The Silicon Valley Real Estate Market

There is some confusion about the state of the real estate market in the Silicon Valley lately.  Are prices going up, are they going down? You hear anything and everything.

These two graphs show the average price per month since the beginning of 2018, one for houses, and the other one for condominiums and townhouses combined.  I show here the cities of Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, Los Altos and Los Altos Hills, and Menlo Park. (East Palo Alto for houses).
The Counties of Santa Clara and San Mateo as a whole are also shown, giving some perspective on the larger numbers.
For May, figures are just trends - it is as of 5/20/19

Click on the graphs to see larger

Conclusion? Prices are about at the same level. The reality is that there are segments of the market which are rather up, and some segments which are down from their highs of a year ago (which were the results of many multiple offers).  Small entry level condominiums would be in the "soft" category,  and I would consider them a deal right now. Remodeled homes in desirable areas would be in the "solid" category.

To know in which category you are and how to structure your offer, you definitely need a specialist.

Factors helping the market:
- low interest rates,
- more inventory for some categories

Factors keeping it competitive:
- very high job creation in the Valley - see this recent article from the Mercury News, by George Avalos.

Thank you for reading!  Share if you like, and contact me for your real estate questions!

Francis Rolland

My Home Valuation tool
Detailed, local trends etc...
Current mortgage rates   (low!)

Price Correlation - SF Bay Area - Nasdaq

Interesting correlation between the average sales price in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the Nasdaq over the past 20 years or so.

This graph is compliment of our Coldwell Banker analysts, and shows the average sales price for Coldwell Banker properties only, not ALL of the sales of properties on the market.

Still, it shows how heavily our local market, around San Francisco, is leaning on the high-tech heavy Nasdaq.

Click on the graph to see larger.

Thanks for reading!
Francis

Price Your Home
Detailed, local trends etc...
Current mortgage rates

Average prices in the SF Bay local Counties - evolution.

To piggy back on an earlier blog of mine, dating back to January of this year, here is an update to the graphs showing the increase in average prices in both the counties of Santa Clara and San Mateo; the figures include both the houses and the condominiums/townhouses.

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.

Local Housing: Quarterly Prices: a perspective...

Here is a graph that I update regularly for the Cities around here:
Quarterly prices of houses since 2007 in the Valley:

Although we have to be careful with any statistical figures, one can definitely see a trend for the Cities of Los Altos and Palo Alto.
The average price of homes in a given area can be influenced by several factors: just because the graph points upwards, it does not necessarily mean that prices are going up. Instead, you could have just a few large and very expensive homes raising the average in a tight market where few homes have sold.
Conversely, you could have a lot of entry-level houses sold and fewer more expensive ones, which would keep the average price low, even though you may have an actual up-market.

However, in this case these graphs confirm what we have been seeing in the past few months: a large demand, not satisfied by enough inventory, resulting in a sharp rise in housing prices.

Francis

Silicon Valley Real Estate

Local market trends

useful links

Community Services Agency - worthy of interest...

Silicon Valley Counties: real estate activity

To keep in perspective: a lot is being said in the press about real estate in the Bay Area, including a lot of foreclosures and short sales happening all the time. But really, when you add all properties combined, (houses and condominiums, townhouses, PUD’s etc…), what really happened to the market in our area in the past 3 years? I think simple graphs can help us understand how we fare here in the Silicon Valley. In the Counties of San Mateo & Santa Clara, let us look at a simple measure: the average sales price:
 

Individual Cities can be very different. For instance Palo Alto has the following history in the same 3 years, showing here in blue the average time to sell a home:

the variations in sales prices are not as steep as the averages in the County.

Let me know and I will prepare a study of your own City/ neighborhood.
Thanks for reading !
Francis

Silicon Valley Real Estate

Local market trends

useful links

Mortgage rates

1st 10 Months, 2010 and 2011...

Curious to see the evolution of average prices, from one year to the next?
It turns out it is pretty similar.

Here looking at the compared graphs of both the County of San Mateo, and Santa Clara, from one year to the next:

The one thing that appears at this point is a slight decrease in prices of single family residences in the County of Santa Clara. But this happened too at the end of 2010. Overall the curves are fairly similar.

What is also apparent in these graphs is that the average values are higher in the County of San Mateo than in the County of Santa Clara. 
Finally, the end of the year is looking up for the San Mateo County so far.

Francis

Silicon Valley Real Estate

Local market trends

useful links

Mortgage rates

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)

Silicon Valley real estate resource
Real estate links of interest 

Mountain View prices: condos vs houses

To piggy back on my last blog, it is definitely interesting to research and compare how different areas within Mountain View (or any City for that matter) may have fared in the past 4 years, whether in the condominium market or the house market.  But how did houses fare vs condominiums?

It turns out that they did about the same:  from the average price in 2006 to the average price in 2010, condominiums lost 4.4% in value, while houses lost 3.4%  - a close contest.  The only thing one can see is that the condominium market went down faster than the house market in 2008 - in average figures... not in median figures.

It mirrors fairly closely what the County of Santa Clara experienced.  Are you curious about your area?  Let me know I am curious too.

Francis

Silicon Valley real estate

A link worthy of interest:  Community Services Agency