Are real estate sales and and prices dropping in Los Altos?

Are real estate sales and and prices dropping in Los Altos?

The San Jose Mercury News once again published a headline indicating that sales have dropped but, buried in their negative article is the fact that the median price in Santa Clara County rose.  We're seeing the same thing in Los Altos.  Typical of most media reports, there's an emphasis on anything negative and while reporting slower unit sales, they're missing the fact that prices are rising.

In Los Altos, sales are down, slightly, and prices are up, slightly.  We're finally hitting parity in the market with a balance between inventory and buyer demand.  This is exactly what the market needs and we should begin to see more demand and slow but steady price increases as more homes are sold.

What is typically happening right now is that homes are coming on the Los Altos market in the $1.5-$2.0 million range and getting slight price reductions or lower offers and then selling.  It's the activity in that segment of the market that is propelling the median and average to move up.  Homes priced under $1.5 million will typically sell very fast.

My analysis a couple of weeks ago on the high-end of the Los Altos real estate market shows continued weakness but improvement.  As inventory turns in the next few months, we should see more transactions over $2M which will pull up the median and ASP without significantly improving unit sales.

In any analysis of Los Altos, it's important to take out the condo and townhouse sales as they tend to be priced much lower than the homes and would skew the results.  In addition, there are very few units on the market or sold at any given time as well as being geographically confined to areas near downtown, along El Camino, or near Homestead Road.