WatchThe supposed "new housing bubble" in Silicon Valley just does not stand up to close examination.
If we consider asking prices in 33 of the richest zip codes in Silicon Valley over the last year and a half, there is at best a bump around May of this year, and a very short spike more recently:
The graph is rather noisy because it is daily average asking price. Very high and very low prices can make it spike or plummet for the day, but at least I don't lose any data this way.
Here are the zip codes I used and the corresponding cities:
94022 94024 94025 94040 94041 94043 94085 94086 94087 94089 94301 94303 94306 94536 94538 94539 94555 95014 95030 95032 95033 95050 95051 95054 95070 95121 95129 95131 95132 95133 95135 95138 95148
Cupertino
Evergreen in San Jose
Fremont
Los Altos
Los Gatos
Menlo Park
Mountain View
North Valley in San Jose
Palo Alto
Santa Clara
Saratoga
Sunnyvale
This gave me a total of 28,268 asking prices which I used to generate the graph. The data is from my What's It Really Worth? real estate data service.
Follow
Befriend (3)
55 threads
521 comments
Roslyn, NY
Sucker's bull rally. lol
It's happening in a lot of markets. Heck - it's even happened in stocks since 2009 low.
Follow
Befriend
35 threads
5,700 comments
Bellingham, WA
that's what about zillow is showing for 94022, flat for the year, but heading up in this selling season. Down from the bubble values. but still at 2003-2004 valuation.
Follow
Befriend (4)
159 threads
2,826 comments
Oh sure and the other Bubble was on the up and up.
:P
Follow
Befriend (14)
821 threads
2,811 comments
63 male
Las Vegas, NV
bgamall4's website
Premium
Well, there is a phony bubble and a bubble based on fraud. This is a phony bubble Trout and the other one was based upon fraudulent CDO's. Once the private MBS took over from the CRA they were off to the races, mid 2003 on.
Follow
Befriend
4 threads
207 comments
Redwood City, CA
Those news articles were idiotic and misleading.
Irrational valuations for recent IPOs (linkedin.com, etc.) do not result in a large number of folks flush with cash shopping for new digs because only a very small number of people actually make money on those deals. It's not like you have to offer stock grants and/or options to rank and file employees when unemployment is above 10% in Silicon Valley. Not to mention most of the folks who benefit the most from those deals already have nice houses in desirable neighborhoods and aren't particularly interested in moving.
Follow
Befriend (9)
6 threads
194 comments
Dublin, CA
Cvoc13's website
There is likely to be a bump up, due to the upcoming Big"Book" IPO and the recent IPO's in tech. But that flood of money will largely only affect the ultra high end then when the next phase of the financial crisis, it will find its natural level.
Follow
Befriend
16 threads
4,426 comments
ducsingle5313 says
Irrational valuations for recent IPOs (linkedin.com, etc.) do not result in a large number of folks flush with cash shopping for new digs because only a very small number of people actually make money on those deals.
Can happen because it has happened before, 1998-2000. Question is who is willing to depart with their savings and hand it over to these share holders. But so far Linkedin options holder is much smaller population. Some 4-5 officers hold the majority.
Today vs, back in the day, options are expensed and due to the stock option scandal, back dating, controls and awards are much more restricted than in the past.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Options_backdating#Overview_of_options_backdating_scandals
Follow
Befriend (4)
28 threads
776 comments
There's probably another dot com bubble but that doesn't automatically equate with a housing bubble...especially since many of the new companies aren't even located in Silicon Valley (google is in cambridge ma), linked in is in santa monica etc
Follow
Befriend (1)
39 comments
I live on the East Coast (MA). The pricing is still very high. Our assessment are done two years out. So an assessment for 2011 is really based on 2009 values. Almost all homes I see have an asking price dead on their assessment value for 2011 which is really what their home was worth in 2009. Now the market has gone down considerably but we are not seeing that reflected in the pricing. Even more disheartening is that the brokers know that these values are two years out, so why are they over-inflating the prices?? I've been sitting on a chunk of money and would like to buy but not at these prices.
Follow
Befriend
7 threads
438 comments
mdovell says
uh.. google is in Mountain View CA
Follow
Befriend (1)
24 threads
557 comments
But Patrick, if we don't buy now we could be priced out forever!
