Los Gatos, California
Los Gatos real estate, neighborhoods, condos, houses, homes, market trends, history, events, lifestyle, parks, events, businesses, home, Mary Pope-Handy
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Apr. 15, 2008
Why do short sales matter so much? In a nutshell, "Silicon Valley short sales" are a precursor of real estate price drops. That is, where you find a lot of short sales, you will see "downward pressure" on pricing. Where you see few or no short sales, you will not find this same pressure.
Most short sales do NOT sell before going to foreclosure. There's a lot of hype about buying your first home in San Jose as a short sale to save money, but there's no savings if you wait three months and the lender never approves the deal. (Or just as bad, the lender waits so long to say yes that the home is no longer worth what you offered on it.)
Below please find a list of homes being marketed as short sales in Silicon Valley.
What trends do YOU see?
| Active Listings of Short Sale Single Family Homes, Condos, Townhouses |
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3/26/2008 |
4/8/2008 |
4/15/2008 |
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| Los Gatos |
5 |
8 |
9 |
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| Monte Sereno |
1 |
0 |
0 |
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| Saratoga |
0 |
0 |
1 |
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| Los Gatos Mtns |
3 |
2 |
3 |
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| Cambrian Park |
59 |
73 |
53 |
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| Santa Clara |
56 |
68 |
59 |
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| Campbell |
13 |
23 |
28 |
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| Cupertino |
1 |
3 |
2 |
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| Los Altos |
0 |
1 |
1 |
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| Sunnyvale |
50 |
69 |
54 |
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| Blossom Valley |
196 |
251 |
200 |
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| San Jose (all) |
1534 |
1882 |
1667 |
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Apr. 8, 2008
Short sales are on the rise in Silicon Valley. Note the change of active listings identified as short sales in just the last 13 days! The list below does not include pending sales.
Related Posts on Short Sales in Silicon Valley by Mary Pope-Handy:
Are there many short sale listings in the Los Gatos, Monte Sereno, Saratoga area?
Mar. 10, 2008
The San Jose Mercury News was a Realtor's close friend in the 50s, 60s and 70s. It was more current than the multiple listing book (which at that time was updated about once a week with tearout or replaceable pages) and scanning the ads was crucially important to know what was going on back then. Each morning, my mother, Pat Pope (a Realtor from '56 to '96) would pour over the Merc with her morning coffee to stay current on the market.
 Most of the ads were pretty plain. One stood out for its frank humor - and it ran for what felt like years. The "old timers" in the industry may remember it. In large letters, this San Jose fixer-upper was listed boldly as "EL DUMPO". It eventually did sell but while being marketed, gave a lot of folks the chuckles.
So what makes a home a "fixer"?
In my real estate practice, I find that buyers, sellers and agents can all have a different idea of what constitutes a "fixer". It comes down to a matter of degree.
Simply put, a fixer is a home that needs a lot of work.
At one end of the spectrum, there are homes that have been updated now and then over the years - perhaps with a kitchen remodel that's now 20 or 25 years old - but not recently. The carpet and paint need replacing and the look could be newer, but the home is well maintained and clean. Is it a fixer? The sellers won't think so and may be offended if that label is applied to their home. The agents may view it as borderline. Buyers may view it as "liveable but needing work". Or maybe not - perhaps they will wonder how the current owners could live in a home with that condition. They may consider it a fixer.
 At the other end of the range is the "bulldozer". These are homes that have not been kept up at all: not updated, not even cleaned. They may have dysfunctional floorplans, illegal additions. They may need more than fixing; they may need replacing.
Once when my kids were out of school (vacation or inservice day) on a real estate board tour day, I took them along with me to see a few homes. We pulled up to one in Monte Sereno. The structure was sitting on a perflectly flat view lot close to Daves Avenue. The house was the kind of thing that makes a person say "ewww" when opening doors and seeing unpleasant, moldy surprises. My daughter, then about age seven, saw it and proclaimed wisely "Mommy, it's a 'dozer'".
