In Silicon Valley, it seems the more expensive the neighborhood, the less likely it is that you’ll find a bargain. Saratoga CA home buyers who are working hard to get their feet in the door during this opportunity in the market (with low prices and even lower interest rates) are scrambling to find a creative way to make their budget line up with this high end enclave’s real estate prices.

One solution is to attempt to buy a distressed property in Saratoga – namely foreclosure or a bank owned (REO – real estate owned by the bank) house, condo or townhouse or a pre-foreclosure or short sale listing.

There aren’t many of them to choose from, which makes the few that do come available very prized by motivated buyers.

Below please find a list of all available distressed properties for sale in Saratoga, CA. This city has several school districts so if you are looking for one in particular, please contact me and we can chat about finding you that perfect home.

Note: some of the homes which have a “Saratoga mailing address” with a Saratoga, CA 95070 address actually belong to a neighboring city (or the county), such as Campbell. So you may see some homes in the list below which say Campbell, for instance. Want to read more about Saratoga and its neighborhoods? (I grew up there and graduated from Saratoga High many years ago…) Please also check out this article on my popehandy.com website: Saratoga Real Estate and Saratoga Homes for Sale”. Also check out the Saratoga California real estate market update post on this blog.

Check back frequently – this list is updated automatically!

The original post below was published in 2009. To see a much more current update on the Saratoga Real Estate Market, please see this post (published spring 2011):

Saratoga, CA, Real Estate Market Update

Today the San Jose Mercury News ran a story (“Million-dollar home sales plummet in California“) about the falling numbers of high end home sales in California, which are down statewide about 43%.   Here in Santa Clara County, million dollar plus real estate sales were down a milder but still quite noticeable 34% in 2008 as compared to 2007, with just 3055 such transactions.  That number is the second highest in the state for numbers of sales of homes over one million dollars, behind only Los Angeles County.

It’s not surprising that there were so many sales in this arena of move-up to luxury homes. Neighborhoods such as Silver Creek, Almaden Valley, Los Gatos, Monte Sereno, Saratoga, Cupertino, Los Altos and more all feature fine homes & neighborhoods and their matching elevated sales prices.  What is perhaps not helpful, actually, is lumping everything over $1,000,000 together. There is an enormous difference between what one million dollars will buy in Silicon Valley versus what three or five or more million will buy. The million dollar home in Silicon Valley is not a luxury home or an estate – often it’s just a solid home in a good school district (and sometimes not even that – it is sometimes a tear down in a good school district).

What about the high end housing market in Silicon Valley?

So what is happening among those sales of homes over one million dollars here?  Are prices falling, holding, or rising among Silicon Valley’s more expensive homes?  As always, it varies by location, price point, school district, land, views, and so on.  Today we’ll have a look at Saratoga, and we’ll consider list prices among Saratoga houses by quartile, since often the luxury or estate market does not behave in the same way as the more affordable market. Most of Saratoga’s houses are worth over a million dollars, but not all of them are luxury or estate properties.
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