Blossom Valley has been in a strong seller’s market for years, though it cooled significantly through 2025 and the first half of 2026 showed us that this year has been generally a touch cooler than 2025. Still, homes in good shape which are priced appropriately continue to sell quickly and over list price, and low single family home inventory isn’t helping to alleviate demand. While trends can vary based on price point, schools, zip codes, etc., the entire area is leaning slightly in the seller’s favor.
Here are some of the main points from the latest statistics:
Available inventory remained stable from the month before, but was up year-over-year for single family homes (SFH), while inventory for condos and townhomes rose above both timeframes.
Closed sales of SFH rose month-over-month and slipped year-over-year, but pending sales shrank below both. For condos and townhomes, closed and pending sales both fell below last month and last year.
The average sale to list price ratio for SFH slipped -0.1% month-over-month and -0.9% year-over-year, hovering just above asking price on average at 100.7%. For the condo and townhome market that ratio has had some up and down in recent months, and just rose above list price to 100.3%.
Days on market slowed to 31 days, while market absorption (days of inventory) sped to 36 days for SFH. For the condo and townhome market, the average DOM sped a hair to 37 days while DOI slowed to 75 days.
What are the usual seasonal trends? Typically February closings are when we start to see the first signs of the spring market accelleration, then March and April are often the peak months for pricing. From there, there is often some leveling out in summer, possibly with an autumn resurgence between the start of the school year and the holiday season when we tend to see more significant cooling through winter until the new year. That said, these are just general patterns, and we’ve had some wild years lately!
Looking back on 2025, it looks like the market peaked early in the year, in February, though it remained a hot market through spring with overall cooling through summer and some up and down in autumn before cooling into winter again. So far in 2026, data suggests that early spring acceleration began around January with increasing heating in the housing market in Blossom Valley through March, which appears to have been the season peak. Although the market has been cooling through summer, it’s been a mostly gradual decline with no sharp dips – there’s still fair activity and demand for good Blossom Valley homes that are priced and marketed well, though it’s milder than it was a year ago.
About Blossom Valley
The Blossom Valley area of San Jose is on the south end of the city and covers the 95123 and 95136 zip codes. For our MLS, it’s “area 12.” A more affordable section of Silicon Valley, it has much to offer in addition to more reasonable housing prices. Many areas enjoy views of the Santa Teresa Foothills or the Communications Hill knolls or even the coastal foothills in the distance and Mt Umunhum. One corner of it sits alongside beautiful Almaden Lake, too. Another corner is located at the crossroads of Highways 85 and 87, making it an easy commute destination for those working in downtown San Jose. And there’s an abundance of shopping and dining opportunities, including Oakridge Mall and various shopping centers.
And now for some market data.
Live Altos Reports
We’ll start with the Altos Reports, which gague the market based on active listings, not sales, and is updated about once per week.
95123 real estate market trends, automatically updated weekly:
High Voltage Power Lines from around the West Valley.
High voltage power lines are a “location issue” that impacts real estate values, and it sometimes elicits worry regarding safety.
High voltage power lines: how far is far enough?
Something we have spoken about recently with our clients is being far enough away so that if the tower and high voltage power lines were to fall, they’d miss your home and property. In our recent series of atmospheric rivers in January 2023, in San Jose one of these large transmission towers did fall down. It’s rare, but not impossible.
I have not seen a website that can tell us how tall any given tower is, but from what I have read online, it seems that most of them are under 200 feet tall, but some could be higher than that. In most cases, that puts the lines about 4 houses away if the lots are a typical 6,000 SF lot of 60′ across the front and 100′ deep.
We cannot speak to the concerns around potential increased risk of cancer or other problems. Each consumer should research that issue on his or her own.
Where are the high voltage power lines?
Map data from California Energy Commission “California Electric Transmission Lines” Interactive Map
Years ago, I painstakingly mapped out the transmission lines from what I knew on the ground and what I could tell from tracing the Google satellite view. (You can find that link near the bottom of this article.)
Today, though, there’s something better than my map available online. The California Energy Commission has a map of the transmission lines that you can view usingTHIS LINK. Or click on the image at the left.
