If you are house hunting in the Cambrian area of San Jose, you are probably aware that home prices and the real estate climate generally differ based on a number of things, but the most important factor of all is the schools.   While it is helpful to view the Cambrian real estate market as a whole, it’s more accurate to look at a smaller segment of that realty market and study it by school district.

One data point we use to analyse the market is the absorption rate, or months of inventory.  The question is this: if no new inventory came on the market, how long would it take for the current supply of houses for sale take to sell, if sales continue at the same rate?  For this we look at the currently available list of homes for sale (some people including pending with contingency in place, but nearly all of these do close, so I omit them) and also those of the same criteria which have sold and closed escrow in the last 30 days.  The same study could be done on a weekly basis rather than monthly, but with such small numbers of inventory, that would likely not be so reliable.  I ran these numbers from MLSListings.com this morning?

Cambrian Months of Inventory

Cambrian as a whole has 1.07 months of inventory – that’s pretty good if you are a seller, and a bit scary if you are a buyer.  A closer look, though, and you see quite a huge difference between either the Cambrian or Union School District, which both have a very brisk .83 months of inventory, versus the homes in the San Jose Unified School District area, which are moving at 3 months of inventory – a great market for most of the U.S., but sluggish compared to the other areas.

For a home owner wanting to sell in the SJ Unfied section of Cambrian, this is critically important information to understand so that you don’t overestimate the enthusiasm for your house.  It is going to be more important for you to price aggressively, stage well, market thoroughly than in the other areas, which may be more self-selling due to the very high quality of the public schools.

For a home buyer wanting to purchase in any of these areas, knowledge is power!  You might be able to get away with contingencies in your offers in the San Jose Unified neighborhoods as you may be the only offer in some cases, but that may not get you into your next home in the more competitive areas where many people are just trying to get their children into excellent schools and you’ve got multiple offers and overbids in that superheated market.   (We Realtors do not love seeing our buyers get into contract with few or no contingencies, by the way.  We prefer where there’s a little more balance.  This imbalanced situation is a classic case of supply and demand: too much demand, not much supply.)

Finally, it should be noted that schools are a major driver all of Silicon Valley.  I have similar studies, using high school districts, for Saratoga (on this site) and Los Gatos (on the Live in Los Gatos blog),  if you’d like to check those out also.  Because those areas have a really big spread in pricing, the absorption rates have been considered by price point too.

Check out what’s happening in the Cambrian market in the map below.

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(all data current as of 12/6/2023)

Listing information deemed reliable but not guaranteed. Read full disclaimer.