Median Sales Price: $1.67M 

If the start of 2025 is a harbinger of what's to come, Tahoe Donner real estate is poised to set a new record for high-end home sales. 

By mid-February, 17 homes had changed hands in Tahoe Donner, two-thirds of them for more then $1 million. Fueled by a handful of sales in the $2-3M range, the median sales price rose to an unprecedented $1,670,000. This continues a trend that emerged in 2021, when the pace of homes priced over $1M eclipsed the broader market in Tahoe Donner.

Custom Homes & High-End Spec Homes

From humble beginnings with the gambrels of the 1980s, the architecture of custom homes in Tahoe Donner has continued to push the envelope over the years, with the priciest home sales here offering not just…

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If you've been dreaming of a waterfront home at Lake Tahoe, this might just be the perfect time to go shopping. The year, so far, has been off to a slow start for lakefront homes, with just a handful of significant sales:

  • This Eastshore home in picturesque Snug Harbor changed hands in March for $6,750,000 ($1.2 million under its initial asking pice of nearly $8M). Beautiful beach (but no pier), and a 5-bedroom 1960s classic with good bones in need of a remodel.  
  • A multi-level home with an elevator and boulder-strewn lakefront on Crystal Bay's iconic Gonowabie sold off-market for $9.7 million. It had sold twice in pervious years, once in 2018 for the bargain price of $5.6 million (after more than 3 years on the market), and again during the Covid…

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Is Silence a Form of Deceit?

If you're planning to buy a home this year, expect to see big changes in the way you engage with realtors. The anti-trust lawsuit against the NAR (National Association of Realtors) settled out of court recently, and part of the settlement agreement requires realtors to have buyers sign what's called a "Buyer Broker" agreement before showing them houses.

In the past decade of working as a realtor, I only used a Buyer Broker agreement once, mainly because my first experience with that piece of paper left a horrible taste in my mouth. I first encountered that form in Reno, where I was trying to buy a house for myself. I was studying to become a realtor at that time, but I was inexperienced.

Nonetheless, I decided to…

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Home Values Gaining Ground in Tahoe Donner

The year is off to a good start in Tahoe Donner, with real estate sales showing a nice uptick from 2023. Despite very low inventory (only 12 homes were available for sale at the end of January), 10 homes changed hands in Tahoe Donner during the first month of 2024.  That's up from just 8 the year before.

The median sales price rose to $1,157,500 (a 3 percent increase over 2023), thanks in part to new construction sales north of $2 million. Brand new homes in Tahoe Donner are fetching close to $700/square foot. That's up significantly from just a few years ago, when new construction prices around $500/sf were raising eyebrows. But it's not greed that's driving the trend; it reflects increasing construction…

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Lahontan Home Values Stay Strong

Despite rising interest rates and a volatile economy, homes at the Lahontan Golf & Country Club held their value this year, finishing 2023 on par with the record prices we saw the year before.

With just 13 homes changing hands all year (and one more new home that closed Jan 2 at almost $1,230/sf), the volume of sales in Lahontan is just two-thirds of what it was last year. But the median sales price is holding steady at close to $4 million, bolstered in part by the sales of brand new homes fetching upwards of $1,100/square foot (SF).

The Lahontan Tradition

Lahontan is the oldest of Truckee's gated golf course communities. Having been developed in the late-1990s, it was a success story soon to be replicated at…

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Customize your finishes

Why go through the cost and headache of building your own home, when you can buy Brand New, and customize your finishes to match your taste?  The photo below offers an idea of what can be ... 

Tahoe Donner Home with views

Prefer a Stone Hearth over Blue Rolled Steel?

No problem.  Work with one of the region's top builders to customize finish materials and colors that match your palette.

Dreaming of a Sonos surround sound system?  Let's talk!

  • 4-Bed
  • 3.5-Bath
  • Chef's Kitchen & Wine Bar
  • 2-Car Garage w/Tesla Charger & Generac whole house generator

Current finishes include:

  • Wood Windows w/black exterior cladding
  • Modern, trimless windows and doors
  • Knotty Alder 2-panel shaker w/bronze hardware - Or  - White 2-panel…

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Winter Sales Down by Half

Low inventory, high interest rates, and unprecedented snowfall left the Tahoe Truckee real estate market with a sluggish start to 2023.

Throughout the region, the volume of sales was roughly half of what we had seen in the first quarter of last year. On the California side, including Truckee and the ski areas, only 98 homes changed hands in the first quarter of this year (compared to 182 the year before).

Most Sales in Tahoe Donner

As in past years, the majority of the sales were in Tahoe Donner. The median sales price there fell to $1.2 million (down from $1.3 million the year before). More than half of the homes closed for over $1 million, reflecting an emerging trend toward luxury in Truckee’s largest subdivision.

…

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Home Values Double over a Decade

It was an idea ahead of its time. 

The year was 2004, and the idea was to create a new community near downtown Truckee to fill the niche between the more affordable (and higher elevation) homes of Tahoe Donner, and the more exclusive, gated community of Lahontan, where some of Tahoe's most celebrated architects were designing homes that felt like a page out of a Craftsman Bungalow on a scale approaching the Ahwahnee Hotel.

The community was named for Joseph Gray, a Truckee founding "father" of sorts whose cabin still stands as an historic landmark downtown. Early lot sales were brisk.  Grays Crossing Real Estate Market DataInvestors and spec home builders gobbled up the early offerings, and by 2007, some prime lots were fetching more than half a…

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Real Estate Sales Slow in Incline Village

While many real estate markets around the Tahoe/Reno region have adjusted prices downward from the 2022 highs of the Covid era, Incline Village on Lake Tahoe's north shore continues to reach high on pricing, leading to a precipitous drop in sales volume from last year.

Moving into March, we saw only a dozen homes change hands in Incline Village for a total sales volume of a little more than $18 million. That's just a third of the sales we saw by this time last year.  

Waterfront Lake Tahoe Condos Sold in 2023

The Incline condo market fared a little better, thanks in part to two lakefront condos that sold for hefty price tags:

  • A beautifully remodeled Stillwater Cove condo listed at $4.250M had an…

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Guide to Tahoe Truckee Ski Resorts

So you've decided you don't want to wait in the long lines on I-80 for fresh powder this season ... how to choose the right ski resort for you? Here's a couple of questions to ask yourself:

  • What vibe do you prefer?  Big Resort with restaurants, dining & shopping? Or are you more into nature, privacy & the solitude the mountains offer?
  • How far do you want to drive?
  • How much do you want to spend?

The links above offer a quick guide to some of the area's more popular resorts, from the Mega-resort, largely intermediate mountains like Northstar, to homes & condos in Olympic Valley (now home to Palisades Tahoe with a gondola connecting some of the region's most advanced terrain at the former Squaw…

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