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Lane Woods Menlo Park

Lane Woods, by builder Summerhill Homes, is opening a new community of 32 residences in Menlo Park targeting the active, outdoorsy family of four.

The model homes will be opening for tours in mid-April and move in will be mid-to-late summer. There have already been many inquiries into this community, with the majority of the curious home-buyers being families with small children and babies.

The Lane Woods development takes its name from the Lane Family, a family of publishers dating back to the 1920s; The Lane Family put their heritage on the map with the popular Sunset Magazine, ‘the’ Western Lifestyle periodical of the time. Within this beautiful community will be the 2008 Sunset Magazine ‘Idea House’, where the concept is to build a home with exciting new ideas and smart products in mind. The very first idea house was built in Menlo Park in 1998, and for the 10 year anniversary of this project they are returning to the roots where the idea emerged.

Apr.02.2008 [ Filed under: Menlo Park ] Comment Here »

Menlo Park Housing Market Update - October 2007

There’s an interesting opportunity in Menlo Park when you take into account that the city has multiple personalities. I want to illustrate this using the median home chart below and a couple facts. First, if you look at the homes that are available, there are just as many single-family houses available between $400K and $800K as there are between $1.5M and $2.5M.

Second, the ones at the low end of the range are closer to Redwood City and East Palo Alto, and use Redwood City and Ravenswood Elementary School Districts, respectively. The more expensive ones are closer to Atherton and Palo Alto and are part of the Menlo Park Elementary School District — and its 907 district API score — or the Las Lomitas Elementary School District — and its two schools with a 948 district API score.

So, with that in mind, the median value of homes in Menlo Park can be somewhat of a tug-of-war. For September 2007, there were two transactions for low-income housing which closed at about $330,000 each. If you threw those two out, the median single-family home in Menlo Park was $1,220,000. That’s a realistic 6% decrease year-over-year.

It’s important to look beyond what the numbers are and understand the story behind them. In this case, there’s been some softness in Menlo Park given increasing CDOM numbers, from 19 to 38 year-over-year. (The average CDOM over 10 years is 34.) But, from on the ground experience, there wasn’t anything to indicate a decrease as dramatic as the median value chart would indicate.

[ Median Home 2007, 2006 | Market Snapshot | How Much Home Can I Get? ]

Oct.14.2007 [ Filed under: Menlo Park, Market Updates ] 1 Comment »

Silicon Valley School System Bang-for-the-Buck

The California Department of Education (CDE) has released the updated 2006 Academic Performance Index (API) scores for California schools, including data for San Mateo County and Santa Clara County. The API is a statewide benchmark based on standardized achievement tests which is primarily used to rank schools relative to one another and relative to schools with similar demographics. Here's an example of what the statistics look like.

Image of California Academic Performance Index Sample

We'll take a look at how school rankings and Silicon Valley real estate prices are related, but first let's look at how to read the information.

Number of Students. In the first column, you'll find the number of students whose results were included from that school. It's pretty close to the total number of students, less any excluded students. The rules for excluding students are listed in the API Base Documentation Information Guide found on the CDE API page. Surprisingly, the number of students has little to do with how well the school did in its API scores (almost, see epilogue).

Base API, Statewide Rank, Similar Schools Rank. The Base API score is like an SAT score except it's from 200 to 1000. Higher is better. To make comparing schools easier, the CDE provides a statewide rank from 1 to 10 (ten is best) and a similar schools rank that rates schools (again from 1 to 10, ten being best) that have similar demographics and characteristics. Apples-to-apples in a way.

Growth Target, API Target. The growth target is the number of points California wants the school to improve in the next year. That added with the current base API score equals the API target. The CDE doesn't set a target for schools above the current statewide performance target of 800.

Silicon Valley School District Scores

I've assembled information from the CDE site and the Palo Alto Daily News to provide a table of school district API averages for Silicon Valley and Bay Area elementary and middle schools.

Image of Silicon Valley API Scores for Campbell, Cupertino, Foster City, Gilroy, Los Altos, Los Gatos, Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Saratoga, Sunnyvale

Mar.31.2007 [ Filed under: Schools, Home Buyers, Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Mountain View, San Mateo, Foster City, Market Updates ] 3 Comments »

Any Tour of Menlo Park Starts at Keplers and Ends in Xanadu

Menlo Park is a Tree USA city, adhering to four national standards for tree management and budgeting on forestry maintenance. Nestled into the lush greenery is a bustling area in central Menlo Park where hundreds of people will gather on a typically bright summer afternoon in Northern California, enjoying a glass of wine and walking the local scene.

Image of House in Menlo Park