From the landing page you can zoom in or out. It covers the entire state of California – you might find it interesting to navigate around a little.
Also, a few years ago, PG&E published an interactive map where you can view the location of electric lines (I’ve filtered the imbedded map below to show Electric Transmission Lines in the South Bay), and another map of natural gas pipelines, searchable by address. This doesn’t cover the entire state, but it does cover all of the Bay Area / Silicon Valley.
Note: Over the last few years each these maps have moved around a handfull of times and changed URLs. We do try to keep the links updated, but if the link is broken it doesn’t mean the map no longer exists – do a little hunting on Google or within the site and you should be able to find the map.
The PG&E map:
On the map I hand-drew at the bottom of this article I did also include the location of schools. Quite a lot of schools do have transmission lines present.
What other location issues are there to factor in? (more…)
The Thousand Oaks neighborhood in San Jose’s Blossom Valley area is highly sought-after as it is a tidy area, pleasant looking, and very convenient.
Thousand Oaks is bordered to the north by Hillsdale Ave, Pearl Ave to the east, Branham Ln to the south, and Almaden Expy to the west. Most of the area is within the 95136 zip code with a tiny portion in 95118. With great accessibility, tons of amenities, and a moderate price tag, Thousand Oaks is worth a look!
Thousand Oaks Neighborhood Lifestyle
This area offers quick and easy access to major commute routes such as Almaden Expressway, CA-85, and CA-87, as well as extraordinary access to public transit. There are two bus routes, and for only a 20 min walk, 8 min bike ride, or 4 min drive residents can access either of two VTA light rail stations, the Capitol and Branham stations on the blue line. From there you need only travel 2-3 stations to Tamien to reach the CalTrain connection (or skip VTA and drive 10 minutes to the CalTrain Capitol station).
But you don’t need to go far from home to get around. Westfield Oakridge Mall is a 5 minute drive (or 40 minute walk) to the south of Thousand Oaks, and there is plenty of shopping and dining surrounding the neighborhood. The post office is within one mile, along with various neighboring grocery stores, fast food chains, popular local restaurants, and a variety of other stores and businesses.
Still, it’s not all hustle and bustle. The Guadalupe River separates the neighborhood from Almaden Expressway and some of the businesses, parts of it creating a natural tree-filled gulch. Most streets are graced with trees along the sidewalks, enjoy a view of the foothills, and the use of two neighborhood parks: Terrell Park and Thousand Oaks Park. Terrell Park has picnic benches and BBQs as well as a playground, and sits adjacent to Terrell Elementary. Thousand Oaks Park is a ~35 acre community park with ample sports facilities, picnicking and BBQs, playgrounds, a fitness trail, and a community center (there’s even a map of the park amenities). (more…)
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:
It can be really challenging for people moving to Silicon Valley to get a sense of real estate prices, and perhaps more, comparing cost of from one town or district to another.
One question I get a lot is this: what does it cost to buy a 4 bedroom, 2 bath house of about 2000 square feet?
So to answer this question, let’s see what houses like this are selling for (4 bed, 2 bath, appx 2000 SF or 185 square meters) and see how the cost looks in one Santa Clara County / Silicon Valley area versus another.
Comparing Costs
Today I compared several areas and cities using this criteria: single family homes of 1800 – 2200 SF, 3-5 bedrooms, 2-3 bathrooms, on lot sizes of 6000 SF to 10,000 SF. Normally I would chart this over the last 2 months, or 60 days, but because of the low inventory causing the sellers market I have expanded the search to the last 3 months, or 90 days, for a better range. Because some areas have had a scarcity of inventory, I’ve added an addition to the chart titled NoS for Number of Sales within the given range.
Here’s how it shakes out in the “west valley areas” along the Highway 85 corridor, most of which are known to have good to great public schools. What areas are most affordable? One way of analyzing this is the “price per square foot” figure. Whenever I update the chart, I re-arrange the order of the cities from high to low based on the price per square foot, although there’s usually minimal movement.
