Luxury Residential and Vineyard Landrush
Economic factors of land scarcity for upscale residential development and for premium wine grape cultivation led to an explosion of land values in Bennett Valley starting generally in the 1980s. This trend is shaped by policies of the County of Sonoma, which discourage small lot residential development in Bennett Valley. These effects have led to a decrease in available natural habitat as well as decreased area available for hay farming and pasture usage. Some of the grapes are used locally for wine production such as in the case of the Matanzas Creek Winery, while some are sold to production facilities elsewhere in Sonoma County. As a result of this recognition of the Bennett Valley AVA as a premium wine-grape subregion, a new American Viticultural Area named Bennett Valley has been recently approved.
Residential development has emphasized new construction of custom homes typically built on parcels ranging from five to 40 acres (160,000 m2). Most of these homes are of the size range greater than 3,500 square feet (330 m²) and characteristic values of these newer homes as of 2007 are in the range of $1.5 to 3.0 million. Most of the Bennett Valley housing stock is nevertheless of more modest pre-1980 characteristics, and in many of these cases valuations are dominated simply by land value.
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