The annual market report is out at popehandy.REReport.com and we can now learn how 2011 compared to 2010.  The median sales price for houses in Santa Clara County was off 5.3% overall.  But from one part of the valley to the next it varied wildly with 6 cities or areas finding themselves in positive territory while others were off by double digits.

In the image to the left, I’ve put into bold the cities where the median sales price of houses which sold and closed escrow in 2011 were ahead of 2010′s pricing.

What is it that makes Gilroy, Los Altos Hills, Los Gatos, Mountain View and Palo Alto “in the black”?

Most of these cities/towns are upscale, west valley communities.  But so are Saratoga, Cupertino, and Monte Sereno.

Gilroy was especially hard-hit with the housing downturn so perhaps in that case, it’s just coming back into more of a balance. (Then again, so was Morgan Hill and it’s still off by 12%.)

The LinkedIn IPO and others in the Palo Alto area drove prices up for some parts of the housing market nearby and it’s likely that this explains the positive growth for Palo Alto, Mountain View, and Los Altos Hills.  That said, it would seem that Los Altos, and perhaps even Sunnyvale would have seen stronger numbers on the same account.  Perhaps school scores are the key driver here.

Los Gatos, Saratoga and Monte Sereno often behave somewhat similarly as they are adjacent to one another and often attract similar home buyers who want good schools, a nice downtown area nearby and scenic beauty with the hills.  The annual numbers show Monte Sereno down 6.7%, Saratoga down 2% but Los Gatos up 6.4%.  With Monte Sereno, there are very few sales each month and each year (only about 4,000 residents), so there can be a wider swing without it necessarily being accurate. Saratoga and Los Gatos each have about 30,000 people who call these areas home, though, so the data is much more helpful.  Saratoga and Los Gatos both have multiple school districts, views, homes with better proximity to “downtown” and more variables – I think we’d have to dig a lot deeper to learn why these two neighboring markets are so diverse.  We might also have to look at multiple years of data to see if Saratoga spiked while LG slumped to explain the difference. (more…)

How’s the Blossom Valley real estate market?  How hard is it to sell a house there now?  (Check the Almaden Valley real estate market here.)

About half the active listings of single family homes for sale in the Blossom Valley district of San Jose are either short sales or REOs.  For all of area 12 (our MLS name for this part of San Jose), as of right now there are 124 houses listed and 61 of them are either short sales or bank owned homes (REOs). (Blossom Valley is 2/3 95123 and 1/3 95136.)

Today we’ll look at the market generally and also see how the high end is faring there – most expensive homes being those listed at or over $550,000.

Months of inventory reflects the ratio between available homes (not under contract) with those which have sold/closed in the last month.  That’s the absorption rate, or how fast homes that go on the market are being absorbed by buyers.

How “hot” is the market in Blossom Valley? It depends. Bank owned homes are flying off the market – particularly the most expensive ones. (more…)

With our 300 sunny days per year in Silicon Valley (at least most years!), golf is a sport enjoyed year round here in the San Jose area.  Living near a golf course, or having a golf course view, is highly desirable as it provides scenic open space as well as convenience for avid golfers.

Silicon Valley Golf Homes, Silicon Valley Golf Properties

There are beautiful courses throughout the South Bay Area and it’s possible to find small condos with views of them at fairly affordable prices (Sunnyvale’s Sunken Gardens area is one of them).  Today, though, I want to provide a list of homes for sale near golf courses in the foothill areas of Silicon Valley.  Many of these will also be luxury homes. So the MLS list of these houses on the market which you can browse includes these areas:

San Jose areas including Evergreen & Silver Creek, Santa Teresa, Blossom Valley and Almaden; Los Gatos, Monte Sereno, Saratoga, Cupertino, and Los Altos.

There are golf courses to be found in other parts of Santa Clara County too (Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara and more) – let me know if you are interested in these parts and I can send you a link for searching them for similar residential real estate.

On Tuesday of this week I was showing some nice folks around the San Jose area. As part of our tour, we stopped in at Valley Christian High School (south San Jose – Santa Teresa area). The sky was clear and the views spectacular!  (Disclaimer – in this photo, the sky ended up looking white, so I did tinker with the color.)

From here we were looking at the Santa Teresa Foothills ((lowest, closest hills).  In front of them are the Santa Teresa & Blossom Valley areas of San Jose.  Behind them is Almaden Valley.

