Silicon Valley Real Estate Blog – 1SiliconValley.com

I've updated my book on buying a home in Silicon Valley with what the Silicon Valley real estate market cycle has looked like over the last decade and how to prepare your money when buying a home.

Thanks to everyone who's written kudos for the book on its download page and the initial announcement.  Since it's first publication on May 1, 2007, the Silicon Valley Home Buyers Book has been downloaded just over 1,000 times!

Jun.17.2007 [ Filed under: Home Buyers, Silicon Valley News ] Comment Here »

It's out there.  And if you're going to spend more than a quarter of what you make each month on it, we're going to find the right one for you. 

But it doesn't end there.  The process of buying a home in Silicon Valley is considered by a lot of folks to be stressful — and part of the stress comes from the shrouded mystery of the process itself.  Some people want to know all the details behind the process, others just want to know what the terms are and where they need to sign.  But neither wants anything to go wrong.

The process simple to talk about.  From a buyer's perspective, finding what you're looking for is the first step.  After which, there's making an offer and getting it accepted by the seller.  Then, come the appraisal and inspections.  And if everything checks out, you're ready to lift any contingencies, write a check for the down payment, and get your keys.

Simple!  Wink.

Which is really the crux of the matter.  It's simple to talk about but there are a lot of moving parts.  My clients know, though, that I grease the wheels and let them know where they have both the control and influence to help the process go more smoothly.  It's not always easy but there are ways we can make it less stressful. 

After all, buying Silicon Valley real estate should be simple, and it starts with a good property search.  (I'll cover the other phases in future articles.)

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Jun.13.2007 [ Filed under: Home Buyers, Silicon Valley News ] Comment Here »

"That’s a lot sooner than I expected," she said as we walked out of the open house towards my car.  He nodded and I mentally went back over my notes about their priorities.  We hadn’t seen that many homes so I wanted to ask a few gentle questions to make sure they were getting what they wanted before putting in an offer. 

This wasn’t their first time buying a home.  Their family had done it a couple times before, here in Silicon Valley and in a different state.  But each time, there was a mad dash.  "It was never clear when we needed the money," she intimated after taking a sip from her water bottle.  She and her husband looked at each other with a knowing glance and he chimed in, "We lost a couple places because of liquidity before."

There are a lot of moving parts in buying real estate, but for the buyer, the lynchpin for the transaction — and the greatest source of stress — is getting money to the right place at the right time.  I want to ensure that my clients have a transaction that’s as stress-free as possible, and part of that is reducing the uncertainty in the process. 

Here are some of the tips I provide my clients on how to prepare their money for buying a home and they impact the strength of their purchase offers.

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May.30.2007 [ Filed under: Home Buyers, Mortgages, Silicon Valley News ] 2 Comments »

"How do we do this?" she asked looking at her Silicon Valley home and with a distant fondness.  When they'd bought it, it was the right place for their needs at the time: economical, in a good school district, and cozy enough to be relatively low-maintenance.  Theirs was, after all, a budding family. 

A few years had gone by and some promotions later, in their case both his and hers, the cozy enough feeling gradually drifted into wishing there were more room for her son to have a proper desk in his room for his homework and having a separate office in case either of them wanted to work from home.  

It was time for an upgrade, and for them, it was worth tackling the challenges involved.  Moving is never easy, physically and psychologically.  And then there are the logistics of selling the home you live in and purchasing a new one, often simultaneously.  Auto retailers have this one solved, but there are more variables involved when trading-up your home.  Here are some tips I recommend to my clients for moving into a larger, more expensive home.

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May.17.2007 [ Filed under: Home Buyers, Home Owners ] 2 Comments »

There was something about it.  Maybe it was the bustling downtown area with its crowded restaurants and palatial arts center.  Maybe it was the summertime shade of the wooded neighborhood just walking distance away.   Maybe it was the knowledge that in a couple years they could send their kids to some of the best schools in Silicon Valley.

The couple next door stepped outside as I was opening the lockbox.  They moved stride-in-stride together and you could sense their affection for each other.  Their son would have a sister in a few months, and as we said our goodbyes, I could see my clients glance at each other knowingly.  Would their path follow the one of the couple we met?  Only time would tell.  The first thing to do was to step through the door.

Sometimes the feeling is unmistakable.  Cliches abound: real estate is about "location, location, location" and sometimes you find the right place at the right time.  It feels like that proverbial ray of light peeking through the cloud cover.  You just know.  

But despite how small of a world it’s become when it comes to communicating with other people — with email, IM, and texting joining their more staid counterparts in the telephone, fax machine, and (gasp!) the written letter — the world is a very large place when you’re someplace else from where you want to be.

These are the personal and financial reasons why location, location, location is so important when buying Silicon Valley real estate.  I’d like to share with you a number things my clients and I have talked about.  The best location in Silicon Valley is just as unique as the individuals who live here.

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May.10.2007 [ Filed under: Home Buyers, Real Estate Stories ] Comment Here »

I am on a mission. He and his family don’t know it yet but I am going to find them that house. Not necessarily the palatial one they left behind, but one that — with a little elbow grease from their very capable patriarch — gives them that sense of pride and stability that he’s been lamenting the loss of since his move to Silicon Valley.

