Silicon Valley market update - California/US Update

Here are some news from the trenches...  concrete information about what is happening in our local area of the Silicon Valley - Plus, for some perspective, some information about the hottest markets in the US. (which include San Francisco and San Jose in the first two...).

Silicon Valley – More listings are emerging in the region, but Santa Clara County is still facing a shortage of available homes and strong buyer demand, which in some cases is leading to bidding wars. Open houses drew “hundreds of visitors” in the last two weeks, reports the Cupertino office manager. All offers ratified over the past two weeks have been multiple offers and all deals have contingencies in place, according to the San Jose Almaden office manager. Prices were up in several communities in January compared to the same month in 2016, he noted. Almaden’s average sales price was $1,329,000 in January, which was up 12 percent from January 2016 and down 3 percent from December.  Blossom Valley’s average sales price followed a similar trend. The average sales price in that community was $708,000 in January, which is up 10.5 percent from January 2016 and down 9 percent from the prior month.  In contrast, Cambrian’s average sales price declined 10.5 percent from a year ago to $916,000 and was down 6 percent from December.  Santa Teresa’s average sales price rose 11 percent year-over-year to $759,000 in January and was also 2 percent higher than the average sales price recorded in December. Most homes are going into contract after just one weekend on the market and in some areas homes are selling well over 10 percent of asking list price, says the San Jose Willow Glen office manager. Despite the strong demand and brisk activity, “Sellers still need to be careful not to overprice as we see homes that are priced above market sit idle as more competitively priced homes are seeing all the action,” explained the San Jose Main office manager.


For the hottest real estate markets in the US (many of them in California), please follow this Coldwell Banker article.

Thank you 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

Property for sale: holding off on offers, or not?

Property for sale: holding off on offers, or not?

As a seller, you and your agent prepare the house and the file carefully, you do everything right and the big day comes: it goes on MLS, you have a Realtor tour, and an open house during the week end.  The critical marketing exposure time has started, and between the paper advertising, the internet advertising and all the promotion, the world is starting to learn about your house.

The big question at that point is: do you hold off for offers until a certain date (hoping for multiple offers), or do you take offers as they come? 

Holding off for offers is a good strategy, if the house is well priced: it ensures that the house has been seen enough, and that potential buyers have had the time to review the file and decide what they want to do, after looking at all the disclosures and reports you carefully prepared upfront.  This way, when offers come in, chances are they are informed and well thought-out, and you can have a choice between good offers.  Odds are high the transaction will close without problems.

But the down side of this strategy is that some buyers are turned off by the process, and do not want to participate in this competition.  Also, if you hold off too long, other competing properties will come on the market and you will lose some potential buyers.  Finally, with this strategy comes the difficult choice to make if someone brings you a “preemptive offer”, which is likely much higher than the asking price.  If you take it you are not going to see what the other offers could have been (the ones that followed your instructions and waited for the “offer date”).  If you do not take it you could lose that high offer.  Hint: it is a gamble.

So the alternative is to “take offers as they come”.  But what do you do when one comes too fast, may be even higher than your asking price, and you have the feeling that either 1/ the buyers did not read the file carefully just to go faster or 2/ not enough people have seen the house? 
Could you have a higher or better offer by waiting for more people to have the time to see the property and work on an offer?  In real estate we say that the first offer is often the best one.  But this saying goes in a typical market, and our market is anything but typical.

Two key elements are in play here: 1/ the (pricing) strategy you prefer to use, and 2/ the quality of the advice you have with your Realtor and how good the information you get is.  I explain to my clients how important it is to have someone on your side during this critical period, to assess the real interest that exists out there for your property.  The tools your Realtor uses are critical too.  It is essential to know: - number of showings, and feed-back, - number of page views on the various web sites, - how many people are looking at the disclosures online, and what exactly they are looking at.  Not all tools get you this information, and not all agents take the care to sift through it. Finally, it is critical that your Realtor follow closely any interested party (agent or principal), and answers questions as best as possible; indeed any unanswered question has a dollar amount attached to it.  Better informed buyers will bring you an offer, and one additional offer may mean a big difference in your final sales price.

As always, thank you so much for reading, and if you like what you read, let your friends know!

Francis

Silicon Valley real estate specialist
Detailed, local trends etc...
Current mortgage rates

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