Luxury Real Estate

Courtesy of Dawn Thomas

The Dawn Thomas Team is experts in Luxury Real Estate in Silicon Valley and one of our specialty areas is Los Altos & Los Altos Hills. We have written about the Real Estate market and the decline in inventory and the drop in the days that homes stay on the market. Last year we wrote imploring people thinking about selling their homes to do so; luckily in the beginning of 2013 the Real Estate Market here in the Silicon Valley and Los Altos & Los Altos Hills, particularly, has stayed the same (on the incline). If you’re thinking about selling your home contact the Dawn Thomas Team and look at these statistics of what’s been going on in the Los Altos & Los Altos Real Estate Market in terms of Sold home price averages and days they’ve stayed on the market! ***Please see our previous Stats posts on Atherton, Palo Alto and Menlo Park***

When analyzing the statistics for Los Altos & Los Altos Hills we chose to break down the average home sale price between 2011-2012 and compared that to the same parameters in 2010. We also did the same thing with the Days on Market.

Average Sold home prices in Los Altos & Los Altos Hills 2011-2012 rose 11% and 9% respectively while Days on Market went down 33% and 32%.

So what do the numbers above mean? During and soon after the housing calamity that started in 2007, but culminated in 2010, home prices were higher and the days that the homes were offered on the market– until they sold. In the last 2 years the days on market has gone down 33% in Los Altos and 32% in Los Altos Hills which is great for Sellers as the longer a home stays on a market the harder it gets to sell. We’ve also seen that this low inventory has been hard on buyers, especially first time buyers, as the competition for these homes are very fierce. The low inventory, struggles for buyers and home values coming back up combined with the location–Los Altos & Los Altos Hills–makes it a great climate for Sellers.

A 11% increase for Los Altos and a 9% increase for Los Altos Hills in average sold home price increase doesn’t seem like much, but it is a step in the right direction considering that the average home sales across the nation is still barely hovering around 10%. But shouldn’t the average sale of homes going up be a bad thing? Not for Sellers or Buyers actually; when the home prices bottomed out those that owed a significant amount of money on their homes found that while they hadn’t lost their homes (foreclosure) they were underwater on their loans (owed more than it was worth). With the average sales prices going up Sellers did/do get closer to the real value for their homes. It also makes it easier for Buyers to borrow; if the home was appraised and it came in–for example– at $5,000,000 yet a Buyer had offered $5,750,000 the Buyer would have to come up with the difference.

The numbers before the housing crisis were greatly bloated and while it hit many hard, even in Los Altos & Los Altos Hills, there has been quite a recovery in California but especially the Silicon Valley. Just recently we wrote about how San Francisco and the Bay Area is #2 out of the Top 10 healthiest housing markets in the country!

This blog is courtesy of The Dawn Thomas Team who is an award-winning Real Estate Agent team at Intero Real Estate Services in Los Altos 650-701-7822. We help nice people with selling and buying homes from Palo Alto to West San Jose!