The Sunnyvale housing market

The Sunnyvale housing market, a part of the larger San Jose and Santa Clara County real estate markets, showed strong signs of improvement in the most recent tracking periods. According to a May 31, 2010 article in the Mercury News, “The local housing market continues to show improvement in sales and value of homes, though overall home sales in the nine-county Bay Area and the state as a whole, showed mixed results during the month of April, according to [the] latest real estate sales and price reports.” The piece, written by Rose Meily, went on to note that “MDA DataQuick reports sales for all new and resale homes and condos in Santa Clara County rose 3.1 percent in April compared with the same period last year. A total of 1,656 homes sold in April, up from 1,606 homes sold in April 2009. The median home price for all homes jumped 20.7 percent from $405,000 in April of 2009 to $489,000 this year.”

The performance of Sunnyvale homes for sale was a substantial improvement over the rest of the Bay Area, which actually saw a decline in home sales in the month of 2010. According to a May 20, 2010 article in the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal, “Bay Area home sales fell slightly below the year-ago level and remained well below average in April, according to a report Thursday by MDA DataQuick. In April a total of 7,003 homes closed escrows in the nine-county Bay Area, up 0.2 percent from 6,992 in March but down 1.9 percent from 7,139 in April 2009.” The piece continued to explain that “Some of April’s sales activity might have been delayed until at least May as buyers decided to take advantage of new state tax credits that became effective May 1.”

The Sunnyvale real estate market was actually cited as one of the most improved in the United States. According to Businessweek, “Of the 50 largest metros, San Jose saw the largest increase in home prices, 8.3 percent year-on-year during the first quarter, according to CoreLogic data. This was driven by a decrease in inventory – supply of single-family homes in Santa Clara County dropped 19 percent year-on-year in May…”