The Los Gatos real estate market appears to remain a ” buyer’s market”, but it entirely depends on which part of the Los Gatos market you’re discussing.

This post will cover:

• single family homes (99% houses, but a few duet homes)
• 95030 and 95032 zip codes
• Two high school districts:
  • Los Gatos Saratoga High School District (meaning Los Gatos High School)
  • Campbell Union High School District (meaning Westmont or Leigh High Schools)
• varying price points in all of the above

General comments:
Most of 95030 is in the Los Gatos Saratoga High School District, but there is a very, very tiny portion of it which belongs to the Campbell Union High School District.  The percentage is so small as to be statistically insignificant, but I wanted to mention it here for the sake of accuracy and I will include it below.  The numbers below are from our MLS provider, MLSListings.com, with the numbers crunched by me, Mary Pope-Handy.  While I have made every effort to be 100% accurate, I do not guarantee it (don’t sure me if there’s a typo or other error!).

Overview of the basic numbers and months of inventory for the housing market in the town of Los Gatos overall  - homes for sale, pending sales, and closed sales within the last month:

It appears to be a buyer’s market, which is true for much of the town, but not all of it.  There is variation to a phenomenal degree depending on price point, zip code, and school district.  Below we’ll look at all of it and see market conditions for each segment.
Let’s view the data by zip codes and by high school district:

The number of pendings can show where the market’s going – in many parts of the town, the number of pendings exceeds the number of recently closed homes.  In some parts of Silicon Valley, this is due to a high volume of short sales which are pending, but never actually close escrow. Here in LG, there are very few distressed properties on the market, so it does not appear to be the root cause of more pendings than closeds. Instead, the high number of pendings in some areas seem to point to an uptick of market activity.  This is really atypical for August (normally August is a very slow month for sales compared to earlier in the summer).

So, the market is heating up.  Also of note is that It has been VERY hard to sell a home that’s not “in the schools”. This is witnessed by the fact that almost nothing has closed recently.

Now let’s break it down by both price point AND by high school district in Los Gatos (95030 and 95032 zip codes merged):

This is interesting because there are two “sweet spots” in the Los Gatos housing market, both of the “in the schools”. First is the group of homes for sale in the Los Gatos School District which are listed at under $1,000,000.  As prices rise, the months of inventory grows from 3.75 to 6 to 8.25.  But then between $2 million and $3 million, there was a spurt of sales activity with 4 closings recently and only 15 available.   Both of these sweet spots have only 3.75 months of inventory right now.

At the other extreme is the reality of the market not in the Los Gatos School District. About 2/3 of the market is in these areas further from downtown, but homes with Leigh High School and Westmont High School have simply not been selling well right and closing this summer. Oddly, the market is less bad in the higher price ranges – perhaps because those owners are not as worried about schools (and are making use of private schools?  about 1/3 of all students who reside in Los Gatos attend private schools – perhaps the bulk is in 95032?)   BUT look at the pendings and you’ll find that the market is improving in this part of the town significantly.  A month from now we should see a far less dismal report for Los Gatos homes in the Campbell Union High School District.

The Los Gatos real estate market has many nuances in addition to factors such as schools and zip code.  We could dissect the market by any number of factors, from the distressed properties (which do sell for less) to those which views, acreage, historic homes, etc.  When you are thinking of buying or selling a home in Los Gatos, do not simply accept the overview of the town as necessarily relevant to your particular situation.  It is imperative to get the data on your part of the market and to understand what that data actually means.  From the study above, you can see that part of the Los Gatos real estate market is a strong seller’s market (3.25 months of inventory) and others have more than a 2 year supply of inventory (extremely deep buyer’s market).  Not understanding where in the spread your home or desired home sits could literally cost you dearly as you mis-position your home or your offer relative to the market conditions.

If you’re interested in buying or selling a Los Gatos house, townhome or condo, please call me.  If we work together to market your home or purchase a home, I will do my best to assist you in getting the clearest possible picture of the particular segment of the market that relates to you and your situation.