What Silicon Valley Home Prices Have Done since the Prior Peak

But household incomes got left behind.
Ten years have passed since the peak of Housing Bubble 1 in Silicon Valley. In 2007, home prices were crazy. After they began diving, accompanied by a deafening layoff boom, everyone called what had happened before a ‘bubble.’ But in early 2010, the layoff boom flipped around and turned into a dizzying hiring boom, and home prices bottomed out in late 2011, as global liquidity was once again washing ashore.
Now, ten years later, the hiring boom that has created hundreds of thousands of jobs in the Bay Area is stalling. And home prices?
Let’s start with the most expensive Bay Area town first: Atherton, with a population of less than 8,000. Only a few homes are sold every month. Currently, 25 homes are listed for sale on Zillow, ranging in asking price from $2.8 million to $22.8 million. Some of them have been on the market for well over a year (including 945 days). With few sales every month, the median price can be a very jumpy.
For example, Forbes, when it called Atherton the most expensive zip code in 2015, figured that the median home price was $10.6 million.
In its new report on the 10-year changes in property prices and household incomes in Silicon Valley, PropertyShark placed the peak of Atherton’s Housing Bubble 1 in 2008. Prices ‘took a tumble in 2009 and 2010, only to rebound and grow even faster over the following years,’ it said. After perhaps a few low-brow homes sold, the median price was at $5.1 million (as of August 31), up 45% from the prior peak.

This post was published at Wolf Street on Nov 8, 2017.