The Silicon Valley real estate market is spread out over a few counties, primarily Santa Clara County but also much of San Mateo County and part of Alameda and Santa Cruz Counties.  Santa Clara County is home to about 1.8 million residents, more than half of them in the big city of San Jose.  The high tech companies such as Cisco, Apple, Google and more are spread out around the valley, and each neighborhood has a very different set of housing market conditions.  Even so, we’ll take a broad view of the county today to give some general indicators on what you might expect when moving here.

As a whole, home prices in Santa Clara are rising due to a dire scarcity of listing inventory.  On average, houses sold in December were overbid and the sales price to list price ratio was about 102%.  Here are the numbers at a glance:

Trends At a Glance Dec 2012 Previous Month Year-over Year
Median Price $682,500 $685,000 (-0.4%) $530,000 (+28.8%)
Average Price $908,873 $885,921 (+2.6%) $714,562 (+27.2%)
No. of Sales 899 903 (-0.4%) 903 (-0.4%)
Pending Properties 980 1,500 (-34.7%) 1,396 (-29.8%)
Foreclosures Sold 25 34 (-26.5%) 112 (-77.7%)
Short Sales Sold 154 138 (+11.6%) 229 (-32.8%)
Active Listings 534 782 (-31.7%) 2345 (-77.2%)
Active Foreclosures 22 27 (-18.5%) 173 (-87.3%)
Active Short Sales 39 52 (-25.0%) 980 (-96.0%)
Sales Price vs. List Price 102.6% 102.3% (+0.3%) 98.7% (+3.9%)
Days on Market 36 32 (+11.3%) 63 (-42.8%)

Though there was a slight slippage in values from the prior month’s median sales prices, the average price was up 2.6%.  More dramatically, though, prices were up 27-28% from the year before!  Foreclosures and short sales are way down.  Inventory is critically low, off 77% from a year earlier.

It is a very deep seller’s market in Santa Clara County.  Some areas, such as Cupertino, are very difficult for buyers right now.  Cupertino’s prices are already past the last peak pricing and have only about 2 weeks of inventory.

Trends At a Glance Dec 2012 Previous Month Year-over Year
Median Price $1,343,880 $1,325,000 (+1.4%) $982,500 (+36.8%)
Average Price $1,304,180 $1,373,820 (-5.1%) $1,085,210 (+20.2%)
No. of Sales 26 27 (-3.7%) 24 (+8.3%)
Pending Properties 18 23 (-21.7%) 13 (+38.5%)
Foreclosures Sold 0 0 (N/A) 0 (N/A)
Short Sales Sold 0 0 (N/A) 0 (N/A)
Active Listings 13 26 (-50.0%) 31 (-58.1%)
Active Foreclosures 0 0 (N/A) 0 (N/A)
Active Short Sales 0 0 (N/A) 4 (-100.0%)
Sales Price vs. List Price 102.9% 104.4% (-1.4%) 96.4% (+6.7%)
Days on Market 31 33 (-5.8%) 52 (-40.7%)

To get the full report with much more data and information for all areas within Santa Clara County, please see www.popehandy.rereport.com.

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