Marcy Moyer

According to statistics, 80%+ people consider the quality of local school districts their number one concern when looking at residential home locations.

And some of these people don't even have kids. When an area boasts an excellent school system, the benefits of that system really bump up housing values. Housing prices don't fall as badly during a downturn, and they skyrocket back up quickly during an upturn. Buyers considering investment homes use schools as the most reliable criteria for determining where to build or buy. In places like Cupertino, where there's plenty of land available, developers bring properties which in turn bring children. These kids flood the school systems, and developers are encouraged to "give back" to the schools so they have ample resources to accommodate the influx of kids.

This creates a mutually beneficial cycle---good schools up land value, which brings developers, who help finance schools, which creates better schools, and so on.

Good schools are also at the core of a community's civic pride and sense of prestige. Think of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan, or Princeton and the town of Princeton, New Jersey. Think of Palo Alto and Stanford. And it goes a lot farther than colleges. Communities with nationally ranked public high schools and access to first-rate private schools are just as proud--and their houses are worth more. Living in a community where people are proud of their schools is attractive for buyers and young families looking for a place to raise their kids.

The California Department of Education awards the California Distinguished Schools award to "exemplary and inspiring" schools across the state. Only 5% of schools achieve this title, which lasts for four years and is a pretty iron-clad guarantee of a school's quality and respectability.

In 2007, twenty-one Silicon Valley schools (11 from San Mateo County and 10 from Santa Clara County) were awarded this distinction.

Three of these schools are in the Fremont Union High School District (South Bay) which includes Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Los Altos, Saratoga, and San Jose. 2007 marked the third time Cupertino High has won the CDS award. Three more are in the Sequoia Union High School District (Peninsula), which serves Atherton, Belmont, East Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Portola Valley, Redwood City, San Carlos and Woodside. The Campbell Union High School District had two winners, as did the San Mateo Union School District.

If you have any questions about the schools in San Mateo or Santa Clara County please feel free to contact me. I am here to help.
marcy@marcymoyer.com
www.marcymoyer.com
650-619-9275

Mantra is a relatively new restaurant in downtown Palo Alto right across the street from Beppo's. I stumbled across it on kind of a whim--my friend and I had something to celebrate, and decided to do so with some quality Indian food at a place we'd never tried. I love eating out in Palo Alto--there's a surplus of really high quality restaurants here. Usually, it's pretty hard to get me to stray from my favorites (Evia, Beppo's, Three Seasons, Amber), but Mantra came highly reccommended, and the online menu looked inspired and full of twists.
Mantra is touted by reviewers and on a number of competitive, "best-of" lists, and its design certainly reflects that. The restaurant has a lounge feel, low slung chairs, warm lighting, and a long swanky bar with the bottles lit up by colored lights that paves the way to the bathroom. It's white tablecloth, and the tables at the banquettes are comfortably aligned---you're not sitting on top of your neighbors, but you're still close enough to eavesdrop, if you strain. You're also close enough to get a good look at what everyone else is eating. Trust me, you'll take advantage of this.
My friend and I made reservations for an early dinner, and when we arrived at 5PM the place was nearly empty except for waitstaff milling about, killing time by polishing forks before the dinner rush. We ordered two appetizers. The first was a watermelon and tomato salad with hunks of feta cheese marinated in chili oil and fresh basil leaves. The second was the loveboat scallops, a trio of plump sea scallops marinated in pink peppercorns, fennel, and spring peas, each topped with a cherry of lobster nagu (or caviar, essentially). Let me just preface the following review--every dish we tasted was a home run, with the exception of the chili-garlic naan (only mediocre, especially lined up against all the other dishes).
The salad seemed like a wild card before it arrived, but once tasted watermelon, tomato, and feta seemed like the most natural trio in the world. The watermelon isn't that sweet, and pairing it with tomato really brought out tomato's fruitiness. It was like a funkier variation of a caprese salad, a summer version or something. Definitely try it. The scallops were perfection--unfortunately there were only three, and they went fast. They were covered in a pinkish sauce, presumably from the marinade, that was like a spicy scallop curry with peas. The plate was clean when the waiter got it back.
Seabass is one of the few fish I'm hardly ever dazzled by. Previously I've always found it kind of bland, and I often get it confused with cod, as it shares the same blank canvas taste. But our knowledgeable waiter's face lit up as he described the seabass special, and I was sold--when waiters gets a dreamy look on their face while describing a dish, I usually know what to order. After dinner at Mantra, I think I understand that the key to seabass is simply how it's cooked. That's it. My piece of bass had about a milimeter of golden crisp on the top and bottom made out of cooking oil, the fish skin itself, and little flecks of garlic. Inside, the fish was buttery and fell into flakes under a slight prod with my fork. The flakes were creamy and rich. The seabass laid over a cauliflower saffron and pea mash--I'm not quite sure how to describe it. The plate was laced with a tangy plum sauce (not sweet) that brought it all together. There were two sizable endives below the mash. They added a bitter and smoky element to the dish (pretty sure they were grilled).
My friend ordered the cumin and and pomegranate braised short ribs with saffron-thyme butter beans and garlic bok choy. The short ribs were cooked as perfectly as the seabass, and were at that melty state where you hardly need to chew. The sauce was flavorful---my only criticism of the night was that the warm, belly-filling dish seemed more suited for cold weather than the end of July.
For dessert we ordered the chocolate pyramid, which was basically a chocolate mousse carved into a cute little triangle with a few berries for garnish. It was good, but a little anti-climatic after such an explosive meal. Also, we were stuffed out of our minds. The texture of the chocolate was slightly dry.
One of the most widespread criticisms of Mantra is that the service is poor. We did not have an issue with this at all. Our water glasses were always full (but not annoyingly so) and when we told the host we were under time constraints he made every effort to ensure our meal moved quickly. The server knew the menu inside and out, and eagerly guided us through the dining experience, pointing out what the chef was known for and what was most popular on the menu.
I can't wait to go back.

