at Ohlone College, bought the cabin in the 1970s, and rebuilt much of it over the years he has lived there. Like other nearby homes, his is served by Pleasanton water services, and has cable television and natural gas. Since there are no sewers on Kilkare, the home relies on its own septic system. Nearby is the clubhouse and pool owned and operated by the Kilkare Homeowners Association.

Although other Realtors sell homes in Sunol, Bianco has built her profitable client base by being there with high visibility for those visiting Sunol or taking trips on the Niles Canyon Railway. Her real estate office sign dominates the community's two-story skyline from all directions and hers is the most frequently seen name on "For Sale" signs in front of homes that are on the market.

"I sold seven homes here last year and have six prospects waiting for homes to come on the market right now," Bianco said.

That's not many compared to the larger agencies in the Tri-Valley, but at nearly $1 million or more a sale, Bianco finds the commissions quite rewarding.

E-mail a friend a link to this story.