by Mary Pope-Handy, Clair Handy | Jun 10, 2025 | San Jose, Almaden Valley, Blossom Valley, Cambrian, Communities, Downtown San Jose, Willow Glen
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What does it cost to buy a single family home in the city of San Jose? There are many San Jose districts and their values vary by about 2-to-1 from the highest to lowest priced areas in this large, sprawling city with about 1,000,000 residents.
In this article we’ll take a look at the main, fairly well defined districts and discuss the cost of purchasing a house in each one. After each small description, there’s a link to a post on my popehandy.com website for that area.
You can also find relevant information on my Valley of Heart’s Delight blog, SanJoseRealEstateLosGatosHomes.com – just click on the “Neighborhoods” link.
Lastly, if you’d like to see a map of where these parts of SJ are located, please click on this link to find this article with a helpful map: San Jose is big and sprawling: where are the districts?
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by Mary Pope-Handy | May 3, 2025 | FAQs, Real Estate, Schools
In Silicon Valley, or Santa Clara County, our school district boundaries and town or city borders don’t line up like they do in most parts of the U.S. Put simply, they often are not the same.
School district boundaries and city boundary examples
San Jose is a large city with one million residents and a number of districts (think large neighborhoods). The San Jose unified School District, which includes all grades K – 12, does cover a large portion of the city, but certainly not all. There are many districts within the city or which cover parts of it, such as the Berryessa Union School District, which benefits students in parts of north San Jose.
But other pockets of San Jose are within the boundaries of Santa Clara Unified School District, Cupertino Union SD, Campbell Union SD, Morgan Hill SD, and more!
In my town of Los Gatos, for example, the elementary and middle school districts include:
The city of Saratoga is served by Saratoga Schools, Campbell, Cupertino, and Los Gatos in places.
So if you are thinking of moving to the Santa Clara Valley, it’s a good idea to get a school district boundaries map in hand. Even if you don’t have kids, it’s important to understand that public schools drive home values – so it should matter to you whether or not you have children!
by Mary Pope-Handy | Apr 17, 2025 | FAQs, Lifestyle, Recreation, Santa Cruz
Planning a beach day? Watch out for beach traffic!
One of the many lures to the San Jose area and Santa Clara County (SCC) generally is the fairly close proximity of the beach at Santa Cruz, Capitola, Rio del Mar, and other scenic places that line the Monterey Bay. From most of SCC, it’s under a one hour drive. If you live in Los Gatos, it could be just half of that. That said, not all trips over the hill are created equal when it comes to beach traffic. Go on a regular weekday in summer and it’s pretty much a piece of cake. Go on a summer weekend or holiday and it’s a whole other matter!
Capitola Beach as seen from the Pier – photo by Mary Pope-Handy
If you live in Silicon Valley, a trip to the beach usually means a drive “over the hill” via highway 17’s pass through the Santa Cruz Mountains to the sandy beaches of the Monterey Bay. It’s a beautiful drive through lush redwood forests with occasional views of Monterey Bay and wild mountain valleys. Since this is the main route between Santa Cruz and the Santa Clara Valley, and a winding mountain pass, it doesn’t take much to create a traffic jam that can stretch for miles.
Weekdays, rush hour, and traffic jams
Commuter traffic mostly flows north into the San Francisco Bay Area in the morning, returning south into Santa Cruz County at the end of the work day. Rush hour can double or triple the time it takes to get where you’re headed. Stalled cars or collisions can take longer to clear and cause even longer jams since much of the pass has no emergency shoulders and some stretches can be quite remote.
But you aren’t a commuter – you want to visit the beach and enjoy your day off! Most of the locals know this about holidays or weekends and the shore: go early or don’t go. Especially when the weather is hot!
How early is early enough?
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by Mary Pope-Handy, Clair Handy | Mar 5, 2025 | Natural hazards
Lots has changed in the last year, and a general Silicon Valley real estate update is in order. This will be a brief post with broad commentary on what newcomers to the San Francisco Peninsula, South Bay, and nearby areas can expect in these markets. Particular cities, neighborhoods, and price points may be different.
- The housing market is quite robust for single family homes (mostly detached houses, but sometimes a duet home – not the same thing as a duplex*)
- It’s a far cooler market for condominiums and townhouses. (Condo is an ownership type, townhouse is an architectural style. Many townhomes are held in condo ownership, but some are planned unit developments, or PUDs. You can read more about the difference and why it matters in our other article through that link.
