Are there bargain homes to be found in Los Gatos (and Monte Sereno), as in a lot of short sales or bank owned houses, condos & townhomes on the market? These types of properties have been in far shorter supply in the Los Gatos area than in most of Silicon Valley (San Jose, Santa Clara County).  Yesterday I logged onto MLSListings.com and did the research on the "Area 16" or Los Gatos - Monte Sereno real estate market - tedious, but interesting. (Area 16 includes Monte Sereno, consists of the 95030 and 95032 zip codes and a sliver of Campbell and San Jose, Cambrian Park - but is about 95% Los Gatos).  Results below:

If you are a Los Gatos homebuyer, you'll find that there are not very many distressed properties on the market. 

Los Gatos Houses for Sale 

Of the 142 active listings in "area 16" (the Los Gatos area, including Monte Sereno and an exceedingly small sliver of Campbell and San Jose - Cambrian Park), only 10 are distressed homes for sale (short sales and REOs combined).  That's just 7% of the available pool of Los Gatos houses for sale are distressed properties (4% short sale, 3% bank owned).

Los Gatos Condos and Townhomes for Sale

Among the condo market, about 10% is short sales and none is a bank owned property.

Pending & Closed Sales of Homes in Los Gatos

The pendings show a lot more activity among short sales - but will they close escrow?  (Unfortunately a significant percentage of short sales never close.  Buyers get tired of waiting, banks request things that sellers won't do, such as sign a promissory note, or foreclosure happens prior to the short sale being completed - just a few of the reasons why the success rate is lower than with either regular sales or REOs.)  Although about half of all homes in escrow are short sales, a look at the closeds over the last month belies that most won't close - only about 3% of the combined closed sales in the last month are short sales. Fourteen percent are bank owned - still a small fraction of the combined market (12% are distressed properties).

Will the info (and percentages of sale type) be different if we view it "year to date"?

It's pretty similar in that the distressed homes in Los Gatos are a small pert of the market - among the single family homes sold in 2009 in Los Gatos, about 6% are short sales, 11% are bank owned homes (about 17% of the solds are "distressed" sales).  Interestingly, the amount of recently closed houses that are distressed is a lot less than the year-to-date. 

Among the condo and townhome market, year to date about 8% of the sales are short sales and about 5% are bank owned home sales (13% are distressed sales).  For the current month, it's a similar 12%.

The distressed element of the Los Gatos real estate market is significant but a minor part of the available, pending, and sold properties in the Los Gatos area.  The lower prices of short sales and bank owned homes will have a negative effect on home valuations, but not nearly so strong as is seen in most of the San Jose area.  Depending on your price point and location, there may be more or less of an impact on your home's value (or the value of the home you wish to buy). 

For more posts on short sales & bank owned homes in & near Los Gatos, please see:
http://www.realtown.com/LiveInLosGatos/blog/short-sales-and-bank-owned-homes

Townsfolk know, but newcomers may not, that in the Town of Los Gatos, the residents do not vote for the mayor or vice mayor. Instead, we vote for the members of the town council, who in turn vote each year on which member of the council will take the jobs of mayor and vice mayor.  You can read more details about our form of government in the Los Gatos town website.

On Monday (11-16-2009) at 7pm, mayor Mike Wasserman will be stepping down as mayor and the council will vote a new member into that post and have the swearing-in also. 

The Los Gatos Chamber of Commerce is hosting a reception immediately following the meeting in the lobby of the town council chambers at 110 E. Main Street, Los Gatos. You can view the informational flyer for the reception online via the chamber's site.

Mike Wasserman will next be running for Santa Clara County Supervisor.  You can read about him and his campaign on his website, http://www.mikewasserman.com/

Today on my Valley of Hearts Delight blog, I posted a long article on the Monte Sereno real estate market.  In places I compared and contrasted it with the Los Gatos & Saratoga markets, so readers of this blog might find that piece interesting as well.

The Monte Sereno Real Estate Market Update, November 2009

Each year during Thanksgiving week, several local faith communities join together to give thanks and welcome the entire community to join them at an interfaith service.  The loacation rotates from one house of worship to another annually. This year it will be Tuesday, Nov. 24th at 7:30 pm at Congregation Shir Hadash (located at 20 Cherry Blossom Lane, Los Gatos - just off Shannon Road). 

Donations of food and funds will be collected for charitable organizations.  A reception will follow the service.  All are welcome!

Sponsoring communites are:

Halloween is fast approaching, but there are still a few more events in and near Los Gatos to get you into the spirit!

At Oak Meadow Park, once again the Los Gatos Chamber of Commerce is putting on the Haunted Halloween Forest and Goblyn's Glen (to benefit the Billy Jones Wildcat Railroad and more). For tickets and more information, please call 408-395-7433 or visit Website.  Next two events are Friday and Saturday of this week, from 7 - 10pm.

There are many, many more Halloween events the rest of this week posted on Craigslist. If you click on the link below, it will take you to an extensive collection of Halloween events in Siicon Valley.  Scroll down to

October 26 - 31
 

South Bay:

and there you'll find 22 items listed in San Jose, Saratoga, Sunnyvale, Los Altos and all over the south bay.

