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…)

Right now in Santa Clara County (which is the bulk of the “Silicon Valley” area), there are 3392 houses available (not under contract) and there have been 853 which have closed in the last month.  That’s 3.98 months of inventory, or a seller’s market.  (There are 2668 which are under contract, but many are short sales which may never close escrow.)  Four months of inventory for the county is pretty strong overall.

For condominiums and townhouses in Santa Clara County, there are currently 1406 on the market and 289 which have sold/closed in the last month, giving us 4.87 months of inventory, which is technically a seller’s market but is very close to a balanced market. (There are 1096 pendings.)  The average “days on market” for the solds vary from about 50 days to about 115 days, depending on whether or not it’s a distressed sale.

Whether a home is in a buyer’s or seller’s market depends largely on its location, price point and sales type.  It is easiest to sell a home which is a “regular sale” situation, harder to sell a bank owned home and hardest to sell a short sale listing.  It’s easier to sell entry level priced houses, harder to sell luxury townhouses or condominiums.

For information on your part of the Silicon Valley real estate market, please email or phone me today!

Today we’ll look at the ratio & relationship between real estate listings and sales of houses and duet homes in Silicon Valley over the last eighteen months. The goal is to get a sense of the market trends in terms of the overall absorption of homes for sale.  (We’ll give a glance at condo and townhome sales but the focus is on single family homes.) How hard is it to sell a home?  The answer has to do with supply and demand – the number of listings and the number of sales.

In the graphs below, the reddish brown line represents the number of pending sales.  The blue line indicates the number of listings or homes for sale. Put simply, the closer these two lines are together, the hotter the market – that is, the more of a seller’s market it is.  When they are far apart, it’s more cold, more of a buyer’s market.  If the lines cross, it is a wild frenzy (that does happen in one case, as you will see). Below please find the graph for the homes in Santa Clara County overall (all areas).

Santa Clara County listings to sales Jan 2009 to June 2010

 You can see that these two lines pinch together in about December 2009 to January 2010.  Prices had dropped and investors were swooping in! The  market has cooled since then.

Santa Clara County condo & townhome listings to pending sales Jan 2009 to June 2010

 For condos and townhouses, all of Santa Clara County:Here the two lines  – or the market – were close together for about 3-4 months.  Buyers understood that condominiums in Silicon Valley were bargain priced, and they responded by buying.Now let’s look at various areas around the county.  We’ll take these in Alphabetical order, beginning with Almaden Valley.

Almaden Valley listings to pending sales Jan 2009 to June 2010

 As you can see, the market improved but never got as “hot” as in the county generally.  This is because it’s a more expensive area, and most of what was selling in winter consisted of entry level housing.
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April 30, 2010 was the deadline for the federal  home buyer’s credit – if someone wanted to take advantage of it, he or she had to be “in contract” on residential real estate by the end of April.

Did it create a buying frenzy in Silicon Valley?

Not really. The numbers across Santa Clara County were very similar in April as they were in March. In March it was 946 closed houses & duet homes and 325 condos and townhomes. In April we saw 932 and 291. Cumulatively, it was down a little from March. And generally that’s what it seemed like, too, in the trenches: just slightly cooler.

Here’s a look at the numbers* with some historical perspective going back to 1998.  I ran these numbers myself on MLSListings.com and have made every effort for accuracy (but cannot guarantee it).  Our MLS will come out with official stats in a few more days – until then, consider this a “sneak peek” care of Mary Pope-Handy:

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