Days on market for several “west valley” communities within Silicon Valley

For people relocating to Silicon Valley, often there’s not just one city, town or area which seems like a good fit.  Sometimes it may come down to what your money can buy or how difficult it is to purchase in one area versus another.   This is frequently the case with the “West Valley” areas where schools are good and the neighborhoods are tidy.

There are two statistics which are especially helpful in understanding the Santa Clara County real estate market.  One is the “days on market” or DOM.  The shorter this is, the hotter the market – and the harder it is to purchase.   The second is the sale price to list price ratio, which hints at the existence of multiple offers, overbids, and buyers giving away all of their rights.

Today, then, we’ll have a look at these, starting with Almaden, the southernmost area, and working our way north along the coastal range.  The charts below are all for single family homes (houses and duet homes, not condos or townhomes).

Almaden Valley is a district within the city of San Jose.  Its boundaries roughly follow the 95120 zip code, though there are some parts of nearby zip codes which somewhat overlap into Almaden too. How’s the Almaden market?  Red hot!  Days on market is crazy low – a mere 16! And the average sale price is almost 104% of list price…and rising!

Monte Sereno is the next city as we inch north along the map, but it’s so small, and with so few sales, that the numbers are often very dramatically up or down – in other words, wonky!  I’ll post the Monte Sereno chart, but in general it’s best to just consider this market as being similar to Los Gatos, as normally it is.

Just across Quito Road, and following the beautiful Santa Cruz Mountains, is Saratoga.  Saratoga is another upscale community with scenic hillside and valley views (and generally great schools, though there are multiple districts with varying strengths and weaknesses).  The market here is cooler than Almaden and Los Gatos – we see a trend of increasing days on market (up to 40) and a lowering of the SP to LP ratio.

Cupertino is prized as a city with fabulous schools (many say it has the “most bang for the buck” in terms of school value for the price of housing) and it’s also a great commute location for many high tech workers, especially those who work for Apple. It has been extraordinarily hard for home buyers to compete in the Cupertino real estate market in recent years.  How is it now?  Have a look. We see that the SP to LP ratio was at around 109% but is pulling back down to around 107% now.  But the days on market are not rising, but instead still shrinking and are a mere 11 days.  Buyers, this is still super challenging!

Sunnyvale is a larger city than the rest considered so far.  It is extremely convenient, and therefore very popular.  (It’s also known as one of the safest cities in the U.S.)  This has been one of the toughest places around for getting offers accepted – and a look at the chart below will show you why! For months they’ve seen less than 2 weeks of inventory.  The SP to

Last but not least, Los Altos borders Sunnyvale but also sits snugly against the coastal range and is a little more upscale & expensive. Like most of these areas, it’s been extremely overheated but we are seeing a little hint of a pullback with the SP to LP ratio, which has recently turned downward a bit.

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(all data current as of 12/2/2023)

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