Here are the types of things that will make virtually all buyers and Realtors view a home as a "fixer" (not just one of these, but multiple issues):
- major systems in need of being replaced, such as the roof, electrical system, plumbing, heating
- floors badly out of level (foundation work needed, drainage work needed)
- baths and kitchens that are 40 years old
- fireplaces and chimneys that need rebuilding or extensive repairs
And here are a few more that may invoke the "fixer" label (or the milder "cosmetic fixer") among homebuyers and real estate agents:
 popcorn or textured ceilings - paneling or (most older) wallpaper on the walls
- single pane windows
- cracked and stained concrete - driveways, walkways, patios
- lack of in-ground sprinklers
- ugly landscaping (obviously a little subjective)
- baths and kitchens more than 20 to 25 years old or in out-of-date colors
- old (or stained) carpeting or other floorcovering
For agents, it's helpful to clarify with buyers what they mean when they say "I want to buy a fixer". They may mean "replacing carpet and paint is OK" but nothing else. Or they may be willing to tear down a house and rebuild a new one for the right lot and location.
 For buyers, it's important to be clear with your agent what kinds of things you'd be willing to do for the right price, and how much is too much.
For homeowners who may be thinking of selling, don't worry about completely updating your house because someone may view it as a fixer upper. You won't get your money back in the short term if you replace your kitchen cabinets, for instance. But it's a mistake to take the stance that "the buyer can fix it" for everything extreme. Many buyers cannot envision how nice your kitchen would be without the brown and white flowered wallpaper and without the brown vinyl or linoleum flooring. Some fixes will make you money when you sell and some won't. Floorcoverings and paint are often a good investment.
Please call me if you'd like to discuss your particular situation and how to maximize buying or selling a home that may be a fixer.
Mary Pope-Handy, Realtor, CRS, ABR, e-PRO, SRES, ASP, RECS, CNHS, ACRE
Helping Nice Folks to Buy & Sell Homes Since 1993
Co-Author: "Get The Best Deal When Selling Your Home In Silicon Valley"
Keller Williams, Cupertino, CA (Silicon Valley)
877 397-5391 (Direct/Toll-Free/Fax); 408 204-7673 (Cell)
www.PopeHandy.com www.ValleyOfHeartsDelight.com
Feb. 21, 2008
 A pediatric center to diagnose and treat autism spectrum disorders will be opening in Los Gatos at the Mission Oaks Campus of Good Samaritan Hospital (located at National Avenue and Los Gatos Almaden Roads). It will be the first facility of its kind in Silicon Valley, in the San Francisco Bay Area or anywhere in Northern California. This important work is coming into existence thanks to the Silicon Valley Children's Hospital Foundation, the May Institute and Good Samaritan Hospital, and all the generous donors and volunteers who support them.
Autism and related disorders seem to be growing at an epidemic rate and families will be thankful to have assistance here in Santa Clara County. It is hoped that the center will open by the end of this calendar year.
Feb. 9, 2008
What are the odds that a home in Silicon Valley
will sell right now?
 Most of the homes for sale in Los Gatos, San Jose, or anywhere in Silicon Valley are not going to sell this month. In Los Gatos, there's about a 20% chance than any given home will sell. In San Jose generally, it's a lot worse than that - it's about a 13% chance that a home will sell. Here's a quick look at the numbers for these two areas of Santa Clara County:
Los Gatos Single Family Homes (95030, 95032 zip codes)
Active Listings (For Sale) = 118
Pending Sales (Under Contract) = 23
Closed in Last Month = 18
Months of inventory = 6.5
San Jose Single Family Homes (all areas)
Active Listings (For Sale) = 2921
Pending Sales (Under Contract) = 405
Closed in Last Month = 196
Months of inventory = 14.9
The months of inventory, or absorption rate, is a simple calculation of the number of active listings divided by the number of closed sales in the last month. For Los Gatos, that figure is 6.5 months. For San Jose, it's a whopping 14.9 months. (The National Assn. of Realtors says that at 6 months or more, it's a buyers market.)
What is also good to measure, though, is the pending sales against the listing volume. In Los Gatos, you can see that the number of pendings is a little higher than the number of closeds. But in San Jose, it's more than double! This tells us that the market IS improving. But it's far from being an easy time to sell. Depending on your area and price point, there's an 80-90% chance that your home would not sell this month.
