Silicon Valley Real Estate Blog

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Update 12/3/12: Classics at Station 361 announced last week that Phase I featuring 29 beautifully-appointed homes is sold out.  With sales starting at the end of June, the sales absorption rate was just under 1.5 homes per week.  Homebuyers started moving into their new homes in September, so Classics at Station 361 is starting to look like a neighborhood with residents enjoying the community amenities.  Look for announcements regarding Phase 2 in the New Year.  The 36 homes in Phase 2 are sure to be as popular with homebuyers as Phase 1.  Be sure not to miss this great opportunity to own a new home close to downtown Mountain View.

Update 10/4/12: Of the 65 29 phase 1 homes that were made available at Classics at Station 361 only four properties are remaining on market as of October 4, 2012. You can view our Station 361 review on 1SiliconValley.com. Keep reading to learn more about each of the available remaining homes:

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Categories: Bay Area Real Estate, Mountain View

When interviewing for a new job, how do you prepare yourself? You get a haircut and ensure your hands are well-manicured. You put on your best suit, pick tasteful jewelry, and shine your shoes. In short, you ensure that you present a polished, professional image so that the interviewing company will hire you for a nice sum of money. Because everyone knows, ‘you only have one chance to make a first impression.’

Now take this same lesson – you only have one chance to make a first impression – and apply it to a home for sale. I ran across the perfect scenario to illustrate my point while showing properties recently.

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Categories: Home Owners, Real Estate Stories

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[Updated 12/13/2012] The Estates at Sunnyvale by Toll Brothers has opened its Sales Center and model homes. Located at 700 Timberpine Avenue in Sunnyvale, the Sales Center is open Thursday through Monday from 11am to 6pm.  Model photographs are now up on the Toll Brothers website if you would like to preview them from the comfort of your home. Homes are priced from the $1.3 million.

Sunnyvale has long been known to offer homebuyers the best value for their money in the Bay Area. It is now seeing a renewal by way of several new home communities under construction. The Estates at Sunnyvale by Toll Brothers will join this renaissance when the new home community opens its doors soon.

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Categories: Home Buyers, Silicon Valley News, Sunnyvale

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Classics at Station 361 is the latest new home community in Mountain View. With models open for only two months and 13 of its 65 homes sold in just three sales releases, Classics at Station 361 has become an instant hit with homebuyers.

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Categories: Bay Area Real Estate, Home Buyers, Mountain View

If you are considering selling your investment property, remember that the IRS will tax your capital gains at 15% and then California will take an additional 9.3% for a grand total of 24.3% in taxes on your hard-earned equity. If you would like to defer that painful tax bill, you may want to consider doing a 1031 Exchange.

What is a 1031 Exchange you may ask? A 1031 Exchange allows investors to ‘exchange’ ‘like-kind’ properties rather than sell them through the use of a Qualified Intermediary who holds the sale proceeds from the first property until a replacement property(ies) can be purchased within a very specific, non-extendable time period. Let us walk through the salient points of this description one-by-one so that we can get a better understanding of the 1031 Exchange requirements.

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Categories: Investors

High demand in a low housing supply market can be caused by any number of things. The end result though is always the same – a bidding war.

I know what you’re thinking, “Home sellers have the advantage in a bidding war.” Yes, home sellers currently own the home on which the potential homebuyers are trying to outbid each other. But, it isn’t always the highest bid that gets the home. I cannot count the number of home purchases in which I have been involved where a lower bid is awarded the contract because of other favorable contract conditions. Being a well-prepared homebuyer is the key to positioning yourself in the best light when it comes to a bidding war.

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Categories: Home Buyers

Palo Alto is a strong market which feels the ebbs and flows of the fickle real estate market less than both its more expensive and less expensive counterparts.  Palo Alto should be considered a seller’s market with a rapid turnover of its inventory with DOM averaging between 10-20 days for the last four months, and not over 50 days since March 2011.  The median price has been on a steady increase for the better part of the last year, and the sales absorption rate has been following the same trend.  Historically, Palo Alto has been a very desirable place to live and will continue to be one of the most consistent investments in all of the Bay Area for the foreseeable future.  All the market data should continue its upward trend and only time will tell how high it will go.

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Categories: Bay Area Real Estate, Market Updates, Palo Alto

The Los Altos Hills market mimics the Mountain View, Los Altos, and Palo Alto with regards to median price only.  Its market data of MSI, DOM, and sales absorption are different than the other markets due to its extremely high price range driven by its premier location and exclusive homes.  Like other Bay Area markets, Los Altos Hills should continue its upward trends, though it will probably be one of the first markets to feel the effects if trends begin to change again.

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Categories: Bay Area Real Estate, Los Altos, Market Updates, Silicon Valley News

As shown in the charts shown below, Los Altos is a highly desirable city with a strong market and high median price range.  While it does border into a balanced market occasionally, Los Alto is to be considered predominantly a seller’s market.  Given its average median price range just under $1.6 million, it is surprising that the average DOM is under 30 days and the inventory supply is just about 1 month.  With the consistent upward trend in sales absorption and median price since September 2011, we can expect Los Altos to maintain its status as a desirable place to live and will most likely see prices continue their upward trend.

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Categories: Los Altos, Market Updates, Silicon Valley News

An analysis of the charts below reveals that Mountain View, though it is more volatile than some of the more expensive markets in the area, is consistently considered a seller’s market. Mountain View is quickly absorbing all of its homes for sale and currently has one of the lowest month’s supply of inventory (MSI) in the Bay Area at .5 months. Only time will tell how long this astoundingly low inventory supply will affect the other key statistics though it can only be assumed that days on market (DOM) will decrease while sales absorption (SA) rates and median prices will increase given historical data.

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Categories: Market Updates, Mountain View, Silicon Valley News

There are several key statistics that are used to determine the health of any real estate market – average days on market, month’s supply of inventory, sales absorption rate, and the median sales price.

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Categories: Bay Area Real Estate, Los Altos, Market Updates, Mountain View, Palo Alto

The San Jose Mercury News has a nice breakdown (below) of the median sales price and number of sales for each zip code in the Peninsula (Santa Clara County, San Mateo County, and Santa Cruz County). You can also see the percent change comparing this January to the same period in 2010.

In the Silicon Valley (Santa Clara County) the median sales price for all homes was $460,000, a 2% drop from the same period last year. But looking at resale homes, we saw a 1.9% increase to $529,000. Looking at number of home sales in the area, there were 1,424 sales for all homes, a drop of 10.9% from last year; in resales, 987 sold, which was 5.6% less than last year. We’ll soon see in the spring and summer months of 2011 if it picks back up, when the majority of sellers and buyers are on the market.

Overall, Los Gatos Los Altos zip code 94024 had the highest median sales price of $1,569,000, but Palo Alto/East Palo Alto zip code 94303 had the highest $/SqFt at $883. On the other side of the scale, San Jose zip code 95133 had the lowest median sales price at $230,000, and Gilroy zip code 95020 had the lowest $/SqFt at $195.

Categories: Bay Area Real Estate, Market Updates, santa clara county, Silicon Valley News