Today I received a call from a home owner, he said “ I want to sell my north Sunnyvale home and move to the south Sunnyvale. This year my home price tanked! The price has dropped at least 17% from 2007. How can I move up?”

I told him:” The homes from more desirable areas go up faster in good times and go down slower in bad times. On the other end. The areas are not so desirable,they go up slower in good times and go down faster in bad times. No matter what tomorrow holds the gap in prices will

Today I received a call from a home owner, he said “ I want to sell my north Sunnyvale home and move to the south part of Sunnyvale. This year my home price tanked! The price has dropped at least 17% from 2007. How can I move up?”

I told him:”The homes from more desirable areas go up faster in good times and go down slower in bad times. On the other end. The areas are not so desirable,they go up slower in good times and go down faster in bad times. No matter what tomorrow holds the gap in prices will

always continue to grow. Since you still own your home. You may use that value to buy in the best neighborhood that you can afford. If you have a reasonable down payment, you can still buy in a good neighborhood, but maybe not the one you really want. I think that you could move into Cumberland Elementary or Cherry Chase elementary areas. Those neighborhoods offer the best of the Sunnyvale elementary school district and Homestead high school.

There is an article of “But even real estate in the best Zip Codes are spending longer on the market than in 2007″ from the businessweek.com. The author said that “Houses in Sunnyvale, Calif., home to companies such as Juniper Network (JNPR), AMD (AMD), and Yahoo! (YHOO), are typically on the market for 66 days, making it the fastest selling real estate market in the country. That’s the good news. The bad news is that listings a year ago in the affluent Silicon Valley suburb normally sold after just 31 days on the market. “

I know the single family home takes less then 66 days to close, so I did a Sunnyvale real estate market research and I found out the four facts of Sunnyvale real estate from August 2007 to August 2008.

It takes us that it takes a lot longer then last year to sell a home. It has less homes did get sold. The inventory increased 22% and median sold price dropped 7%. The real estate market source is from www.reil.com

Silicon Valley is a “Competition real estate Market”

THE VALUE IS THE LAND, especially in Silicon Valley. It’s the reason why the region is in a “competition market,” and that’s why discounting will hurt sellers and the market. This is what Carole Rodini told SILVAR members at the Menlo Park/Atherton District bi-monthly meeting this last week of August. Rodoni, who is past president of Alain Pinel in Silicon Valley She gave SILVAR members a brief synopsis of the economy, the housing market, and her analysis of the future.

The good news: Silicon Valley, particularly in places like Menlo Park, Atherton, Palo Alto, Los Gatos, Los Altos, still is protected real estate environment, and while there are some foreclosures, this region will weather the market better than most.

Rodoni says: “In many areas, it’s a declining market, but in Silicon Valley, it’s merely a cooling market.” Rodoni does not expect the economy to stabilize until late 2009. “I see us in the fourth or fifth inning, but we’re not through with the credit side yet. It will be about 12 to18 months before we are done,” she says. She continues to stress, “The housing market is a local and regional business. We should be interested in what’s happening here.”

So what should Realtors tell buyers?

Rodoni says despite the rise in interest rates, “we still have the lowest rates in the last 30 years. … We have lost investors and 30 percent of buyers because they can’t get loans. Tell your clients it doesn’t matter what the interest rate is, the key is to get you a loan, get qualified and approved, then we can look for competitive rates and there are still many out there that are low and reasonable.”

She says tell homeowners, “Give it time, where it took three to four years to see appreciation (in homes), it will now take five to seven years. Land here only gets more valuable. … The trick is to hold on in the bad times. We always will have multiple offers here because of location, zip code, school districts and lifestyle.” “Watch the seller’s ego,” Rodoni advises Realtors. “You need to keep it a competition and not a negotiation market, where buyers come in and know there is value and have strong positive emotions about the area. Discounting is bad in these high end properties. Discounting does not do anything for the seller. The key is the entry price. Don’t set prices above the entry point.”

Rodoni stresses, “We have got to get buyers back in, but they won’t if we continue to discount prices. When do you discount it enough? You don’t want to go there. Land is an asset that has strategy and location.” The source is from www.silvar.org

Two Cupertino almost identical homes but sold for a lot difference in price.

Yes! There are two Cupertino Rancho homes both are located at the same street Wunderlich Dr.

A street with mixed sized of homes some are about 2000 sf for 1.2 millions and the other tiny homes are about $650,000 range.

The 10415 Wunderlich past owner applied the building permit and approved by city of Cupertino for an addition to become a 3 bedrooms and 2 baths. Will this city permit costs $55,000?? I don’t think so.

is the good time to look at the top two quarters of 2008 Silicon Valley (Santa Clara Valley) real estate market which includes the following city: Campbell, Cupertino, Gilroy, Los Altos,Los Altos Hills, Los Gatos, Los Gatos Mtns, Milpitas, Monte Sereno, Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Jose, Santa Clara, Saratoga,
Sunnyvale.

