Affordability Issues for Silicon Valley Home Buyers Deepen with Feds’ Jumbo Loan Decision for ‘08

By Alicia Lanier, REALTOR

Unfortunately for Silicon Valley home buyers, there will be no change in 2008 for the $417,000 maximum on home loans that can be bought or guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) hinted in its announcement that, if home prices nationwide continue to decline next year, the conforming loan limit might even be lowered in 2009.

This decision carries a hefty price tag for California home buyers. Home loans over $417,000 – called non-conforming or jumbo loans – typically carry a higher mortgage interest rate than a conforming loan, increasing the monthly payment and negatively impacting purchasing power for households in California. Do I need to say that affordability is already beyond the reach of many of our first-time home buyers, especially here in our pricey Valley?

The president of the California Association of Realtors (CAR), William E. Brown, was quick to respond. “At more than $568,000, the median price of a home in California is more than 2.5 times the U.S. median of $221,000, yet California is not recognized by OFHEO as a high-cost state,” said Brown. “California still has the third highest home price in the nation, compared with Hawaii at seventh, and Alaska, which ranks 39th in terms of median home price. Yet Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands are recognized by OFHEO as high-cost areas.”

Brown added: “Now is the time for the U.S. Senate to pass legislation allowing regional adjustments to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loan limits and to modernize FHA loan programs. This critical legislation is a key step to allowing families in California an opportunity to climb the first rung of the homeownership ladder.”

Alicia Lanier is a REALTOR and member of the Coldwell Banker Diamond Society – Top 8% of Agents Internationally  www.AliciaLanier.com  408-491-1634

 

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Free Real Estate Services for Buyers & Sellers

By Alicia Lanier, REALTOR

At my weekend open houses, I meet many home buyers who – because they are web savvy – will at first insist that they do not want to work with a REALTOR because they can search on the web for homes being offered for sale and then go to an open house to check them out. Sometimes they say they have even driven by several homes to eliminate them so they “don’t have to go to the open house.” This is a big mistake, in my opinion, because often a home’s interior can, happily, sometimes be just what they want and a less-attractive exterior can frequently be modified to their satisfaction. 

Admittedly, today’s buyers have in the Web a very powerful search tool at their disposal. But what most buyers don’t realize is that only about one-third of homes for sale have open houses. For the other two-thirds, a buyer needs a professional real estate agent with the right tools and instincts to find, help evaluate, and quickly access all remaining properties that might actually appeal to the buyer. 

Secondly, using a buyer’s agent is not only free to the buyer … perhaps the only time any of us receive free professional service … but also saves time and even money in today’s market. Today’s buyers do have useful resources available, but a professional REALTOR has more –  plus the expertise to know what further information a buyer really should have to make an informed home choice and acceptable purchase offer. More importantly, the buyer needs an advocate who will represent that buyer’s interests in both negotiations and property disclosures.

As for Sellers, the FSBOs out there (owners who are choosing to have a home For Sale By Owner) are perhaps the most misled of all. Obviously trying to save agency fees, an owner may strike out on his own without realizing that most FSBO homes end up with selling prices far less than comparable homes marketed by listing agents who are highly skilled marketing professionals. Just hiring any agent to place the home in the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) is not enough to sell a home in today’s market. Worst of all, the owner unknowingly may not have made all the appropriate disclosures which could leave them vulnerable to a future lawsuit.

Unfortunately for them, the buyers and sellers out there who are so reluctant to work with a professional REALTOR are overlooking some highly useful free real estate services that can save them large amounts of time and money.

As we enter the waning days of 2007 – which, by the way, offers you buyers a compelling trio of reasons to buy now because of attractive inventory, motivated sellers, and low home lown rates – here are My Complimentary Services to help both buyers and sellers get started immediately on the path to finding the perfect property or selling a home  …. 

FOR BUYERS:  Request my Just Listed Homes for Sale e-mail alerts. I will send you regular emailed photos and details about newly listed homes for sale that meet your  search criteria. Request alerts for Single-Family Homes, Condos/Townhomes, Land, or Multi-Family properties anywhere in the Silicon Valley. 

FOR SELLERS: Request my indepth free  Home Audit to learn how to “dress” your home for a successful sale, its potential selling value and more.  I will also include my customized, exclusive “fast track” marketing plan for your home.

REFERRALS.  Ask for the name and contact information for an excellent REALTOR in our Coldwell Banker network who can assist you with buying or selling anywhere in the United States.

