I'm holding open a gorgeous home today in Los Altos. Priced at $1,899,000 - this home is very affordable and located in one of the quietest neighborhoods in the entire town. It's within walking distance of the Los Altos Hills Country Club and Loyola Corners. It's 10 minutes to downtown Los Altos - even with the lights. You get a nice "country" feel on the street with a nice mix of homes styles plus new and old construction.

This home has been substantialy upgraded in 2005 and 2008 but looks "new". The floor plan has nice flow to it and offers easy access to the back yard from the kitchen, family room, and master bedroom. The yard offer a pool with automatic cover and plenty of room to move around. The lot is 11,904sf.

I can't say enough about this place and highly recommend stopping by to take a look. We had a lot of visitors to the open house yesterday and I'm sure this will move fast.

Los Altos and Los Altos Hills are premium locations in the heart of Silicon Valley. From the quaint, tree-lined streets and fine restaurants and shops of downtown to the sprawling estates in the Hills, Los Altos offers everything a luxury home buyer could be looking for. But what if you’re on a budget and still want to buy in Los Altos?

Here are Los Altos and Los Altos Hills homes for sale under $1M as of February 10, 2012. To see the MLS listing for a property, request additional information, or to schedule a showing, click on the property’s Price.

Note: There were no Los Altos Hills homes priced under $1M as of today. Current listings in the Hills run from $1,588,000 to $12,995,000.

Visit Silicon Valley MLS Searchto find current listings for properties of all types anywhere in Santa Clara, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito Counties.

Please Contact Usfor help buying or selling Silicon Valley real estate.

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Tags: Los Altos CA homes and land, Los Altos Hills CA homes and land, Silicon Valley homes and land, Los Altos home listings, northern California homes and land, Los Altos real estate agents, Silicon Valley real estate agents

John A. Souerbry & Associates (DRE -01370983) Tel (650) 815-6182 john@jsrealproperty.com

Update!

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Test. Test. Test. Testing 123. Test. Test. Test. 1 2 3 4 5 Testing. 20120212abc123test. Test.

... an exercise to see how long it takes Google to update the web page cache. Any guesses? Hours? Days? Weeks? Months? Reminder: Don't change the blog title (URL) ... Check back for updates in the comments...

Google Cache

What to do if you accidentally post a draft, which is stored in the Google cache?

Lessons Learned

If you update the page, Google may not visit the page again for awhile (days or weeks) and even if the page content changes, the Google cache is not always updated.

See comments below for some details of this story...

One of the biggest issues with downtown Los Altos has been the lack of large chain stores. Many of the property owners have wanted to keep the "village" feel and only have small, local shops present - especially on Main Street. Of course, time and countless lessons learned by other towns has shown that that trend is prone to failure. Look at the number of vacancies downtown and you'll see what happens when small businesses with little economic backing do. A recent article in the Los Altos Town Crier talked about this issue, which is what prompted this blog.

What chains could we possible want downtown that would augment the retail experience? Interestingly enough, Apple was mentioned as was Niketown. However, I think we could use a few others that would appeal. We have one major sumbling block before they show up - small properties!

There are 3 major owners downtown who still hold narrow lots, some adjoining. If those owners would sell those lots, and merge them, we'd have more wide lots with 3000+ sf of store space to accomodate these chains. The town is is desparate need of more, better stores - c'mon owners, get with the program! Is keeping the Los Altos "village" feel so important that you'll sink the town's economy to do it? I think we can have a successful mix of chains and small businesses, very much like Los Gatos. If they can do it, so can we!

My suggestions for appealing chains include:

• Children's Place (clothes)
• Coldwater Creek (clothes)
• Ed Hardy (clothes)
• Gap (clothes)
• Justice (clothes)
• Pottery Barn (housewares)
• Morton's, Ruth's Chris, or any other steakhouse chain
• Lego (toys)

There are several others but these, in my opinion, fill a gap in what we already have downtown without seriously impacting existing merchants. In particular, we don't have a serious steakhouse in town and that's popular with many folks. We have one toy store and the Lego products would probably augment their business instead of taking away from it by bringing more "toy focused buyers" downtown. The clothes are a no-brainer and these stores are very popular right now.

I'd like to get some more exciting restaurants downtown too. A theme restaurant that's family oriented would be interesting but I'm not sure where to put it. Something like "Rainforest Cafe", you know what I mean? Something with a little flash. A little "sizzle" downtown would really attract consumers. Sleepy little villages don't tend to make much money.

Home buyers are continuing to snap up pretty much anything that comes on the market. Even though we're not officially in the hot selling season, multiple offers are still prevelant. The lack of inventory meant only 9 home sold in January 2012 but the average selling price continued to rise to $1,984,286 for single-family homes. This is a sharp rise from a year ago and is actually the highest January average selling price...ever. This is a sign of things to come for the Los Altos market overall as the normal hot market time is just starting.

Single-family homes are still selling fairly quickly, only on the market 43 days on average. They're getting offers in line with listing prices, matching what we saw in November 2011 (97.4%). For a typically slow month, this shows a strong market to start the year. What's interesting is that there were 23 new listings and 23 expired listings so the loss of 9 due to sales means a net loss of inventory. This will see prices most likely hold firm and rise.

Is Los Altos a buyers market or sellers market? It's definitely a seller's market. There is no doubt that prices will continue to rise, just as they have in January. My suggestion for buyers is that they prepare for tough negotiations on prime properties. We're likely to see a return of cash buyers and multiple offers going into the late-winter and spring markets.