Within this range, Campbell only had one sale over the last 90 days, so data for that segment may or may not be a good average. Both Los Altos and Saratoga had no sales within the last 90 days within these criteria, so their searches have been expanded to 0-180 days (or 6 months / half a year) and 0-120 days (or 4 months / a quarter year) respectively to provide data for comparison for this chart. Now that we have the data, let’s analyze it!
Home prices, like anything else which is bought and sold, are subject to the pressures of supply and demand. In recent weeks, we have seen an increase in the number of condominiums and townhomes for sale in San Jose, but a slight lessening in buyer interest. More supply with less demand equals lower prices. This will be a bit of a shock to most home sellers, who’d read about the madness of the market in February, March and April. But spring is nearly always stronger than summer – and we are seeing a fairly typical calming down in the Silicon Valley real estate market as we move into that milder summer market.
Since I mostly sell in the “west valley” areas of the Santa Clara Valley, I had a look at a few of them just to see what the trends look like. In this chart, please see the inventory of condominiums and townhomes for sale in 95120 (Almaden Valley), 95123 (Blossom Valley), 95124 (Cambrian) and 95125 (Willow Glen). Almaden seldom has many listings of townhouses or condos at all – over the last year, it looks as though it’s usually close to 5 at any given time. A slight uptick means 6 are available. The trend is much more dramatic in other parts of San Jose.
Home sellers: where the inventory rise is the steepest, you will probably see the most impact on the odds of selling and the price for which you can sell your home. Home buyers: if you see that inventory is largely unchanging, as it is in the tony Almaden Valley, the odds are good that it’s still pretty competitive for home buying and you will likely need to bring your best game forward to secure your future home.
Interested in other areas? I work all of Santa Clara County and would be happy to help you buy or sell your condo, townhouse or single family home here.
June 20 2014 condo inventory 95120 95123 95124 95125
Today I was doing a comparative (competitive) market analysis for a client in the Blossom Valley area of San Jose and was struck by two tract houses which sold at about the same time, same market conditions, on the same street, with the same floor plan, but for very different prices. We’ll refer to them as Home 1 and Home 2.
Home 1 was nicely remodeled – at least the kitchen and baths were obviously nicely upgraded. The house was furnished when the photos were taken and it looked very inviting. It was listed for about $630,000 and sold for $670,000 in under 2 weeks.
House 2 appeared to be in original condition – in other words, a “fixer” in the eyes of most Silicon Valley home buyers. A vacant home, it was not staged to sell but instead was starkly empty – and frankly, it was not at all inviting. This house was offered at around $550,000 and sold for $490,000 after almost 2 months on the market.
There was more than a 10% difference in the list prices of these two homes. Was that enough? Apparently not. One got bid up 5% more while the other one got bid down more than 10%. The difference in their ultimate sales price is a whopping $180,000, or 37% more for the home in better condition. Did the fixed up home have that much in improvements done to it? That’s unlikely! But buyers worry about having to do remodeling and repairs, and the more buyers worry, the less they pay. It’s a risk-reward ratio. If they risk more by buying a fixer, there needs to be a monetary reward. And they almost always get it.
Perhaps as a busy San Jose area home owner, you don’t have a ton of time or money to put into fixes, especially if it’s a rental or investment property which is now vacant. How can you maximize the return on investment? I hope that it is clear that it’s in your best interest to tweak the condition of appearance of your property to net more. If you’d like some insights on this, please continue reading on this subject at another article on this blog: Preparing Your Silicon Valley Home to Sell and Return on Investment. Or call me for a confidential home selling appointment today!
About half the active listings of single family homes for sale in the Blossom Valley district of San Jose are either short sales or REOs. For all of area 12 (our MLS name for this part of San Jose), as of right now there are 124 houses listed and 61 of them are either short sales or bank owned homes (REOs). (Blossom Valley is 2/3 95123 and 1/3 95136.)
Today we’ll look at the market generally and also see how the high end is faring there – most expensive homes being those listed at or over $550,000.
Months of inventory reflects the ratio between available homes (not under contract) with those which have sold/closed in the last month. That’s the absorption rate, or how fast homes that go on the market are being absorbed by buyers.