My Other Complimentary Services will help both buyers and sellers and are also designed to inform everyone about our Silicon Valley housing market and its impact on our daily lives …

Print newsletter, Service for Life.  Ask for a complimentary subscription to this consumer publication about living “healthy, wealthy, and wise” in the Silicon Valley. 

Market updates for all Silicon Valley cities … ask me to furnish an up-to-the minute report  of all single-family or condo homes for sale/activity for your specific city or neighborhood. 

Alicia’s Homeowners Guide … ask for a free subscription to my monthly e-mail newsletter filled with tips for buying, selling and maintaining a home.

Search the Entire MLS at www.AliciaLanier.com – simply click on Property Search to search for Single-family homes, Condos/Townhomes, Multi-Family Properties or land. When you find something that looks promising, call or e-mail me with questions or to visit the property.

FREE REPORTS, including:  “Tips for Selling Your Home for Top Dollar – and Fast!” ~ “12 Questions You Should Ask Before Committing to a Real Estate Agent” ~ “The Best Home Fix-Ups” ~ “Avoid 7 Costly Mistakes When Selling Your Home” ~ Customized City/Neighborhood MarketWatch Reports

To Request Any Complimentary Service, call me at 408-491-1634 or write your request below and click submit.

 

Alicia Lanier is a REALTOR and member of the Coldwell Banker Diamond Society – Top 8% of Agents Internationally  www.AliciaLanier.com  408-491-1634

 

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Silicon Valley Has The Edge in “Globalization”

By Alicia Lanier, REALTOR

In this post-Thanksgiving weekend, San Jose Mercury-News writer Scott Duke Harris gave us another reason to be thankful with an upbeat business article about the continuing mystique of the Silicon Valley tech scene.

A most welcome departure from recent gloomy news, Silicon Valley’s edge: How globalization strengthens the tech economy, emphasizes that just a few years after the dot-com bust wiped out 200,000 jobs, “the Silicon Valley region is riding high on a global market it helped create. The rise of tech hubs in China, India, Israel and elsewhere has reinforced the valley’s leadership, not threatened it.” Among the evidence cited in this story:

• Revenues to Valley icons such as Hewlett-Packard and Cisco Systems are soaring.
• The start-up culture is flourishing and, in the third quarter of 2007, venture capitalists invested more than $2.48 billion in more than 260 Valley companies.
• Multinationals like Nokia and Microsoft have expanded their presence, and many overseas start-ups are moving operations to the valley to be closer to potential investors, partners, ideas and customers.
• The Valley is now diversified, becoming a center for biotech, medical devices, nanotech and ”clean tech” as well as the traditional computer industry.                                                                               

Intriguingly, our Silicon Valley is called ”a technocratic melting pot where ideas are sparked, shared, blended and refined; where bootstrapping and angel investing may ultimately lead to multibillion-dollar companies; and where personal relationships are forged that lead to payoffs years down the road.”

TIP: The Silicon Valley’s globalization edge translates to a strong local housing future.

Alicia Lanier is a REALTOR and member of the Coldwell Banker Diamond Society – Top 8% of Agents Internationally  www.AliciaLanier.com  408-491-1634

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Thanksgiving Greetings

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family …. I hope you enjoy the bounty and blessings of this wonderful holiday.   ~ Alicia Lanier

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More Investors Eyeing Bay Area Properties?

By Alicia Lanier, REALTOR

DataQuick issued its monthly report on the 9-county Bay Area housing sales today – and the news wasn’t pretty. The company, which lumps together all new and resale and condo and single-family homes, reported that total home sales scraped the bottom of the barrel in October.

Sales of all condo and single-family homes in Santa Clara County (SCC) alone dropped 35%, although the median selling price rose slightly. See my blogpost on November 6, 2007, for details on single-family homes sales in SCC.  Unfortunately, sales were also down in the other eight counties.

The DataQuick table below shows a breakdown, county by county, of the number of sales and median home prices for October 2007 compared to the same month last year.

