Often I get emails from people asking if I can help them with finding a rental property. For the most part, my practice revolves around listing and selling real estate in San Jose, Los Gatos, and Silicon Valley generally, so my best information is on what’s for sale, not what’s for rent.  Once in awhile I work on rental housing, but not normally, as rental condos or houses through an agent (if they are listed on the MLS) will usually cost you more than homes you find to rent elsewhere.

The best resources I have found for locating rental properties in Santa Clara County are these (I cannot guarantee or warranty your results, but these are starting points for you):

• Craigslist (link is to the South Bay area)
• Bay Rentals (they do charge a small fee)
• ForRent.com (search by city name or zip code)
• Once you’ve located an area you like – drive around
• possible – the mls search – scroll down on left sidebar widget on this blog and pull down the menu under “all property types” and select Rentals OR run similar search by map on my popehandy.com site at this link ~ you must also find “property types” on left side and then locate rentals under that)

The last bullet point might seem silly, but some of the best apartments, townhomes etc. never get listed anywhere other than a sign in the yard.  So if you love Los Gatos, Campbell, Santa Clara or anywhere else, drive it and watch for signs! (Or talk with friends or acquaintances in areas you like – have them keep an eye out for you.)

Perhaps you want to be in a hotel or inn for awhile before deciding where to rent or buy, or while on temporary assignment at a local business or university. You don’t need me to tell you where to stay in a hotel, but if you are moving here with a pet you might want assistance finding a place which will welcome your cat or dog.  Here’s a great resource for finding pet-friendly hotels, motels and inns here: DogFriendly.com’s San Jose (and nearby) City Guide, which includes accomodations, parks, outdoor restaurants etc.

Right now, it seems to be the case that it’s harder to rent a home than to buy one – at least that is the word on the street.  (And it seems that like with the purchase market, the closer you get to Palo Alto, the tougher it is.)  Tougher still if you have pets or smoke.  If you have pets or smoke and find a rental, the cost per month will be higher.

How is the real estate market in the Willow Glen area of San Jose?  There are multiple ways of viewing it – via price point, school district, proximity to “downtown Willow Glen”, by numbers or percentages of distressed sales (sale type), and many more criteria.  Today we’ll look at the broad market numbers for the MLS “area 10″ (all of Willow Glen) and at times just the zip code for San Jose 95125, which covers the majority of the Willow Glen area.  This post will only cover houses or “single family homes”, not condominiums or townhomes.

I ran the months of inventory for homes in Willow Glen (our MLS area 10) by sale type.  Here’s what I found – most of the market appears to have about 4.95 months of inventory, with short sales being considerably longer.  (This may have had different results had I isolated certain school areas or price points – this is a “sweeping view” of the area only.) The National Association of Realtors says that less than 6 months is a sellers market, but for our area, this is fairly “cool” and most sellers would not find the market to be all that much in their favor. (Six months is supposed to be a balanced market.)

It is unusual for there to be so little variation in the MOI, so I double checked but this appears correct. Often bank owned homes or REOs fly off the market.  Odd that it’s not happening here, too.

Next, a selection of statistics and trends in the numbers from my REReport for Willow Glen (click on link for more info) – prices here reflect sold prices (median and average), not list prices:

Prices appear down from the prior month but up from a year ago.  That’s good news for Willow Glen home owners, who hope that the worst is now behind us.  Days on market are better than the previous month (but worse than a year ago) and inventory is up from last month but almost the same – just a little less – than a year ago.  It’s a mixed bag.

The next batch of info comes via my MLS, which I pulled together using a new tool, the Realtors Property Resource.  What I like about this set is that it includes distressed properties (banked owned homes or REOs as well as short sales and pre-foreclosures).

If the lack of new notices of default continues, we’ll see a lot of improvement in the Willow Glen market.

Next let’s look at the data provided by Altos Research (which uses list prices rather than sales prices). This is helpful as it views the listing activity by price quartile. That is, you can see that “the market” for the top tier or luxury homes in Willow Glen is behaving a bit differently from entry level houses in the same general area.

First, the median list price for San Jose 95125 (which covers about 90% or more of Willow Glen), going back as far as 2005:

It looks rather dismal, taken historically, until you pause to note the recent and very welcome uptick.

Next, the same data but broken down by price quartile - I think it is very interesting that the top tier of pricing there is at almost the same point as it was at the beginning of this time period. That certainly isn’t true for the other groups!