Happy Halloween!



 

What can you expect, weatherwise, for Los Gatos in the fall?  It varies but generally is dry and fairly warm during the days.  Mornings can be chilly but it heats up fairly quickly.  This last week was perhaps a bit unusual, but I'll share with you a bit about the weather here over the last seven days.

This last week, though, we caught the tail end of an Asian hurricane and we got drenched and pelted with strong winds.  After three drought years, no one is complaining: we needed the rain.

The storm caused damage to trees all over and created power outages for many.  Our block in Belwood was mixed - half the homes were out of power for about 48 hours. We were lucky and had power. As usual, though, after a very heavy rain, we had Comcast problems.  Our internet flickered off and on for a couple of days (a challenge for Jim and me since we both work from home and rely heavily on the web).

The temps rose in the days following the storm.  It's not completely abnormal to have an 80 degree day in October, but it is unusual to have a summer like temp with east-coast like humidity. The ground was saturated and as it evaporated, we had several muggy days. 

We got back to the daily walk with Bella through the neighborhood and to Belgatos Park and that's when we learned that so many neighbors were without electricity.  We saw a few trees that were getting extra supports (or should have, as they were now listing badly) but others which seemed just fine.

Many of the smaller plants and bushes fared much better than the larger trees had. To see the blooms along Westhill Drive, you'd never know that a massive storm had passed just 48 hours earlier.

Mike's prickley pear looked just great.

Everyone's got power again and aside from a few downed limbs, the neighborhood is looking back to normal. As usual for fall, Los Gatos is full of people who are jogging, riding bikes, pushing strollers, walking dogs, or just getting out.  Today was into the 70s - a very normal fall temp - and except for a few clouds that have been coming and going, it's again looking like autumn as usual.

Westhill Drive was cordoned off for a block party, too.

This is not surprising: our mild weather makes doing things outdoors be the norm throughout most of the fall.   We enjoy an average of 300 sunny days per year in Silicon Valley, with mild weather being the hallmark.  Rain normally comes from about December until March or April, but even then it's not usually so bad unless we have a once-in-a-decade El Nino year.   Word has it that we might be in for that this year, which would certain end, officially, the drought.  It's supposed to rain again tomorrow.  No one likes water rationing, so we will view it as a gift!

As readers of this blog know, Los Gatos is full of micro-markets, and that can make generalizations about how the "Los Gatos real estate market" is doing a bit skewed.  So whatever you read online, or hear about in your neighborhood or from friends, do take with a grain of salt since your home may or not be similar to whatever other home you're hearing about in terms of how it might sell (or if you're a buyer, the home you may want to purchase may be different....).

Disclaimer aside, I did a few minutes of data-collecting on MLSListings just now for single family homes (houses or attached/duet homes, but not condos or townhomes) in the town of Los Gatos (not Monte Sereno, but LG with zip codes 95032 and 95030).  It appears that the general trend continues: the most affordable Los Gatos homes, generally, are selling fairly well. 

What I did was run the numbers (agents: using the "preview" button on REIL), then simply added two other criteria: high school district (Saratoga-Los Gatos High School District and Campbell Union High School District) and then list price of up to $1.5 million. Then I figured out the absorption rate, or the months of inventory (MOI).  The solds are homes which have closed in the last month.

Where the MOI is greater than 6, it is a buyer's market, and where it's under 6 it is a seller's market - six months is considered a "balanced" market.

So, looking at the first set, for Los Gatos overall the absorption rate is 5.6 months - or very close to a balanced market.  But we know that some areas and price points are selling much slower than others.  Surprisingly, when all of Los Gatos with "the schools" are considered, the MOI is 7.7.  Given that it feels like entry level homes in that part of town feel like they're flying off the market, this doesn't sound right. So look at the second group of numbers, where the price range is limited to those under 1.5 million.  We can see that there are only 39 such homes for sale now (vs 101 for all price points) and the MOI is a brisk 3.55. That makes sense.  So what's slower are the more expensive homes, generally.  Entry level homes in the schools are selling at a healthy pace.

Interestingly, homes in the Campbell Union High School District are faring even better - and the data is inverted, slightly, as to where the sweeter spot of the market lies.  For these homes, those under 1.5 mil are going at a quick 2.4 months of inventory.  The market as a whole for Los Gatos houses for sale in this area is lower still, though - 2.23. That demonstrates that the market is even faster in the higher priced homes.  My belief is that this is the case because those homes - high end homes in the CUHSD - have taken a bigger hit on pricing and buyers are responding.  Cannot prove it in this brief blog post entry, though, but that's my (hopefully educated) hunch. 

What about your neighborhood, or where you'd like to buy?  Get hyper local when you think about how "the market" is.  Feel free to visit my Los Gatos Real Estate Report and see local sales in your neighborhood. Make it more precise by indating the beds/baths you want to consider, and how far out (in a radius) you'd like to see the comps, or how far back in time. Best part: you don't have to register, you don't have to leave a footprint.    (Your search is not saved on my site, so I will not be showing up on your front porch!)  Or call or email me for a confidential, no obligation, no-pressure consultation.