Palo Alto: Weekly Snapshot

Regular readers of Sweet Digs may have noticed a significant drop in blogger productivity over the last few weeks. No, we weren’t on vacation or in rehab. We were rethinking our approach to the Redfin blogs. In response to a recent reader survey, we’ve decided to infuse our postings with more local market statistics and analysis. This is no surprise in Silicon Valley, where data rules.

So, bear with us while the dust settles on our new format, and please let us know what works for you. We’d ultimately like to be your one-stop-shop for useful house hunting and selling information.

Above is a snapshot of Palo Alto real estate activity for the week of 06-01-2007. According to Altos Research, “the value placed on [Palo Alto] homes continues to increase, despite the fact that prices, in general, have been basically flat recently. These conditions can arise when inventory is light and more, smaller homes have more influence on overall prices.”

In other words, there aren’t enough starter homes to satisfy the demand for new families wanting to move into the Palo Alto school district.

One non-scientific metric that the locals use to measure the economic viability of Silicon Valley is the traffic on Highway 101. There’s been a lot of water-cooler talk about how the congestion has reached pre-2000 “Tech-Bubble” levels. There are many new jobs being created here, especially in the biotech and green technology sectors, and this is increasing demand in the housing market.