How Can A Seller Improve the Odds
of a Home Selling Now?Prospective Los Gatos, Saratoga, and west valley sellers - what can you do to improve your chances of selling?
Here's a short list of the most common seller mistakes, things NOT to do:
 (1) Hiring an agent based on the list price he or she suggests (going with the highest number) is the biggest and perhaps most common error. A better practice: interview agents, hire someone, and then together work to establish the probable buyer's value of the home and work out a pricing strategy from there. It's fine to discuss pricing with the agents you interview, but do not choose your agent based on pricing, but rather on references, marketing, negotiation ability, experience, and other criteria.
(2) Related to #1 above, a common mistake among sellers is pressuring your agent to tell you what you want to hear rather than what you need to hear. Some sellers believe that if they "sell" the agent on the higher value of their home, or the current condition (which might need some changes to net you the most money), the house will sell for more, and sometimes homeowners actually push agents to state their estimated value higher than is realistic. One key job the real estate professional has is to provide you with objective input on your home, both at the time the listing is signed and as the feedback comes in and the market conditions possibly change. Ultimately, only you can assign the list price on your home. Allow your agent to provide you with objective input so that you can make a good decision.
Put another way, sellers often have an inflated view of what their own home is worth on the market (this is true of agents selling their own homes, by the way). And sellers take it personally when they believe a home is worth 10% more than the agent is telling them it's likely worth. Sellers frequently feel as though the lower price is insulting, and a response spoken or unspoken may be "I'm not going to give away my home". Agents occassionally do underprice a home, but 98% of the time, if there's a pricing error, it's on the high side.
Please remember that your agent is not the buyer on your home, and you are not negotiating a sales price with your agent. You are not on opposing sides of the table. When you hire a Realtor, you are a team and you share the same goal: getting your home sold in today's market.
 (3) Another common error among sellers is simply this: not believing that the market data applies to their home. If the market has corrected X% in the last timeframe, and all the other homes in the area have gone down in sales price, it's also true that your home has gone down in value in the buyers' eyes. Home prices or values are not a lot different than those of shares in the stock market. What a share of stock sold for yesterday or last year is interesting information, but it may be totally irrelevant to what that same share will sell for today. Holding on to what the home "used to be worth" is not going to assist you in getting your home into the minority pool of homes that are selling now.
(4) And finally, a very frequently seen seller mistake that causes homes not to sell is in not utilizing their agent's skills (on pricing of course but also staging, garnering feedback, analyzing the market, etc.).
For example, often Realtors have extra training and experience in staging. Agents know that fresh paint and carpet often will get the seller the most return on the investment, and so will decluttering. Sometimes more is needed in this area too. But sellers don't always want to hear it. The ultimate sales price of the home is tied to a number of factors, including how well it shows to potential buyers.
 Another area to watch out for is feedback. If your Realtor tells you that there's a problem with the way buyers assess your home (pet odors, cooking or smoking odors, clutter or other issues), take it seriously. You will improve your odds by taking the feedback as useful input (and not as an assault). A great system that I use is HomeFeedback.com; the seller can get both individual responses and compiled statistics of the feedback. Sometimes, sellers take it personally and get upset at their agent for the information offered, even via this type of buyer response. This makes it hard to hear what you need to hear.
Put another way, what you CAN and SHOULD do to sell your home in today's market: Hire carefully! (Most agents in the Santa Clara Valley have been licensed less than 5 years and have not been through a market like this. Experience is very important. Check references and be very careful here as it is your single most important decision.) Make sure it's a full marketing plan, using both web and traditional forms of marketing.
Price carefully and realistically! With the vast majority of homes not selling, it is important to not overprice. This is not the market for "trying a price". Price it to sell. Price it to be the best value among similar homes.
Stage it! Listen to your agent.
Take feedback seriously. Estimating prices and what needs to be offered to buyers in the way of condition, concessions or other things in falling markets can be tough. Ask your agent for feedback and take it to heart. Sometimes market conditions are a "moving target" and may require readjusting.
