As always, one has to be careful with statistics: a few very high priced homes can skew the average to a high number, even though nothing much else has happened in the market place.
A few things to note:
- In general, average prices go down at the end of the year and until January. Last year was shielded in large part from this phenomenon: prices went down, but not much. We will see if this year acts more "normal".
- The total number of homes (houses and condos) for sale last year at the end of August was 1,852 in the Cnty of Santa Clara, and it is now 1,778 - a little lower. Still a lack of inventory ...
- Prices were an average of $715.7K in the County of Santa Clara in Jan of 2013, and they are now $992.5K, a 38.7% increase !
- From the graphs below, it seems that averages move faster up and down in the County of San Mateo than in the County of Santa Clara. I believe it reflects the fact that a lot more properties went into the averages in SCC than in SM Cnty: 25,705 listings for Santa Clara County, vs 10,619 for San Mateo County. The more properties you have, and the more the averages are going to be representative of the real market, instead of the specifics of the homes. To say it simply, if you have a few very high properties, they will have less of an effect on the average of 25,000 sales vs the average of 10,000 sales.
One final note: the inventory of homes for sale in January of 2014 was around 900, about half of what it is now. So it is a better time to look for a home! Also, many trades linked to real estate, like property inspection services, termite companies, stagers, report being extremely busy right now (beg. of Sept.). This could mean that inventory may increase soon...
County of Santa Clara:
County of San Mateo:
Thank you for reading,
Francis
Silicon Valley real estate specialist
Detailed, local trends etc...
Current mortgage rates
non-profit organization worth noting: Partners for New Generations - now called:
Mentor Tutor Connection.
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