San Jose’s Cambrian, or Cambrian Park, area is a very hot seller’s market.  Multiple offers are not uncommon, especially in the Union School District, where schools are trending upward.  My Cambrian Park Real Estate Report has just been published with the updated numbers from the closed sales in April. Please click on the link to see much more information there.

Prices are up nicely year over year! Inventory is crazy low – just 35 homes for sale in April compared to 57 in March and 84 in April 2011. Days on market is far lower too. All around, it is a deepening seller’s market.

Even stronger is the Cambrian condo market, which is skyrocketing!!!  Please see the Cambrian Condominium & Townhouse Real Estate Report for all of the numbers, but I’ll include a quick summary below.

Here again, notice the ratio of active to pending homes, the sale vs list price (over 100%), and most of all, the tremendous rise in both the average and median sales price.  Few homes closed escrow in February, so it is possible that these numbers are a little exaggerated.  We will know more in a month – if it’s a trend or if this is a fluke.

Now let’s work with Altos Research’s graphs and get a feel for the Cambrian realty market in “real time”.  These use list prices, whereas my REReport uses sold data.

First, the statistics by quartile for houses in San Jose 95118:

Next, the stats and trends by price quartile for houses in San Jose 95124: (more…)

How common are “all cash” transactions for Silicon Valley real estate right now?  Throughout Santa Clara County, they were 25% of all sales, up from 20% in October 2011,  among houses, duet homes, condominiums and townhouses (class 1 and class 2, does not include mobile homes, 2-4plex or apartment buildings or raw land).   What’s trending? Lots, including more cash offers.

Some areas and some types of sales are more frequently all cash than others.  Here are a few quick stats for the last month (last 30 days from today – numbers from MLSListings, crunched by me – disclaimer on good intentions but no guarantee). Also, please note that this is for CLOSED SALES. As of this writing, we are seeing a huge uptick in multiple offers in all price ranges in many parts of the valley, and it seems that many are all cash or very large cash downpayments.

• Santa Clara County: 25% all cash
• San Jose (entire city): 27% all cash
• San Jose short sales: 27% all cash (down from 33% in Oct 2011)
• San Jose bank owned or REO sales: 39% all cash (38% Oct 2011)
• Short sales & REOs were 52% of all sales in San Jose in last 30 days (was 48% Oct 2011)
• Of SJ homes listed at $300,000 or less: 44% all cash (was 48% Oct 2011)
• Of SJ homes listed at/under $500,000: 33% were all cash (didn’t track in October 2011)
• Los Gatos: 9% all cash
• Saratoga: 8% all cash
• Almaden Valley area of San Jose: 10% all cash

Some of these sales will have no financing and the new owners will occupy the home.  Particularly in lower priced homes, though, these are investor buyers who will be renting out the property.  This is often the case with the lower price distressed properties in particular.  In higher priced homes, some new owners will put financing on the property after close of escrow.

With the crazy new demands that keep coming at us from banks and new requirements being imposed on appraisers, now more than ever, cash is king.  That doesn’t mean that the cash buyer will get a deep discount, but there will be a slight one in most cases and certainly preferential treatment that will create a great advantage in multiple offer situations.

Learn more about buying and selling Silicon Valley real estate with cash offers:

Cash offers: what do you need to know if buying “all cash”?

Q & A: Making an Offer

What’s My Silicon Valley Home Worth? Estimating the Probable Buyer’s Value  (financing impacts market value)

The Los Gatos real estate market for houses & duet homes looks pretty good at first glance, but if you scratch the surface and analyze some of the sub-markets, we see that it varies widely as to how “the” market is faring. (It’s not one market, but many smaller markets near each other.)

Yesterday I spent some time pulling apart the housing market in Los Gatos (for houses and duet homes, not condos) by school district and price point to get the months of inventory.  Here’s a brief summary:

The market gets substantially colder as you go up in price – read more and get more details on Live in Los Gatos!

