Local real estate - some perspective.

Here is a simple summary of what real estate did lately, and in the past few years, in the Counties of the Bay Area of San Francisco.  Coming directly from the MLS (Multiple Listing Service):

Francis Rolland

Silicon Valley real estate specialist
Detailed, local trends etc...
Current mortgage rates
A place worth noting: Our Brother's Home in MountainView

To keep in perspective: Sales Price Graphs 2012-2013

To piggy back on my last blog, let's look at values in our part of the Bay Area of San Francisco (Silicon Valley).

To keep some perspective on the market in our counties, let's look at the graphs (past 2 years) of the average sales price for residential housing (houses, and PUD's combined, which include all townhouses and condominiums),
in the County of Santa Clara first:

(click on the graph to enlarge)

 For this County, the ratio of the Sales Price to the List Price follows the curve below, which shows that from March to May of 2013, the market was the most heated:

 

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Looking at the County of San Mateo, for the same statistics:

 ... and the ratio of Sales Price to List Price, which shows that in that County the market remained even more heated and unbalanced than in the County of Santa Clara, for the 2nd half of 2013.

 

 A few things to note: 

- another thing to remember when looking for a home in both Counties is that as an average, prices are higher in San Mateo County than in Santa Clara County;

- the overbidding was just starting to warm up in 2012;

- finally, something that is noticeable from the stats is that prices did not go down much at the end of each year, from the highs of the middle of the year.  This is somewhat of a new phenomenon that I had mentioned in an earlier blog (last year in November).

 

Interested in local statistics for your own neighborhood, and the value of your assets?  Just let me know, I'll be glad to study it.

 

Thanks for reading!

Francis

 

Silicon Valley real estate specialist
Detailed, local trends etc...
Current mortgage rates
A place worth noting: Our Brother's Home in MountainView

Price increase in the Silicon Valley

To piggy up on my last blog (is the market slowing down?) here is the evolution of sales prices of houses and CID's (common interest development = condos and townhouses).

These graphs that I just pulled show the amount of increase in average prices in a year and a half, and illustrate how indeed this is a factor in a possible slow-down of the activity.

They also show something that is unusual: prices did not really go down a lot at the end of 2012.  On previous studies I showed how prices really adjusted towards the end of the year, in 2011 and 2010.  But the market stayed strong at the end of 2012.

Finally these graphs show that indeed prices are (somewhat) flattening at this point, at least in the case of the County of Santa Clara.

 

 

If you have any area of interest, very local or at the City level, let me know and I will publish it for you.

 

Thanks for reading, as always!,

Francis

 

Silicon Valley real estate

Local market trends
Current Mortgage rates

Non-profit organization worth noting: Partners for New Generations.

Time to appeal that tax bill?

Is it time to appeal your tax bill?

It is that time of the year again when the Tax Assessor's Office of the County of Santa Clara sends to all homeowners a notice of the assessed value of their property.

If you think it is too high for your home (it always seems too high doesn't it, since you pay a yearly percentage of the assessed value) you have between July 2 and September 15 to file a review, or an appeal - depending on when you want to contest it.  The specific rules, and the specific dates to check for are on this page of the Santa Clara County official web site.

Where I can help is by providing you with MLS sales data that happened around the turn of the year of assessment.  This is information that you can send to the County in support of your request, along with any other data you may have (that would not be in the Realtors' MLS for instance).

One thing to remember though, as they point out on the web site - and I quote: "IMPORTANT NOTE: It is very important to understand that filing an assessment appeal does not relieve an owner of the responsibility for paying any outstanding tax bill no matter how unfair the owner may feel a bill might be."
.. no surprise there I guess :-\

For the County of San Mateo, the dates when one can appeal the assessed home value are different.  Details can be found on this page: County of San Mateo Treasurer Tax Collector.

Let me know, as always, how I can help!
Francis

Silicon Valley Realtor
Local Real Estate resources

A link worthy of interest: http://www.ourbrothershome.org/