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San Mateo and Foster City Home Prices - April 2007 Update

One is a city of older homes, spacious and elegant away from the 101, morphing into urban sensibilities and upcoming renewal to relatively dense population moving eastward. San Mateo neighborhoods show the contrast of organic growth — how personalities, zoning, and economics combine to create the feel of an area that changes (or doesn't) over time.

The other is Atlantis reclaimed from the Bay, bringing with it an enviable landscape: curving streets and arched bridgeways glide through the greenery, which itself is beautifully manicured to meticulous perfection. The Foster City atmosphere creates an impressive Epcot Center-like portrait, with Roman order and discipline — ask anyone who's slow rolled through a stop sign on the suburban side of Edgewater Blvd.

The two cities share a common bonds that stretch well beyond just the numbers 94404 and the 101 artery. The first is, while neither is in the traditional boundaries of Silicon Valley, you'd have a hard time convincing the people who live there that they're not Silicon Valley residents.

They also share Hillsdale High School, a newly designated California Distinguished School in 2007. It's no wonder that Foster City has in recent years decided to focus more on economic development than building a high school of its own.

Chart of Housing Prices for Foster City in March 2007

But when you look at the graph of Foster City median home prices, there's something wrong with the picture. It's subtle, but my clients depend on me to see these things. The question is whether it's an opportunity or an obstacle for them.

Apr.27.2007 [ Filed under: San Mateo, Foster City, Market Updates ] Comment Here »

Silicon Valley Distinguished Schools and Area Home Values

Image of California Distinguished Schools

The California Department of Education (CDE) just released the recipients of its California Distinguished Schools award, which honors the "exemplary and inspiring" schools across the state.

Typically only 5% of schools are awarded with the California Distinguished School title, which schools are allowed to use for four years — and in 2007, there were 21 Silicon Valley schools (11 from San Mateo County and 10 from Santa Clara County) that received the honor.

Elementary and secondary schools are evaluated in alternating years and, this year, it was time for the middle and high schools to go under the microscope.

As frequent readers here know, I'm a big advocate of not only looking at real estate in established educational powerhouses, but also finding up-and-coming schools. After all, schools power real estate demand — even if you don't have kids — and people looking for the "next big thing" in terms of appreciation need to look beyond what's already been priced into the market.

There were some big winners this year in Silicon Valley and this article kicks off a week of market analysis homing in on key cities in these school districts. Here's a whirlwind tour.

Apr.22.2007 [ Filed under: Schools, Cupertino, Sunnyvale, San Mateo ] Comment Here »

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 »

Determining Your Must-Haves When Buying a Home

As we stood under the cathedral ceiling looking over the stone-tiled patio, we could hear the owner and his son playing their XBox in one of the bedrooms. It was penned off from the rest of the house so that Cujo wouldn't get loose.

I thought the top-level townhome was in pristine condition considering they had a Cujo, until I peered into the room and saw a tiny 10-pound pug sitting attentively in front of the television!

Chart of Silicon Valley Newly Listed Homes There were network connections wired into every room, and this being Silicon Valley, we asked the owner if it was standard CAT-5 or CAT-5e. The gentleman, in his decidedly French accent, said with a bit of sheepishness, "You know, I'm not sure." (He was a little redfaced because we'd talked about his job at Cisco.)

So I asked whether he had a wireless network and his face lit up. He hopped over to the storage closet in the entryway and eagerly showed off the router, neatly and carefully wired into the connectivity panel. He didn't check for CAT-5e because he didn't need it.

The network drops were a "nice-to-have" for my client who does a lot with multimedia. They weren't a dealmaker (and as he discovered not a dealbreaker) but given that this was the first home he'd seen as a potential buyer, he was eager to get some experience looking at houses under his belt so that he could really experience firsthand what his requirements feel like.

In the back of people's minds, most people start off with a list of requirements that I rank order informally using the "MoSCoW" method:

Must: What they know they want
Should: What they think they want
Could: What they don't have strong feelings about
Won't: What they don't want

For any number of reasons, what people say they want doesn't always line up with what they really want in their minds and hearts.

A lot of times that's because of the difference between theory and application: being able to actually drive the commute or experience how many flights of stairs there are gives people a clearer picture of "could" vs. "won't".

The tricky part is separating the borderline "must-haves" from the "shoulds." And with my client in the early stages of his home search, we needed to setup a stable foundation so that we'd learn those differences from every property he would see on the rest of his search.

Mar.22.2007 [ Filed under: Home Buyers, Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, Mountain View, San Mateo, Foster City, Real Estate Stories ] 1 Comment »