Silicon Valley Housing Blog by Steve Leung

Whole Foods in Cupertino moves across the street tomorrow to its new, larger location.  Their corporate press release calls it "Northern California's flagship store."People who have been going to the old location may have also been greeted by a friendly local student who was handing out flyers re...

When is a $900,000 home more expensive than a million dollar home?  When the $900,000 home comes with a $533 per month HOA fee.  If you bought a one million dollar home in Silicon Valley using a 30-year fixed-rate principal and interest mortgage with a 7% interest rate and 20% down payment, your ...

Hi all, this is a cross-post on thinking about and preparing for a home search from my personal blog.--- Not prejudging.  Some things are pretty easy to quantify: number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, price range, and cities.  Then when you plug those parameters into a home search, you can usu...

It's not world famous for it's homes or real estate.  Folks outside Silicon Valley know it as the birthplace of the iPhone.  Apple, Symantec, and a very large portion of HP --- to name a few --- call it home.  To locals, Cupertino is synonymous with the school system.  The Cupertino Union School ...

It's all about proximity.  This month, I took a look at the semi-annual statistics aggregated for the first-half of the year so that my clients can get a good look at the overall trends, as opposed to the bumps in the road.The story isn't about the median prices, which are charted further down in...

"That's a lot sooner than I expected," she said as we walked out of the open house towards my car.  He nodded and I mentally went back over my notes about their priorities.  We hadn't seen that many homes so I wanted to ask a few gentle questions to make sure they were getting what they wanted be...

It's all about proximity.  This month, I took a look at the semi-annual statistics aggregated for the first-half of the year so that my clients can get a good look at the overall trends, as opposed to the bumps in the road. The story isn't about the median prices, which are charted further down i...

It's a job interview, for a position that lasts for anywhere from the next few years to decades into the future.   And there are hundreds, if not thousands, of candidates eager to be the chosen one.  Some candidates don't make the cut because they're too far from work or they don't have the right...

It was the undiscovered country.  The downtown market in this Silicon Valley city was heating up and even homes that were structurally sound but had serious functional flaws were selling quickly --- and for well over the asking price.  Their schedule was clear, though.  No showings on weekends, o...

It was Starbucks today.  Sometimes it's a living room.  Other times it's their favorite restaurant for lunch.  Real estate, especially with prices like we have here in Silicon Valley, involves some critical decisions that are sometimes stressful to think about, so I try to help my clients feel mo...