California Home Price Fundamentals

California Home Price Fundamentals.

Check out this interactive map of the “Home Price Fundamentals” for California, and individual Counties.

The interactive tool is provided by the California Association of Realtors (CAR)

Some of these graphs are most interesting, like the one called “Years of Savings Required for Down payment”, which is now close to 20.  The one called “Price to Income Ratio” shows that it takes about 8.3 years of paychecks to purchase the median priced home in California right now.

 

If you look at the County of Santa Clara though, the figures are staggering: it takes over 11 years of salary to afford the median priced home, and it takes over 26 years of savings (at 6% of savings rate) to afford the typical 20% down payment.

It also shows that in California, if you are in the median, it takes about 59% of the yearly income to pay for your mortgage...

Thank you for reading,

Francis

Home Valuation tool
Detailed, local trends etc...
Current mortgage rates   (slight recent uptick)
A worthy local non-profit to remember: Community Services Agency in Mountain View.

Perspective on the Real Estate Market - Silicon Valley - USA

A perspective on the real estate market in the US, and in the Silicon Valley - the Bay Area of San Francisco.

As I update this amazing graph every year around the month of April - May, I cannot stop being amazed at the evolution of prices in our corner of the world.
This graph makes me think somewhat about the technical progress of the past 3 decades  - also unique to our generation.  Although obviously it is not in direct correlation to scientific discoveries, since it is a reflection of other factors like supply and demand, economic upticks and downturns and geographic particularities, the graph is as extreme in its own way, and covers a time frame that is the same.

Click to see a larger graph.

What happens after the end of 2016?  For now the market is still a strong sellers' market in most of the US regions. 
Nationwide the median home value is now higher than right before the "Big Crisis", at $198,000, according to the April Zillow® Real Estate Market Reports (Svenja Gudell article).
However, let's not forget that this is not true of all of the US: in 17 of the 32 largest metropolitan housing markets prices are still below-peak (like in Las Vegas, Phoenix, Miami).

Here in the Silicon Valley the market remains very much a seller's market. At this point, I believe the annual appreciation will be easily around 6-8%.  The areas with the lowest average prices may even show a higher rate of appreciation.  Multiple offers are the norm, and cash is king...

Thank you for reading,
Francis

Trends: Local prices and graphs.
Check your Home Value
A worthy local non-profit to remember: Community Services Agency in Mountain View