May Statistics and Trends for Silicon Valley Residential Real Estate

The numbers are in!

In the previous month, it looked like a sudden jump in pricing had occurred because the average and median sales price both shot up. Now they are down slightly (.2% and .7% respectively), but the average price is up 7.8% over a year ago.

What is going on?

These numbers do not indicate that a particular Silicon Valley home is gaining or losing value. Last month's jump was deceptive because what was happening was simply this: the lowest priced homes (and in the poorer areas like east San Jose or south San Jose) were suffering the reprecussions of the subprime loan fallout. Higher priced homes, such as those in Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, Cupertino, Saratoga, Los Gatos and Almaden Valley continued to sell. So the numbers were skewed.

And now? A change as slight as this may simply mean that lenders are taking a deep breath and starting to fund more "B" paper (and entry level) homes again. Or it could be the beginning of a trend reflective of growing inventory and days on the market. Sales are off about 9.5% (not home values, but number of sales/sales volume) from a year ago.

To get the full scoop, please see my online report for Santa Clara County:
http://www.rereport.com/sj/winmph/index_scc.html

Under Santa Clara County, click on Monthly Trends. Page 2 of that report will break it down for you city by city.