Along the coastal range in back, the peak on the far right (with a flat area) is Mt. Umunhum.  To the far left, the higher peaks are where you’ll find Loma Prieta.

A key ingredient in understanding how the Silicon Valley real estate market is faring is the ratio of regular sales to distressed properties on the market (Bank owned or REO listings and short sale listings). Today we’ll study Los Gatos and four areas or districts of San Jose: Almaden Valley, Willow Glen, Cambrian Park, and Blossom Valley.

First, let’s look at the county numbers as a general overview.  In all of Santa Clara County, there are 3537 houses, duet homes, condominiums & townhouses for sale and available (“status 1″ for my Realtor readers) on our multiple listing service. Of those, merely 1964 are “regular sales” (56%), 1105 are short sales (31%) and 375 are bank owned homes or REOs (11%).

Now let’s drill down to a few areas: Los Gatos, Almaden Valley, Willow Glen, Cambrian Park and Blossom Valley.  We’ll check out the ratio of regular sales of houses and condos in each of these areas.  How do these compare to the county average of 56%? Have a look:

This is helpful information for both home buyers & home sellers.  Home sellers need to understand the challenges that come with selling in an area with more short sales or REOs, if they are in one of those parts of the valley.  Or vice versa: if there are few distressed properties on the market, this makes it easier to sell (with less downward pressure on pricing).  Buyers need to appreciate that they will have better luck negotiating in areas where many homes are being sold under some pressure.

A quick disclaimer - if we narrowed this study by school district and even neighborhood school, we might find that these “general numbers” are actually quite different at the hyper-local level.  For example, if you visit a post of mine about the Los Gatos real estate market on my Live in Los Gatos blog, you’d find that when we separated out the various school districts, and even price points, the ratio of distressed properties and their absorption rates change very dramatically.  To see those, scroll down until you see the blue and yellow boxes.

The condo market in San Jose and nearby areas has taken a beating throughout our downturn.  Even so, condos in Los Gatos, Almaden and Willow Glen are faring pretty decently.

Now let’s hone in on each of these five areas and the two main housing types to see the ratio in each of regular sales, short sales, and REOs.
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How many of the Silicon Valley homes for sale are listed as short sales? How many are bank owned properties? This morning I did some time pulling the numbers out for my readers so that you can see the actual real estate figures.

What’s being counted below are homes for sale, including houses, duet homes, condominiums and townhouses (or townhomes) in the various areas of Santa Clara County listed below.

As was the case a year or two ago, most of the short sale activity is taking place in the most affordable price ranges. The higher priced areas are not immune, though – but because there are fewer distressed properties to choose from, they get purchased rather quickly, so we’d see a higher percentage of them among the pending sales rather than the available listings.

Today I did a post on this subject focusing specifically on the Los Gatos real estate market in terms of short sales today vs the last couple of years (and the question of whether or not the trend is to rising numbers of short sales available). To learn more, visit the article on my Live in Los Gatos blog.

For bargain hunting buyers of high end properties, then, it’s slim pickings!  In the entry level areas, there’s much more selection but also lots of competition.  Last week I was involved with some buyers in a bidding frenzy in a terribly underpriced Cambrian short sale: it got 43 offers!  (So please remember that the list price may be completely unrelated to the sales price.)

If you’re looking to buy or sell a home in Silicon Valley, it helps to have the assistance of a Realtor with a pulse on the market.  Please contact me for a confidential & no-obligation meeting today!

Fifty years or so ago, San Jose was still a very agricultural area. The Blossom Valley and Santa Teresa neighborhoods enjoyed great open spaces, farmland and orchards. Today that’s nearly all gone. But there is still a large, undeveloped area there at Branham Lane and Snell Avenue (the border area for these two districts of San Jose), not far from the Vistapark neighborhood or the Hayes Mansion area. I wonder what it will become as the valley continues to fill. Hopefully at least some of it will remain open.

Below are a couple of photos taken of this agricultural oasis last weekend, by my husband, Jim, with the mustard in full bloom. It’s a beautiful reminder of Silicon Valley’s past as “the Valley of Heart’s Delight“.

The first view is looking west to north-west:

Same area, but looking a little up and to the left – and you see part of a barn…
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