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…”

Diamond Head Real Estate

Diamond Head, Hawaii, refers to the area on Oahu near the volcanic tuff cone, so named because explorers in the 1800s thought calcite crystal in the rock were diamonds. Today the area is one of the islands’ most popular tourist spots and is a U.S. monument. Diamond Head real estate tends to be rather high-priced, as the area is in high demand, and it consists of both single-family homes and a number of condominiums.

According to statistics published by the Honolulu Board of Realtors, the Diamond head area residential real estate sector has continued to struggle a bit into 2010. In March, there were 23 new listings of Diamond Head homes for sale, down 28% from a year earlier. There were 22 homes sold in March, better than last year, when there were just 20 sold. The median sales price for homes in March was down 4% to $710,000, and the average price was down 27.5% to around $722,000 from more than $994,000. Homes are selling more quickly, though. The average number of days homes spent on the market before selling was 42, down 57% from a year ago, when that figure was 97 days. At the end of the month, there were still 97 homes on the market for sale, down from 124 one year ago. Thus far in 2010, however, the median price of homes in Diamond Head is up 5%, at $775,000, though the average year-to-date is down 8%.

The condo market shows similar trends and is, on the whole, showed much room for optimism in March. There were 21 new listings in the month, the same figure as last year, and at the end of March, there were 82 condos still left on the market for sale, down by four from a year ago. There were 10 condos sold in Diamond Head in March, up from just four sales in March 2009. The median sales price was off just a slight 0.8% from a year ago to $470,000, while the average sales price was up more than 40% to around $769,000. Condos for sale spent an average of 72 days on the market once listed, a decline from last year of more than 45%, when condos spent 131 days on the market, on average, before selling. So far this year, the median condo price in Diamond Head is up 13% to $396,500 and the average price is up 70%. There have been 23 condos sold in the first three months of the year, up from only eight at the same time last year.