To sell your home in this challenging market for the most money and in the fastest time, the home needs to look great and be priced well and be accessible. Recently I was at a real estate educational seminar and it was put this way: "we're in a beauty contest and a price war".
And lastly, only put your home on the market if you are serious about selling. It's a great time to buy a home in Silicon Valley, but it's not necessarily an ideal time to sell! Rick Campbell, author of The Real Estate Report, opines that we may be "at or near the bottom of the market". Of course, if you are "moving up", the overall is most likely a plus even if you take a hit on the sell side of the equation. So sellers, if you want or need to sell now, make sure that you position your home so that it's not just listed, it's sold.
Mary
P.S. Buyers, don't wait. This is about as good as it gets!
Mary Pope-Handy, Realtor, CRS, ABR, e-PRO, SRES, ASP, RECS, CNHS, ACRE
Helping Nice Folks to Buy & Sell Homes Since 1993
Co-Author: "Get The Best Deal When Selling Your Home In Silicon Valley"
Keller Williams
877 397-5391 (Direct/Toll-Free/Fax)
www.DelightHomes.com www.ValleyOfHeartsDelight.com
emailto: Mary@PopeHandy.com
Blog: www.LiveInLosGatos.com
Jan. 5, 2008
Silicon Valley is not alone in being pounded by a fierce Alaskan storm this weekend. The Friday rains - which we desperately need - came in a short period of time, together with strong winds which apparently gusted close to 100mph in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
 It's a mess out there, and it's not over yet. The roads are filled with fallen leaves and branches. In the Almond Grove District of downtown Los Gatos, a bough actually blocked off an entire street and damaged a car. This is not an uncommon story from one end of the state to the other. Fences are down all over. Emergency personnel are working overtime to handle the accidents and weather related problems. In Southern California, they face mudslides after the fires a few months ago - homes are truly at risk there.
Not surprisingly, power was lost to over a million P, G & E customers in northern California alone. Additionally, cable and internet services are out for many of us too. At our house in the Belwood area of east Los Gatos, we have Comcast cable for high speed internet and television. But they are both out. (The town of Los Gatos requires the cable boxes to be below ground, at least where we live, and every time we get a heavy rainfall, the boxes flood and those services go out. Our neighbors used a sump pump on theirs, and helped us use it on ours, to no avail. We keep dialup as a backup here since my husband and I both work from home and can't afford to not have internet access.)
The end is in sight. By Monday, the rain should have stopped. Then it will be time to do the cleanup.
Once you take care of the immediately obvious items, let me suggest a few others to protect your home while they are on the top of your mind.
(1) Water Against Your Home: Get It Away
 Did the water pool up against your house, or come very close to doing so, during these storms? If so, it's imperative to get the water away from the house. If you live in Los Gatos, Monte Sereno, Saratoga, Almaden Valley, or any of the regions close to the coastal foothills, you may be getting hillside runoff. Or you may have a very high water table - both which are much more serious and will require expert help. (Call or email me if you'd like a recommendation for an inspector.)
Often water pools for two very simple, and easy to remedy, reasons. Fist, it may be there because the downspouts don't extend away from the house and/or secondly because the dirt around the soil is not properly graded.
If your downspouts don't have extenders, go get them! They are ugly but functionally very important. They are cheap. Ace Hardware in Los Gatos carries them and the folks there are friendly and will assist you. Next, see if you need to work on the grading around your home to carry the water away from your home's foundation. (If you lay a marble 1' away from your house, would it roll toward or away from it? You want it to go away from your house.)
Here in Santa Clara County, in the San Jose area generally, we have clay soil. It expands when wet and is extremely strong - much more powerful than the concrete and rebar in most homes' foundations. Foundations can be very costly to repair, and a moving foundation can put your home out of level and cause other problems too - most of which are not easy or inexpensive to fix. So if you care about your real estate as an investment, protect your house's foundation: get the water away from it.
(2) Leaves On Your Roof and In Your Gutters: Get Them Off
 We love our trees, especially here in the west valley communities. When they are too close to our residences, though, they can be an issue. (In the photo here, the house has a shake roof, which is dark gray. But there are so many leaves on the roof that it's almost not visible at all.)
