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 waranty 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

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!

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.

The condominium & townhouse market is improving dramatically now.  It is evident both in looking at the stats countywide and in my recent experiences holding open my townhouse listings in Saratoga and Sunnyvale as well as recently participating in the sale of a townhome in Almaden Valley (representing a buyer) – all different areas and price points but all very active.

Here are the numbers for May sales of condos and townhomes for all of Santa Clara  County:

As you can see, the days on market are shrinking and prices (both median and average) are rising.  A few numbers cut back slightly in May: the sale to list price ratio retreated a little to 99.9% and the pending properties went down a little too.  But the number of sales were up.

The “months of inventory” or absorption rate is a great way to know how much of a buyer’s or seller’s market it is in any given place. Six months is considered balanced, less is a seller’s market and more is a buyer’s market.  Here are the months of inventory for selected communities in the “west valley” area of Silicon Valley – they are all “seller’s markets”, but some are strong and some are approaching balanced:

Of course, this is still painting with a broad brush.  The absorption rate for any of these areas may not be accurate for the various price points or school districts that might be found there.  For instance, a large luxury townhouse in Los Gatos which is downtown might be a really different type of market than a small, entry level one bordering Campbell or Cambrian Park.

What everyone’s wondering is if this seller’s market for condominiums and townhouses will continue despite the end of the federal home buyer credit.  To utilize that credit, homes had to be in contract by April 30th.  Most of those should be closed now, or nearing that date at best.  So we’ll really know more as we move into summer. My sense, though, is that what’s driving this market is much more the affordable prices of homes and of loans. The credits are a bonus, but many in Silicon Valley make too much money to be able to use them.

For information on your particular part of the Silicon Valley condo or townhome market, please give me a call or email me!

Sereno Group Real Estate just released its annual real estate market trends report for Santa Clara County, San Mateo County and Santa Cruz County.(The link will take you to a pdf of the report, which is a 1.6 MB file so allow a little time for downloading.)

The study covers nearly two years in these three Bay Area Counties: January 2008 to December 2009.

The report is free and does not require registration to be viewed.

We hope that you find the report informative and helpful.

June 2010 is Global Labyrinth Month, so now is a great time to learn a little about the history of the labyrinth and find some local ones to enjoy.

What is a labyrinth? Luckily I found a comprehensive labyrinth site which explains that it’s thousands of years old and is (and has been) used for prayer and meditation by many cultures and religions. They can be in all kinds of materials: sand, pavement, rock, paint, landcape… Most are permanent but some are now portable or temporary.  Some are inside, some outside.  I have seen them in several religious settings and recently was invited to a “labyrinth dedication” party at a friend’s backyard in the Cambrian Park area of San Jose too, but was surprised to learn how widespread it is beyond my own experience.

You may have heard of or seen the labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral in France (if looking at the amazing stained glass windows there didn’t capture your entire attention for several days). This may be one of the most popular ever.

Where can you find a labyrinth in or near Silicon Valley?  I found lots of sites identifying public and private labyrinths. One labyrinth locator site  indicated 271 of them in California alone!  Here are some that I’m aware of, but I invite readers to post comments with other locations.

Interestingly, not every site with a labyrinth is religious in nature. The Santa Clara Valley Water District Headquarters at 5750 Almaden Expressway (between Coleman Av. and Blossom Hill Road in Almaden Valley) has a labyrinth in the garden right next to the Los Alamitos Percolation Ponds. You can actually see it from the satellite view of Google Maps.
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How do you choose where you’d like to live in Silicon Valley?  Especially if you’re relocating here from out of the area, this can be a huge question.  Most Santa Clara County home buyers have strong preferences for low crime, good schools, and pleasant looking & quiet neighborhoods.

