June 24, 2008
Seeing the Big Picture in Santa Clara County
Last week I reported on all the data crunching that Redfin did for San Mateo County, and this week the southern Bay Area county gets its due, with an analysis of how the market is faring. All the data I reviewed came from MLS records for April and May of this year. It encompasses sales in 17 cities, starting in Palo Alto and Los Altos and moving down to Morgan Hill and Gilroy.
Not surprisingly, San Jose led the pack with the most sales in that two-month period with 637. While you may think that is a huge number, and it is in comparison to neighboring cities, you have to remember just how many homes are on the market in San Jose. How many you ask? Approximately 4,758 homes are for sale as of 6/23/08. That breaks down to 544 Under $300,000, another 1783 listed between $300-500,000, 2052 in the $501,000 – $1,000,000 range, and 379 over $1mil. At an average sale rate of 319 per month, it will take 15 months to sell the current inventory.
Other cities that garnered a larger number of sales were Sunnyvale with 118, Mountain View with 89, Palo Alto with 80, Santa Clara with 79, and Cupertino with 77. The backlog of inventory isn’t anywhere near as severe in these towns. At the going rate, Cupertino has 2.3 months of inventory, Palo Alto 2.5, Mountain View 3.2, Sunnyvale 4.7, and Santa Clara with 8.5.
Eight of the cities have average sales prices under the $1mil mark, with the lowest averages being seen in Milpitas ($514,024), Campbell ($609,034) Gilroy ($609,880), San Jose ($626,968), Morgan Hill ($637,988), and Santa Clara ($633,730). On the other end of the spectrum were Portola Valley with a whopping $6,304,863 price average (based on only 4 sales), followed by Los Altos Hills at $2,662,968, Monte Sereno with $1,847,000 and Los Altos with $1,680,365. Most of these towns don’t even have a home listed for under $1,000,000, so there are no surprises there.
As for the final price paid vs. the listing price, there is only one city that had a percentage higher than 100%. Over in San Mateo County there was also only one, and that was Menlo Park. Oddly enough, Santa Clara County’s winner in this category is Menlo Park’s southern neighbor, Palo Alto with an average 102.23% over list. Back-to-back cities coming out on top; there must be something in the water. Just slightly under the 100% mark is Los Altos with 99.85%, Cupertino at 99.8%, and Mountain View at 99.75%. The cities with the most disappointed sellers were San Martin with 94.88%, Los Altos Hills at 95.41%, and Morgan Hill at 96.16%.
Comparing the two counties, it appears that people are paying closer to list in Santa Clara County, and doing more bargaining in San Mateo County. San Mateo also had more cities with lower average sales prices, in fact they had 8 cities with averages lower than $600,000, while Santa Clara County only had 1. In the high-end home range, 6 out of 24 cities (25%) in SM had high-end over $1mil average sales prices, while in SC there were 9 out of the 17 cities (53%).