It is very sad for me to see a theatre close, but especially one that has been part of my life. Even more stunning is that it has been part of the life of San Jose since 1935. It has been a cultural icon of the Silicon Valley since before we were the Silicon Valley, and more a collection of orchards with a little city in the middle.

AMT starting as CLO, Civic Light Opera, then San Jose Musical Theatre, and finally changed to American Musical Theatre in 1995 for its 60^th anniversary. Originally it was a strictly local company, but began hiring big stars to bring in a wider audience in the 80's. In the early 90's I saw Sally Struthers play Miss Hannigan in a wonderful production of "Annie" and a bevy of local children, many of whom were friends with my sons play the adorable orphans. This theatre was the major local employer of the abundant local musical theatre talent.

In 2002 AMT changed from a local theatre company to a national tour company. Instead of mounting local productions most of the musicals were national tours of Broadway Shows. Many local theatre people and audience members (myself included), were angry, but the theatre felt it could get a wider audience by changing the model.

Unfortunately they were wrong, and when they faced a financial disaster in trying to mount a tour of Disney's Tarzan, they had to close. I am very sorry for the theatre and the community. I can only hope that maybe this will leave an opening for another local, professional musical theatre company to emerge again.

I have a wonderful client who just closed escrow on a new town home built by KB Homes in Sunnyvale and it is a beauty! This new town home complex is at the corner of Evelyn and Wolf which is less than a mile from the vibrant downtown Sunnyvale. The 3 bedroom 3 ½ bath town home has about 1600 square feet on 3 levels with gorgeous flooring, beautiful espresso color maple cabinets, and all the bells and whistles of a new home for a price in the mid $600,000 range. There are many new developments to choose from in the bay area and I can help you find the one that is best for you. I just think that this is definitely a development worth checking out. My client is delighted with his.

There are currently 88 single family home for sale in Palo Alto.

There are currently 21 pending home sales (homes that have sales contracts but have not closed escrow) in Palo Alto.

6 single family homes closed escrow in the last week, 5 of which closed OVER asking price. The low price was $905,000 and the high price was $1,400,000.

What does this mean?

The volume of sales in Palo Alto is low. Last year there were fewer homes for sale and there were as many pending sales as active listings. The price of homes that are selling is very low for Palo Alto. A year ago the medium home price was over $2 million dollars. Last week the highest closed sale was 1.4 million. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the higher end is hurting.

If you have any questions about the market in Palo Alto please send me an e-mail:

marcy@marcymoyer.com