What's going on downtown Los Altos?

People ask me all the time what is going on downtown Los Altos, as it seems the whole town has been a work in progress since last year.
The City started redoing the corners of the downtown streets at the end of last year, 2011, but there are a lot more things that were started then.

I thought I would show something published by the Town Crier about a year ago, which I find myself copying often and sending to the curious inquirers  - ok, this is not recent, but still gives a better idea to the occasional visitor ;-)    Please see below:

and:

Kind regards,
Francis

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Some perspective on the Silicon Valley market....

Some recent headlines turned heads and generated a lot of questions among my clients recently, headlines such as: “Case-Schiller Down 5.1%; What Will Stop It?” and “The Depressing State of Housing”.

What is really going on in the Valley? I find that chosen graphs speak much better than headlines. Comparison of the first 5 months of last year, with the same months this year, for the Counties of Santa Clara and San Mateo:

This graph shows roughly the same movement as last year. If anything, it shows a better situation, since we do not have in 2011 the government incentives for 1st time homebuyers that we had in 2010 (Calif. 1st time homebuyers credits, and federal incentives). These created last year a rush to buy before June, which does not exist in 2011.

Comparison charts for Sunnyvale and Mountain View:

Comparison charts for Los Altos and Palo Alto:

Average prices can vary  a lot from month to month.  These charts just show that overall the market is fairly the same as last year, at the very least.
Thanks for reading!
Francis

Mortgage rates: Week ending 6/23/2011:  - 30-yr. fixed: 4.50 fees/points: 0.8%   - 15-yr. fixed: 3.69 fees/points: 0.7%    -  1-yr. adjustable: 2.99% Fees/points: 0.5%  (Source: Freddie Mac)

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Los Altos prices: condos vs houses.

In the category: condominiums vs houses, I was curious to see how Los Altos fared, in plain simple terms.


Does it vary a lot from one City to another?  Not much: it turns out that it is fairly similar between Los Altos and Mountain View.
The following graph shows how condominiums and houses evolved in the past 5 years:

In Los Altos the condominium market started to be soft earlier than houses, and is a little slower to recover; - but overall is doing very well.




Los Altos townhall

  From the average price in 2006 to the average price in 2010, condominiums lost 4.3% in value, while houses lost 5.3% .  This is about the same as what the market did in Mountain View.

I think what is important to note is the general direction these figures point to, and the general idea that the peak was in 2007 - 2008, and the low 2009.

Again, it mirrors fairly closely what the County of Santa Clara experienced.      --Are you curious about your area? Let me know I am curious too.  I'll run the figures for you.
Francis
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