For home buyers trying to decide where to purchase a house, condominium or townhouse, there may be many factors to weigh, including the commute time, architectural charm, quality of the schools, crime, age of homes and many other things.

Often we Realtors cannot discuss demographics much for fear of stumbling and saying something that could be a Fair Housing Violation.  We can, however, guide you to some online tools so you can learn whatever you want to learn about an area. 

One of my favorite sites for this is Zip Skinny – it enables you to compare and contrast quite a few zip codes against each other with some interesting aspects covered such as housing density, education of the residents etc. Have a look!

How long does it take to buy a home in Silicon Valley?  There are really two questions within that one: first, how much time will be required before you’re ready to choose a home to purchase (or how many homes will you need to see), and then how much time is involved in getting the transaction closed.

Prior to this housing crisis, the national average used to be seeing fewer than 10 homes in order to make a decision.  The number of homes now visited (and the time) has been rising, though.  According to the California Association of Realtors, “On average, home buyers spent 8.4 weeks considering buying a home in 2009, compared with 7.2 weeks in 2008. Buyers spent an average of 10.3 weeks searching for a home with their REALTOR®, compared with 8.7 weeks in 2008.”

Often my clients need to see between 10 and 20 homes before they feel like they know the market and the choices well enough to select a home they want to write an offer on.  Depending on how broad of an area they’re considering, and how much of a hurry they’re in, this varies from couple of weeks or less – or a couple of years!  Clients relocating to the San Jose area often want to settle in.  If they’ve owned homes before, they may have a perfect idea of what will and won’t work for them.  Once I sold a Los Gatos house to a couple before the wife ever saw the property!  They moved every couple of years, the husband knew his wife’s requirements perfectly and they had no trouble being expedient. 
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The Silicon Valley real estate “Spring Buying Season” has been very active among anxious home buyers, but there’s not a lot of turnkey, well-priced inventory for them to choose among. Yesterday I previewed four homes in San Jose and Santa Clara, and noticed the same young gal doing a drive by while I was touring. Not surprising: there are only a few homes that are on the “need to see” list. And most of them are disappointing (dirty, unkempt houses that were not even properly cleaned up or staged minimally to sell).

The federal government’s tax credits for home buyers expires at the end of April. To qualify for it, move up, move down or first time home buyers must be in contract on a property by April 30th, and must close between May 1st and June 30th.  This is a great motivation for many Santa Clara County home buyers – the tax credit can pay for new carpet, curtains, or sprucing up the landscaping on that new purchase.

The good news for residents of the Golden State, though, is that California has created a new $10,000 tax credit. There are plenty of conditions and footnotes, though, the biggest being that it must be a single family home, attached or detached (not an apartment building or investment property). A confusing element of this credit is whether buyers can use all of it, or if the benefit will be capped due to the amount of state taxes paid. To read about it first hand, here’s a link to the California Franchise Board’s statement about the home buyer tax credit. Bookmark that site as the info will be updated periodically.

Here’s the best part: get into contract on a California home in April and close escrow in May, and you may qualify for both of these tax credits!

If that doesn’t get buyers out and looking, nothing will!
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