Coldwell Banker survey says million-dollar homes increase
A new survey has confirmed what many people have suspected--the number of million-dollar homes in Silicon Valley is soaring almost as fast as the number of high-tech stock options.
Sales of million-dollar homes in the valley reached 1,090 in the first half of the year, up 85 percent from the 588 recorded during the same period last year, according to a report released on Aug. 16 by Coldwell Banker.
Coldwell Banker said the average million-dollar home in Silicon Valley sold for $1.9 million, up from $1.7 million a year ago. Included in the Silicon Valley figure were all home sales from Gilroy to Palo Alto. The first half of this year marked the first time that the Bay Area's million-dollar sales count exceeded the high-priced Southern California market.
"Price appreciation, the lack of inventory, the creation of wealth from the technology sector and the white-hot market have driven many homes in Santa Clara County and the peninsula over the million-dollar threshold," said Avram Goldman, president of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, Northern California. "It has reached the point that a million-dollar price tag no longer automatically means a luxury home in this region."
Silicon Valley wasn't the only area that experienced a surge in premium home sales. The peninsula saw a 61 percent jump in million-dollar home transactions, reaching 615 in the first six months of 2000, up from 381 from the first half of 1999. The average high-end property in San Mateo County sold for nearly $2.1 million.
San Francisco recorded 166 million-dollar sales through June, up from just 17 last year at this time. However, the sharp increase was skewed by an unusually low number of sales in San Francisco during the first half of 1999. The average luxury property went for nearly $2 million.
The East Bay also saw a big jump in luxury properties with million-dollar sales more than doubling to 89 this year from 43 last year. The average prestige home in the East Bay sold for $1.5 million.
Goldman said that contrary to some accounts, Silicon Valley's hot real estate market is not showing many signs of cooling off. "It may not be at the white-hot level that it was earlier this year, but it still has momentum," he said.
One barometer is available inventory, which has started to decline once again. The trend is particularly evident in the Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Menlo Park region where only 195 units were on the market earlier this month, the lowest total since April.
That figure is out of nearly 60,000 total homes and condos in the area, meaning that available supply was just three-tenths of 1 percent of the entire market.
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