It can be really challenging for people moving to Silicon Valley to get a sense of pricing for home buying. So to compare “apples to apples,” let’s take a hypothetical case of a 4 bedroom, 2 bath home of approximately 2,000 SF house (appx 185 square meters) and see how the cost looks in one area versus another.

Today I compared several areas and cities using the same formula: homes of 1800 – 2200 SF, 3-5 bedrooms, 2-3 bathrooms, on lot sizes of 6000 SF to 10,000 SF that have sold within the last 90 days (120 days when there’s less inventory, 60 when there’s more). Here’s how it shakes out in the “west valley areas” along the Highway 85 corridor. What areas are most affordable? One way of analyzing this is the “price per square foot” figure. How competitive is it? Have a look at the DOM or “Days on Market” figure.  All of these days on market are short, but they range from low to heart-skipping fast. Please also note that while most of these numbers are working on a handful of sales, Mountain View and Saratoga had only two each over the last 3 months that fit the criteria, so the data may not be as accurate in that row as others, like Cambrian in San Jose which had 23 sales in the same time. Now let’s have a look.

How much have prices changed? I’m trying a different approach this time to arrange the chart, showing areas that have moved up on the chart in white and those which have moved down in the darker rows. While that shows how prices have changed in relation to other areas, and for the most part the rankings don’t change very much. Compare each individual market to where it was last July and you’ll see that prices everywhere are up from summer 2017.

This chart was from last July.

Below is another flashback to March 2017.  Do you notice the difference in ordering? A couple of markets have switched places, Sunnyvale and Saratoga, but there’s not too much different. For the most part, rankings have changed very little.

This next chart was from last March.

In most cases, the most expensive and desirable places have either the best schools or shortest commute location. Had I ranked these for school scores, you’d find that Cambrian is fairly high up and a good “bang for the buck” location – though not a super short commute for folks who work in Mountain View (though not so bad for people working in Cupertino). None of these is especially close to North San Jose (Cisco).

What about a little longer term? What did this look like in 2013? Click through to see. Continue reading →