Follow
Befriend (5)
27 threads
2,073 comments
mdovell says
Are you serious? Google is not based in Cambridge, nor is it a new company. The GooglePlex is in Mountain View, CA (and the company was founded in Menlo Park, CA.
LinkedIn was founded in Santa Monica (actual quote from LinkedIn's website: "LinkedIn started out in the living room of co-founder Reid Hoffman in 2002."), but is now based in Mountain View.
Pandora is based in Oakland, not Silicon Valley.
Groupon is Chicago.
Zynga is SF. Twitter is SF.
Facebook is Palo Alto, but is moving to Menlo Park.
Follow
Befriend (5)
27 threads
2,073 comments
Patrick says
Patrick -- do you think it would be helpful or meaningful to provide some sort of moving average in addition to a daily average? e.g. a 7 day average, 14 day average, 30 day average, etc. It may help us suss out the trends here.
This is great data. Thank you for compiling it.
Follow
Befriend (28)
182 threads
4,616 comments
Premium
But those 1 billion RICH Chinese and Indians, haven't they been showing up with 55 gallon drums filled with cash and fighting with each other on the lawns of valley homes, running up the prices of every 3/2 on the market?
Follow
Befriend (5)
10 threads
2,329 comments
APOCALYPSEFUCK is really Iwog says
Cool. So you think you are Iwog now?
Follow
Befriend
2 threads
1 comments
San Marcos, CA
Jim in San Marcos's website
Hi Patrick
One thing you need to take into account, is that rich people buy houses without regard to the economy. The wage earners drop out of the buying in a bad economy. At that point you have nothing but high price homes selling and no low price homes in the mix to bring the average down. The net result gives the appeareance of rising home prices.
Follow
Befriend
243 comments
Cupertino, CA
Jim in San Marcos says
I agree with this, however even in Los Altos, prices have been coming down for over 2 years now - my landlord being a prime example whose residence has fallen over $800k in value.
~Misstrial
Follow
Befriend (5)
27 threads
2,073 comments
Jim in San Marcos says
Yes, mix always matters. It is hard to isolate mix without looking at same-house sales like Case-Shiller does. Mix is why medians can show something different than what's really happening. Median data isn't really granular enough.
Follow
Befriend (54)
5,240 threads
6,175 comments
46 male
Menlo Park, CA
Premium
corntrollio says
Good point. What does Case-Shiller say about Silicon Valley lately?
Follow
Befriend (5)
27 threads
2,073 comments
Patrick says
I think the "SF" for the 20-city data is SF MSA (5-county), which wouldn't include Santa Clara County, since that's SJ MSA. However, I know the data is available, as First Republic uses it for the "Prestige Index" -- they use an 8-county Bay Area (Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, Sonoma, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara):
I referenced this index earlier on a post where I pointed out that Bay Area ultra high-end prices are back to 2000 when indexed for inflation.
Follow
Befriend (6)
5 threads
2,368 comments
APOCALYPSEFUCK is really Iwog says
Dunno about that but I found myself in The Fortress on personal business last weekend, area around Stevens Creek / DeAnza jammed with Lexuses and fancy SUVs, etc., shopping and chauffering around kids. Saw folks wearing polo shirts and Tshirts to boast about places they traveled to, the new ones I noticed were Antigua and a Resort in Macau.
Follow
Befriend
18 threads
166 comments
Yeah housing prices in SV are still way out of wack with reality. I walked around Mountain View today and saw an open house where the seller wanted 900k for a small 3 bedroom 1 bath old home with 1 car garage and tiny yard. Renting is WAY cheaper than buying now.
Follow
Befriend
35 threads
5,700 comments
Bellingham, WA
Renting is WAY cheaper than buying now.
$900,000 loan 20% down 4.25% = $3200/mo carrying cost starting out:
Interest & Property Tax (less tax credit): $2259/mo
Ins, Utils, Maintenance, Opportunity cost = ~$900/mo
Over 30 years:
Total interest paid (net tax credit): $360,000
Total property tax paid (net tax): $220,000
Total other costs: $164,250
Total cost of ownership: $743,000
Average cost of ownership: $2100/mo
What are rents going to be in 2020? 2030?
