Davis residents flock to Woodland in search of cheaper housing. Welcome to ‘Wavis’
Dave Heard’s “heart and soul” is in Davis.
But when his four children had grown up and moved out of the family’s six-bedroom, six-bathroom house, and when Heard still found himself every weekend cleaning out the gutters and trimming the bushes for a mostly empty home, and when he realized it had been three months since he had even been upstairs, that’s when he finally told his wife: “Honey, it’s time to move.”
The couple began looking for homes in Davis, but it was slim pickings. That’s when his wife headed up County Road 102 to Woodland, where hundreds of brand new homes were opening in the city’s southeast corner.
Woodland houses sell at roughly half the price of those in Davis. And the Spring Lake housing development off Road 102 was just a six-minute drive to Davis. It made Woodland an attractive new home.
So Heard and his wife, like hundreds of other Davis expats, took the plunge.
“You can drive down my street and you can look at the license plates of the cars and a huge percentage of them are all bought from University Honda in Davis,” Heard said.
Davis real estate agents who once never sold properties in the blue-collar town now see a steady stream of sales every year. Builders are securing more than 100 building permits for new homes every year, eager to develop the cheap land buttressing a thriving metro area. Woodland officials hope with the city’s farming reputation — and the proximity of a major research institution in UC Davis — the city will bolster its economy by becoming a leader in agriculture and food technology innovation.
“About half the home sales, I’m told, are to Davis residents,” said City Councilman Tom Stallard. “Once they get here, they’re happy with their decision.”
But is Woodland ready to capitalize on its new growth? Will this city that once embraced a small-town feel lose its character? And will families fleeing high-priced Davis drive up the cost of real estate to a point where long-time Woodland residents will be forced out?
Concerns about affordability are just beginning to materialize, said Woodland real estate agent Don Sharp.
“It kind of moves one population out as the price goes up,” Sharp said. “Sometimes people that live here in Woodland can’t feel like they can afford to live in Woodland, and start looking at Knights Landing and Arbuckle and those areas.”
Kim Eichorn, a real estate agent in Yolo County for 25 years, said most people looking to move from Davis to Woodland used to be empty nesters.
Recently, however, Eichorn is more often helping young parents find new, relatively affordable homes in Woodland to raise their children while taking advantage of a school district policy that lets them keep their kids in high-performing Davis schools. Nearly 9 percent of the Davis district’s students live outside the district, with “a number of them” coming from Woodland, said spokeswoman Maria Clayton.
“I used to never sell real estate in Woodland,” Eichorn said. “Now I have a good number of sales every year — a sale in Davis and a purchase in Woodland. It’s a double whammy.”
The reason? Residents are getting priced out of Davis and into Woodland.
“You can easily purchase a home with cash, and downsize with a nest egg left over,” said Nicholas Marin-Kumko, executive director of the Yolo County Association of Realtors.
The median home price in Woodland hovers around $420,000, roughly double what it was in 2012, according to data compiled by real estate agents and listing services. In Davis, the median listing price is closer to $675,000.
“When you look at the commute distance to Davis and it’s only 10 to 15 minutes to most location,” Sharp said, “that’s very attractive to people who can afford a $550,000 new home in Woodland and that same home would cost $750,000 in Davis.”
Downtown Woodland a draw
Ken Hiatt, a Davis native who works as Woodland’s community and economic development director, knows how hard it is to get new residents to establish community ties in their new home. Some would still rather shop at Costco or the Nugget Markets in Davis than spend their money in downtown Woodland.
“Our anticipation is that over the next 10, 15 years, as Woodland brings in more amenities and connects the southeast area, and really as downtown matures and becomes a destination, we’ll get a lot of these new residents to think of downtown Woodland as their community center,” Hiatt said.
And as home prices and rents steadily increase in Woodland as well, Mayor Rich Lansburgh wants to make sure new growth doesn’t affect the city’s hometown feel and “small-town flavor.” After decades of steady growth, Woodland’s population now stands at roughly 60,000.
“We’re not so small anymore, but we still have that hometown feel, especially in the downtown area,” Lansburgh said. “I want to see smart growth for our future.”
Downtown Woodland’s Main Street, lined with pioneer-style buildings, wrought iron benches and antique stores and boutiques was relatively quiet on a recent cloudy afternoon. As patrons played cards at Scribblers Coffeehouse, which opened earlier this year, a handful of storefronts just a few doors down sat vacant.
But Othmane Moutaib, owner of Crepeland located on a prime corner spot on Main Street, sees opportunity. Sitting in his three-month-old restaurant, the Davis resident said he had long dreamed of opening his own restaurant, but “in Davis, there are too many restaurants and also it’s really, really expensive there.”
“I said, ‘Let’s see Woodland.’ And so far it’s good,” Moutaib said. “I’m feeling like downtown Woodland, a lot of things are going on ... The city of Woodland (is) helping small businesses grow, having events here like almost every week, which is a good thing.”
Earlier this year, more than 35,000 attended Woodland’s California Honey Festival, which started in 2017. Thousands more descend on the city for other events each year – Christmas parades, dinners on Main Street, art walks, food truck manias. People are noticing Woodland.
With a new beer garden opening up next door to the historic Woodland Opera House next year, and other street improvements like a new bike lane on Main Street wrapping up construction, the area is “more active now than it’s ever been, and a lot of people enjoy that,” Sharp said.
“I think the city has grown from not having a lot of draw to being a cute little historic town that has a lot of charm,” said Eichorn.