All Homes	Number Sold Oct-06	Number Sold Oct-07	Percent Change	Median October 2006	Median October 2007	Percent Change
Alameda	1,655	1,098	-33.7%	$587,500	$570,000	-3.0%
Contra Costa	1,754	1,011	-42.4%	$540,000	$530,500	-1.8%
Marin	303	216	-28.7%	$829,000	$875,000	5.5%
Napa	154	71	-53.9%	$547,500	$548,750	0.2%
Santa Clara	2,125	1,381	-35.0%	$673,750	$683,750	1.5%
San Francisco	573	526	-8.2%	$765,000	$795,000	3.9%
San Mateo	719	512	-28.8%	$755,000	$775,000	2.6%
Solano	636	309	-51.4%	$464,000	$391,750	-15.6%
Sonoma	613	362	-40.9%	$520,000	$473,000	-9.0%
Bay Area	8,532	5,486	-35.7%	$616,000	$631,000	2.4%

DataQuick, as always in its monthly housing report, also analyzed the indicators of market distress, and said they “continue to move in different directions. Foreclosure activity is at record levels, financing with adjustable-rate mortgages and with multiple mortgages have dropped sharply. Down payment sizes and flipping rates are stable …”

But here was a very tantalizing little tidbit at the very end of the October report: “…non-owner occupied buying activity is edging up.”  Ahhh! I do so wish they had elaborated and explained where these “non-owner occupied” investors are targeting. Are they eyeing the vacation-property-rich counties of Napa and Sonoma or do condo investors have their eye on San Jose’s central business district with its newer construction and the city’s first high-rise condo properties? We’ll have to look into that …

Alicia Lanier is a REALTOR and member of the Coldwell Banker Diamond Society – Top 8% of Agents Internationally  www.AliciaLanier.com  408-491-1634

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Two-Car Garage A High Priority with Buyers

By Alicia Lanier, REALTOR

Evidently reflecting Americans’ love affair with their automobiles, a two-car garage was considered a priority by 57 percent of home buyers in a survey by the National Association of Realtors (NAR). 

In the 2007 Profile of Buyers’ Home Feature Preferences, oversized garages saw the biggest growth in terms of what recent buyers considered very important in a home, gaining 16 percentage points to 57 percent. Among buyers who purchased homes without this feature, 56 percent of them said they would have paid more for an oversize garage, compared to only 6 percent in the 2004 survey. Personally, I suspect that most homeowners use their garages for storage in addition to housing their vehicles.

Other priorities for today’s home buyers include air conditioning, with three out of every four respondents ranking this as “very important,” and a walk-in closet in the master bedroom, which was very important to 53 percent of respondents. Hardwood floors and granite countertops each gained 7 percentage points from the 2004 survey, with 28 percent and 23 percent, respectively, of buyers viewing these features as “very important.” Gaining 6 percentage points was cable/satellite TV-ready, at 46 percent.

Regionally, two-thirds of buyers in the West want oversized garages (66 percent), followed by central air conditioning at 59 percent.

Who’s green? Energy efficiency was more important to new-home buyers than buyers of existing homes, with 65 percent of new-home buyers saying it was very important compared to 39 percent for buyers of existing homes. Older buyers placed a higher priority on energy efficiency than did younger buyers – 63 percent of buyers 75 and older said it was very important, but only 32 percent of buyers who were 18-24 agreed.

TIP for Home Remodelers: If you are thinking about converting your garage to a family room - but plan to sell your home in the future – it’s probably unwise to sacrifice that garage for extra living space.

Alicia Lanier is a REALTOR and member of the Coldwell Banker Diamond Society – Top 8% of Agents Internationally  www.AliciaLanier.com  408-491-1634

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The Plant Shopping Center Growing at Curtner and Monterey in San Jose’s Under-retailed East Side

By Alicia Lanier, REALTOR

More than 2 dozen retail stores and restaurants are scheduled to join already-open Target and Best Buy at The Plant, the newest San Jose shopping center at the corner of Curtner Avenue and Monterey Road, by next April.  The big 653,000 sq. ft. center is already 90% leased – no surprise since nearby residents of this densely populated area now have to trek over to either Oakridge or Eastridge Mall. 

Kudos to The Plant’s developer, Westrust, who struggled with some significant environmental challenges because the 55-acre property was the site of a General Electric motor factory producing, among other items, components for nuclear power plants.  In a recent San Jose Mercury-News article documenting the hurdles, Westrust was quoted as having to “coordinate its construction with the ongoing environmental cleanup being handled by GE; create a floodwater prevention system because the site is in a flood plain, as well as implement a runoff filtering system; design complex foundation systems because of soil liquefaction concerns; remove large power poles in the area, rebuild utility systems and coordinate a tripling in size for the PG&E substation on the property; and work with the city to widen Curtner.”  

I’m sure that residents in the area welcome their persistence. Among retail stores slated to open at The Plant will be PetSmart, Office Max, Toys R Us, Starbucks and Payless Shoes.