Higher or lower than $2100?
When you pay $900,000 that's what you're locking your housing expense at (not counting the opportunity costs).
People can get 5/1 ARMs at 3.25% rates now, and if they pay them off in 10 their interest expense can be rather small.
Follow
Befriend
18 threads
166 comments
Troy,
You forgot to take into account that I can invest the down payment on 900k which would be $180k into different investments to keep up with inflation. As for rents going up, salaries must also go up otherwise rents will remain flat. Rents were not much less 10 years ago in Silicon Valley. Not to mention the added repair costs and time to spend fixing the house. I value free time outside of work to travel, exercise and do things besides fixing the house. Everyone I know who owns spends all their free time and money fixing or repairing something in their home! I can still get a business tax break for using part of the rental as a home office so the mortgage deduction really is not that big of a deal. If I were to buy, either bay area real estate must drop or I will eventually buy in a cheap place like Texas, Arizona, or Florida and relocate/transfer for job or find one there.
Follow
Befriend
7 threads
677 comments
Troy -- I always like your posts, but trying to get a bead on your thinking sometimes is like trying to bite down on a tomato seed. Are you just playing devil's advocate, or are you somehow trying to convince yourself that life with only one kidney really isn't as bad as people make out?
Framing opportunity costs in parenthesis like you have here seriously downplays things. Right off the bat, you've sunk nearly 200K in liquid cash (which you'll never ever see again) into a modest SFH. From an investment perspective, you'd be better off buying a copy of Spider Man # 1 or an Abraham Lincoln toenail clipping or putting a down payment on a Stradivarius, or even just starting a small business somewhere. If the big idea is to lock in living costs, you could try to figure out how many durable and consumer dry goods you will need to replace over the coming three decades and lock those in, too; 200K will buy you more tube socks and Ivory soap today than it will in 2041.
BTW I'd take the rent vs own idea one step further: it is MUCH cheaper to buy a Southwest ticket and visit whatever part of California it is that makes your heartstrings zing, and then retreat back from the Twilight Zone once you've had your fill. I've never lived in California, but I'm there for one reason or another about half a dozen times a year and this sampling is more than ample enough for imbuing my sensibilities with just enough of the good stuff that California has to offer -- which is mostly its' coastline and its' architecture.
RE: 5/1 ARMS: This assumes a buyer's financial standing remains at least at parity for the first ten years: No personal scandals; no divorces; no deaths; no illnesses; no pay cuts; no job losses; no economic downturns...bascially, no allowance for chaos. This strikes me as quite a gamble.
Follow
Befriend
35 threads
5,700 comments
Bellingham, WA
Austinhousingbubble says
I assume the house and/or land will retain *some* value : )
BTW I'd take the rent vs own idea one step further: it is MUCH cheaper to buy a Southwest ticket and visit whatever part of California
People buy in PA to work in SV, where all the jobs are.
I have no other attachment to SV, I'd much rather live up near Shaver Lake or perhaps in the San Lorenzo Valley, out where Heinlein used to live.
5/1 ARMS: This assumes
I don't think the index is going up any time in this life, other than in reaction to a bona-fide inflation event, which will be doing a number on rents and land values too.
Are you just playing devil's advocate
oh, and the biggest mistake I made was not buying in late 2001 when I was looking. There were some very good deals to be had then all over the state. I was in no hurry because I thought the dot com crash would last a long time, but I did not count on the google, Apple booms of 2002-2007 and the macro 2003-2006 craziness. Part of my decision not to buy was "renting ($700) is so much cheaper than buying ($~2500/mo)", but I made the mistake of counting principal repayment in that analysis.
Solid houses from the 1990s up in the Shaver Lake area were in the low $300,000s then, they're still in the $600,000s now, e.g.:
http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/42067-Granite-Ridge-Rd-Shaver-Lake-CA-93664/18642469_zpid/
Follow
Befriend
16 threads
4,426 comments
Troy says
People live all around Santa Clara County and work in SV. Where you work during your career, isnt predictable. It may be PA or Fremont or down to South San Jose. In my three decades, I never worked/lived in PA, did I miss something ?
