The median sale price for a home in Atherton (94027) was $3.9 million last year, up 4 percent from 2013, making it the priciest zip code in Silicon Valley.
Behind Atherton and Los Altos Hills’ 94022 at $2.45 million, Palo Alto’s 94301 tied for third at $2.2 million with Los Altos Hills’ 94024. The median sale price for a home in Palo Alto’s 94301 jumped 50 percent over the past year, the sharpest increase among the priciest Silicon Valley zip codes.
The full list of the twenty most expensive Silicon Valley zip codes in 2014 as compiled by PropertyShark and based on closed sales versus simply an average of the listings that happen to be on the market at any given point in time:
It is surprising that Portola Valley dropped. Maybe an error due to the low number number of transactions? I thought it might be a sign of a shift away from suburban locations and towards urban centers. But then San Jose 95120 is mostly rural.
Over $1.2M to buy the median priced home in Sunnyvale blows my mind.
94087 is south Sunnyvale. Home prices are cheaper in the north half of the town. But aside from the surprise that south Sunnyvale got expensive, lets consider its merits:
– about as good as you can get to the center of Silicon Valley means that your commute will stay reasonable no matter where your next job move takes you
– significant increase in the number of jobs within a short commute.
– Served by Caltrain express service if your next job ends up in SF or up the peninsula
– good schools
– sought after by Chinese and Indian expats
So though many in the city consider Sunnyvale to be Nowheresville, it has changed a lot in the last 15 years. It is adjacent to Mt.View which is becoming the next Palo Alto.
I wasn’t questioning the value prop. (well, I suppose I am a little) so much as just marveling at the meteoric rise. I went to school near Sunnyvale and lived in Saratoga for many years, and am a veteran of the semi industry and the valley at large. When you say things like “It’s close to Mt. View, which is the next Palo Alto!” I know exactly what that means, and my mind just gets blown even further away.
94010 is more Burlingame than Hillsborough
I was going to say, I was surprised not to see Burlingame on the list. I just spent a couple of days there for meetings (near the Millbrae line) and was impressed with the feel of the neighborhoods I walked through. Did a quick search and found that almost every house sold in the past 6 months was >$1.3M, and found maybe 2 or 3 less than $1M, even down in the flats near El Camino and the train tracks. Too bad – i almost could see myself moving to the burbs down there, but it’s way out of my price range.
The wife and I like it down here. Moved out of the City when our first was ready for Kindergarten. Schools are good and the neighborhoods are very safe – our kids walk to school everyday. The Holidays are fun with some houses decked out with all kinds of decoration. I noticed for the first time this year how many people were at home for Christmas – lights were on and driveways full of cars – meaning that a lot of people are coming here to see and spend time with family. It never really has the ghost town feel that some neighborhoods in the City have. Add to that, we almost never have to fight for parking, anywhere and the shopping along Burlingame Ave is really top class.
The best areas are above on the 280 side of El Camino but there are also some nice homes on the other side as you get closer to Broadway and then down further to Burlingame Ave. When we moved down here, we saw quite a few homes un-staged which obviously had elderly owners (grab rails in shower, next to toilets). Most of these places were tear downs or near tear downs. If you had the time and patience to deal with the whole construction hullaballoo, I would guess these are probably where you could still find (and/or create) some value. Inventory was still pitiful and for most of last year the inventory of SFH’s was only 20 or 30 homes. That listing shows 94010 is Hillsborough and that’s very deceiving, almost all of Burlingame is in this zip. It’s way less snotty than Hillsborough. As one person noted in a prior article, Burlingame is a place where people make their fortunes while in Hillsborough you inherit them.