"I hate paying someone else’s mortgage," he says revealing the tip of the iceberg. The chord I struck continues through the screen door and the oven, both of which he’d gladly fix himself if this were his castle. But what sticks in his craw the most is that he doesn’t feel like he’s given his family the ability to set roots between the uncertainty of rents or whether the landlord will move back into the house.

He doesn’t think he can afford a house of the size he wants in the Bay Area. Exotic loans are out of the question: while the law may not hold me responsible, my conscience does. Plus, I believe he’s too savvy to be led into one by an unscrupulous mortgage officer.

And we both know that Silicon Valley real estate is expensive. He did the reverse move from a place where a lot of folks go to lower their cost of living, and since the market there isn’t strong, he’s biding his time on his previous house. He’s gutting out the pain so that he’ll be able to make good long-term personal and financial decisions.

That’s why I’m on a mission. It involves one extra question at an open house, that one extra phone call, another drive into the neighborhood to uncover the right opportunity. The cumulation of single drops of water that form the falls — perhaps not at Niagra — but somewhere he can call home.

He needs to stop renting — not like people need food, or clothing, or other people. He needs to stop renting because he believes it’s integral to helping his family lead better lives. People have different reasons; the question becomes how to make it happen.

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May.03.2007 [ Filed under: Home Buyers, Real Estate Stories ] 2 Comments »

I've taken some of the best Silicon Valley real estate articles from this site, organized them, updated them for publication and compiled them into a book which you can download, print, and read at your convenience, online or offline.  

The download is free so please feel free to share it with others.  I've tried to keep the file size small (~1MB) so that my book is easier to pass around by email.

May.01.2007 [ Filed under: Home Buyers ] 4 Comments »

"It’s yours!"  About ten seconds after hanging up with the selling agent, I couldn’t wait to deliver the news.  This had been something he’d been waiting years for and today was the day.  And after those two words, the only thing on the line was stunned silence!  A combination of elation, shock and achievement.  You could feel the excitement echoing through the airwaves but the quiet could have put out a candle.

For all the number-crunching, research, and analysis I do to ensure my clients are making good financial and investment decisions, the one thing I never lose sight of for them is the emotions they’ll go through during the process of buying and selling their home, and how they’ll feel when they’re living there.

I’m a Silicon Valley residential real estate specialist, but even in the highly-analytic world of commercial real estate — where contracts, traffic flow, and demographics rule the decision-making process — the right location can make you feel like you’re absolutely unstoppable.  How great would it be to come home every night to something that makes you feel just as good?  And what are reasons people are afraid of it?

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Apr.25.2007 [ Filed under: Home Buyers ] 3 Comments »

Come on, admit it.  We've all done it.  There have been times when you've been tempted to throw money at the problem.   Maybe you got tired of circling around for parking?  Maybe you could have waited and mail-ordered that part for less — even after shipping — but went to pick it up at Fry's anyway?  Maybe you paid a little extra to book that plane ticket one week instead of 21 days in advance?

But with Silicon Valley real estate, the stakes are higher.  Folks in Silicon Valley are busy and in a fast-moving real estate market, like the one we have in the Bay Area, it's easy to get caught overpaying for a property.  My job as a buyers agent is to alert you before that happens.

In this case, my buyer tour took us to a newer development in Burlingame, off Burlingame Avenue.   People who move to Silicon Valley often talk about how suburban it feels here compared to transit-friendly cities in the "old world" like Boston or even Chicago, so metropolitan-style developments walking distance from shopping centers or downtown areas are in high-demand.

The staging in this model home was near to opulent and the depth of the rosewood furnishings against the contemporary Asian paintings in the background were only accentuated by the ornate mirror that gave space to an otherwise compact living room.  Compact beds, not quite queen, not quite twin, occupied the bedrooms so that there would be ample room for the mahogany-style dressers. 

So with the weaknesses obfuscated by a good staging company (sellers, note that!), would townhomes here really sell for $100,000 more than comparable properties in the area? 

Yes, but not to anyone I represent.

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Apr.17.2007 [ Filed under: Home Buyers, Real Estate Stories ] 2 Comments »

Arm wrestling.  A zero-sum game where you have to beat your opponent in order to win.  There are times when I need to take this approach to get the best deal for my clients.  But in this case, there was a different opportunity.

This wasn't the first offer during our search.  We'd made an offer on a townhome in San Mateo knowing that the chances of getting that property were really pretty low.  This was a two-year-old development in an up-and-coming part of the downtown area.  It was a cross between San Francisco warehouse lofts, each with wide-open spaces, and an opulent hotel, complete with luxurious appliances, plush carpeting, and high-quality fixtures.

My client hadn't asked yet but I anticipated a couple concerns about crime in the area, which were quickly allayed with some research and a call to the local police station — they yielded nothing out of the ordinary.  My real concern for my client, though, was the three lockboxes in this townhome's oven.

I want to make sure they're getting a good deal going in and can sell at a quality price later on.  It's the part of being a Silicon Valley buyer's agent that's more important than making the deal itself, but it involves a lot more research than just taking the asking price and knocking 5% off it.

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Apr.11.2007 [ Filed under: Home Buyers, Real Estate Stories ] 2 Comments »