Follow
Befriend
7 threads
677 comments
Yeah, but this has way more to do with price propaganda (the manufacture through aggressive marketing of what the 'going price' for something should be) which is helped by the various price supports still presently in place more than it has to do with real supply/demand.
In any event, the asking price for the house you linked to is down 100K from where it was when they purchased 2 years ago.
You are watching a pot boil...give it 8-10 years.
Follow
Befriend (4)
28 threads
776 comments
corntrollio says
Sorry my pad...I didn't say that google was a new company but they did wait a bit for their ipo.
Facebook was founded in Cambridge ma
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook
All I'm getting at is this
1) due to how bad the ipo's have been (ren ren, linked in, ffn etc) it can be safe to say that we have another dot com bubble
2) Many people assume that because companies are dot comes that they are in the silicon valley
3) because of #3 they feel that there's a new housing bubble
In the late 90's it was largely that companies would operate to gain market share without looking at revenues let alone profits. Now we have companies that stay private for so long that we have no clue how much they are worth. Before facebook there was myspace and murdock got burned with it. Before that maybe aol and that merger was one of the worst in history.
Follow
Befriend (5)
27 threads
2,073 comments
SJ says
The ridiculous place I saw recently was this one:
http://www.redfin.com/CA/Woodside/610-Woodside-Way-94062/home/1678462
This is a 1BR house with a loft built 2000-2004. You may ask yourself, why would someone do that in this day and age? The reason is because this property is on a septic system, and a restrictive covenant placed on the house in 2001 does not permit more than 1BR.
I also didn't believe it was 1600+ sqft. I've lived in 1200-1300 sqft houses with 3BR that felt bigger. It's also not really in Woodside proper, but rather Emerald Hills which has the Woodside zipcode/post office and not necessarily Woodside schools. Because this place is north of Jefferson, it may have Woodside schools. Nonetheless, this place is considered part of the Town of Woodside and is subject to its code and planning.
It has a bizarre history too -- foreclosed in 2005 at $865,209, and then purchased for $925K in 2006. The current owners tried to add a second bathroom in the loft space but got smacked down by the Town of Woodside for doing so illegally without a permit and against the covenant which requires only 1 BR. The prior owner tried hard to build that second bathroom in the loft space, but got smacked down numerous times by the town (including after demolishing the prior 1BR house and applying for a "remodel").
All this for a mere $1.095M.
Follow
Befriend
16 threads
4,426 comments
mdovell says
Today, many stay private because they under-invested in their accounting/finance. Many had to and currently are restating their financials, mainly revenues, because they are inaccurate.
Many received poor comments from external auditors, as such you cannot file an S-1 to the SEC with inaccurate FS and a audit disclaimer opinion. Google had issues if you read their S-1 as does LinkedIn today. You wont find many seasoned Accounting people in FaceBook or LinkedIn. LI had to get a external consultant to file the S-1 and handle the SEC filings. The problem is they hired young children with no experience and passed up on hiring much older experienced valley veterns. Somehow, hiring seasoned older peoples doesn fit the Zynga, LinkedIn, or Facebook culture.
Back in the 90s, that wasnt the problem, because more seasoned people managed the the company including the IPO process. Getting market share wasnt the issue.
Follow
Befriend
1 threads
39 comments
corntrollio, i don't get it, foreclosed in 2005?? Didn't he got it for like 355k in 2000?
Follow
Befriend (5)
27 threads
2,073 comments
warblah says
They tore it down completely (without getting a demo permit) and then rebuilt it. There may have been a big construction loan that was converted to a mortgage, or something else that resulted in the foreclosure (e.g. building the new house then cash-out). These guys tried for several years to back-door a 2nd bedroom into this house, and then the subsequent owner did too. We're 10 years down the line now.
Follow
Befriend (5)
27 threads
2,073 comments
thomas.wong1986 says
People really don't read the S-1s carefully enough before investing anyway. The standard is that you have to make disclosures of material items that someone would evaluate to make an investment, e.g. financials, risks, key talent, etc. However, those risks could be substantial. For example, Pandora says in their S-1 that their entire business model could be up-ended because their music licensing model could change. Didn't stop people from buying the stock, although it was below par for a while.