Question for People in the Bay Area

Parent Cafe
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<p>There seems to be a lot of people from the Bay Area in this forum, so I have a quick question for them. I am planning to buy a condo in the Silicon Valley area. Do you have any suggestions as to good areas that will appreciate in value - and what percentage of appreciation should I expect? Also, how much have values gone up - I don’t want to buy high and sell low :slight_smile: Thanks.</p>

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<p>…various info on the net…</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.wetfeet.com/Content/Cities/silicon%20valley.aspx[/url]”>http://www.wetfeet.com/Content/Cities/silicon%20valley.aspx&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://www.viewfromsiliconvalley.com/id124.html[/url]”>http://www.viewfromsiliconvalley.com/id124.html&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://www.viewfromsiliconvalley.com/id66.html[/url]”>http://www.viewfromsiliconvalley.com/id66.html&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://realtytimes.com/rtcpages/20060110_siliconvalley.htm[/url]”>http://realtytimes.com/rtcpages/20060110_siliconvalley.htm&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://www.bizjournals.com/industries/real_estate/residential/2005/08/08/sanjose_story1.html[/url]”>http://www.bizjournals.com/industries/real_estate/residential/2005/08/08/sanjose_story1.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>The best areas to live in Silicon Valley, based on the quality of life, best public schools academically, low crime rate, ever increasing property values, etc. continue to be:</p>

<p>Almaden Valley in San Jose
Cupertino
Los Altos
Los Altos Hills
Los Gatos
Palo Alto
Saratoga</p>

<p>You just don’t get any land for your housing dollar in Silicon Valley. In time (5+ years), property values do increase significantly all over the valley, even though some of the articles above suggest otherwise on a short-term (less than 2 years) investment.</p>

<p>On the flip side, there are people who commute 60-90 miles one-way from Fairfield, Modesto, Tracy and Los Banos into Silicon Valley in order to purchase affordable housing outside of the Bay Area.</p>

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<p>Consider renting for awhile – I think that the housing market is likely to be flat or take a downturn for awhile. Condos tend to fare worse than single family homes whenever the real estate market has a correction.</p>

<p>Someone posted a great site in another thread:
<a href=“http://www.zillow.com%5B/url%5D”>www.zillow.com</a></p>

<p>You can use this to search for a city that you are interested in – then zoom in to a level where you can see houses - and click for “detail information” on a particular property, then click the graph that shows up. That will take you into the part where you can graph housing prices for a zip code, city, or county, and look at trends for the past year, or past 5 years. In some areas housing prices are falling, in others they seem to be leveling off. </p>

<p>I don’t think that there will be any huge drop in housing prices, but if the zillow.com graphs are accurate, then I think this would be the worst possible time to buy. The graphs for the Silicon Valley/Peninsula area tend to show a huge surge in market prices during the first 8 months of 2005 (up 40% in value), then a leveling off or slight downturn after that.</p>

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<p>very cool site !!!
don’t know how accurate the market price info is, but this site sure is fun to play around with…</p>