Santa Teresa (SJ)
Silver Leaf Park in the Santa Teresa area of San Jose
How’s the Santa Teresa real estate market? The scenic Santa Teresa area of San Jose is popular as it’s a bit more affordable but offers lovely views of the hills and public schools that seem to be improving over time, making the area more desirable. These positives seem to be helping that area to hold its value pretty well.
Santa Teresa (our MLS Area 2) includes a small bit of the 95123 zip code, which is more expensive, but most of that zip is Blossom Valley, so we will omit it. The 95138 zip code is about half Santa Teresa and half Evergreen (more expensive area), so take those numbers with a big grain of salt. I find the 95119 zip code to be most helpful, but even then, the school district is divided between Oak Grove and Morgan Hill.
Weekly update from Altos Research with a “market profile” of San Jose’s Santa Teresa area, zip code 95119 for single family homes / houses:
This week’s update (as of writing this, January 7th) shows a strong seller’s advantage in a market bouncing between strong and mild.
Weekly update from Altos Research with look at a glance of zip code 95138 for single family homes or houses:
Silver Leaf Park in the Santa Teresa area of San Jose
A scenic, more affordable part of San Jose with excellent freeway access is the Santa Teresa region, which is perhaps the southernmost part of the city. The east foothills and the Santa Teresa foothills create pleasant views and some areas are still rural. Price ranges have a wide gap between lowest and highest, with some luxury properties in some of the hilly eastern side. Most of the homes for sale, though, are less than the median or average for San Jose as a whole.
Where is the Santa Teresa area?
Per the MLS, the Santa Teresa district of San Jose spans a few zip codes (95119, 95138, 95139 and a little bit of 95123 north of 85 and the 95119 zip code). (The city of San Jose has a different map that includes far more of 95123.) An easier description might be the area close to where Highway 101 and Highway 85 intersect in South San Jose, or the area through which Santa Teresa Boulevard runs. It is north of the Coyote Valley, it borders on Blossom Valley and the southern part of Evergreen, and is just over the hills from the Almaden Valley. It truly is South San Jose, and part of it even has Morgan Hill Schools, though most of the area is served by the Oak Grove School District.
The Santa Teresa foothills include gorgeous, large open space, the Santa Teresa County Park. It’s a wonderful place to walk or hike, and for suburban dwellers, easy access to rural or natural space, even within the city.
Some of the better known neighborhoods in Santa Teresa are these:
- Avenida Espana (95119 zip, has Morgan Hill Schools – Bernal Road is the cutoff)
- Chantilly (95119 zip, has Morgan Hill Schools)
- Edenvale (kind of a sub-district)
- Sunspring
- Silver Leaf (near Silver Leaf Park, between Monterey Highway & Hwy 101 – 95138 zip code)
- Basking Ridge (newer homes on a small hill just over 101 – one of the last subdivisions you see before hitting the open countryside, north of Metcalf Road – 95138 zip code)
- Los Paseos (95119 zip, has Morgan Hill Schools)
- California Maison
- Burning Tree
- Martinvale Vineyard
- Rancho Santa Teresa
- Oak Ridge
- Makati
- Anderson
- Miner
- Oak Grove
- Deer Run
- Great Oaks
If you arrived into Silicon Valley via Highway 101, driving south from San Francisco, you might believe that the Santa Clara Valley, the San Jose area and Silicon Valley as a whole has got to seem to be the ugliest place on earth. Although heavily traveled, that is not the “scenic route”.
So, too, if you are looking for a place to live and are groping to find a place that is reasonably priced, fairly safe and not a terrible commute distance. You might not even have “is nice looking” on your wish list. You might not think it’s possible if all you ever see are the ugly concrete tilt-up buildings in north San Jose, Santa Clara, Alviso, or anywhere along the 237 corridor. That area is an architectural wasteland.
Let me assure you: there are a lot of beautiful places in Silicon Valley where you can rent or buy a home. But how do you find them? It helps a lot to have a local give you a few pointers. I’ll give you some tips today on finding a scenic place to live.
Hills – An easy way to find a scenic location to make your home is to settle near the hills, especially those in the west valley (the Santa Cruz Mountains or the Coastal Range) as they are green year-round. Communities at the base of the west valley foothills include, in Santa Clara County, Palo Alto, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Cupertino, Saratoga, Monte Sereno, Los Gatos, and the Almaden Valley area of San Jose. All of these areas are adjacent to the hills or mountains and offer far better than average schools (many of them qualify as great – compare costs between these areas). Continue reading
The annual market report is out at popehandy.REReport.com and we can now learn how 2011 compared to 2010. The median sales price for houses in Santa Clara County was off 5.3% overall. But from one part of the valley to the next it varied wildly with 6 cities or areas finding themselves in positive territory while others were off by double digits.