More reading…

How’s the Los Gatos Real Estate Market Doing Now?
Please also view the current statistics care of Altos Research on my popehandy.com site on the Los Gatos real estate market (uses list prices rather than solds):
How’s the Real Estate Market in Los Gatos?

Do pools enhance property value in Silicon Valley back yards?  Do they make homes easier or more difficult to sell in Santa Clara County? What’s the impact on resale value?  The common wisdom is that it depends on the amount of yard or lot size, the price point and the location of the residence. When a pool takes up the majority (or virtually all) of the back yard, most often it makes the property undesirable to buyers – at least to most home buyers – and that, in turn, causes the sales price to slip a bit. It used to be that pools were almost a given on more expensive residential real estate, particularly if there is a lot of land.  Today I ran the numbers, though, and it appears that things have changed.  Below please find the “months of inventory” for homes with and without pools and note that it is very consistent, in the fields I checked, that it’s now harder to sell a home with a pool than without

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Pools appear to make it harder to sell a home in Santa Clara County right now.

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How is the real estate market in the Willow Glen area of San Jose?  There are multiple ways of viewing it – via price point, school district, proximity to “downtown Willow Glen”, by numbers or percentages of distressed sales (sale type), and many more criteria.  Today we’ll look at the broad market numbers for the MLS “area 10″ (all of Willow Glen) and at times just the zip code for San Jose 95125, which covers the majority of the Willow Glen area.  This post will only cover houses or “single family homes”, not condominiums or townhomes.

I ran the months of inventory for homes in Willow Glen (our MLS area 10) by sale type.  Here’s what I found – most of the market appears to have about 4.95 months of inventory, with short sales being considerably longer.  (This may have had different results had I isolated certain school areas or price points – this is a “sweeping view” of the area only.) The National Association of Realtors says that less than 6 months is a sellers market, but for our area, this is fairly “cool” and most sellers would not find the market to be all that much in their favor. (Six months is supposed to be a balanced market.)

It is unusual for there to be so little variation in the MOI, so I double checked but this appears correct. Often bank owned homes or REOs fly off the market.  Odd that it’s not happening here, too.

Next, a selection of statistics and trends in the numbers from my REReport for Willow Glen (click on link for more info) – prices here reflect sold prices (median and average), not list prices:

Prices appear down from the prior month but up from a year ago.  That’s good news for Willow Glen home owners, who hope that the worst is now behind us.  Days on market are better than the previous month (but worse than a year ago) and inventory is up from last month but almost the same – just a little less – than a year ago.  It’s a mixed bag. (more…)

For retirees or senior home owners in Almaden who’ve been in their houses a very long time, the prospect of selling that beloved San Jose home can be quite daunting.  The longer you’ve been there, the more memories you’ve created and most of the time the harder it is to decide to sell and then do all the work needed to maximize that decision.

In today’s post we’ll go over the decision to sell the home (or not), the timing elements for selling and getting help in doing so.

Deciding it’s time to sell your Almaden Valley home

Perhaps the biggest hurdle is not the physical work involved with preparing a home for the real estate market or moving, but instead is the difficult decision of whether or not to move (and if so, when to do it).

As people age, there are a lot of losses.  There may be retirement that wasn’t chosen, but forced.  Loved ones pass away.  Vision diminishes.  It may become necessary to limit driving, or worse, give it up altogether. It is not hard for those over 65, 70  or 80 years of age to feel like it’s one unhappy challenge after the next. There’s a lot of change but it’s not all positive.

The prospect of also changing one’s residence can seem like one of the biggest, toughest and most unwelcome of all.     (more…)

How is the Campbell condo and townhouse market?  The answer may well depend on both what part of that market we’re discussing and which data we’re focusing on.

The Campbell Condo Real Estate Market Summaries for Summer 2010

The summaries here are from my Real Estate Report.  Get the most current, detailed report at www.popehandy.ReReport.com.

Campbell condominium & townhouse sales in September 2010

The condo market in Campbell, California has been strengthening.  September 2010 was a good month!

August 2010 Condo Sales in Campbell CA

August was slow across Silicon Valley – real estate sales lagged (more than the “seasonal average”)
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