Alicia Lanier is a REALTOR and member of the Coldwell Banker Diamond Society – Top 8% of Agents Internationally  www.AliciaLanier.com  408-491-1634

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Median Prices Up in 10 of 15 Silicon Valley Cities as October Home Sales Slide in the Silicon Valley

By Alicia Lanier, REALTOR

Homebuyers in the Silicon Valley continued to stay on the sidelines in October 2007 as sales volume of resale homes again weakened,  but stats from MLS Listings Inc. show that median selling prices increased in 10 of the 15 Silicon Valley cities when compared to the same period last year.

It was a story best told by San Jose, the Capital of Silicon Valley and the nation’s 10th largest city. Total sales volume was $206,364,461 in October, down significantly from  $380,533,026 in October last year. However, the median sales price rose slightly to $737,000, citywide, up from $720,000 last October while dropping a bit from September’s $747,000 median. Only two San Jose neighborhoods saw upticks in prices. The ever-popular Willow Glen’s median price rose to $794,975 in October, up from $780,000 the same month last year, and neighboring Cambrian registered a slight gain to $722,500 in October compared to $720,000 last October.

In 10 Silicon Valley cities, the median sales prices for single-family homes rose in October over the same month in 2006:

Cupertino - $1,137,500 median in October 2007 ($1,050,000 in October 2006)  
Los Gatos - $1,540,000 ($1,365,000)
Los Gatos Mountains – $923,500 ($700,000)
Milpitas – $721,500 ($680,000)
Mountain View - $1,025,000 ($1,003,000)
Palo Alto – $1,587,500 ($1,400,625)
San Jose – $737,000 ($720,000)
Santa Clara – $765,000 ($705,000)
Saratoga - $1,546,405 ($1,450,000)
Sunnyvale - $900,500 ($785,000)

Median sales prices for other cities were:

Campbell  – $742,500 in October 2007 ($775,000 in October 2006)
Gilroy – $624,000 ($719,000)
Los Altos – $1,775,000 ($1,790,000)
Los Altos Hills – $1,952,000 ($2,517,900)
Morgan Hill – $885,000 ($975,000)

Total sales volume increased in Cupertino, Palo Alto, Santa Clara and Saratoga. Countywide, total sales volume decreased to $602,592,702 in October from $874,609,191 the same month last year.

Tip for Buyers: Cities with growing numbers of homes for sale were San Jose (some, but not all neighborhoods, have an abundance of inventory), Gilroy, Milpitas, Morgan Hill, Santa Clara and Sunnyvale. And home loan interest rates dropped again last week, giving you more home purchasing power.

Alicia Lanier is a REALTOR and member of the Coldwell Banker Diamond Society – Top 8% of Agents Internationally  www.AliciaLanier.com  408-491-1634

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Holiday Faire … Another Fun Day in The Villages

By Alicia Lanier, REALTOR

One of my clients, Kathy Weatherford, and husband Dana moved up to The Villages this past summer and wasted no time getting acquainted with other residents and involved in community life up there. 

Life in that beautiful, serene community for persons 55+ in San Jose’s East Foothills above Evergreen sounds like an idyllic non-stop round of fun, with one’s calendar filled with golfing on the 18-hole championship course, potluck lunches, hiking, amateur dramatics, gourmet dinners at the country club, swimming, tennis, and organizational activities. One could easily say it epitomizes the American Dream of Retirement.

As for Kathy, the members of the Villages Arts & Crafts Association wasted no time spotting her gifts … she’s a talented jewelry designer as well as professional bookkeeper … and put her in charge of their 35th annual Holiday Faire. “We’ll have lots of arts and crafts … including toys and cards and too many things to mention … and home-baked goodies plus other food and beverages,” says Kathy, who seems to be enjoying the challenge.

This popular annual Holiday Faire will be Saturday, November 10, 2007, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Cribari Center, 5000 Cribari Lane.

I certainly have the Holiday Faire on my calendar. I treasure a lovely jade-crystal necklace and earrings made by Kathy, and I know she’ll have some wonderful pieces for holiday gift giving.

Considered one of the U.S.’s Top 20 adult communities for persons 55 and older by New Choices for Retirement Living Magazine, The Villages is a sprawling gated neighborhood of 2,300 condominiums and 227 single-family homes on 1,200 acres of lush landscaping and sparkling lakes.  Let me know if you want to learn more and hear about any properties currently for sale in The Villages.

Alicia Lanier is a REALTOR and member of the Coldwell Banker Diamond Society – Top 8% of Agents Internationally  www.AliciaLanier.com  408-491-1634 

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