Overhanging branches can be a superhighway for rodents to get onto your roof. Depending on your roof type, from there it may not be a whole lot of effort for them to get into your attic, and then down into your walls, too. Rats munching on electrical wires can spark a fire. The list of why you don't want your home to be a habitrail go on and on.
But the leaves themselves are a problem too if they pile up on your roof and in your gutters. On the roof, they can trap moisture and cause accelerating aging to the shingles, or encourage the growth of moss (also ages the roof faster). Perhaps worse, when the roof and gutters fill with tree debris, it can cause actual roof leakage as the water does not drain properly but instead backs up into your home from between the shingles or tiles.
Meanwhile, though, we need to wait out this series of storms. Our total rainfall has been off by about half of last year's, and last year's was low too. (Not unlike the real estate market...) If we don't get more rainfall, the folks at San Jose Water are saying we may have a full on drought and rationing next summer. So we are thankful for the precipitation - just wish it wouldn't all come at once!
Jan. 4, 2008
Is January a good month to list your home, or to make an offer on one, in Los Gatos? When is the best time to buy or sell? In auto sales, it's said that making an offer on a car the last day of the month, especially if it is a rainy, "slow day", can result in a good bargain. Is that true in buying a house in Los Gatos too?
Auto sales and real estate sales are not the same, but they can respond to the same economic factors, among others. Predictions for 2008 are very mixed. The weather, though, also impacts sales in both areas.
What about the weather? As I type this, it's pouring rain, the wind is howling and my power here in Belwood has browned out 3 times in the last 2 minutes. This is not the kind of weather that brings most buyers out to shop! So competition will be less for the best homes. Interest rates, too, often rise in mid-February as demand increases. There's not a ton of inventory at the moment, but it's very possible that the "best deal of the year" for getting that condo, townhome or house here in the west valley will be had right now. No one can say with any certainty whether the realty market will be more or less favorable in a month, but I would say to buyers who are serious about purchasing a home this year: do look now. If you see a home you like, make an offer. And sellers, most of your competition will wait for fairer days. Right now, that's not much of an issue.
What's the inventory? And sellers, is this a good time for you? Right now,inventory is low: there are exactly 95 single family homes that are on the market in the 95030 and 95032 zip codes. There are just 22 condominiums or townhouses in the same parts of town. Winter is not usually known as the best season to sell, but there is also far less competition now than there might be later in the year. And buyers who come out to view homes in the middle of January's weather are usually very serious about writing a contract to purchase a house.
What about pricing? Home sales have been plummeting for 34 solid months. Most homes in most parts of Silicon Valley are not selling. (Believe it or not, even in a hot sellers market, not all homes sell. A percentage are always overpriced, in poor condition, or marketed so badly that they do not procure an offer that goes through.) Los Gatos, and neighboring Monte Sereno, Saratoga, and Almaden Valley, are stronger than many parts of the valley - in large part because of the quality of life in these areas, the low crime, the well-kept neighborhoods, and the great school scores. Those factors make some areas desirable in any market. So while you might find a foreclosure emporium in some parts of Santa Clara County, you won't find it in this part of the Valley of Heart's Delight! Short sales and foreclosures pull prices down, perhaps by as much as 10 percent, in areas where those occur. But prices in the town of Los Gatos and the lovely areas adjacent are continuing to rise.
The future of real estate sales in Silicon Valley is a bit uncertain for this new year, perhaps especially since it is an election year. We truly don't know how long the sales slump here will last. If homeowners need to sell, it is probably best to get the home on the market sooner rather than later since the competition is not very great at the moment. Buyers can gain on this market now by purchasing when no one else is looking and while interest rates are good and before prices rise any more. (I have often heard buyers say "I'm waiting for prices to go down" but in most markets within Los Gatos, they are simply not falling.)
"The Market" is a broad term, and really even within our fair town, there are micro-markets from east Los Gatos to downtown to the areas bordering Monte Sereno, and that is also true as relating to school districts and price points.
Right now - even with this inclement weather - can be a great time to buy and sell in Los Gatos or anywhere in the west valley areas of Silicon Valley.
Please call or email me if you'd like to discuss your particular circumstances.
Best regards,
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