- In Silicon Valley, most of the time sellers provide pre-sale inspections and disclosures for buyers to review before putting an offer in on the property. Buyers are expected to read and sign for these disclosures before submitting an offer, and most buyers don’t hire their own inspections once in contract unless they need more details or bids on a particular item of concern. Often homes that sell within 10 days or so get multiple offers and sell with zero contingencies. This is often a sharp change for people coming from outside of this area with experience in other markets.
- Cash offers are happening, but the majority of sales happen with mortgages. Depending on the price point and home type, the percent of cash offers might be 20-30% of the market. But cash isn’t always king: sometimes cash buyers overestimate the value of their cash and they “lowball” the offer, or have less favorable terms. Sellers will wait a little longer and bet on the bank if it makes them more money, or they get their terms!
- A recent change here as with everywhere else, home buyers working with an agent need to have a written buyer-broker agreement to privately tour properties and be represented when making an offer.
- At open houses, the hosting agent is supposed to collect the visitors’ names and whether or not the visitor has a real estate agent, usually done on a non-agency form. This is NOT supposed to be for marketing, but only for clarification should there be a question later about who is or is not representing that buyer should they submit an offer. Some hosting agents will accept a business card from a visitor’s buyers agent instead of signing in. Some misuse the form, or are overbearing and will follow up for your feedback after the showing or to seek your business. I suggest that my clients put my contact info into the form, or just let me show them privately (something we and many clients prefer anyway).
- While some buyers get the first home they bid on, most write 2-4 offers before having one accepted. This is really not a new trend in the Silicon Valley real estate market – it’s been this way for years, but it can still be a shock to people relocating here. Extreme competition for the best homes, a shortage of inventory, and our persistantly hot market make it a challenging market for even the most qualified buyers.
- In our experience, only 50% of buyers who say that they want to buy a home will do so in the first year. Most of that is due to sticker shock and struggling with paying that much for a home. Yes, even for buyers with good Silicon Valley salaries! Unfortunately, waiting can be even more expensive as home values continue to grow.
- Areas with short commutes to major employers, and those with good schools, are hot all the time. For instance, Cupertino offers both and is a highly sought after and competitive market.
- Insurance has been a particular challenge in recent years, especially fire insurance. Fire risks and related insurance costs and availability are major concerns in areas near or in the hills particularly.
Silicon Valley real estate update in 2025 – what about condos?
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by Mary Pope-Handy, Clair Handy | Feb 22, 2025 | Buying Tips, HOA, Real Estate
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Low HOA reserve accounts are surprisingly common, and when I asked the HOA expert, Jacquie Berry, about my observation, she said that 75% of HOAs in California have underfunded reserve accounts. This is a big deal for many home buyers, particularly first time buyers and seniors downsizing to a common interest development after living in a house without an HOA.
What is a reserve account?
Homeowners Associations have two budgets and bank accounts: one for operating expenses (right now items, this year) and one for long term costs (anything more than a year out).
To ascertain how much should be in that reserve fund, the person doing the budget estimates the replacement cost of the item, such as the roof, in today’s dollars and then factors in the rate of inflation, often about 3% per year and calculates the total cost needed in whatever year the replacement is expected to happen.
Why are so many HOA reserve accounts underfunded?
I asked Jacquie this question: why are all of these homeowners associations so poorly funded? She replied that many of them won’t save today for something needed in the distant future (with the underlying thought being “when I may not even live here anymore”.) It appears to be a common practice, at least in some homeowners associations, to simply kick the can down the road.
What’s the risk with a low HOA reserve account?
The risk with low HOA reserve accounts is multifaceted. We’ll touch on a few of them here.
Naturally, one of the first risks is the HOA insisting that home owners pay more. They are allowed to raise the monthly dues by as much as 20% of the previous year’s fee annually. Sometimes, though, that’s not enough. The next approach, when a large sum is needed, it to have a special assessment.
Special assessments get voted in when a majority of the HOA wants to get certain important projects done and there are not sufficient funds for the project. Recently we’ve seen these special assessments get levied for $30,000 – $50,000 or more in some cases. But that’s not all!
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