For people relocating to Silicon Valley, often there’s not just one city, town or area which seems like a good fit.  Sometimes it may come down to what your money can buy or how difficult it is to purchase in one area versus another.   This is frequently the case with the “West Valley” areas where schools are good and the neighborhoods are tidy.

There are two statistics which are especially helpful in understanding the Santa Clara County real estate market.  One is the “days on market” or DOM.  The shorter this is, the hotter the market – and the harder it is to purchase.   The second is the sale price to list price ratio, which hints at the existence of multiple offers, overbids, and buyers giving away all of their rights.

Today, then, we’ll have a look at these, starting with Almaden, the southernmost area, and working our way north along the coastal range.  The charts below are all for single family homes (houses and duet homes, not condos or townhomes).

Almaden Valley is a district within the city of San Jose.  Its boundaries roughly follow the 95120 zip code, though there are some parts of nearby zip codes which somewhat overlap into Almaden too. How’s the Almaden market?  Red hot!  Days on market is crazy low – a mere 16! And the average sale price is almost 104% of list price…and rising!

Almaden Valley, San Jose, 95120 days on market and sale price to list price ratio

How is the Monte Sereno real estate market? Because the city is small, with just about 4000 residents, there usually are few homes listed for sale or selling, and with small numbers we can get seeming volatility.  Additionally, some of the properties carry hefty price tags, so reductions in those can really fiddle with the stats overall.  Here are the quick statistics for the closed sales in the last complete month to give a sense of how things are going. Sales data comes from my Monte Sereno Real Estate Report .

Given that the supply of homes to study is tiny, what can we tell from this data?  Listings are way up (for

and the month prior:

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Today let’s look at the Santa Clara County real estate market, the days on market (DOM) and the sale price to list price ratio for houses and duet homes (single family homes). This will primarily be graphs that I created using MLSListings.com (our local MLS, to which I am a paying member).  We’ll consider the county as a whole and various cities or towns within it, plus areas of San Jose, as it has about a million residents.

First: Santa Clara County homes over the last year.  Please note the decreasing days on market, the increasing sale price to list price ratio in recent months.  This is exactly what an appreciating market looks like!

Santa Clara County average days on market and sale price to list price ratio

Next, let’s have a peek at how some of the hottest markets in Silicon Valley look, starting with Sunnyvale. It is odd to see any kind of a blip on the sale price to list price ratio.  Are buyers giving some push-back?  We keep hearing stories of homes selling 30% or more over list price with gobs of offers.  So the SP – LP ratio change is a surprise.

Sunnyvale average days on market and sale price to list price ratio Sunnyvale

Palo Alto is always the hottest ticket in town. (more…)

It’s a sizzling hot seller’s market in Silicon Valley, meaning the San Jose area, Santa Clara County and San Mateo County generally have critically low housing inventory and extremly strong buyer demand.  But it’s not equally hot in every city, area, school district or price point.  Some home buyers may be interested in more than one area.  For instance, often I have clients looking at both Almaden and Cupertino, or Cambrian (San Jose) and Campbell, or Los Gatos and Monte Sereno…. So if you are looking for a less crazed area in which to buy, it might be useful to compare the months of inventory* to see where it might be more possible to buy a home, especially if you’ve been beat out on multiple offers a few times.

Today we’ll just consider where these houses are located, but know that it is also possible to run the data by school district, pricing tier, sale type (regular vs short sale vs bank owned) whether or not there’s a pool or garage, etc.  I pulled the info from MLSListings.com and then ranked them from hottest to coolest.  (Not all areas are represented.)

What can we learn from this information?  The first question might be “why are some areas selling so much faster than others?”  Although sometimes we can say that only inexpensive, moderate or expensive areas are moving fast, that doesn’t seem to be the case here.  Palo Alto is one of the priciest points nearby, and yet it has less than 3 weeks of inventory.    At other times we say “it’s all about the schools” but Santa Clara, which aside for a sliver served by Cupertino schools, is the #1 hottest segment of the market – and it is not highly prized for academics. (Same with Blossom Valley.)  Cupertino is usually at the top of the pile for desirability, but it’s behind several other communities.  What I’m seeing from this one angle is that there aren’t any easy answers, much as I’d like to present some clear cut trend with a big Ah Ha.

Although the underlying “why” may remain a mystery for right now, it’s still helpful for home buyers who are looking for relief.  Been beat out 5 or 10 times?  Your odds will be improved in the areas listed at the bottom of the sheet: Monte Sereno, Los Gatos, Saratoga, Almaden Valley are all just a bit easier places in which to buy.  They are all great communities with strong schools.  This kind of info could help you to move from frustrated shopper to happy home owner. (more…)

Is it a good time to sell a home in Silicon Valley?  One of the best ways to get a pulse on the real estate market is with the months of inventory (MOI), also known as the absorption rate.  The way we calculate it is simple:  find the current available inventory (not under contract or sale pending), then find the number of homes with that exact criteria which have closed escrow in the last 30 days.  Divide the first by the second and you get the months of inventory.

Today I spent a little time on MLSListings.com, our local mls association (of which I am a member) and I ran the numbers for single family homes (houses and duet homes) in Cupertino, Los Altos, Los Gatos, Monte Sereno, Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Jose (all areas combined), Santa Clara, Saratoga, Sunnyvale and three of San Jose’s districts: Almaden, Cambrian, and Willow Glen.  Below, please find the results of that study.   (This is for single family homes of any price range or school district in each city or area named.)

