Bracing for impact: Sonoma County businesses prepare for viral pain - Santa Rosa Press Democrat

Real estate fallout

Real estate agents, meanwhile, are in their industry’s version of “March Madness” — the time of year in the county when people put homes on the market.

Mikki Cardoza, founder of the firm MikkiMoves of Santa Rosa, said she had a full weekend of appointments to show homes to prospective buyers, with sellers willing to show them off — “as long as we clean off door knobs” and other surfaces.

Mortgage interest rates on 30-year loans around 3% are encouraging for buyers, Cardoza said, but if people wind up losing paychecks or jobs in the next five or six weeks, the situation could change just as the spring selling season typically heats up.

“I’m anxious to see what next weekend brings,” she said.

The construction industry is feeling some discomfort, said Keith Woods, chief executive officer of the North Coast Builders Exchange.

The timing of the virus outbreak couldn’t be worse for people stlll trying to rebuild after losing their homes in the 2017 North Bay wildfires. One contractor reported that more of his workers are staying home when they feel ill. Another builder reported that it is taking six times longer than before to get LED lighting equipment shipped from manufacturers in China, Woods said.

From a national perspective, Moody’s Analytics warned the coronavirus has “slammed business confidence” and is “the latest in a string of geopolitical threats that already had businesses on edge” that could prompt them to rein in operations.

Consumers here and across the country are also growing wary, including the large baby boomer cohort unhappily watching the erosion of their stock and mutual fund portfolios, a big part of their retirement nest eggs, according to a report last week by Moody’s renowned economic analyst Mark Zandi.

The slide in stock prices since mid-February has wiped out about $5 trillion in stockholder wealth that, if sustained, will curb consumer spending this year by $225 billion, Zandi’s report said.

Stock market woes aside, county Supervisor Gorin is alarmed by the prospect of small county businesses failing and their employees losing income, with low-wage workers the most vulnerable.

A consumer spending cutback, Gorin fears, could trigger a contraction on par with the 2008 recession.

Things may not get that dire, Eyler said. Should the coronavirus crisis abate in a few months, there might be “a wild snap back in the second half of the year,” the economics professor said. In the meantime, “it’s going to be a bit wobbly.”

Ample parking, short lines

“Thank you for braving the coronavirus,” said Dominic Foppoli, mayor of Windsor and winery operator.

He was in the tasting room of the Christopher Creek Winery, which he co-owns, addressing a couple who were happily sipping a single-vineyard pinot noir.

“Thank you for being open,” replied Dan Nisenbaum, who’d driven up Friday from Santa Clarita for Wine Road, arriving in Sonoma County just in time to learn the event was canceled.

It was still early — before noon — but staff outnumbered customers 3 to 1. Coronavirus made for ample parking and short lines. Foppoli mentioned a group of serious buyers who’d become “freaked out” by the bad virus news, and chartered a plane back to Montana.

“The nice part about it is, they stocked on a bunch of wine first,” he said.

Foppoli shared some advice he’d gotten from his cousins in Italy, where a nationwide quarantine is in place: “They said, if you’re in your home for two or three weeks with your family, you’re gonna go through a lot of wine.”

Back in the Coppola tasting room in Geyserville, Beck the CEO echoed the notion that wine can be a coping mechanism in tough times.

If a simple glass of vino “can add a smile to somebody’s day, or take their mind off things for just a moment,” he said, “well, we did our job.”

On a large screen behind him, in a scene from Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now,” a patrol boat chugged upriver, into a foreboding unknown.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 707-521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @guykovner. You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at 707-521-5214 or austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Ausmurph88

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