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What financial legacy are

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SINCE THIS ISSUE IS DEDICATED TO FAMILIES, and my own has taken a turn from traditional to “reinventing,” I did a bit of research. Initially I wanted to learn about demographics of the county in terms of young families and came upon a 2007 article for this magazine by Tim Porter (former editor-at-large) on families and real estate trends.

I was happy to see real estate agent Payton Stiewe noting a direct link between the San Francisco’s school lottery and demand for Marin housing. “In March,” he says, “when the letters were mailed out to the parents in San Francisco about the school they applied to — whether they got accepted or not — we got a huge spike in people looking in Marin for houses.” Coincidentally, these days Payton’s wife Bettina has an art gallery, Upstart Modern, next door to our office, so I asked him if anything has changed. Nope. March is still a hot month for real estate. And he adds, “Marin is still the best place for families in the Bay Area.” He has changed firms and now owns Artemis Real Estate — a boutique real estate firm in Mill Valley.

Back in the late ‘90s, my then-new husband, Pete, and I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and found (thanks to Karen Hardesty at Frank Howard Allen) a sweet house on Plymouth Ave in Mill Valley. We could barely afford the $350,000, but with help from our parents, we settled in with our golden retriever, Sam. We were getting