Which are the hottest markets?  They’re the ones with the smallest MOI – Mountain View is at .56 of a month (about 2 weeks), Sunnyvale at .66 month (about 2.5 – 3 weeks), Cupertino at .8 of a month, Palo Alto .81.  All of these are very, very red hot seller’s markets.  Every area, city or town studied was a hot market except for Monte Sereno, which at any given time has few listings and few sales plus a wide range of pricing, so often for this small city it’s best to look at the Los Gatos and Saratoga stats to see what’s really happening.    A few very high priced listings may make the whole area look slow, when it fact it may be just a function of the pricing tier. (more…)

The luxury homes market often behaves very differently than the rest of the real estate market as a whole.  If interest rates jump around, the impact is often far less since the home buyers of estate properties may not be nearly as dependent upon financing.  Many of these fine homes & estates are paid for “all cash”.  (In some cases they do this but later arrange financing, perhaps funding a “charitable remainder” trust rather than a more typical institutional loan.)

How’s the real estate market for high end homes in Los Gatos, Monte Sereno and the Los Gatos Mountain communities?  Defining “luxury homes” is a bit tricky because what constitutes luxury can vary from area to area (check out these estate homes for sale in the Buffalo NY area). For now let’s use prices of $2 million or greater as we first look at the Months of Inventory or Absorption Rate – though in fairness, the luxury price point is a little lower in the mountains.  (Six months is considered balanced by the National Association of Realtor, less is a sellers market and more is a buyers market.)

As of October 19, 2012, here are the numbers for homes over $2,000,000 in the Los Gatos area

Los Gatos, 95030 for sale (active) = 30    Sold in the last month = 1  Months of inventory = 30

Los Gatos, 95032 for sale (active) = 13    Sold in the last month = 3  Months of inventory = 4.33

LG Mtns, 95033 for sale (active) = 8    Sold in the last month =0  Months of inventory = infinite

Monte Sereno   for sale (active) = 9    Sold in the last month = 1  Months of inventory = 9

For some reason, right now it seems to be easier to sell a luxury property in Los Gatos 95032 than in the more downtown area of 95032.  That said, there are so few homes sold that things can fluctuate quite a bit, and also the over $2 million range is huge as some homes are offered at well past $10 million.  For the absolute best information, you’d need someone to do a customized study for just your property, the one you own or the one you’d like to own.

No matter how you look at it, overall it is a buyers market in the luxury home strata in Monte Sereno, Los Gatos and the Los Gatos Mountains. It may be closed to balanced in 95032, or possibly a seller’s market even in that area, but we’d need to tease out things like school district (most of 95032 is in Union or Campbell schools, not Los Gatos schools), exact pricing tier, views, proximity to downtown etc.  In general, though, it is a great time to purchase a high end house or estate in these areas.

Altos charts on the LG area

Next we’ll change gears and use Altos Research and quartiles to evaluate the most expensive listings.  We will look at the top quartile of list prices, the high end listings in Los Gatos (zip codes 95030 and 95032 in town), in the Los Gatos Mountains (unincorporated, 95033) and Monte Sereno (99.9% of which is in 95030 but a tiny sliver has the 95032 zip code).   The charts I’m using are live and will be continuously updated by Altos Research, to which I have a subscription.

List prices of homes for sale in the topmost price quartile in Los Gatos, Monte Sereno and the Los Gatos Mountains

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Mini update for Santa Clara County as a whole as of September 17, 2012 for houses in SCC:

Actives = 1295

Regular sales for sale = 1157 (89%

Short sales for sale = 95 (7%)

Bank owned houses for sale = 43 (3%)

Sold in the last 30 days = 859

Regular sales closed in last 30 days = 675 (79%)

Short sales closed in last 30 days = 151 (18%)

Bank owned houses sold in last 30 days = 33 (4%)

It seems that although short sales are in increasingly smaller part of the inventory of available homes, they are highly desirable and are showing up in the solds at twice their ratio of actives. Put another way, the absorption rate looks to be higher.  Let’s check the math on the moths of inventory:

All houses in SCC:  1295/859 = 1.51 months of inventory

Regular sales in the county: 1157/675 = 1.71

Short sales in SCC: 95/151 = .63 moi (63% of one month!)

Bank owned homes: 43/33 = 1.3

All of these numbers are low, low, low – but the short sales are the lowest of all!

-mph

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POST FROM APRIL 22, 2011:
Yesterday we looked at the types of home sales around Silicon Valley by price point.  Not terribly surprising, most of the short sales and bank owned homes were in the lowest price ranges.  Today we’ll look at this type of information not by pricing tier but instead by geography – in other words, by either town, city or district of San Jose (area).  This post will not cover every area but will be a sampling a few communities, mostly on the west side of the valley (since that’s primarily where I work).

By way of reminder, the small image to the left reflects Santa Clara County’s houses for sale as a whole – all areas and all price points. (You can see the full sized image by clicking on it.) The green area represents “regular home sales” and the brick red and light orange signify distressed  properties listed on the MLS for sale (red is short sales and orange is bank owned or REOs). Next let’s see a few regions within the county to see how things are faring geographically.

1. Almaden Valley area of San Jose – homes listed for sale by type – very few distressed properties on the market!

Almaden is a lovely southwest San Jose suburban community (zip code 95120) that grew up initially with the cinnabar or mercury mining activity.  Today it’s an upscale area of more expensive homes than most of the county, it enjoys really good schools and scenic views of the coastal range as well as the Santa Teresa Foothills.  Housing here is costly but residents love the quality of life. Since the cost of homes for sale here is high, it’s not super surprising, after seeing yesterday’s post, that there are very few distressed homes on the market here. Next we’ll check the other extreme…. (more…)