Right now the three lower price ranges seem to be moving up while the luxury home prices are moving the opposite direction.

Same data but just the last one year – not so dramatic:

So how’s the market? If your house or the one you want to purchase is a short sale in the highest pricing strata, the market is unduly soft. If your home is a regular sale in a lower price point, it may be completely different.

When I work with sellers and buyers on “their” market, I run the numbers every which way, but tailored to the home they own or wish to own – the schools, the price point, the sale type, how many distressed homes are nearby etc. The market is not one monolithic creature, but instead is a patchwork of many micro markets.

For information on your micro-market, please contact me! Should we decide to work together in buying or selling your home, I will provide you current and pinpointed market information.

A plat map comes with your preliminary title report (provided by your title company when you purchase or sell a home in California), tucked away at the back and somewhat mysterious with lots of numbers in small print.  It holds quite a bit of helpful information if you know what it is you’re seeing.  Today we’ll view a sample of one of these – breaking down the plat map shown as a small thumbnail image on the right to more readable parts so that you can learn how to “read” or understand a plat map.  By the way, this example we’re using is for a lovely San Jose neighborhood in the Cambrian Park district which borders Los Gatos and is near Carlton Avenue, Los Gatos-Almaden Road and Union Avenue.

First have a quick look at the thumbnail image on the right.  You can tell it’s some sort of map with official looking writing in the lower corners.  Perhaps most salient even in the smallest image, one important feature of the plat map is that it provides the orientation of the properties (north/south/east/west).  That info is now readily findable online, but this used to be the easiest way (and most accurate) to answer the question “which way does the home face?” Look at the map, find the parcel and you’ll know its orientation.

The plat map also provides the Tract Number (and often the name given by the builder for the subdivision – in this case, Carlton Terrace). Along the right side, you can see the source of this information: the office of the county assessor for Santa Clara County.

Let’s look a little closer still.

Looking at an individual address or lot, you’ll note that there’s more information.  The house number for each parcel is listed, the shape of each property given (parcel boundary) and the approximate lot dimensions are provided too.  When a dimension is the same on both sides or as with the adjoining property, it’s not listed.  In the case of these homes, most of them have 60′ to 61′ wide lots and approximately 110′  to 113′ deep lots -  very typical lot size for a Cambrian Park home.

What about the large numbers in the middle of each property?  One of them is the builder’s lot number and the other is the parcel number assigned by the to the property by the county assessor’s office. The parcel number should be underlined and more prominent (bolded, italicized etc.).

The assessor’s parcel number, or APN, for each property is created by referring to the Asessor’s Book Number, the Assessor’s Book Page Number plus the individual parcel number, with each of these sets separated by hyphens.  To find the book and page number, look in the corners of the page with the plat map – they will be listed clearly.  In our sample, note the lower right hand corner.

So for the homes on this plat map, the APN will be 421-18- whatever the parcel number is for that particular home (the bolded, underlined, italicized number).

Can this information be really useful to you? You bet it can.  Sometimes we see homes for sale in which the lot size is said to be a certain amount, say 6000 SF, but having seen the yard, it appears much, much larger (or smaller). By studying this page, you can check the dimensions and see if the number quoted as the lot size is correct or not. 

Several times in my career I have found a lot size to be under-estimated or under-reported in the county records.  This is especially true with irregularly shaped lots (such as pie-shaped lots or lots with many sides to them – more than four).  If a builder primarily subdivided with 6000 SF lots, that number may be inputted to the county records for every parcel, even if the one you’re looking at buying or currently own is much, much more.

I won’t say it’s a fun geometry project, but learning that a home is sitting on a 9000 or 10,000 SF lot rather than 6000 is money in the bank if you’re buying or selling such a home.  Many Realtors will not get the lot measured in person or referencing the plat map, but this extra step is extraordinarily helpful in understanding a home’s true value.   So first we must understand how to read a plat map, then know and act on what we see if there’s anything that does not look correct.

Plat maps are so important that if there’s a small typo in them, the lender for a buyer will not fund the loan until it’s corrected. (I know, it happened to me about 10 years ago on a Willow Glen home I listed and sold on Arata Court.)  When you get the preliminary title report, whether you’re buying or selling, don’t ignore it!  The rest of the contents of the prelim are also important, but for today I want to encourage agents and consumers to take the time to look also at the parcel map at the end of the prelim and see if everything looks correct.  It may save you both time and money to catch any errors upfront.