How long does it take to sell a Silicon Valley home in today’s market? As always, it depends on how you slice and dice it! “Silicon Valley” is not a super tightly defined area, but roughly includes most of Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, with a smattering of Alameda, Santa Cruz, and even San Francisco counties to boot. Since the vast majority of it is in 2 counties, let’s have a look at them first.
The charts below were created from MLSListings.com, the real estate agent supported multiple listing service for our region.
(1) Single Family homes in San Mateo County and Santa Clara County – the days to sell is at a very low figure of 25!
(2) Condominiums and townhouses in San Mateo County and Santa Clara County – the days to sell also sitting at 25, though the pattern has been a little different from single family homes.
The very broad, 2 county view looks amazing with the sale pending properties popping at an average of 25 days on the market. What happens if we narrow it to San Jose, the largest city in Santa Clara County, which has about 60% of the county’s homes?
(3) Single family homes in the city of San Jose, California – an incredibly low 23 (we tend to think of San Mateo County as being a deeper seller’s market than Santa Clara County).
(4) Condominiums and townhouses in San Jose – these are at 28:
So it seems that for the homes which DO sell (and not all homes which are listed become sale pending), the average is in the 3-4 week range. What that says, pretty clearly too, is that if your listing is well marketed but doesn’t sell in three to four weeks, you’ve got a problem. At least that is the broad brush. Some types of properties will always take longer (think Santa Cruz Mountains, ultra luxury homes and others), but overall, your home should be seeing 3-5 showings per week and get at least one offer in 3-4 weeks or things are likely amiss.