In the image to the left, I’ve put into bold the cities where the median sales price of houses which sold and closed escrow in 2011 were ahead of 2010’s pricing.
What is it that makes Gilroy, Los Altos Hills, Los Gatos, Mountain View and Palo Alto “in the black”?
Most of these cities/towns are upscale, west valley communities. But so are Saratoga, Cupertino, and Monte Sereno.
Gilroy was especially hard-hit with the housing downturn so perhaps in that case, it’s just coming back into more of a balance. (Then again, so was Morgan Hill and it’s still off by 12%.)
The LinkedIn IPO and others in the Palo Alto area drove prices up for some parts of the housing market nearby and it’s likely that this explains the positive growth for Palo Alto, Mountain View, and Los Altos Hills. That said, it would seem that Los Altos, and perhaps even Sunnyvale would have seen stronger numbers on the same account. Perhaps school scores are the key driver here.
Los Gatos, Saratoga and Monte Sereno often behave somewhat similarly as they are adjacent to one another and often attract similar home buyers who want good schools, a nice downtown area nearby and scenic beauty with the hills. The annual numbers show Monte Sereno down 6.7%, Saratoga down 2% but Los Gatos up 6.4%. With Monte Sereno, there are very few sales each month and each year (only about 4,000 residents), so there can be a wider swing without it necessarily being accurate. Saratoga and Los Gatos each have about 30,000 people who call these areas home, though, so the data is much more helpful. Saratoga and Los Gatos both have multiple school districts, views, homes with better proximity to “downtown” and more variables – I think we’d have to dig a lot deeper to learn why these two neighboring markets are so diverse. We might also have to look at multiple years of data to see if Saratoga spiked while LG slumped to explain the difference. Continue reading
Yesterday Jim and I attended the Los Gatos Creekside Sports Park kickoff celebration (will nearly touch Vasona Lake County Park and is just off of University Avenue) and as we often do, drove east on Blossom Hill Road to get home. Straight ahead of us, hanging over south San Jose and Santa Teresa and extending north, was a huge and darkened cloud. Smoke? Smog? Rainclouds?
We drove up Harwood Road and to the top of Harwood Court to get a better view of it. It did look like it started in south San Jose or further south than that. Some hikers were trekking up the challenging hill and we asked them if they knew if it were a fire. “Can’t smell it,” one replied “so it must be smog – just awful!” Smog, though, tends to dissipate from side to side and not hang together so tightly as what we saw.
View from Harwood Court in Los Gatos of the smokey skies created by the Cal Fire “controlled burn” in south county
We flipped on KLIV, the San Jose based AM radio station (channel 1590) that best covers local news & traffic, and learned right away that it was a controlled burn. This morning I googled the fire and learned that it’s a 2 day burn at part of Henry Coe State Park, overseen by Cal Fire, with more scheduled for today.
The Morgan Hill Times reports that “The prescribed burn is part of the ‘Western Zone Complex’ controlled fire in the remote area of the park. The fire will take place on the Middle Ridge Trail off Hobbs Road, about eight miles northeast of Morgan Hill, according to Calfire fire prevention specialist Chris Morgan. ”
With our 300 sunny days per year in Silicon Valley (at least most years!), golf is a sport enjoyed year round here in the San Jose area. Living near a golf course, or having a golf course view, is highly desirable as it provides scenic open space as well as convenience for avid golfers.
Silicon Valley Golf Homes, Silicon Valley Golf Properties
There are beautiful courses throughout the South Bay Area and it’s possible to find small condos with views of them at fairly affordable prices (Sunnyvale’s Sunken Gardens area is one of them). Today, though, I want to provide a list of homes for sale near golf courses in the foothill areas of Silicon Valley. Many of these will also be luxury homes. So the MLS list of these houses on the market which you can browse includes these areas:
San Jose areas including Evergreen & Silver Creek, Santa Teresa, Blossom Valley and Almaden; Los Gatos, Monte Sereno, Saratoga, Cupertino, and Los Altos.
There are golf courses to be found in other parts of Santa Clara County too (Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara and more) – let me know if you are interested in these parts and I can send you a link for searching them for similar residential real estate.
Here are a available or recently sold homes near to golf clubs:
On Tuesday of this week I was showing some nice folks around the San Jose area. As part of our tour, we stopped in at Valley Christian High School (south San Jose – Santa Teresa area). The sky was clear and the views spectacular! (Disclaimer – in this photo, the sky ended up looking white, so I did tinker with the color.)
From here we were looking at the Santa Teresa Foothills ((lowest, closest hills). In front of them are the Santa Teresa & Blossom Valley areas of San Jose. Behind them is Almaden Valley.
Along the coastal range in back, the peak on the far right (with a flat area) is Mt. Umunhum. To the far left, the higher peaks are where you’ll find Loma Prieta.