In recent years, the city of Woodland has focused on spreading the success of downtown to other neighborhoods. In a 2017 update to its general plan, the city aimed to improve the city’s walking and biking infrastructure, said Woodland deputy director of community development Stephen Coyle.
“We’re trying to be more pedestrian-friendly, but people will not walk if there’s not a credible destination, to actually have places like cafes and bakeries,” Coyle said.
What housing is available in Woodland?
Woodland is now considering a “new zoning approach” to encourage denser housing with built-in retail and commercial space, as part of a new plan for the city that will be finalized next year.
“The city would’ve never approved such a thing ten years ago,” Coyle said. “Now with our current City Council, we’re looking to squeeze housing wherever we can.”
Woodland is “under the gun” to zone for more than 3,000 new units in the next decade under a state mandate, Coyle said.
“Instead of crappy stucco boxes, we need to find a way to make a beautiful city,” Coyle said. “Who wants to move to a place that looks like Phoenix?”
Woodland has made some progress producing higher density housing — construction for 14 three-story townhomes one block off Main Street finished earlier this year. The same local developer behind that development has already proposed another similar infill project in downtown Woodland.
But City Councilman Enrique Fernandez said more needs to be done to entice developers to build high-density housing. The city reduced the impact fee for infill projects last year, but Fernandez said that alone won’t speed up the process.
“We’ve done our part to incentivize urban high-density infill development,” Fernandez said. “The problem is in a community like Woodland, you don’t really have a model for that kind of development.”
And even if the city were to build more infill housing, Davis real estate agent Cory Gold isn’t convinced that’s what potential Woodland home buyers are looking for.
“Davis is talking about the same thing – a goal of 1,000 beds in the core area in the next general plan – and I can’t see that many people willing to give up their cars and start walking everywhere,” Gold said. “I think some people will, but the majority of people with families still want a yard, still want a garage for two cars.”
Moving from Davis for better options
Davis residents are flocking to Woodland simply because there are more options available. In Woodland, there are currently 100 active listings. In Davis, there are just 41, according to Eichorn, the longtime Yolo County real estate agent. And so far this year, 574 homes have been sold in Woodland, compared to 476 in Davis.
In fact, so many people from Davis have made the short hop over to Woodland’s Spring Lake area that some refer to it by the portmanteau “Wavis.”
Sharp, the real estate agent, bristles when he hears the term. “It’s kind of funny,” he said, “but I try to stay away from that because it’s not Davis, it’s Woodland, and the zip code tells us that.”
The vast majority of new growth in Woodland comes from the Spring Lake area, a roughly 4,000-home development approved by the city in 2001 off County Road 102.
In the last decade, Woodland has approved more than 1,500 building permits for new homes, mostly to big national developers such as Taylor Morrison and Lennar building in Spring Lake. Last year alone, the city approved 210 building permits for new housing.
Woodland was attractive to builders for the same reasons it’s attractive to residents, said Bob Tummolo, Sacramento division president at Lennar.
“It’s a small town that’s close to UC Davis and a quick drive to the Bay Area and Napa – but with much more affordable pricing,” Tummolo said in an email. “Affordable land, good schools and easy access to shopping and jobs. That’s what Woodland offers.”
When you walk down Woodland’s Main Street, you can feel the authenticity, said Councilman Tom Stallard.
“It’s the real deal. We’re not recreating history, we’re celebrating our strong sense of place built by the pioneers who lived here,” Stallard said.
But Stallard is worried “that we’ll be too successful.”
“We have a history of ruining nice places,” he said.
Woodland vs. Davis
Eight miles south, Davis Mayor Brett Lee said he also wonders what the future will hold for his northern neighbor.
“Woodland is sort of in the process of figuring out what it is,” Lee said.
For years, the two cities were locked in a kind of rivalry. But these days, that’s something Hiatt, the Woodland community and economic development director, sees beginning to change.
He described the two cities as “complementary” — one with a university-focused economy, and one with an applied agriculture, food and industry-based economy.
“When I was growing up, it was more competitive,” Hiatt said. “Not until recently we realized the potential of the two communities to really grow together.”
City officials hope that a proposed 2 million square foot research and business park in the southeast area of town near the Spring Lake development might position Woodland as a leader in agriculture and food technology for the region. A specific plan for the project won’t be released until early next year, but Hiatt said the city envisions a bustling employment hub that includes high-density housing for workers to walk to work, along with a commercial town center.
Already, Woodland has received significant private sector interest from companies that are excited about the prospect of a job center close to UC Davis, one of the top agricultural research universities in the world, Hiatt said.
Even before the mass migration from Davis, Woodland was already positioning itself as an agriculture and research powerhouse, Stallard said.
“It would be totally inaccurate to say that Woodland hasn’t been changing all along,” Stallard said. “The question is, can we change in such a way to keep what attracted us initially and that we love, and that’s what we’re doing.”
Even with all the change, Dave Heard still misses Davis.
“In the four years since I’ve been here, we’re still so connected to Davis,” Heard said. The couple still regularly shops at the Davis Farmers Market. Both are active with several nonprofits there. Many of their friends still live in Davis.
So the pair might make one more downsize. Heard said he’s finding he and his wife don’t use the upstairs of their Woodland house as much as they thought, and a single-story house might be more appropriate as they get older.
Where are they looking?
“Well, I’d love it to be in Davis, yeah,” Heard said.
This story was originally published December 19, 2019 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Davis residents flock to Woodland in search of cheaper housing. Welcome to ‘Wavis’."