Silicon Valley Real Estate Market Update for March 2009

How's the Silicon Valley real estate market?

The market is heating up! Anecdotally, my phone is ringing off the hook and my email is jammed with people wanting to discuss home buying and home selling in the San Jose area.I have talked a few sellers out of selling - it's important to be extremely realistic right now since the odds are against selling.

What about pricing for Santa Clara County homes that do sell? Are sales improving? Yes! It's better.

Countywide, home sales increased, year-over-year, by a whopping 30.3% in February. The vast majority of sales are in the lower price ranges. One Realtor friend of mine said to me, "my sales are down, but the price point where I'm selling is REALLY down". That's just the reality of today's market. It's harder to sell a high end home than it is to sell a home under $500,000.

Prices are stabilizing. The median price for single-family, re-sale homes was flat for Santa Clara County at $450,000 compared to January. It's huge that this general number is flat and not falling!

• for San Jose as a whole, the median list price is down by about 2% and average sales price is up about 2%
• for Almaden Valley, it's up about 20% for both numbers
• for Cambrian Park, it's up 2% for median and up 7% for average sales price
• for Willow Glen, it's up about 28% for both!
• for Los Gatos, it's negative territory: down 28% for median list price, down 8.6% for average sales price
• for Saratoga, the numbers are badly skewed since there were NO sales the month before and in the recent month there were a few - so it's up 75% but this is a statistical abberation
• for Campbell, the numbers are up about 27% for median and up about 8% for average sales price
• Palo Alto is often the last to crumble and the first to rise. The market there is hopeful but mixed, with the median sales price up 1.6% and the average sales price down 5.6%.

Want more Santa Clara County cities or areas within San Jose? Or want to see data on condos? You can read the full on-line report here: http://popehandy.rereport.com/

If you'd like to read a more in-depth newsletter about current market conditions, please click here: http://rereport.com/scc/print/Mary.PopeHandySCC.pdf.