How “hot” is the market in Blossom Valley? It depends. Bank owned homes are flying off the market – particularly the most expensive ones. (more…)
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! (Sadly, the camera washed out the beautiful blue sky and made it appear white.)
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.
A key ingredient in understanding how the Silicon Valley real estate market is faring is the ratio of regular sales to distressed properties on the market (Bank owned or REO listings and short sale listings). Today we’ll study Los Gatos and four areas or districts of San Jose: Almaden Valley, Willow Glen, Cambrian Park, and Blossom Valley.
First, let’s look at the county numbers as a general overview. In all of Santa Clara County, there are 3537 houses, duet homes, condominiums & townhouses for sale and available (“status 1” for my Realtor readers) on our multiple listing service. Of those, merely 1964 are “regular sales” (56%), 1105 are short sales (31%) and 375 are bank owned homes or REOs (11%).
Now let’s drill down to a few areas: Los Gatos, Almaden Valley, Willow Glen, Cambrian Park and Blossom Valley. We’ll check out the ratio of regular sales of houses and condos in each of these areas. How do these compare to the county average of 56%? Have a look:
This is helpful information for both home buyers & home sellers. Home sellers need to understand the challenges that come with selling in an area with more short sales or REOs, if they are in one of those parts of the valley. Or vice versa: if there are few distressed properties on the market, this makes it easier to sell (with less downward pressure on pricing). Buyers need to appreciate that they will have better luck negotiating in areas where many homes are being sold under some pressure.
A quick disclaimer – if we narrowed this study by school district and even neighborhood school, we might find that these “general numbers” are actually quite different at the hyper-local level. For example, if you visit a post of mine about the Los Gatos real estate market on my Live in Los Gatos blog, you’d find that when we separated out the various school districts, and even price points, the ratio of distressed properties and their absorption rates change very dramatically. To see those, scroll down until you see the blue and yellow boxes.
The condo market in San Jose and nearby areas has taken a beating throughout our downturn. Even so, condos in Los Gatos, Almaden and Willow Glen are faring pretty decently.
Now let’s hone in on each of these five areas and the two main housing types to see the ratio in each of regular sales, short sales, and REOs. (more…)
Helping nice folks to buy and sell homes in Silicon Valley
Mary Pope-Handy, Realtor ABR, CIPS, CRS, SRES
Christie's International Real Estate Sereno, Los Gatos, CA 95030 408 204-7673 Mary@PopeHandy.com License# 01153805
Clair Handy, Realtor
GREEN
Christie's International Real Estate Sereno 214 Los Gatos-Saratoga Rd Los Gatos, CA 95030 ClairHandy@sereno.com License# 02153633
Mary & Clair sell homes throughout Silicon Valley: Santa Clara County, San Mateo County, and Santa Cruz County. with a special focus on: San Jose, Los Gatos, Saratoga, Campbell, Almaden Valley, Cambrian Park.
The real estate search
Use this link to browse properties which are for sale, under contract (pending) or sold. Want to view only homes which are available now?
Mary Pope-Handy, Realtor ABR, AHWD, CIPS, CRS, SRES Christie's International Real Estate Sereno DRE License #01153805 408-204-7673 mary@popehandy.com “Helping nice folks to buy and sell homes in Silicon Valley since 1993”
Clair Handy, Realtor, GREEN Christie's International Real Estate Sereno DRE License #02153633 408-721-6160 clairhandy@sereno.com “Helping nice folks to buy and sell homes in Silicon Valley”
This is the Valley of Heart's Delight blog , covering Silicon Valley real estate - Santa Clara County, San Jose, Los Gatos, Cupertino, and nearby communities in the South Bay Area and lower Peninsula. Find info on neighborhoods, disclosure issues, buyer and seller tips, and housing market conditions in the west valley and most of the county.Please also see my other websites and real estate market statistics site, which are listed in the sidebar, above.
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Mary Pope-Handy, Realtor ABR, CIPS, CRS, SRES Sereno DRE License #01153805 408-204-7673 mary@popehandy.com
“Helping nice folks to buy and sell homes in Silicon Valley since 1993”