My clients often ask me to compare for them areas which are somewhat similar, such as Los Gatos & Los Altos.  Off the top of my head, I can give general answers, such as these:   Compared to Los Gatos, Los Altos is a  more expensive (perhaps 20 or 25% more?), has a very slightly smaller population, is a little more spread out,  has slightly milder weather and is overall “quieter” in terms of the downtown night life.  Los Altos is more convenient if you want to go to Palo Alto or San Francisco.  Los Gatos is more convenient if you like to visit Santa Cruz, Monterey and the coast.  Los Gatos is more mixed in terms of housing types (it still has many beautiful historic districts with nicely renovated Victorian homes, but also newer construction). Both are “nice looking” but Los Gatos has more varied terrain as it is nestled into the Santa Cruz Mountains. Both enjoy pleasant neighborhoods, good schools, lower than normal crime and community involvement.

That’s the kind of “ballpark” info I can tell people about various areas of the Santa Clara Valley, whether it’s comparing one part of San Jose to another (Cambrian Park vs Almaden Valley vs Willow Glen) or one city to another (Cupertino vs Saratoga).  I can give general info on schools.

What I can’t do (and most agents can’t) is recite from memory school API scores, median household income, housing density, crime statistics, etc.  For that we have the web!  Here are some very helpful links which can assist you in your search to find the part of Santa Clara County that’s the best fit for you, your wants, needs, and budget:

Want to compare areas in and near San Jose?  A great tool for some basic and broad information by zip code is a website called Zip Skinny.  Input a zip code and get fairly detailed info on it.  One of the best features of this site is you can compare one zip code to other, similar areas to check out the differences in density, education of residents, household income, and more.
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The real estate news is so mixed it’s mind boggling, whether it’s a national perspective, one specific to California, the San Francisco Bay Area, the “south Bay”, Silicon Valley or even San Jose in particular.  It is anything but a uniform, monolithic market. Even so, it’s good to look at the big picture along side the hyper local level, and that’s what we’ll do today.

Today’s San Jose Mercury News featured a front page article by Sue McAllister (an excellent reporter) on Santa Clara County housing values.  She shares that Zillow says that we’ve hit bottom here in Santa Clara County.  That is certainly good news to home owners accross Silicon Valley!  And I don’t disagree that countywide, we’re definitely looking up right now.  No guarantees for the future, but Zillow says that the threat of a second or double dip no longer seems likely. Whew!

Unfortunately, there’s another real risk to this recovery and it’s not the “shadow industry”. This time it’s homeowners walking away because they’re underwater (not because they can’t afford to stay, but because they choose not to).  Sixty Minutes did a segment on this phenomena of home owners walking away last night., which you can watch via this link.
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On Friday I drove from Silicon Valley to Los Angeles to get my son (and his stuff) from college at LMU at the end of the school year.  On Saturday, we drove back.  It was a quick trip but we did have some fun and see some sights, lingering a few hours at the exquisite Getty Museum especially. 

The last little stop we made was in the south county at one of the many, many fruit stands along Highway 152 near Gilroy, the Merry Cherry Fruit Stand.  There we purchased some cherries (naturally!) and pistachios.  Since some of my blog’s readers are actually not in Silicon Valley, and may not be familiar with this area, I thought it would be good to share a couple of pics.  These were taken in the late afternoon, around 6:15 or 6:30, so there are long shadows – but it was fabulous spring weather and very pleasant out. It’s a pretty typical roadside stand and there are many of them in this region. (Note to visitors: most of these places are cash only.)

This next photo was taken from the parking area of the Merry Cherry stand. I loved how the shadows looked in the groves of the ploughed field, waiting for the next planting, or perhaps for sprouts to soon appear.

For people who’ve never been to Santa Clara County (where most of Silicon Valley can be found), or new to our part of Northern California, it’s a suprise that we still have farmland and fruit stands. We also have vineyards and wineries in various parts of the county, especially the Santa Cruz Mountains and “south county”. These agricultural regions are a reminder us that our whole area was once largly farm based and was then called “the Valley of Heart’s Delight”. 

If you’ve never been to Morgan Hill or Gilroy, don’t wait for the Garlic Festival or a need to hit the outlet malls to drive down and investgate the area.  It’s really quite beautiful and there are many interesting nooks and crannies waiting to be discovered.