We know the real estate market is changing. Let us look at the number of inventory vs closed sales which is the 2^nd and 3^rd columns:

1). At the 1^st quarter of 2007 60%of the homes sold in 47 days on market in and median sales price was $780K.

2). At the 2^nd quarter of 2008 only 42% homes has sold in average day for 48 days and the median sold price is $750K.

When we combined the both information we know that the sale ability rate has dropped for 18% and the price dropped for 5%. If you are the sellers of those cities, your home needs to be in good condition and priced aggressive to be at the 42% homes that can be sold.

Single Family Residential                                                                             

Years   New Listings  Current Inventory       Closed Sales   Average DOM            Average CDOM            Average Sales Price   Median Sales Price

2007-Q1          4402    3137    2133    47        64        1,002,671        780,000

2007-Q2          5736    4163    2797    35        47        1,090,218        865,000

2007-Q3          5318    4562    2155    37        50        1,065,137        850,000

2007-Q4          3768    3895    1557    46        61        1,035,274        842,000

2008-Q1          5264    5162    1342    55        78        994,206           780,000

2008-Q2          6053    5706    2423    48        71        954,229           750,000

Summary        30541  26625  12407  43        60        1,026,994

This Cupertino bank own/REO homeis just on the market for $684,5000. This one is lowest priced 3 bedrooms 1 bath and 1 car garage and it is located at the most affordable area Rancho Ricinconada. This area has the excellent Cupertino schools.

 There are many other bank owned listings in the surrounding areas such as Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, San Jose and Campbell. The San Jose has the most bank own and short sales homes available.

There is another bank owned property in this area. It is a 3 years old Sunnyvale home with 1483 sf and 3 bedrooms and 3 baths for $599,900

Silicon Valley Single Family Inventory Report as July 1^st 2008 by Kathy Gamch – Chicago Title

# listings Pendings #Active %Pending # short pending #active short sale

Evergreen 516 108 408 21% 50 220

Alum Rock 1000 183 817 18% 71 441

Berryessa 377 101 276 27% 45 104

Milpitas 199 52 147 26% 15 52

Santa Clara 274 70 204 26% 15 42

Central SJ 418 76 342 18% 28 93

Willow Glen 277 67 210 24% 9 20

South SJ 557 140 417 25% 54 248

Blossom Vy 385 90 295 23% 38 103

Almaden Vy 141 34 107 24% 2 9

Cambrian 261 59 202 23% 12 47

Campbell 216 56 160 26% 10 18

Los Gatos 197 44 153 22% 1 5

Los Gatos Mt 79 3 76 4% 0 3

Saratoga 145 28 117 19% 1 1

Cupertino 159 55 104 35% 0 1

Sunnyvale 239 82 157 34% 22 35

Mt View 92 35 57 38% 0 2

LA Hills 87 23 64 26% 1 1

Los Altos 47 8 41 16% 0 1

Palo Alto 110 46 64 42% 0 0

The city of Palo Alto has 110 listings of homes for sale, 46 homes are pending, 64 homes are active, 42% of the homes are in pending. We can see the following has the best real estate market: Palo Alto, Mountain View, Cupertino, Sunnyvale.The Berryessa, Milpitas, Campbell, Los Altos Hill and South San Jose is above the same still in the sellers market. The rest of cities as Los Gatos, Mountain is hardest to sell only 4% listings are pending.

The top of short sales listings are located at the 5 areas of San Jose Alum Rock, South San Jose, Evergreen, Blossom Valley, Berryessa, Central S J.

I found a 3 bedrooms 2 baths home for 1203 sqft home with lot 5978 sqft at901 Gerard way San Jose was closed for $620K August 1 2006 now at the market as the bank owned property since June 24 2008 only asking $310,000.

If you jump the conclusion that the Silicon Valley homes dropped 50% then you are totally wrong.

If you jump the conclusion that the Silicon Valley homes dropped 50% then you are totally wrong. Just look at another home at 10674 GRAPNEL  PL CUPERTINO, CA 95014 was closed 11/27/06 for $1.252 Millions. The owner put on the market April this year for $1.399 Millions. No offer is received for 2 months. As June 20 the asking price dropped to 1.15Million then the owner received 12 offers and sold for much over asking price.

The real estate market really depends on the location of the homes. Some area the prices went up and some area value goes down significantly. You may wonder how come some homes price can goes up and the other goes down.

This Cupertino homes is at the best Cupertino schools area ( Monta Vista High ). The homes at the better neighborhood preserved the value.

 I found an interesting article of the -Top 10 recession proof cities from the forbes.com . The City of

        2). The median home price data from the National Association of Realtors—from the fourth quarter of 2006 to the fourth quarter of 2007–to see which areas posted the largest annual gains. Our data don’t account for the impact of declining sales in the first several months of this year.

         3).The numbers were adjusted using data from a November 2007 report, “U.S. Metro Economies: The Mortgage Crisis,” by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. It lists each city’s estimated gross metropolitan product growth by projecting how rising foreclosures and falling home prices would affect overall levels of productivity in local economies

“And in the

     I don’t know how the editor found the the

www.reil.com today. It shows the