The Silicon Valley housing market continues its long rebound, with May seeing year-over-year increases in sales and median prices for both homes and condos in Santa Clara County. But you’ll need to act fast to have a chance at one of these properties because they’re spending less and less time on the block!
After a cool and frosty winter, the market is experiencing a boom in early 2024. As of February, approximately 56% of home sales were made in less than a month, with a median of 38 days on market. Additionally, 20% sold over list price, 21% were purchased as investments or second homes, 26% were bought by first-time homebuyers, and 33% were all-cash purchases — the highest monthly share of sales in almost 10 years.
If you ever needed a visualization of the rising cost of homeownership, this chart should do the trick. Tracking median house sales price fluctuations by region since 1990, you can see a significant shift to the West and South and away from the Northeast, even as prices have appreciated across the country. Of course, the last spikes we saw in western sales led to the subprime bubble, so it’s good for investors to be cautious.
Has the home sales market in San Francisco finally begun to cool off, or is it just the chill of another atmospheric river? Inventory and median sales price were down year over year in December, and properties took a little more time getting scooped up. Meanwhile, condo prices in the City by the Bay saw a 9% increase from the same time in 2022, and opportunities were 10% more plentiful.
The numbers from December are in, and it’s a familiar story. But while sales of homes and condos are still below the same time last year, the gap is narrowing as inventory slowly returns. But buyers still need to act fast with homes spending an average of 23 days on the market. As far as the bottom line, median sales prices were up year-over-year, more so for homes (16%) than condos (5%).
